A/N: This is from Axel's POV if you can't tell. I read a drabble called 'If I' by Miharu-chan2and this shot me in the head. heh heh. Enjoy.
What is a heart?
Is a heart what let's you feel? Let's you truly be known as alive? Is it what keeps you sane and gives you a purpose? It's what drives you to do what you do and leads you down the path you believe is right.. Right?
But they've told me a hundred times.. I don't have a heart.
Yet I feel courage in the face of danger. I feel sad, almost rejected, when I'm forgotten and left behind. I just wanted to help. It drove me crazy. I tore myself apart trying to understand a reason why people left. I wanted to understand but I couldn't.
Why would you leave me?
And it sprung another emotion I shouldn't be able to feel. Anger. But ever since you left, the emotions confused me and I didn't understand. If I didn't have a heart, what created these feelings?
These feelings led me to abandon my fellows and strike out on my own. They taught me to chase you until I could no longer stand.
And as I vanish tonight, I'm deciding something and making it final in what's left of me.
A heart does not produce the emotions. The ability to care and to love. To hurt and to hate. They come from an unknown source and the heart channels them. Without a heart, it may be harder to realize they're there, but you sense them. You feel and you strive to find what you don't have.
These emotions I've found and have. They fill me up inside and they are my heart. I ache because I couldn't see you and yet I'm at peace with the path I chose. Is this what it's like to have a heart?
With the last of my energy I follow what my heart tells me and do the right thing. Now I only wish my comrades could see...
A heart is just a symbol. The feelings are real.