Author's Note: RikuRoku, and done in my classic multiple-person point of view. Hope you like it. The rating will change to M, so be prepared now.

One. The First Day

Roxas

I blinked one, twice, and let my eyes fall closed for just the smallest second. The smallest second, but it was more than enough to let the Other take over.

"Ew! Sora, don't eat that! It's groooooss!"

"What, you don't like my peanut butter and ketchup sandwich, Kairi?"

Then, the other voice entered the conversation. I knew their hearts, knew their names. I knew that Sora had a sort of emptiness lingering inside his body. It was a same sort of emptiness I felt in mine.

"What'd you do that for, Riku?"

They were sitting at a cafeteria table. It was funny how I could see them so clearly in my mind, even though they were only figments of my dreams. Kairi, with her long red hair, giggling at Sora, whose brown spikes stuck up in disarray. They sat on one side of the table, together, and Riku across from them. His silver bangs stuck to his forehead as he tried to memorize French.

Sora said something I didn't hear, and Riku looked up. Just a general glace, but for a second he lingered on me. I blinked my lids, since my eyes were going dry from staring him down. He blinked back, then turned his head in a way that indicated he didn't believe what he was seeing.

"So…ra?"

"What?"

"Nevermind."

"Roxas!"

"Never…mind…wha…t?"

"ROXAS!"

"It's…"

The ball hit me full-force in the forehead, with a pounding sound that made all the other volleyball teams stare across the gym at our losing squad. Olette bent over me, her dark lashes clumped together with prideful tears.

"Roxas, you okay?"

I sighed and shook my head. That bounce off my skull had meant game point for the other team, and our league of four has lost the game for the third P.E. period this week. Also on my account, just like the first two. Any team with me seemed doomed to lose, even though I wasn't half-bad of a player. I was just bad luck.

Coach blew the whistle. "Alright, that's enough, punks. Put the balls back in the basket. Olette, you take Roxas to the office and see that he gets 'imself fixed up, okay?"

"Yes, Coach, ma'm!"

Olette gave a sort-of salute and picked me up off the gym floor, slinging my arm over her shoulder. "Are you okay, Roxas? Seifer hit you pretty hard."

Spots of light danced before my eyes as the blood rushed to my head.

"So…ra…what's the…"

"I'll be fine. It's just…nothing. Don't take me to the nurse, alright?"

Olette released my arm and let me stand on my own; her eyes were steady, waiting to see if I would fall. When I seemed healthy enough to walk without getting an insane head rush, she took her leave.

I slumped back against the wall, trying to remember what I'd seen. It had been one of the worse visions, so clear I could almost feel it. The smell of ketchup still lingered inside my nose. And that Riku, with those eyes of his….

I didn't want to think about it. It was almost like he'd seen me. Not Sora, but me, standing behind or lingering above like a ghost.

Which had to be impossible. Utterly, insanely impossible.

Why? Because they weren't real. I knew, as much in my heart as I wanted them to be real, they couldn't be. Where would they exist? And why on earth, in that case, would I be connected to them?

I rubbed my head. There was a throbbing in the front of my brain, either because I was thinking about impossible things or because I had just been pounded with a volleyball. Either way, it only throbbed more when Axel grabbed me from behind.

"Rox-as! Heard you got hit pretty hard in gym last hour."

I grumbled inside. Someone had told the school, probably Seifer. It wasn't like me getting injured was that big of a deal, since it tended to happen from time to time. Most people ignored it…except when Axel heard about it. Axel was supposed to be the nurse's aide, hired to take care of us when she wasn't around. But somehow, ever since I had gotten a jab to the eye with a tennis ball in the beginning of the year, Axel had decided following me around the school when he had nothing better to do was his first priority.

Axel stopped me in the middle of the hallway and bent down, holding out a bandage. "You're bleeding a little," he said. "Hold still."

"Bleeding? Axel, you don't bleed from being hit with a volleyball."

Axel bit his lip and stuck the bandage across my head. "From you, Roxas, I think anything is possible."

