((Every teardrop is a waterfall- Coldplay
the version that inspired this chapter is by Boyce Avenue. Youtube can be your best friend~ Enjoy!))

When I find myself thinking about him, I like to picture him -God- as a large or bigger man who sits for a living in a huge white arm chair made of the fluffiest clouds that you can imagine.

It's his job to stare all day at the face of a million television sets, of different sizes and assortments, and click away at the lives of millions with his mighty and all powerful universal remote. That's Gods deal. He's a repair man and people just happen to be his specialty. With his magic buttons he takes the blur of our static filled lives and fixes it so that we are on the right station. That's what the bad things are. Static. A fuzzy mess of white noise that keeps us from making logical decisions. Usually something as simple as a green line on your screen can be fixed by your guardian angel pointing their wings in a different direction, or maybe standing on one leg. But sometimes it's not as simple. That's why we are separated into sides. The "good" people, the ones that don't need to be watched as closely are put off to the right side, the easy side; where we can go about our life easily with just an occasional adjustment until our screens click off and are replaced by a newer, better life. Naturally, God spends most of his time on the left side. The "bad" people. People that need him to find out what they have the potential to be; people that needed guidance and protection, people that needs the the buttons of a remote to get them going. People who needed to learn how to be happy.

That's why bad things sometimes happen to good people.

Mostly I never thought of myself on either side of this scenario. I take this from a general perspective as a common understanding between all people who simply don't want acknowledge because it would mean that they would be giving in to their place in this alignment. I don't think that anyone every really knows what side they're on. It's like a war. Both sides think that they are right and either could give you, what they believe would be, a fantastic justification for their actions against the other half if you would give them a few seconds of your time. We all start in the middle ground, just waiting for our fate to be decided for us. And as unfair as it is, we have never really had a choice in the matter.

There was a time when I thought that I might be one of the bad people. When I thought that maybe the way I was raised and my struggle for happiness would push me closer to the left until I was absorbed in a spiral of static. But after I found my music I really thought that it had changed things, made me a happy person and found a way to pull me back to where my mother would have wanted me to be until I forgot her face completely. Then I was sitting in the middle again. You don't have to be strictly good or bad. You could be both at the same time and maybe more inclined toward another. Or you could be either at different times but still be ultimately good. Right? That's the way I wanted to think about it. But as the red and blue lights made their way toward me I had to think that I must have done something to deserve this.

I turn the music up,
Got my records on.
I shut the world outside until the lights come on!

I almost find it funny how you never expect it to happen.

Not to you anyway.

One minute we were driving down fairly empty road; my father was in the front seat yelling into his phone at whoever was trying to book our next appearance because to him, yelling was the only way he knew how to get people to do what he needed of them. I was lying down in the small back seat of the black Acura, legs folded in to my chest with the middle seat belt wrapped around my waist in the most uncomfortable way imaginable, but I didn't care. I had been staring at my left hand that had been shaking since I got off the stage that night, baffling me into the anxious state that can only really be cured by the fetal position. It's not as if it never happened, the hand shaking thing that is. Every couple of weeks after I've played a dozen or so different pieces to their fullest my hand would go into shaking spasms that put my arm in a trimmer. The first time I shook so hard that my father had no choice but to take me to the doctor, but he swore that there was nothing terribly wrong with it. I was prone to over exerting my muscles and as a result the muscles flexed and shook as they tried to repair themselves. The only way to fix that was to rest, and rest was just one thing that I could not do. To rest I had to stop everything, and if I didn't play then I would feel empty. And being empty is almost worse than being sad.

I had just lay there staring as I listened to my father make negotiations about ridiculous sums of money that we didn't really need as Demyx, our driver glanced at me through the rear-view mirror. Demyx had been with us for a few years, having been hired by me after it became clear that my father was never going to be sober enough to be trusted behind the wheel of a vehicle. I myself had been perfectly capable to drive, but it was times like this one, where my hands started shaking and the yelling grew louder and more constant, that I was immobilized by my anxiety problems.

Anxiety. My therapist liked to tell me that anxiety was at the core of most of my problems. "You over thinks things Sora," she kept telling me, as if she hadn't a thousand times before. Sometimes her patience was just astounding. But then again she was paid to listen, "Sometimes thinking too much can be just as painful as thinking too little."

