So I went back over some of my older stuff, I figured this one could use a little bit of beefing up, it's kinda little.

It will be a chapter at a time, I don't think any events will change, but there will be a lot more fluffing around all of it. Starting word count 14,411

Hope you all enjoy.

Disclaimer: Square Enix and Disney owns Kingdom Hearts, all characters and locations are theirs only the story is mine.

*v*w*v*

Chapter One

I

Sora had woken as he had for the last ten years: panting with a racing heart from a dark nightmare that never grew old. The shadowy figure always spoke, and it alway hurt his heart, even if he could never actually make out the words. It was always dark in his dream so he could never see the face, and it always made his stomach drop and turn uncomfortably.

"Sora!" a banging on his bedroom door made his sky-blue eyes shift from his oh-so-fascinating ceiling tothe back of the wood door.

"It's open," hegrumbles

"Hey, are you okay?" A spiky blonde steps into his room, looking more chipper than usual.

Sora shifted his eyes back to the ceiling with a shrug, "same dream, different night."

Roxas expression changes a little bit as he sat on the side of his brother's bed. "Are you sure?"

Sora gave him a defiant look to not push it this morning. Roxas give a little look of worry before pulling on a happy face and standing from the bed. "Come on let's go and get some breakfast. Food always seems to cheer you up. Rena is making pancakes and eggs this morning."

Sora pulled himself up to a set on the edge of the bed, yawning big with a stretch. He run a his eyes then takes off after the blonde.

"You aught to clean that mess of your room." Roxas says before they make it down the stairs.

"You know Rena will flip and not let you have dinner if she finds that it's that messy."

"Food." Sora mutters back, plopping down on the kitchen chair. He was never much of a morning person and the dreams only made it worse. Nothing worse than waking up beside being woken up.

Rena pushes a big bowl of eggs towards her son, followed by a plate stacked high with pancakes. She pours him a glass of orange juice.

The bell for the back door dinged as Kairi came all dressed and pretty into the kitchen. "Good morning Rena, Roxas, Sora-really, I think that you should chew your food, you know savor it."

"The human vacuum does not chew," Roxas reminds her taking a bite of his own eggs.

"Neither does the bottomless pit," Rena adds.

Kairi sits down across from Roxas next to Sora. She watched the brunet inhale his food with slight disbelief.

Rena pours her out a cup of tea. "Would you like some breakfast Kairi dear? Before Sora inhales it all," she chuckles spooning some more

eggs in Sora's empty bowl.

"'Fanks." Sora says looking up at her, his cheeks bulging with food like a chipmunk.

Kairi chuckles at Sora, "No, but thank you. I had some of mom's grits this morning. Tea is fine."

"Where is Namine?" Roxas asks Kairi.

"She should be here any moment now." Kairi says taking a sip of her tea, "You would think with our five days left of our senior year of high school she would have learned so assemblance of punctuality."

On queue there was a small knock on the back door and in came the blonde version of Kairi. She was breathing heavy and it looked like her closed had come straight from the laundry bin.

"'Morning, sorry I'm late," she pants lightly, trying to catch her breath without giving away she was breathless.

"Well, you all better hurry to school, you'll be late," Rena tells them pulling the dishes from Sora who was trying to lick the syrup from the plate. "Go get your stuff, and put on a shirt."

Sora dashs back up stairs. He throws on his school uniform, pulls his backpack from his dresser, crammed his shoes on and snatches his lunch muney from his desk.

A shattering of glass stops him at the bedroom door. He turns slowly and sees a pile of books, a box, a spilled open pencil sharpener and broken glass in a mess next to his desk.

He walks over and bends down, bushing some of the pencil shavings off the picture and carefully picking up the broken frame. It was the picture of Riku and himself when they were eight, standing on the Paopu trees trunk the day before they were to go and meet Kairi. It was a good picture of them together. The sun was bright and the ocean calm.

It had been eight years sense he had looked on this picture-or any picture for that matter—or had even directly though about Riku.

"Sora!" Rena calls up the stairs.

Sora looks away from the picture, sighed and stood, carefully holding the frame in his hands. He'd get a new frame after school, he could go without lunch for a day. "Coming." He calls, pushing his money into his pocket and closing his door behind him.

"Hurry dear—oh my," she cuts off sees what he's carrying and give a gentle sighs at the sight of the broken frame in his hands. "Oh, and that was of you and—"

"Can I have some muney to get a new frame?" Sora cuts in before his mother could get out the name he hadn't heard in so long.