I bunched my eyebrows together. The bandage wrinkled against my skin in a way I didn't like. "Shouldn't you be in your office?"

"Yes, but when some students neglect to come…" he said, tapping me on the head, "It is the nurse's immediate duty to go to the student!"

I was just about to remind Axel that he was just and aide and not even a real nurse when I breathed in sharply and suddenly felt woozy. My lungs felt hot and raw and something throbbed inside my head. A fog came over my vision, and I couldn't see any more of Axel than his outline.

"Sora? Sora!"

Sora was laying his head down his desk, a visible trail of drool coming from his mouth. I was behind him, where I hovered like cigarette smoke over the head of a barkeep. "Ha ha," he said groggily. "Let me sleep, Kairi."

"Roxas?"

"Riku! Riku, tell Sora to…Riku?"

"What is that?"

"Roxas! Roxas, wake up!"

"What is what?"

"Don't you see it, Kairi? There's something…there. Behind Sora."

"Riku, are you sure you're okay? You didn't eat anything at lunch." She placed a hand on his forehead. "Are you getting sick?"

"What?" Riku said, staring straight through me. No, not through. At me. He could see me. He was looking right at me, and he wanted an answer. "Who…" his voice was beginning to fade, and I could feel the clarity of the world slipping away as I was being taken back to my own world.

"Roxas!" I yelled as loud as I could. "ROXAS!"

Riku smiled and looked down at the sleeping Sora. "Rox…as?" he asked slowly.

His outline faded in my vision, until all I could see were dancing spots of blue and white through the heavy mist. There was a jagged pain that came in my chest and left quickly. My lungs felt raw again, like I'd run a long way in a short amount of time.

I opened my eyes and found myself in Axel's arms.

"Roxas!" he yelled. I groaned and rubbed my head, which was throbbing from the bright lights, and the sound of Axel's voice rattling around in my skull like I had no brain. "Roxas, are you okay? Roxas, you passed out! Quick, somebody get the nurse!"

The door of the classroom nearest to us opened and a teacher I didn't recognize rushed out. I think she was one of the senior teachers.

"Code blue!" she yelled back into the classroom, even though I was perfectly awake and looking around at everyone like they were crazy. At least, that was the look I was trying to go for—it seemed to have gotten mistranslated somewhere between the sarcasm I was going for and the delusion everyone else saw.

One of the kids must've dialed the office, because next thing I was surrounded by teachers who were checking my pulse and telling me to breathe slowly. I recognized a few of them. Then one of the cafeteria ladies who had also rushed down in the confusion pulled out her cell phone and called the medics.

Axel was still panicking when they hauled me away in the ambulance.

xxx

I must have passed out again, maybe from stress or just pure exhaustion. I was lying on a cot in the school infirmary, or at least I assumed I was. I'd never really had need to visit the infirmary, because Axel normally followed me around school and saved me the trouble of visiting.

I sat up and looked out though the door to the nurse's office. "Axel?" I said. "Hey, did I pass out or something?"

Nobody answered, even though I heard the clear rustle of papers. "Axel?"

"Oh, are you awake?" someone asked. A pretty woman with brown hair stuck her head around the doorframe and smiled at me. I followed her into the next room and sat down in an ugly orange chair. "We found you passed out on the floor in the hallway," she said. "You seemed to just be exhausted, so we decided to let you sleep. It's third period now, if you feel like going back to class."

"Yeah," I said, sitting up. The front of my head was pounding, like I'd been smacked into something hard. "Yeah…third hour." I squeezed my eyes shut and stared at the nameplate on her desk. Mrs. Gainsborough.

I didn't know any Mrs. Gainsborough at our school. The only nurses we had were Axel and the head nurse, some weird guy named Marluxia.

"Where's Axel?" I said.

"Who?" she asked, not looking up from some papers she was reading.

"Axel. Y'know, he works here." I sighed and leaned back into my chair. "You're new, aren't you? Figures. Axel said you guys were getting someone new, since Marluxia was going on vacation and he has college three days a week. Or don't tell me. He's going around the school looking for me?" I frowned, because something had just hit me through my headache. "Are you sure it's only third period?"