"As usual Dr. Heart you give nothing away." I sighed as our last session wrapped it's self up with its usual unresolved mess, "I have to say, I would have thought you'd get tired of never really saying what you mean, but your commitment is quite admirable." I told her with my newspaper headline smile that always got me a bag full of fan-mail I couldn't bring myself to answer.

"Must you always mask aggravation with sarcasm Mr. Valentine?" She quirked her brow at me as I walked to the door, "It's alright to care every once in a while."

"You sure seem to know a lot about masks," I turned the smile smile gone left with only a fave of unwanted vulnerability, my most genuine look as I let the venom of my words sink into her, "I'm not the one hiding Doctor."

It's not that I didn't like Dr. Heart, I actually found her company to normally be quite stimulating. But along with my anxiety came sleep deprivation and with the lack of proper rest my mind tended to drift into the dark thoughts that I usually kept to myself. It's hard to keep things from someone who is paid to pry. Hard to hide from who I wished I wasn't but was all too aware that I was. Those were the moments that I allowed myself to be on the left of the dividing line. When I acknowledged that I was doing something unkind but couldn't bring myself to stop it and unleash the negative effects. Like the look that the good Doctor gave me when I told her about being empty… That was the look that Demyx had been giving me in the rear view.

For that awful moment I'd made eye contact with him, his eyes way too icy a blue to seem entirely real, had startled me more that the lack of control I had on my hand. Demyx had this way of knowing things before you ever got the chance to tell him what was on your mind. It was really quite infuriating. That look made me happy that we hadn't been driving on our own. He liked to ask me questions when my father wasn't around to hear what we were saying.

"Do you ever get tired of it?" He'd asked me one night when we were coming home from a private lesson, a word I use loosely, with some old man that my father thought was necessary to "refine" my skills when all he really did was say a lot of big words to try and confuse me. Not that it worked, "You know being, like, sold by your dad and stuff?"

The thought was amusing to me but it was still too raw a subject for me to want to go into it willingly,"I wasn't aware you were an aspiring therapist," I smirked at him hoping to find that he was in his usual mood of good humor that had him so easily distracted.

"Kid," he laughed a nice smooth and easy sound that came so easily from the back of his throat, proving me right, "You don't pay me enough to listen to your crazy ass thoughts."

"I pay you to drive!" I grinned elbowing him playfully, "Keep your eyes on the road will you?"

"Got it boss man!" he saluted with a face that seemed way too serious for him, but he winked as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

The next time he'd brought up my "Daddy issues" as he so kindly wanted to call it, was after we'd managed to get him to bed after he passed out in the back seat of a limo, uncorked bottle still clasped in his beautiful and magic fingers. "It's always the talented ones," he sighed taking off his hard-billed hat, running his hand through his dirty blond hair as he sat at the bar of too clean living area. It was always too clean because that was the way I liked things. Orderly was the only way I knew how to do it. If you had no structure then you had no technique, no technique meant that you were not perfect. And perfection was everything. Demyx just looked around at the room with an easy shrug completely accepting in a way that never failed to bother me. But of course, he didn't see that. He just looked at me and laughed at my bemused expression, "Don't act so surprised! You can't tell me you pull all that crazy ass bull shit you can do out of your ass."

"As usual you have such a way with words," I smirked at him shaking my head, hating that he was so right about it. My father was a tortured person, he had been for the majority of my life; but it was his anguish gave him the drive to perfect his talent. My pain was what drove me as well, it made me better, pushed me away from the emptiness with the only way I knew how to fill it. I was what my father made me… And that must have shown on my face because before I knew it Demyx was beside me.

"Hey…" He placed his hand on my shoulder giving it a small squeeze as I turned to face him, "Stop with the sad face will you?" he gave me a small shy smile bending slightly so he could look me in the eye. "Don't you know how beautiful you are when you smile?"

That's when he kissed me.

Demyx and I kissed rather a lot, not that it meant anything. It was nothing but a release, something to help me fill the part of my chest that my music was still unable to touch no matter how moving or painful a piece. He understood that as well as I did; that music was the only love in my life and we had nothing but a physical relationship to keep us both from falling onto the wrong side of the line. At least that's what I thought we had. I'd shielded myself from my father's lack and abuse of affection for so long that I didn't realize that I had acquired it until it just kind of exploded into the atmosphere making everything between us feel…wrong and sticky. As if it could never be washed off.

