Four Ice Cream Bars-A Sequel

A Kingdom Hearts fanfic

YAJJ

Date: 5/18/2015: 11:06 PM

Summary: It took a lot longer than they liked to remember their non-friend, who they used to buy extra ice creams for all, those years ago.

Yeah, I'm "back". Hello! I didn't even realize I hadn't posted anything for a couple months, so when I did, I needed to get something up. This has actually been written for about as long as the first one has been written... there were two other parts, but it was too rambly to have them on, and I really liked this part. So please, read!

Hayner and Olette were happily married almost ten years after high school. Ten years after not buying that fourth ice cream, ten years after growing apart and coming together, they married on a hot summer day. They provided refreshments and, without needing to consult the other, enjoyed seasalt ice cream for the one that they stopped trying to remember.

But this isn't a story of marriage or romance.

Olette was halfway through her second pregnancy when the name came to her. Out of nowhere, it came to her mind in her sleep. Her dream said one word -Roxas- and she sat bolt upright, screaming the name and awaking her husband.

Hayner watched her, infinitely confused for his wife, who was shaking and crying and kept muttering that name over again -Roxas- and he didn't know how but somehow he knew that name, too. There was no jealousy, no wondering if maybe Olette wasn't as faithful as he thought, because judging by the look on her face and the pounding of his heart, this was bigger than the both of them.

Instead, Hayner just hooked an arm around his wife and held her close, let her shake and maybe, just maybe, he shook alongside her with the force of memories that were not his own.

After endless minutes of muttering, Olette turned to Hayner and looked up at him with wide, brokenhearted eyes. "Hayner… we forgot about Roxas!"

Hayner didn't ask, only nodded. His own dream was haunting and painful -and was it really just a dream? Or was it a memory long forgotten, of Struggle matches won by not-Seifer and a championship won by not-Setzer, and four kids sitting on a clocktower staring at the eternal sunset?- but he didn't hear the name, it didn't haunt him like it did Olette.

"How could we forget about Roxas? What kind of friends were we?!" Olette continued, shaking her head sharply, upsetting her messy brown hair. She abandoned her husband, tossing the duvet off of her and kicking her feet to the side. She scrambled out of the bed, grabbed her slippers and robe, and rushed out of the room and down the stairs, toward the basement.

Hayner was close behind her, following her if only to make sure that she didn't hurt herself. He followed without robe or slippers, panic embedding in as his lovely wife panicked all on her own.

He chased her down the basement, gasping when she came to a stop at the old, beat up freezer.

The old, beat-up freezer was, in fact, the one from the Usual Spot, from over a decade ago. And as if that wasn't the best part, it still held over four hundred little bars of ice cream, carefully contained and moved in a freezing moving van all its own because they didn't even know why but they wanted to keep it as it was, for the non-friend that they couldn't remember.

Their daughter Annette, who was two years already, often questioned about the freezer. The one time she'd been caught trying to reach in and steal an ice cream, Hayner had nearly panicked and snatched her hand from the freezer, holding her far from it, though to protect her or the freezer he didn't really know. All he'd said by explanation was "this freezer is very important, and those are very old anyway. Never touch them". He'd then bought her two ice creams afterwards, and she didn't question further.

"Olette…" Hayner said carefully, stopping at her side and setting a hand on her waist, to draw her away from the freezer.

Olette wouldn't be deterred. She yanked his hand away and tore open the freezer, staring down at the endless packets of ice cream. "These… these were for him. They were always for him. Roxas. We always got four, but we only needed three but we got four because there should have been four. R-Roxas was on the clocktower. And at the beach. You remember that p-picture? That picture of the three of us, but there's this big blank space right next to you, like someone should be there but wasn't. Pence even pointed it out that one time, remember? It was framed in the Usual Spot, sitting on the desk and I remember always thinking there was a boy there when there wasn't but there was, wasn't there? Roxas. He was always there."

