I don't own any of the characters or anything else, but if I could own one thing it would be the ability to turn back time and fix everything. This is for Aidan. I love you, and if you were here again I would tell you that every day.

Thanks.

Suicide is a big thing. It is something that even just to think about, is big. It was something that is rarely ever spoken about- and if it is, someone will make a joke about it, and then slowly the tension will ease and people won't realise until later that they haven't really talked about it at all.

Sora hadn't understood at the time. He had been a kid then. He had been eight years old, and that part of him just hadn't developed yet. The part that realised that the eyes crying over a scraped knee was nothing compared to the heart crying over a pain so heavily crushing that the body that holds it seems to shatter into a million pieces that bury deep under the surface; so deep that you can never get them back, no matter what you do.

He had been with Kairi that day. Near the end of the day - after many games of hide-and-go-seek and several running races - they had been down at the Secret Place, carving various things into the walls, using rocks and sticks and anything else that was sharp enough to bite deep enough into the dark, smooth stone surface of the cave. Sora had been thinking alot about Kairi lately. He had been thinking that he would like to marry her one day. He hoped that she kept her hair short, because he thought she looked quite pretty like that. In fact, Sora decided as he carved the point of a sword into the metallic surface, that he would never ever marry her if she got long hair like Riku.

"Hey, Kairi," he said as he stuck his tongue out, hoping that if he concerntrated hard enough on the picture it would draw the rest of itself without his clumsy hands' help. "Do you want your hair to be long?"

"Na-uh," she replied, not taking her eyes away from the face she was so prouf of herself for carving. "I like it better when it's all prickly and short. It doesn't feel right if I have long hair and Riku has short hair."

Sora tried to picture Riku with short hair. His back felt funny and he decided that Riku could only ever have long hair. "Do you reckon that Riku was born with long hair?" Sora asked, not even thinking about how that could not possibly be true.

"Maybe," Kairi said, imaging a pale baby gurgling happy in his cot, with big eyes like the sea and long silver hair that trailed down the back of the cot and nearly touched the floor. She giggled, looking over at Sora. "I bet his Mumma used to plait it."

Sora grinned. "And when he had a bath she would tie it in a knot and hang him out on the clothes line to dry."

Kairi giggled again, and Sora joined in. Soon they were both laughing at the image of baby Riku, chirping and fluttering in the wind as he spun around and around in circles on the clothes line.

After that, they didn't talk. Sora thought about what Cloud would cook for tea tonight, and he wondered if he would be allowed to help. Cloud was fourteen. He was a big kid, and Sora loved his brother very much. He wanted to be like Cloud when he was older, all tough and not afraid to show the world who he was. He wanted to have a pretty girlfriend like Tifa and he wanted to wear baggy jeans and tight t-shirts.

Kairi thought about Selphie. Or, rather, Selphie's make-up. She wondered if Selphie had any of that pink blusher left from her birthday. Maybe if she wore some of that, Sora would ask to share her cookies instead of Riku's. She would ask her mother later if she could go over to Selphie's tomorrow and borrow some. And maybe Selphie would paint her nails purple and pink, one on every second fingernail like Yuffie did.

Then she remembered her mother had said that she had to be back by the time the sun touched the top of the Paopu tree. She quickly looked outside of the enterance to the Secret Place and saw that the sun was just a little bit underneath the first few leaves Paopu tree. She gasped. "I have to go, Sora," she said quickly. "Daddy's coming back early tonight and Mummy said I could cook dinner with her for him as a treat."

Sora's eyes lightened up. "Your Dad's come back, then?"

Kairi grinned, feeling somewhat smug. "Yup," she said, almost purring like a cat as she put her hands behind her back and laced her fingers together. "But I've really gotta go," she said, opening her eyes and lurching forward.

"Alright!" Sora called. "Tell him I said hi!" After Kairi had gone, Sora didn't really know what to do. He didn't feel like going home, and his mother wasn't like Kairi's. Sora knew everyone on this Island, and his mother trusted him. But it was pretty boring if there was no one to play with. Sighing, he didn't bother to pick up his feet as he dragged himself out of the Secret Place.

He took the short way home, hating the feeling of being alone. Sora was small and although he was outgoing, he was very timid. He couldn't wait to see Cloud and tell him about how he had won seven races against Kairi. Seven! For a 'lazy bum' (as Kairi called him) he sure was getting better as his running.

It was quiet and as Sora walked past all the houses, he could see all the familiar faces. Cid was there, in his one bedroom house, sitting back on the couch with his music up way too loud and his window open, a thin trail of smoke coming from out of his mouth and leaking out the window. There was Wakka, laughing wildly as his mother scolded him for standing on his chair at dinner time. There was Sephiroth and Leon drinking out of brightly coloured cans, trying to look cool as they played multi-player on a n X-box game that wasn't legally meant for fourteen year olds and was scaring them much more than they would like to admit.

And then, finally, there was his house. There was Aerith, his beautiful mother, biting her lip as she tried to control her tear streaked face. There was his father Zack, an exact replica of Cloud (or, rather, the other way around), aside from the spikey blonde hair, with a stiff arm around her shoulder, failing hopelessly to hold back tears. There was Riku, staring out the window with a dead gaze, meeting Sora's eyes with a dull start.

And then everything happened so fast. Sora registered everything, cried out loud in shock, and then ran up the driveway and onto the porch. He flung open the door he just knew would be unlocked and raced into the kitchen. It had all seemed so surreal outside - like watching a drama through the window that was the tv screen. But inside it was different. The air was thick with something Sora was too young to describe, and everyone was avoiding his gaze.