"Will you fucking quit already?" He shouted, drawing my eyes away from the bow that was shaking in my hand, resting on my strings as I tried again and again to get this song to fall out of my finger tips. "Do you really think that this is going to make you any better? This… this neurotic illusion you have in your head! You thinks this is going to help you? Sora, it's making you insane!"

Insane. I was used to this word. It was one that fallowed my father around as we sprinted across the world, digging farther into my skin with each utter."I am not insane," I told him softly closing my eyes as I once again tried to force myself to push through the trimmer, but his steady strength yanked the cello out from my chorded hand.

"Are you positive about that? I mean absolutely sure? Cause you're acting just as crazy as your old man." He spat as the one phrase I had been playing over starting to slip from my mind, leaving only his anger that my fragile brain couldn't bear to think about.

"Please give me back my cello." I told him softly, not meeting the gaze that he was glaring into me. I could feel it burning into me, begging silently for my acknowledgement.

"No," he seethed, "Not until you until you look at me."

"Demyx, you're being unreasonable-"

"Like fuck I am!"

"Demyx-"

"Look at me." He said softly, but his voice was a fire in itself, pleading with me to acknowledge what I couldn't give him freely without giving up a part of myself why couldn't he understand that? Why couldn't he just leave well enough alone and leave me to decompose in the ground like the rest of them? "For god sake Sora, feel something for one in your li-"

"All I do is feel!" I shouted, staring at the ground in between us, "I feel everything; hurt, joy, compassion, all of it! It's all here in my hands and if you don't let me get it out it will kill me!"

"You're already dying!" He yelled back at me, shoving my cello back into its case on the ground, kneeling next to me, catching my gaze for only a moment, but that was long enough to shake me. He took advantage of my weakness, "Can't you feel it?" he asked softer getting that I was at a vulnerable state that I wasn't sure I wanted to share with him, "The more you let this insanity drive you the more you start to disappear…"

"Why do you care?" I demanded haughtily, eyes blazing as I forced them upon his excited, miserable face, "It isn't your problem!"

"Like hell it isn't!" he growled, all of the softness gone at my snippy remark.

"Oh and why is that exactly? Please enlighten me-"

"Because I love you, you fucking asshole!" He screamed, taking all of my anger, all of my will, all of my everything and shoving it back down my throat where it tied itself in a knot that I couldn't quite swallow as my eyes found the floor again. There was nothing after that. Nothing but silence until he left me with a sentence that haunted me ever since, "Please…just look at me."

But I couldn't.

The moment our eyes aligned in the mirror when everything was still going normally was the first time I had looked directly at him in two months. All of his hurt, all of his intensity had seemed to ebb away, leaving only an angry frustration demanding some kind of answer from me that I couldn't give him. I couldn't tell him that my feelings had changed because I was to broken to know how to feel about anything other than my art. I always would be, bonded to my father in this twisted way, lost to all people who couldn't understand. The look that Demyx had given me in the mirror was just another way he proved me right. He didn't understand the pain I was going through because he was clouded by his own hurt feelings at my rejection. But I couldn't give him anything more than what we had; I couldn't offer him anything else. I think that maybe he had finally figured that out because when we pulled up to that light, everything that needed to happen just seemed to fall into place.

There hadn't been anyone behind us when we stopped at the red light, just a small amount of traffic running perpendicular of us, completely unaware of our existence.

At least they were.

For a moment.

Most everything happens in these small and seeming meaningless amounts of time and that, it would seem is why we never expect it. What thing of consequence could ever happen in only a moment? But a moment was all it took. A moment was the amount of time that had been allotted for a very tired man who had just worked a sixteen hour shift at some unknown gas station to fall asleep at the wheel of his black Ford while coming off the high way. A moment was all that it took for his vehicle to go careening into the back of our car. A moment was how long it took for us to jolt forward into that light traffic, and in that moment everything…every confusing thought or angry sigh was just as lost as the look I'd given Demyx in the mirror.