Hayner wrapped his arm around her, using his free arm to close the lid. "Yeah, yeah I remember all that." He did remember always bringing a bag of four ice creams to the Usual Spot and always tossing one into the freezer. "But… who was Roxas?"

Olette made a noise like she was going to explain, but then her expression fell. "I… I don't know. He was just there. No reason why, always just there until just after that Struggle competition, just the summer after eighth grade. Then it's like he disappeared. Did he? Did someone take him away?"

"I don't think so. Not in the way that you think, anyway."

Olette dropped her arm on top of the freezer, turning a little to glance sideways at her husband. "Roxas was…" She bit her cheek and lifted a hand, tracing it through the air as though stroking a face. "Roxas was the boy with the deepest blue eyes. He was the boy with the yellow hair and the sad smile, like he knew something was wrong but would stay happy for our sake." She continued tracing a boy's face, touching places for the eyes as she said them, sweeping upwards as she explained his hair and drew a thin smile.

Hayner watched in amazement as a face did appear, melting down into detail, like she was painting on thin air. A boy at fifteen years old, with deep blue eyes and yellow hair and a sad smile that said that he was upset but he was happy for them.

Olette stopped tracing his face, perhaps not seeing the apparition or perhaps continuing to bring it to life. Instead, she started over gently sloping shoulders and down long arms. "He… he was all black and white. Light and Darkness, all in one person. He was so… mysterious. Even after being our best friend for years, we would never really understand him, would we, Roxas?"

The face didn't move, didn't answer. It was nothing more than a painting on air.

"He had these checkerboard wrist bands that you liked to tease him about but really we all thought they were great, because somehow they always exemplified him, and… and around his neck, he had a strange little cross. You remember those white things? Those Nobodies? That same cross was always around his neck, right… there…" She finished off the cross on the boy, and it sparkled, and the boy blinked.

Both adults jumped. Olette quickly withdrew her hand, pressing back into Hayner's arm.

The boy blinked hard, and wiggled his arms and watched them go, and then he looked up at them, like he really hadn't noticed their presence. He didn't look entirely real; he was almost transparent, like a ghost, and he looked flat as a painting, but as he turned his head to peer around him, they saw that he looked pretty three-dimensional. He was three-dimensionally flat; an interesting notion.

"...Roxas?" asked Olette quietly, gaining his attention.

The boy looked their way again, actually looking at them. The small smile that Olette had traced crossed his face was like she had explained; sad, like he knew that something was wrong but would be happy for their sake. "Hey guys."

His voice echoed a little, and it was clear to them that this boy, this "Roxas" from memories they never had, wasn't really there. Not entirely, not in the way that they were. They didn't know how he was there even as he was, and yet… there he stood.

"...Hi…" Olette greeted.

Roxas looked around him silently, peering at their silent home in Twilight Town, just outside of the clocktower so they could go up there if they wanted and remember what had never happened. Then he looked back at them, and the sadness was gone. "Congratulations," he said, nodding at Olette's left hand. The delicate diamond ring situated on her ring finger was the reason behind his word, and Olette twitched her finger, looking down at it.

Neither said anything.

Roxas didn't seem put off. "I kind of always thought it would be you two. I mean, you and Pence… I dunno, it wasn't gonna happen. You were almost too close. And you were always one of those 'cherish old memories' kind of people, so I figured someone from school, and you and me… that wasn't possible. I guess I always knew that," he continued, shoving his hands into his pockets.

The cross around his neck glittered.

Still, neither adult spoke, too caught up in returning old memories that they couldn't entirely remember having or not having.

"Annette is beautiful," Roxas continued after a moment, and it was unclear to the two if he was just talking to talk, or if he was trying to pull a response out of them. Either was totally possible.

Olette opened her mouth, kind of panicking again. Her eyes flashed toward the ceiling; Annette's room was just upstairs and a room over. Roxas, she saw when she looked to him, had glanced for a moment to her room as well.

