Hey! Ok, this fic is rated Teen, just like all my others for language, themes, blah, blah, blah. This fic contains Riku/Sora, Sora/Kairi, Cloud/Sephiroth, Cloud/Rikku, and other minor pairings in the future. ((But the main pairing will be Riku/Sora)) This is an AU, of course.

Summary: His mother is an abusive, drug addict and his father is a homosexual. After not seeing his father for eight years, Sora's father suddenly wants to spend the summer with him and his little sister, Namine. Is there such a thing as forbidden love? And if not... will the cynical, antisocial boy known as Sora allow himself to love?

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy. If I did, I would have gotten KHII out on the streets much faster... Hopefully, it'll be out by Christmas... It better be!

PROLOGUE:

This Story's Never Had an End…

Well… my life is simply… life. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just there. Kind of like a banana. Sometimes I like to eat them, sometimes I don't. My life has never been easy, but it's never been hard either. I suppose… I suppose I feel the same as anyone else. You deal with what you have to and throw everything else out.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm insane or something. I don't know. I probably never will. I mean, my Mom is a ((cough, cough)) former heroin addict. (She got one of the nurses there to slip her some morphine as a substitute. But last I heard, she's into Ecstasy now.) My Dad is a jerk-off whom I haven't seen in eight years. That really doesn't matter. That chapter of my life is finished.

Lulu and Namine are my only family now. Lulu is my Godmother and Namine is my little sister. She's fourteen and just about the most innocent person I know. She even calls Lulu "Mom". I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it. Cause our real Mom is in rehab. They don't even bother to release her, everyone knows she'll go right back to using. It's the only way she can deal with her pain.

What pain, you ask? Well… my wonderful Father just up and left my Mom. He went straight up to New York, leaving my Mom behind with a newborn baby and a two-year-old. Lulu, the ever-famous I-Can-Do-Anything Godmother was called in by the Divine Watchers of Traumatized Children. While my Mother slipped down a road of drugs and depression, Lulu changed Namine's bed sheets and corrected my bad grammar.

Needless to say, Namine and I turned out alright. Namine knows that our real Mother is still in rehab. Heck, everyone knows it. Neither of us looks anything like Lulu, with her blood-red eyes and her dark brown, almost black hair.

Namine is actually the split image of our Mother. She has sandy blonde hair and delicate creamy skin as our Mother. I received Dad's spiky hair. We both have Father's mystifying blue eyes. Lulu says that both our natural blue eyes give us an innocent look, but I don't think I look pure at all. Namine, but not me. Never me.

It took me a while to figure out that Namine was everyone's favorite. For a long time, family I never even knew existed always tried to take her away. This is where my good-for-nothing Father puts his big bucks to use. He gave Lulu custody over Namine and myself. No one else is allowed to have us, except him. (Like we had to worry about that.)

He used to visit us all the time, back when Namine was a baby. But he stopped visiting after I turned eight after a certain incident with paint, puke, and a brand-new silver BMW. I suppose you can fill in the pieces.

I remember when Namine would beg to hear stories about our Mother. Back when she thought Mom would move back in with us and we would all sit down as a true family and eat cotton candy. Heck, I don't even know if she's still in rehab. She could be somewhere out on the streets… We've never heard from her. We don't need to though. We have Lulu and she's more than enough.

But basically, from the stories that I overheard in Namine's room, Mom passed on her innocence to Namine. Our Mother was a cheerful optimist who's only fears were not having enough butter to make chocolate chip cookies or thunderstorms. Mom was an inventor. She loved to make things, combine things… Mechanics. That was her thing. Rikku. Rikku is my Mom's name.

Lulu and Rikku. They had been best friends since grade school. Lulu had always watched out for her. So what went wrong? Rikku met my Dad up in New York during a fashion show in September. Needless to say, when he went down to visit Rikku the next summer, boy was he surprised to see me! He had lived in Hollow Bastion, New York for his entire life. ((We live on Destiny Islands, Florida.))

He had gotten into some kind of fight with his lover in NY and he came down to Florida to see Rikku. So I guess the whole thing was my fault. If I hadn't been born... my Mother would still be happy and drug-free. But at least he put in two years of good effort. Traveling back and forth from NY to FA must've been hard. Every weekend from Friday to Sunday, summer vacation, spring vacation, and winter vacation he was there. He tried the whole commitment thing.

And it might've worked too. If Rikku hadn't gotten pregnant again. And her hormones were kicking in. He high-tailed it outta there and didn't even give Namine a good-bye kiss. Apparently, he still had his lover to go back to in Brooklyn.

I believe that because neither of my blood parents cares about me, that's made me somewhat of a cynic. Amazingly enough, I'm not your classic depressed, masochistic loner. I have a girlfriend. I have a healthy relationship with my sister and my surrogate mother. I have no life. I have a problem with contradicting myself. I have too many problems to count, but who really cares?

Kairi has been my girlfriend for almost two years and my best friend for about eleven years. Since she's the only person outside of the family who knows about my Mother, she's the only one I let in.