There was no slow motion, not like in the movies. No, this happened entirely too fast. The first knock came from the right, the awful crunch of metal ringing out into the air as it fell in much too easily on its self. I could hear shouting in the front of the car and the vague noise of my father spouting out a long string of profanities right before the shrieking of tires trying to stop sounded from the left abade lightly smaller but equally terrifying crunch over took him. One after another cars careened into us, breaking the car slowly until all that was left were the people inside. I could hear them screaming, but I couldn't look. I could never look. If I allowed myself to look up them I would have to accept the things that I saw. I curled up on myself, holding my head in my hands, left shaking harder than ever as I made myself as small as humanly possible and the commotion became less and less until the only things I could hear was the gargled sound of struggling breath and my own hyperventilation that almost covered the small moan of my name.

"So…ra?"

My eyes reacted before my mind could catch up.

I uncurled slightly as I looked up at him. Those icy blue orbs that always seemed so strong now losing all light as Demyx reached out to me, restricted by some unknown force. My throat was closing up as I forced myself to sit up and reach out to him, try and find where the source of all the blood that was freely pouring out of him was so I could stop it. There was just so much…weather all of it belonged to just him it was a mixture of my father's was a question that I couldn't allow myself to ask. I tried to comfort him, to tell him that I was there and that he was going to be okay as I climbed up to him and stroked his face that I had known so well… but Demyx wasn't an idiot. I watched as his eyes came to a close and he left me for the last time. "Demyx…" I whispered, barely about to make my lips move as my vision blurred, but he said nothing. "Demyx!"

Nothing.

I took several rapid breathes trying to calm myself as I stared at him. This man that I had been so willingly intimate with just gone as if he had never been important enough to exist. That was the thought that frightened me. The thought that maybe he was gone because he just wasn't important enough to live… Not like me… Not like my fath-My Father…

He hadn't made a noise since the second car hit… but the moment I moved to check his heat beat, desperately trying to get the trimmer that had spread to my entire body to stop; The moment that I allowed myself to let out the staggered sob of my father's name. The moment that I lay my left hand upon him was the moment that the last car hit. A construction worker texting his wife that he would be home soon just didn't see it coming and collided with the front of our car. He had been so distracted about the fact the his son was coming home from college that he had forgotten, for the moment, that when he was putting his equipment up, he had left a hammer hanging on one of the rungs of his ladder. The very hammer that, in the moment of impact looped around the rung before flying off, shattering what was left of our wind shield and impaliled my left hand with the back end so deep that it went straight threw my palm and stuck me to the lifeless chest of my father.

At least the construction worker got to go home to his family a few days later having little more than a slight concussion. Not like the exhausted man who had lost his life for trying to make it home before he went to work the next day; or the mother that crashed into our side who sliced open her head and ended my drivers life when the metal twisted by her car stabbed into his liver. It's nice that he got to be the one to be okay, that he got to go home and return to normal…

Nothing has ever been normal for me since. Nothing will ever be normal again. It is the price I pay as an artist to suffer for what I find beautiful, the price I pay for sitting too close to the line that divided right from wrong. This was the line that took away the one thing that kept me sane.

And this was the moment that changed my life.

Maybe the streets alight,
Maybe the trees are gone-

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

"Sorry…" I muttered not bothering to glance at the woman who decided to sit next me as the preacher went on and on about what a wonderful man my father had been in a way that made me exceedingly irritateds. This man had never met my father. Never seen him, not in real life anyway. The only way that any of the people in this grand hall that was way too crowded, had ever known my father was by what they saw on the TV. It wasn't like I had been making a lot of noise either. Just the small drum of my fingers against the cast imprisoning my left hand, stuck through with such an odd assortment pins that it made me feel like a pin pillow. And considering how uncomfortable I was alreadywas, that was some feat.

It had been four days and two surgeries since the accident. Four days of coming in and out of consciousness to new faces of crying people telling me just how sorry they were for my loss. Four days of flowers that just reminded me how pitied I was; being wheeled into my glass room at the hospital that they put me in to make sure they could see me at all times in case I tried to off myself. Four days and two surgeries trying not to think about what was happening at this very moment as I stared at the closed casket having seen what was inside at the scene of it all. A once beautiful man stripped of half his face, long black hair cut short trying to make him presentable and a long line of stitches over his heart where they had to pry the hammer, my hand attached out of him… That had been the worst part. Trying desperately to pry myself off of his dead body, begging him to be alright, to say something even though I knew he was gone. Worst than the crushing pain of my shattered hand and the loss of Demyx… but that wasnt what really hurt. What hurt was the part of my fratured skull that still wanted to believe in all the childish things that made bad things go away. The part of me that wanted to believe in mirricals stripped and lain bare before thecup seeing eyes of God. Hoping things will get better is the fastest way to embrace your utter defeat. Hope is the only things that can truly crush you.