"W-Wha... What happened, guys?"

Riku cleared his throat after a moment, and he sounded so much older. But, after all, he was ten. He was growing up now, and he had left behind the stage Sora was currently in of being confused about everything, and being too naive to refrain from asking what was wrong. "You know, Sora," he said in a voice that just wasn't Riku. "You came home at a bad time."

Then it clicked. Sora knew what was in the air around him, choking him into this stunning silence that was so tight it hurt to breathe against it. Absence. Cloud wasn't here. Big blue eyes widened and Sora didn't have to ask anymore. Cloud was gone. He didn't understand exactly what that meant, or how it had happened, but he knew that his big brother wasn't coming back.

"I..." A small, selfish part of Sora noticed that he seemed to be the only one capable of speaking. "Is he coming back?"

Aerith wailed then, and the sound was too healthy and clean for the situation. She buried her face into her hands and her elbows into her knees. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, never once breaking pattern. It was the same sound, over and over again. Sora watched, horrified, as the sound rang through his ears until it was all so much that he couldn't bear it.

He wanted to scream something, but he didn't know what. He wanted to scream it so loud that Cloud would hear it and come back. He wasn't aware that he was moving until he had passed his Dad and was running out of the dining room. He streaked through the living room and stumbled down the hallway. He reached Cloud's door, but found he didn't have enough strength to open it. He just let his body go limp, and threw himself at the door. The side of his weakly clasped fists banged against the wooden door and he knocked his head against it a second afterwards, hating how empty and alone that thud of the collision sounded to his ears.

He could still hear his mother whimpering, but he wasn't sure if that was because the sound was still ringing in his ears. The endless brown that travelled down Sora's vision faltered for a second, going blurry, and Sora realised that he was crying. He was crying and he couldn't stop. He was crying so, so much. The muted pulse of his tears hitting the carpet were lost to him, everything was lost.

He knew now that Cloud wasn't coming back. He didn't care, at that moment, where he had gone - he just knew that his big brother wasn't coming back.

"I won seven races," he told the door. His voice was clear, but that's because it wasn't his. It was an excited, vibrant kids' who had just gotten home to a smiling mother and a joking father. It was a little brother who was proudly bragging to his big brother as he kept the older boy from studying. "I even won when we took our shoes off and the sand was wet." Maybe there was an echo of his sad voice in the hallway, maybe there was not. Sora couldn't even hear his own heart beating anymore. "Are you proud of me?" he choked. "Cloud," he mumbled. "I'm proud of you. Are you proud of me?"

He started crying heavily again. "I want you to be proud of me!" he yelled, but the sound was quieter because he screamed it from the back of his throat. It was sharp and intruding, and the sound woke him up.

He pulled his whole body away from the door, looking up. He stared numbly at the door. He opened it slowly, giving himself enough time to relax. He wondered if Cloud's room was messy. No, it would be neat. Both of the boys had to clean their rooms this morning, and Cloud wouldn't have messed it up that quickly. The door opened fully, but Sora squeezed his eyes shut.

He didn't want to see no one in there. He wanted to see Cloud in there, grinning, saying, "Ha-ha, did we fool you, little man? Don't be silly, stop crying. I'd never leave you - you're too much of a wuss on your own," or something cheesy and brotherly like that. But Sora couldn't hear any breathing or movement, and so he readied himself to see an empty room.

He opened his eyes, and jerked forward, letting go of the door handle. The room wasn't empty, that's what Sora noticed first. Then he noticed that it wasn't empty because Cloud was there, sitting in his study chair. He was facing the door, but it wasn't anything like Sora had imagined. His eyes widened and he froze for a second, trying to wrap his head around it. There was red, so much red. There was a big hole in Cloud's chest, and something squishly was rubbing against the seat of the chair, hanging limply in Cloud's even limper hand between his thighs.

Sora screamed. "MUM!" he telled. "MUM! DAD! MUMUMUMUMUMUMUMUM!" he ran out of the room and down the hallway, through the living room and into the kitchen. Everyone - Zack, Aerith, Riku - was looking at the spot where they knew Sora would turn up, their gazes all horrified, guiltly and numb. Sora stared crying again, without warning and dropped to the floor as his knees caved in.

"Mum," he sobbed to the shiny white lino beneath his knees. "Why did you let me see that?"He looked up, angry. "WHY DID YOU LET ME SEE THAT? I'm only little, Mum!" he looked over at his Dad, looking for some sense to this on the surface of his father's beautiful face. "Don't care about me?" he asked, suddenly coming to term with all these mature doubts he realised he must have been possessing for a long, long time. "Is that why Cloud left? Because you don't care about him?"

Zack's face broke, then, but Sora didn't care. "You're the reason he left!" he yelled. He looked at Riku. "Some friend, letting me see that," he said calmly. "Some friend, Riku."

"Sora..." Aerith said weakly. "Don't speak to us like that..."

"Like what?" Riku suddenly spoke up. "Like the way Cloud can't anymore? God, Aerith. We may be kids, but we're not stupid. Don't take this out on him - that's not right. He's done nothing wrong."

Sora looked between all three of them, feeling so angry, so bitter. What had made this happen? Why had Cloud left? And why was he so mad? It wasn't like they had made him leave, Sora knew that. But he was angry at Cloud, too, so, so angry. And what made him even angrier was that Cloud wasn't even there anymroe to yell at.

"You're all kids," he said quietly. "You're all stupid little babies." He pushed past Zack, who didn't even try to stop him. "I'm going to Kairi's," he said. "Her Dad came back today."

And after the door closed, Aerith began to cry.