"Of course dear," she says softly, turning to hunt down her purse.

Roxas, Kairi and Namine leaned closer to see what picture it was he was holding.

"Here," Namine carefully lefts the picture from his hands and pulls all the broken glass off and slides into a clear sleeve she pulls from her backpack. "So you don't scratch the picture up," she hands it back to him.

"Here you go." Rena said handing Sora some muney. "Hurry now, you'll be late if you don't leave now."

The only thing that Sora could think of during his thankfully short day was of that day he and Riku took the picture now laying in his lap. The day beforethey had met Kairi.

It had been ten years. Ten long years. For a while after that day he had deeply detested Kairi. He'd looked for something to blame and she was the one under fire. She was the one who said they should race to the park to go and play on the see-saw in the dark after all…

x*x*x*

'Come on!' Kairi calls to the two boys who followed giggling after her. 'Race ya to the see-saw, I bet no one is on it now!'

It was dark, but it was also the dead of summer, so they got to stay out later. It was warm tonight and the moon was mostly full and flooded the islands with soft light. They had just met Kairi yesterday, she was fun, energetic, and was full of new stuff to talk about and do.

Sora and Riku were looking for someone like her to have something more to do. They had gotten quite bored with the Islands recently. So they just ran around with her all day. Playing in the trees, drinking coconut milk in the secret place, chasing down fish and giggling when they ran their fingers over their slimy fish-bodies.

Kairi ran across the street to the park, Riku was still in the middle and Sora not too far behind him.

The car lights was what had stopped Sora.

"Riku! Riku watch out!" He yells from the curb.

Riku stopped in the middle of the lane to look back to Sora, "what?"

As Sora yelled again the car wasnt stopping. The driver, who'd bent down to grab her cell phone with her 5 year-old daughter on the other end, did not see the boy.

"No! No! RIKU!" Sora yelled, stepping off the curb to run out to him.

Too late. The woman hit Riku full on. Her neck snapping under the dashboard, the clutch driving into her chest, foot slipping off the gas petal. Riku was hit on his right side, he was knocked a 100 yards forward, rolling and skidding onto the pavement, motionless.

Sora ran to his best friend, laying broken in the street. "Riku! Riku! Oh my god, Kairi, go get some help! Hurry!" Sora yelled at her. He turns the boy over carefully, he was covered in gravel and his face a blood streaked all across it.

"Riku," Sora rasps out through the sobs, lifting him supper carefully up into his lap.

Riku groaned in pain and forced his eyes open. "S-Sora?" he whispered.

"Don't worry Riku, I'm here."

Riku flinched in pain, and rolled his head more into his friends lap, "You've always…been here."

"Don't leave me Riku!" Sora cries, tears streaming down his face.

"Never. I will never…leave you." Riku panted, closing his eyes and tucking into his lap more, "I will…always be…your guardian…angel. Like you…are…mine." Riku gave his last sigh after his last words and fell limp in Sora's lap.

Sora didn't move, screaming into the air tears flooding down his cheeks. He was half covered in Riku's blood, and siding move until the ambulance and the cruisers came and pryed Riku's body away from and took him away on a stretcher in a black bag.

*x*x*x*

A single tear dropped onto Sora's paper, causing the fresh ink to mix with the droplet. He shakes his head lightlt and whipped it away with the back of his hand.

"Hey, you okay?" Namine asks.

Sora looked down at the broken frame in his lap.

"Can I see it?" She shifted a little. "The picture I mean, I didn't really look at it this morning."

Sora nodded, he set it softly into Namine's hands. "That's R—that's me and my best friend Ri—" Sora looked away shamefully at the fact that he could not say Riku's name out loud. His own best friend's name. He could feel his heart being scratched at again, the pain leaking through more fully now.

"Riku right?" Namine studies the picture. "Kairi told me about him. She didn't know him well though. Said that he died in a car accident the day you guys met her."

Namine and Roxas came a few years after Riku's death. Their boat crashed close to the Islands on some rocks the night of a storm four years after the day of the accident. As far as anyone could find, there were only two survivors. And it was Sora mother Rena and Joye and Raze, Kairi's parents, whom offered each one a place to live. Namine shares Kairi's basement and Roxas lives in Rena's what use-to-be the guest room.

Sora gave a shaky sigh and cleared his throat a little, "Yeah, we were racing to the see-saw. The woman in the car was on her phone with her five-year-old little girl, she dropped the phone when she hit a small pot hole and dipped quickly to get it. He didn't see her and she didn't see him. By the time he saw her it was too late."