I found it harder and harder to breath as I sat next to this stranger woman and listened to the crap the leaked its way out of these people's mouths. About how much my father meant to them, about all of the things he had accomplished, including the raising of his adopted son.

Adopted. Seventeen years and no one had said anything to me about it.

"Did you know?" I glared accusingly at Dr. Heart the moment I woke up, battered and horse to find her looking at me with a strange mix of emotions, so plentiful that I would never be able to list them all. I didn't bother telling her what it was that she knew about because, if she did, then I wouldn't have to. She would get it. And she did.

She looked at me, sobering herself from all the grief that was coming out of her eyes and nodded. "Yes Sora…I knew."

We didn't say anything else.

That had been the hardest day, that first one. The questions that flooded me when I woke up about what happened, who had died first, if I was in any sort of pain- Well of course I was! It never seemed to end. Just Doctors flooding the room, coming and going with paper work, making phone calls, and some of them just marveling at the closest thing they'd seen of a celebrity. "Don't worry Mr. Valentine, we've been in touch with your emergency contact and they should be here within a few days.", "Just try and rest Mr. Valentine, how can you heal if you won't try to get better?", "The surgery went well Mr. Valentine but there were some… well, complications.", "Is there anything I can get you Mr. Valentine?", "Hungry Mr. Valentine?" , "Oh, Mr. Valentine-", "Mr. Valentine!", "MR. VALENTINE!-"

"Mr. Valentine?"

I looked up to see the preacher standing in front of me, his hand on my shoulder with a soft look in his kind eyes. The entire church was staring at the two of us, waiting or marveling at the fucked-up-ness of this all. As I looked at the man with his hand on my shoulder, I felt like I might have misjudged him. It wasn't his fault that he was giving the eulogy of a man he didn't know. Hell- he probably knew him better than I did. And that would always be my biggest regret. I could never ask him why. Why had he never told me? Why didn't he say something? I wouldn't have loved him any less, I wouldn't have hated or resented him, but now… Now I could never ask what other secrets that he had kept from me. "Did you want to say a few words?" he asked me, squeezing my shoulder slightly.

It was almost an out of body experience as I watched myself stand up and heard the muttering of everyone around me, "Oh god, that must be his son,", "Poor thing," , "Looks like he hasn't slept in days," , "Did you hear about his hand?" , "Is that poor child here alone?" , "Heard they couldn't get a hold of the mother." , "I just want to take him home and feed him, look how skinny he is!" , "Said he may never play again," , "Really all of the nerve endings in his hand?" , "Wonder what'll happen to all that money?" , "Who needs to play, he's set for life-" I tried to shut them out.

Everything weighed on me like a ton of bricks as I walked slowly up to the podium where the mic was waiting for me, every voice was stifling but I managed to get there. My left hand was twitching in my cast again causing pain from the needles to shoot up my arm. Sweat rolled down my face and I had no idea why. It was my job to perform for millions of people. I had done several shows and did them with a smile, but I guess then my father's dead body hadn't been behind me. That, and I had always had my cello to synchronize with my pounding heart.

I feel my heart start beating to my favorite song.

They were all staring at me, no set of eyes letting me rest but, somehow, I didn't really notice. I was looking at the man in the box, marveling yet again at the skill they used to recraft his face. The man in the black mahogany box still looked like my father. But I knew if I wgets have dared to get close enough the warmth would be gone, the smell would be gone… everything that ever him my father would have been replaced by the artificial wax of his new skin.

And that was the thought that gave me courage enough to speak.