Fifth period. I had been hit in the head during fifth period gym with Coach Larxene. Had time suddenly spiraled backwards, or was this some sort of weird coma side-effect dream?

"Yes," she said carefully. She took hold of my shoulder. "Open your mouth for me, um—"

"Roxas."

"Roxas, then." She gave me a disposable thermometer and checked the time on her watch. "Roxas, honey," she said while we waited, "did you hit your head at all?"

"No. I just fainted," I mumbled, trying to keep the thermometer in my mouth. "Didn't you hear the code blue?"

"Code what?"

"Code blue. Y'know, where it means a student needs help really badly? One of the teachers called it in."

"Oh," she said, taking the thermometer from my mouth and shaking it before reading the little dots. "I thought that was Sora? But never mind. Roxas, let me write you a pass, since you seem alright. What class do you have?"

Sora. My heart jumped into my throat. Had she meant Sora, as in the boy from my vision, Sora? Something had happened to him, and something had happened to me. Did it mean anything at all, or was he even the boy she was talking about? And then the big question: was any of this even real?

"Chemistry," I mumbled, trying not to panic.

Something wavered in my voice as I realized I might not even be in my school anymore. This wasn't where I should be, I knew that much. I had seen Axel's face when they'd taken me away in the ambulance. How would I leave in an ambulance and wake up on a cot in the school infirmary? Nothing here was making sense.

"Chemistry with…?"

"Vexen. Chemistry with Mr. Vexen."

Mrs. Gainsborough bit her lip. "Are you sure you didn't hit your head too hard, honey? Because we don't have a teacher here by the name of Mr. Vexen."

I shoved open the door as she said it and didn't recognize the lockers or the hallway or even the tile on the floors. This wasn't my school. And as the bell rang and the students flooded into the hallway. I didn't see any of them that I knew, except for one girl.

It was Kairi, the girl I'd seen with Sora, the boy in my vision. So did that mean this was Sora's school?

"Lunch," I said quickly. "Sorry, I'm just a little confused. It's…new for me. I have lunch now."

She looked a little reluctant to let me go, but I ran out the door before she could tell me no. I would find somewhere to sit at lunch, and get some answers somehow. There was a way out of this and back into my own world. There just had to be.

I knew this was either a dream or I had finally done it for real—I had slipped into one of my visions. And given that I wasn't following Sora, feeling what he felt and hearing what he heard and seeing what he saw, I knew that this was real.

I slid into the lunch line and grabbed a tray. The cafeteria was almost exactly like ours, except with more windows and blue trays instead of green. One of the walls faced towards a back courtyard, where some kids were eating outside in the sunlight. I debated the merits of inside eating versus outside eating when I got to the end of the line and realized I didn't have any munny with me. My wallet had been left in my locker in my world.

I was trying to explain something to the cafeteria lady about being a new student and forgetting my wallet and having homework to do when somebody three people behind me spoke.

"He said it's his first day, Miss Tifa! Why don't you give the poor guy a break? Can't you see he's nervous?"

"Tidus," the lunch lady said, pointing the large serving spoon she was holding at him. "You better get back in line, mister. I won't have any of that shouting in my cafeteria."

"Hey." He held his tray up in front of his body, like it'd protect him from her piercing glare. "You know I love you, Miss Tifa. I was just looking out for the new kid. C'mon, what do ya say?"

"What do I say? What do I say?" She pulled a pad of paper and pen out of the pocket of her apron. "Name." she said to me.

"Uh, Roxas."

"Roxas, huh?" she glanced back at the line that was building behind me. "Grade?"

"Eleven."

She scribbled this down on her piece of paper, pulled it off and stuck it under the computer monitor. "There. Now you owe me one-hundred and seventy five munny. Bring it tomorrow, or I'll track you down." As I stood there, grateful and shocked that she had just let me off the hook, she waved a hand at me. "Hurry up, new kid. You're holding up the line."

"T-thanks," I stuttered, nearly tripping as I rushed out the door.