"...Guys…?" Now it made more sense that he was just talking, but that he was talking because he wanted an answer, he wanted to hear them speak because over the past two decades or so, he'd missed them.

Olette tried to speak, but her heart caught in her throat. Instead she reached to the boy, touched her fingers to his cheek. She was surprised to find that, despite his transparency, her fingers met solid, warm skin. She laid her palm flat against his cheek and wasn't entirely sure how it was possible, but she just touched him, stroked his cheek with her thumb and let herself drown in the memories of the boy she hadn't really known she'd forgotten.

"Roxas," said Hayner softly, and the boy looked from Olette to him, watching curiously and happily. "What are you doing here? Where were you?" Hayner was handling his own returning memories rather well, memories of a boy who could Struggle better than the best of them, who had learned how to skateboard with him when they were ten, who had traveled through school with them for nearly nine years and then had mysteriously disappeared from everything.

"I had to go... had to wake up someone important," Roxas explained. He picked up Olette's hand and just held it, smiling.

"Why couldn't you come back?"

"'No one would miss me,'" Roxas whispered, but from the faraway look in his eyes they weren't sure if he was remembering something or answering their question.

He blinked a moment and then smiled stronger still. "Once he woke up, I had to stay with him. Watch over him. He'd get into a lot of trouble otherwise. He's a bit of a danger magnet." There was affection in his gaze; whoever this person was, he was very fond of him.

"You're not anymore?" Olette asked. It had been about fifteen years since their returning memories mentioned him.

"No, I still am. I always will. I'm just taking a break. He said it'd be good for me." He glanced behind him at the freezer. "...You guys collected a lot of ice cream."

Olette nodded and swallowed, rubbing the back of his hand with hers. "Yeah. And we didn't even remember why…" She made a noise, almost of discomfort, and touched Roxas' face again, pulling her hand from his. "We never meant to forget you, Roxas…"

"I don't blame you, Olette. What happened… all of it wasn't real, anyway. It was all fake. Fake feelings, fake people, fake… fake memories. I'm a Nobody, we aren't supposed to be remembered."

"But it was real to you," Olette commented softly.

"...Yeah. It was all real to me."

Olette's eyes softened a little. "I'm sorry."

Roxas quickly waved her off, cheering himself up. "It's better now. And… you remembered eventually, so that's all that matters, right? I mean, even if you did before, you couldn't exactly do anything about it."

"I suppose…" Olette bit her cheek uncertainly.

"Did you want one?" asked Hayner cautiously, his eyes flickering to the freezer. "An ice cream? I mean, I don't know how good they are, but we've got a box of good ones upstairs for Annette, and she doesn't seem to mind if someone else takes one… and we could run upstairs and grab one, if you want."

A real smile gracing his lips, Roxas laughed. "I can't. But I appreciate the offer. You really should throw all those out; they're bad by now. It's been years. You could probably use the freezer space."

"Naw; we've got another in the garage," Hayner said with a shrug, scratching his cheek and flushing with embarrassment.

"You kept this one just for ice cream?" Roxas asked, quirking one golden brow.

"Yeah. I guess, even if our heads didn't remember you, our hearts did. They wouldn't let us stop."

Roxas smiled again, shaking his head. "...That sounds like just the dorky sort of thing that Sora would say. Listen, guys, I've gotta go. Don't forget me this time." The cross around Roxas' neck twinkled and he slowly became less and less visible.

"Wait. You know Sora?" Hayner asked, dropping his hand from Olette's waist.

Roxas shrugged, blending into the environment like a chameleon. "You could say that."

Olette bit her lip when he was nearly out of sight, gripping her husband's hand. "We won't forget you, Roxas! You're still our best friend! Bye!"

Roxas didn't have the time to answer, only waved at them, middle and forefinger extended. He twinkled out of sight silently.

Hayner and Olette were left alone with their memories and the silence.

There you go, my most recent offering to the KH fandom! How was it? Please let me know in a review! As always, all reviews will be answered!

Love,

~YAJJ