"Vincent Valentine lied to me for seventeen years." I spoke into the microphone in front of me, not really giving much of a shit about the gasps of surprised strangers as I said my peace, "He told me that he was my father, and for all intensive purposes I suppose he was. But even now… I'm not sure what to think about it." This wasn't what I had wanted to say really. I had practiced a speech, a really good one in the mirror as I got dressed to be here, ignoring the nasty bruise and rash that the seatbelt had left on my gut and collar bone. But when I stood up everything changed. I could look past all of the harsh words and murmurs, but when I looked into that black casket I felt… bitter. "To the extent that most of you would probably measure happiness, I have had a wonderful life, better than most children my age. But that is one place that Mr. Valentine failed me. Money does not equal happiness. Neither dose obsessive compulsiveness or a highly paid for professional opinion." I locked eyes with Dr. Heart for a moment before she looked away. "Vincent Valentine was a brilliant artist. A handsome and a very successful man and there is no doubt in my mind that my father will be missed… but… He was far from perfect- something that it has never been acceptable for me to be. And I will always regret not asking him what else he has kept from me. That's all."

The silence was enough to get me to walk straight past my original seat and down the aisle to the door, pushing in the much needed sun light as I stepped out into my new life, ignoring the shout behind me.

And the kids they dance! All the kids all night-
Until Monday morning fills another life…

The breeze hit me hard in the face like a slap as I fell against the stone doorway, looking out at the paparazzi that had crowded around since the service had started. "Mr. Valentine! Mr. Valentine!" they all shouted as they cornered me against the stone, drowning me in flashing lights. I blinked against them, trying to adapt to the black dots in my vision as I squinted into the crowd, but as soon as one dizzy spell ended the next started and soon in was hard to breathe.

"Please," I gasped taking a hessitant step toward to outline of the small circle in a panic, " let me through!" I said more shakily than I had intended. That was really all that they needed. In all of my years in the spotlight I have learned only one thing when it comes to panicked writers; once you stutter, they pounce. It only took a few seconds for them to start shouting, and as soon as the lights flared up again I just sank down against the wall and curled up, praying that they would just go away and let me be miserable without reminding me with a new headline in the morning.

This is what my life was. This is how my life would always be, one reminder after another of everything I had lost in such a short time that it would never be fair, "Mr. Valentine how do you feel about inheriting your father's fortune?" "Mr. Valentine! What will you do now that you can no longer play the cello?", "Mr. Valentine! Why did you leave the funeral? Isn't it still going on?", "What's happening?", "Why aren't you inside?", "-your hand?", "-All that money!", "Mr. Valentine!", "Mr. Valentine!"

"You leave him the hell alone!"

They hadn't been taking pictures very long when I heard that voice, so painfully familiar, and a few people come out of the church, shouting and pushin. Isqueezed my eyes closed trying to dissapear but then someone was picking me up and all of the questions stopped. "Is this what you wanted?" the voice demanded, his arms tightening as he cradled me like a small child. It was the voice that startled me. The familiar caring voice that had me open my eyes and look at my savior.

Mr. Strife had me cradled into him, his grey-blue eyes livid, looking exhausted probably from traveling. "You want to see a boy cry over his father? Well there you have it!" he shouted turning around and toting me back into the church in a fury, ignoring all of the people in the pews and walking up to the pastor, "You need to heighten security outside," he told him softly, then he took me back the way we came and out of the room, down the hall to a much smaller one that was easier to handle.

For a few moments, I let my eyes close again, clutching onto the man who had been a missing figure in my life for almost nine years. I held onto him and the part of my life where I remember what happiness was; that it was a possibility… but that was a long time ago, when I still have both hands to pour my heart into.

"Sora?" another familiar voice probed at me from my hiding place in the soft blue fabric, causing me to slowly turn my head and look into the concerned, deep eyes of Dr. Heart. "Sora honey, are you alright?" she asked like she was approching a wild animal, eyes both excited and weary. I don't know what it was, maybe the look on her face, or the way she touched my shoulder but as soon as she spoke, I wanted to be on the ground. I didn't feel protected anymore, I felt stifled and embarrassed and just awful.

"I'm fine." I grunted, squirming until Mr. Strife, grudgingly let me back on my feet, "Just peachy actually, in fact I think I could dance all night."

"Sora…"

"I'm fine," I said again gruffly, looking between the two of them so see them sharing a look that really irked me. Conspiring no doubt, trying to get in the mind of the crazy bastard who just cursed his father's grave. I thought about saying something but instead I just turned away. I was crazy... My father was and so was I. They knew that as well as I did.

My gut hurt as the thought went through me. I was broken. My hand might never work again. And the only person who could have helped me find an escape from all of this madness had been buried two days ago. My feet moved before I told them too, and before I knew it I was running. "Sora?" Mr. Strife called baffled behind me but I could see the door.