My body froze as I stood in the center of the cafeteria, near the table of condiments, and wondered where on earth I was supposed to sit. There were hundreds of kids and at least twenty different groups I could identify.

The kid from before, Tidus, came up behind me and squirted a pool of ketchup onto his tater tots. "Hey, new kid," he said. "You need somewhere to sit, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said, eyeing the bottle of ranch dressing. "Yeah, I do."

He jerked his head towards one of the corners of the room, where a round table filled with older kids still had three empty seats. "Well, c'mon, then. You can sit with us for now."

I trailed behind him, not sure what to say. What kind of rules applied in this world? Did they have the same kind of music we did, and the same fashions? Was Chemistry class still a bitch and Health still some sort of sick joke they made us re-learn every year?

Tidus slammed his tray down on the table so hard I though it'd crack in half. He pulled the chair out next to him and nodded at me, as though I was here now, and I had to sit down.

I sat.

Tidus ate, and then he began to ask me something about who I was or where I had moved here from when the tanned redhead from across the table interrupted him. "Oh, Tidus, Riku asked if he could sit with us today. That's okay, ya?"

"Riku?" Tidus mashed his corn into his tater tots. "Yeah, it's fine, Wakka. But why's he want to sit with us? Sora do something to piss him off?"

"No, Sora's sick today, so Kairi's sitting with Namine in the art room. Riku needed someone to sit by. You know he only acts like he likes being alone."

"Who acts like what?" Something sleek slid into the empty seat next to mine, and I was left staring at a half-eaten bagel in his hands. I couldn't bring myself to look him in the eye.

"Nothing, nothing," Tidus said in that shifty way that made it obvious Riku had been the topic of conversation. "So…French test next hour?"

"Oui," Riku said, and then nothing more and he chewed his bagel and sat in some strange kind of contented silence.

I wished I had some ranch dressing for my tater tots. Then my neck pricked in that weird way that made me sure someone was staring at me. I looked up, and Riku was glancing from his French textbook to my face and back again, like he couldn't place me.

It was that look that made me shiver. I'd had it set on me before, when I had hovered behind Sora and Riku had saw me and stared like he couldn't believe I was there. Now he was staring like he couldn't believe I was solid, or that I existed at all. Tidus and the other boys were talking loudly next to me, but I couldn't hear a thing. Finally, Riku broke the silence that seemed to occur only between the two of us.

"What's your name?"

"Roxas," I said quietly.

He nodded, like he was just going along and not really paying attention. Then his head snapped up, eyes wide with slight shock before he composed himself. "Roxas?" he said slowly.

"I know, it's weird." I gave a quick laugh and stuffed a few tater tots into my mouth so I wouldn't have to explain any questions to him. In all worlds, it was always rude to talk with your mouth full.

"Not weird," he said to his textbook. "It's just…"

I waited for him to finish, but that seemed to be all he had to say. 'It's just…' What kind of sentence was that?

Then, before I could ask him anything, my insides lurched. I put a hand to my mouth in case I had to vomit, but nothing came up except raw air, which I choked out of my lungs with several barking coughs. Nobody noticed, except for Riku. He looked up quickly from his book and took another bite of his bagel before swallowing it painfully quick.

"Hey—" he began to say, and then the room started to blur, just like it had done in the hallway with Axel how many hours or days or weeks before.

I just decided to let it take me. I didn't want to stay in that world, where I didn't know what would happen and some boy with bright blue eyes was the only one who bothered to ask my name out of pure curiosity.

"Did you—did you see that guy who was here? Where'd he go?"

"Guy? Riku, what the hell are you talking about? There wasn't anyone here. It's just us. And that seat it always empty, anyways, ever since Selphie—Riku?"

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"There was someone here," he insisted. "Roxas. His name is Roxas."

And, however many worlds away, I woke up in a dark hospital room with Axel asleep in a chair to my left. I was hungry, and there was a pair of bright blue eyes I couldn't get out of my head. Axel stirred in his sleep as I moved my lips to make the words come out. I was afraid that if I didn't say them, then this vision, this dream, hadn't really happened at all.

"Riku," I said to nobody in particular. "His name is Riku."