This takes place in a slight AU that's explained in the first part of the piece. Inspired by the song "Worlds Apart" by Seven Lions.

Might add another couple of chapters if people want, detailing more of Suguha's POV through the rest of SAO. This was intended to be a oneshot, though.

Worlds Apart

Suguha sat beside Kazuto and his friend Asuna as they ate a picnic lunch on the seventy fourth floor. Of course, she wasn't really with them in SAO. Several months into the death game, the government's virtual division discovered that Akihiko Kayaba had set up a system to monitor a particular player's progress in the game.

This player had been the highest ranked beta tester, and apparently Kayaba had developed somewhat of an interest in him. So, in one of Kayaba's laboratories, a smaller server received a constant stream of data from the official Sword Art Online servers. All of the data from Kirito's avatar and surroundings was sent to this server. It took the government another few months of experimenting, along with the release of the Amusphere, but they finally managed to convert the raw data into a three dimensional rendering of Kirito's surroundings. If someone had an Amusphere, and they opened a link to the live stream the government put out all day and night, they could log in and watch a holographic recreation of what was going on in Sword Art Online at that exact moment.

Suguha had originally been interested in the idea, but it wasn't for several weeks after the government released the stream that she learned that her brother, Kazuto, was actually the player everyone was watching. With that knowledge, she had practically sprinted to the nearest electronics store to purchase Amuspheres for her and her parents.

Reflecting back on the last year and a half of watching her brother fight for his life every day, Suguha had to admit that it was both a blessing and a curse to be able to see what was going on in his world. On one hand, it set her at ease to be able to log in at any time and see that he was usually doing fine. At first she had been constantly terrified for him as she watched him engage in near constant life-or-death fights with terrifying monsters and even other players. She still was scared when he fought, but she at least understood that he was one of, if not the strongest player in the game. He wasn't about to die so easily.

On the other hand, it was a terrible experience to see him come close to death so often. She had watched the only guild he had been apart of get killed, and the effect it had on him. He had become so depressed, taking extreme risks with his leveling. No matter how skilled he was, she couldn't ever shake the feeling that if he made a couple of mistakes in his swordsmanship, impressive as it was, he could be taken from her forever.

That didn't even take into account the public opinion of him. Since her brother was the only player Kayaba had monitored, he was the only way anyone had to get information about what was going on inside SAO. Everyone that had a family member trapped in the game, and anyone else who had even a remote interest in the topic, had gone out to buy Amuspheres and were constantly watching. She had heard on the news that the average number of people watching exceeded a hundred thousand, and that jumped into the millions when a boss battle or something important was happening. Also, Kirito was the biggest talking point on all of the forums online. People made highlight videos of his amazing swordsmanship or the times he saved other players, while others openly criticized how selfish he acted at times.

It caught up to her at school, too, after she was caught being a little too concerned about Kirito on one particular boss battle day. Now that the people around her knew that he was her brother, everyone always asked her questions about him or wanted to know what she thought about the latest thing Kirito did in the game.

She sighed. None of that mattered now, as she sat beside him and Asuna while they ate Asuna's home made sandwiches. She had realized a few weeks ago, that contrary to her friends belief, the hardest times for her were when she was right next to Kazuto in the virtual world, but still worlds apart.

To be so close to him...but not be able to reach out and touch his hand—if she tried her hand would just phase through his as if he didn't exist—was truly a terrible experience. Still, she would reach for his hand every time she was near him, and he would never reach back. Once, she had even stood beneath Asuna's hologram and tried to hold her hand out like Asuna's, in an attempt to feel like her brother was holding her own hand, not the hand of the chestnut haired girl that obviously had a crush on him.

Why? she found herself asking again, as she watched the two of them laugh as they ate. Her brother had become animated about the seasoning Asuna used for the sandwiches, causing the other girl to laugh in embarrassment.

The question of why was what she had originally hoped to understand by coming to this world. Why had Akihiko Kayaba stolen her brother from her? Why was she allowed to stand next to him, but not touch his hand? Why was his silent presence absent from their home?

Why are we worlds apart?

In the eighteen months she had observed the game, she had never been able to even come close to finding an answer to that question. In fact, nobody on the outside had any idea what Kayaba was doing. It had become a heated topic on the internet—where was the mastermind behind Sword Art Online, and what was he doing?

From what she could tell, there were two main theories. First, that Kayaba was merely managing the game from afar and not directly interacting with it, or that Kirito hadn't encountered him. Otherwise, people seemed convinced that he was hiding as one of the players, taking part in his own death game. Even if that were the case, he was doing a damn good job of staying hidden, as the lists of probable players included pretty much everyone fighting on the front lines.

Suguha had long since lost hope that an answer would ever come to that question, but she continued to ask it anyway. Maybe if she just asked it enough, she might find an answer.

Then, to her surprise, she was brought back from her philosophic questioning as a group of players showed up. It wasn't common for her brother to encounter other groups of clearing players except in boss fights, as he would either solo the dungeon before anyone else got there, or he'd train somewhere else until the groups arrived.

She recognized the men as the Fuurinkazan guild, headed up by Klein. They began interacting with Kirito and Asuna, causing her to chuckle at her brother's attempts to keep Klein away from his girlfriend. She silently wished that Kirito could always enjoy himself like this in the game, and that his life didn't have to be so hard.

Little did she know that later that day he would come closer to death than ever before...