I pushed harder willing myself to move faster but before I got there, soft skin gripped the bend of my elbow, "Sora!" Dr. Heart huffed, but I didn't want to hear a thing from her.

"WHAT!" I shouted spinning on my heal so that I was looking back at her looking nothing less than stunned, "What the fuck do you want me to say? Just tell me and I'll say it!" Why was she looking at me like that! I would have done anything to make that stop, to make it end, to make her look at me like she used to; like nothing had changed at all, like I could just erase the whole thing…

"I don't want you to say anything Sora… I just want you to be able to show what you feel…" she muttered in earnest, begging me with her eyes to forgive her. To forget the wrong and try to start over, but I knew better than that.

"Well I feel dandy at the moment Doctor, in fact I think that all of my obsessive compulsive tendencies have given way to a completely new outlook on life." I pulled my arm away from her and took a deep breath, "I don't think I'll be needing to come in any longer." I said coolly as I turned my back to her, not wanting to see how much I hurt her with that. If I were being completely honest with myself, I knew that Dr. Heart cared about me, maybe even loved me. I had that effect on people sometimes… But I just couldn't think about love right then, I couldn't think about anything like that or I would break down.

"B-But Sora!" She gasped and I heard her stumble after me but I took a step away.

"I'll have them send in the last of my payments in the morning." I muttered and then without waiting for more, I walked down the hallway and found the back door, walking out into my new life. A life that didn't need Doctors or nonexistent parental figures. A life that didn't need money, didn't need friends. That didn't need music.

That was my life now.

Until Monday morning feels another life,
I turn the music up- I'm on a roll this time!
And heaven is in sight…

I sat on the back steps as I listened to people walking out the front, stepping quietly after the coffin before climbing in their cars to follow them out to the funeral home. I just couldn't do that. I couldn't drive after them in one of those death machines to see what else they could steal from me. They already had my father, my friend, and my talent… They couldn't have anything else.

The warm hand on my head pulled me out of my thoughts, but it didn't stir me from my position with my chin rested on my knees as Mr. Strife sat down next to me on the step. We were both very quiet for a long time, just sitting there, drinking in each other's company, and for a minute I allowed myself to examine his face. It was the same as it had been when I was younger, hardly a crease added to his tanned skin. His honey hair sticking up in all different directions, never tameable by anything as his wife would sigh out after a good brushing. He still had the same look, the same style if not slightly better off, but there was a sadness radiating out of him that aged him more than his skin ever could. We shared that kind of hurt. Only what he expressed in love, I only seemed to be able to reveal in anger.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked him softly as we watched the cars begin to drive out of the parking lot with their hazards on after the dark tended hearse. Oddly enough this brought a smile, if only a small one to Mr. Strife's lips.

"Nothing's wrong with you Blue, you're just…hurt." He said simply echoing my thoughts, "Vincent kept a lot of things from you for a long time and now he isn't here to help you heal. It's a lot for any man to handle, yet alone one as young as you are." We sat with that for a while, maybe even longer than that because the next thing I knew all of the cars were gone, followed by the cameras and it was just the two of us and the shadows left to feel miserable.

"I didn't mean it… what I said to Dr. Heart."

"I know Blue."

"I think I should apologize… or maybe-"

"She knows." He put his arm around my shoulders and gave the opposite one a squeeze, "She's a therapist Sora, she can understand the stages of grief. She knows that she needs to give you time and space, but she told me to remind you that you have her home number and the call anytime."

I nodded shivering with sudden cold. God today was exhausting. It was the first day that I had been allowed out of the hospital. They didn't tell me that I had to come back, but they made it obvious that they thought it would be a good idea if I did. They just wanted to make sure I didn't hurt myself; I guess I should be grateful that they cared. But the darker the sky got the more I realized that I didn't want to go back, I didn't want to be watched constantly and get told over and over how sorry people were about what happened. I didn't want to go home either… I didn't want to think about anything that had happened in that house, or what would never happen again. I just wanted to play. I wanted to lose myself. I wanted the cello to draw out all of my pain and let it loose so that the world could hear the beauty that tragedy brings…

But I couldn't.

Not anymore.

I turn the music up, I got my records on-

"How's your hand?" he asked after silence surrounded us again, breaking it apart in a way only he could without annoying me.