Kairi knows all my secrets. She knows that I like blue applesauce and that I pretend to like thunderstorms, even though I'm terrified of them. (But you can understand why I lie about that, right?) She knows that I really do consider Lulu to be my true Mother, because I can't remember a time when Rikku acted like one. She knows that I listen to "Fly Me to the Moon" in so many different versions it would your head spin.

It's funny how people fluctuate. I never liked the band Good Charlotte. As a matter of fact, I hated them. Until one fine day… I heard their song "Predictable" a while back. Once I saw the video, I was impressed. I liked it. I liked them. But then I saw the "I Just Wanna Live" video and thought, who the hell puts on a banana suit in a music video? Not a band I like. So my love for GC and Made vanished as quickly as it arrived. My love of twins came from that band. Then I saw the Olsen's on MTV and that love departed rather quickly. I'll never forget that.

I love the water. I love swimming, scuba diving, building sand castles with Namine, racing against Lulu… Water is my life. That's why I love living in Florida. I love dolphins, too. Yes, I can be random. Except… I'm not even sure that the dolphin statement was random. I mean… dolphins swim in water and I was talking about how much I loved the water. Dolphins swim and I love swimming. So was my comment really random?

Lulu tells me that I think too much. Sometimes I think she's right. One day I'm going to get brain cancer from thinking too much. I don't like being corrected. It bothers me. I remember when Rikku was sober for two whole months. It was heaven. It was also the month I meet Lulu.

Namine and I managed to survive without Lulu for three whole years. I always used to wonder why Lulu never came to rescue us sooner. She told us that Rikku would always make up excuses and lies. Lulu didn't even know that Spiky had abandoned us (but not financially, mind you) or that Namine even existed.

I love rainbows. Because they're an infinite sign of the end. The end of horrid torrents of rain, of booming thunder, and blinding lightning. I'm sure glad I wasn't alive back in the olden days. Because that forty-day storm would've given me a coronary long before Noah sent his dove out.

I enjoy long walks in the park, watching sunsets on sandy beaches, and traveling through muck-infested marches where alligators chomp through your shorts. Ah yes, I'm quite the romantic type.

As a matter of fact, I did all that last week with Kairi. Summer vacation has finally started, after nine months of torture and Algebra II… I'm free for the next two months.

July. July. July. I had my sixteenth birthday "party" last week. Ninety-percent of the people there were from Lulu's job. They brought all their rich, snotty kids and teenagers, who flocked together like flies on a dead body.

Speaking of that, Kairi is taking a forensic summer course. I don't know why she's into dead bodies and ballistics and all that, but if it makes her happy… Heck, Kairi's always been smarter than me. So its natural that she gets put in this program for kids-who-are-smart-enough-to-take-college-courses-but-not-old-enough. Plus it only cost like three hundred dollars.

I sometimes wonder what I'm going to do once I get out of college or high school for that matter. Lulu used to be a prominent fashion designer. Now she owns her own label: "Overdrive". She has clothes for toddlers, kids, teens, adults, and the not-so-young-oops-I-broke-my-hip-falling-down-the-stairs adults.

Namine is actually one of her best models and she loves all the clothes Lulu makes for her. Amazingly enough, Lulu created division of Overdrive that's actually sold in Hot Topic. She did that just for me. I'm loved, I know it.

Namine's favorite T-shirts always have those Moogles on them. They're weird creatures that come in all colors and they remind me of Teddy Bears, except they have balls on their heads.

Rikku was a mechanical inventor and a chemist. She worked hard at what she did and she was the best in Florida. Spiky was on the news a couple weeks back. He's a superb criminal defense attorney. So anyway, I was talking about the news, right? I'm trying to remember what it was…

(Flashback)

I had been sitting on our couch in the family room. The TV was on, as usual. Namine was doing a crossword puzzle, ignoring the news just like she always did. Lulu was making dinner and would most likely call Namine to set up the table. The news people had just finished making their third inaccurate weather forecast of the evening. Some redhead with fake blue eyes had just started running her mouth:

"As you may recall, two months ago, Sephiroth, president of Jenova Inc., which is the largest metal manufacturing company in the US, was charged with the murder of the famous florist Aeris Gainsborough. As you all know, Sephiroth hired the best defense attorney possible. Although there are some rumors about the relationship between-" And the redhead had been shut off by Namine.

"They don't know what they're talking about!" Namine had shouted at the television and stomped away to the kitchen, which happened to be about a few feet away. I had sighed and decided to take a quick nap.

(End Flashback)

I smiled, remembering that day. Even though this might sound evil, I enjoy seeing Namine get angry. Because 99.99994 of the time, she's happy and calm and angelic. And she only gets angry whenever Spiky is on television.

If Namine inherited Lulu's wisdom, I inherited Lulu's heart. Or… lack of it. I don't really mind. In truth, I'm glad Lulu and I have something in common. Because even though I spent my childhood years plotting against her in some kind of psychiatric frenzy, I must've fed off her genes or something. Now we share so many qualities it makes me sick.

I do know that back then, deep inside past my childhood insanity… that I was just trying to lash out at someone. I needed someone to blame for losing both my parents. But the fact that Lulu never let me down… that meant a lot.

Oh… and by the way, my name is Sora Strife.