"The woman died in the accident as well, snapping her neck under the dashboard and crushing her rib cage on the stick-shift. Hit his whole right side, shattering his hip, breaking his knee, just about all his ribs, punctured a lung, skull cracked... The woman was only going thirty. That was even five miles under the speed limit. I was getting ready to turn eight in a month and he would have turned nine two days after he died."

"That's-" Namine didn't know what to say laying the picture frame back on his lap. "How awful that must have been for you."

"Kairi had blamed it on herself for a few year afterward. Said that if they had never had ran across the street like that, or had started a race for a countless time that day, he would still be alive." Sora shook his head, "I wasn't anyone's fault though, just a bad string of fate-"

The final bell of the day tons out three times and Sora slid the frame carefully into his bag and stood, dropping his backpack on his shoulder.

"Hey Sora, happy birthday over the weekend!" Called a few people.

"Thanks." He muttered back slightly.

Saturday was his birthday, and as it was testing week, they had Friday off. He would be eighteen this year. Eighteen, graduating high school three days later and his own legal guardian.

Also the age he could get his license which he didn't even think about. Didn't want ever to even know how to drive a car. In fact, he has only been in a car twice. Once when Rena had to pick up a dresser from downtown and when they went to the complete other side of the main island for one of Sora's aunt's funeral. Any other time he took the tram, which was fixed on rails that couldn't except for the smallest fraction of percent slip off the rails and hit someone or kill himself.

As Saturday morning rolled in, Sora lay looking at the new aquamarine frame that he had gotten at a card shop after school. Kairi had volunteered to come with. She had told him that she too had been thinking about Riku all day.

"I still feel like it's my fault." She had said.

"Kairi—"

"Really. I kinda do. I know it's not my fault, but there is still guilt," she fiddles with her hands.

Sora knew what she had meant by that. Sometimes, when he had nothing more to think about, he blamed that accident on himself. He figured that if he would have kept running he could have grabbed Riku and pulled him out of the way, or hadn't called to him, just let him keep running. For it was him calling out that was the reason Riku stopped and was hit. There were so many things that could have been done or changed to not let that happen.

Rena came into his room and kicked Sora out of the house at noon, when Kairi came to take him to lunch with Roxas and Namine. They had a three way gift that they gave him afterwards, which involved Roxas getting him a shiny silver chain with a single, white upside-down heart looking thing, then Namine getting a him a charm that was a notebook with a pen across it, and Kairi making a charm of Thai shell that was a star. He put it one right away and fingered the charms.

After lunch the three of them dragged him to the main islands to the Fall Fest. It was helping Sora feel better he had to admit. Afterwards, Kairi and Namine were called home for something, and Rena called and needed Roxas to get some things at the market place and Sora to get a light bulb from the hardware store for the burnt out one in the hallway and batteries for the smoke alarm they yanked from the family room yesterday because it was chirping.

Sora was walking up to the house around five thirty after going to the corner store. There was a man leaning against the fence next to the gate around the yard to the house Sora lived in. He was tall and slender, looking like he was waiting for the most important thing ever.

It made Sora slow his walk down. "Can I help you?" he asks as he comes closer, but not too close.

The man had long silk-white hair that bushed just past his shoulders and vivid eyes. He had strong arms, folded across his chest, and a strong face. He didn't look dangerous. "I'm looking for someone. I'm suppose to meet them right here."

"Who would you be waiting for right here?"

"Well, he's about this tall," the man held his hand up to Sora's height. "He's got spiky brown hair, and ocean-blue eyes. I'm a good friend of his and I wanted to surprise him."

Sora stopped walking and looked straight at the guy. Those aquamarine eyes looked all too familiar and it made Sora rather uncomfortable to look into them. At the same time, he couldn't look away, his eyes had placed those that he looked into and his heart was nodding its head at the answer to the man's identity. His brain wouldn't let him believe it however, it just couldn't be. "Who are you?"

"Oh, now, it's rude to ask a name without giving one." The man says standing off the fence and unfolding his arms. He was a good six to seven inches above Sora's height.

Sora frowned at him. "I'm Sora, who are you?"

"Awe, you don't remember me? I know it's been a while, but still," the man says in a light airy voice.

Sora looked at him for a moment. Looking into those perfect eyes. "No." He shook his head, pulling his eyes from those all too familiar ones. "It's can't be! No way."

"Why not?" He smirks. Sora knew that smirk too. It made a memory come back to him...