"It hurts." I told him truthfully with a slight shrug, "The Doctors said that's a good thing, that it would be hard to play an instrument without feeling anything." I related, feeling a little better as I got that out. I just had to keep saying it, keep telling myself that I would get better and then maybe that would happen. Maybe was good. Maybe meant that there was still hope left and that was something I needed to have.

He nodded but seemed far away from in his own thoughts, "Did they say you had to go back to the hospital?" he asked lightly and slightly hopeful.

"No, I'm just supposed to wait for my emergency contact to fly in-"

"Then I guess you're good to come with me," he smiled brightly, almost ridding himself of that horrible sadness. Almost. He sobered a bit when he saw the surprise in my eyes, "I guess you didn't know they called me did you…Well they did, I'm here, and you are more than welcome to come home with me and my family." I said nothing to that, but how could I? He was offering me everything I'd ever wanted on a silver plate, a place in his life with his family in his happy life. He would take care of me, he wouldn't yell, he wouldn't drink, he wouldn't… He wouldn't. But it didn't feel like I thought it would. Not like I wanted it to or needed it too, it just felt wrong, like I was betraying my father, like I was throwing him away, burying him.

"Mr. Strife… I…I don't-"

"I know." He whispered with a regretful sigh, "I know that this is hard for you, and that everything feels like it's wrong and raw right now. I know that you don't want to feel like you are going to forget your father and I know that you don't want me to replace him." He looked me straight in the eye with the most sincere expression imaginable, it was too much and I had to look away, "But I also know that right now, you need to be with good people who love you, and with people who can make you smile. You need a family Sora. I know I can't replace your father, but can you let me try and make the hole a little more bearable?"

From underneath the rubble sing a rebel song-

Knock, knock, knock.

"Come in?"

I pushed the door of the familiar office open with my left elbow, too weary to use my hand seeing as it had been freed from its castmust that morning. Now it was shaking hard in the black glove that covered the hideous pattern of stitches and skin grafts that tried to seal the hole, from nerves or pain I wasn't really sure. It felt like forever since I had been in this room, the neat office with tea green walls and magazines that no one would ever read freely. There was a fluffy Blue couch against the wall facing two worn armchairs and a grand oak desk that sat in front of the grand glass wall window looking out at the rest of Destiny Island. The place would have been comforting if it hadn't been for the big-blue eyed woman looking at me from behind a book, both surprised and relieved to see me in the confines of this room so soon. "Sora?"

"Dr. Heart." It had been nearly a two weeks since the funeral and I still hadn't gotten up the nerve to call and apologize. Mr. Strife told me that it could wait, that she would be willing to talk at anytime and I knew that was true. But bow that we were leaving, not just talking about leaving but actually going, I just couldn't leave things like that. I stepped into the office and closed the door so that we could have a little privacy, "I…Well I wanted to stop by and tell you…just how sorry I am about the way I beha-"

She held up her hand, the kind smile that got me through all of the hard times I had before the worst lighting up her kind face, "Please Sora, let's just forget it ever happened okay?" she raised her brow at me, a habit that I hoped she'd never break. I nodded and we were both quiet for a moment, avoiding each other's gaze. "Would you like to take a seat?" She asked always sensing there's more. I walked slowly over to the couch I had lain across so many times, making witty banter, spilling my guts out, it seemed like that was a world away even when the fabric was warm to the touch.

Don't want to see another generation drop-
I'd rather be a comma than a full stop!

"I'm leaving." I told her when I decided that the quiet was too much to handle, practically screaming in my ears as I waited for the nothing that was coming out of her mouth. She was always telling me to get to the point of the matter, to let it out. Well here I was being as blunt as I could be and she didn't seem the least bit surprised.

"How soon?"

"Our flight is at six."

"I see…"

And then there was more silence. Why did it infuriate me so much? Why was it that every person I spoke to always came up a loss for words? "Well?" I asked her, not caring that I sounded impatient in the slightest, "Is that all?" I demanded coldly, all apologies I had come in for earlier forgotten.

She raised her brow again only it didn't seem so endearing this time as she looked at me with her all knowing couch doctor eyes and started her inquisition. "Is there something more you want me to say?" She asked me softly, and for some reason I felt like she probing me with the knife that was sticking out of my back.

"Gee, I don't know, how about good bye?" I asked her in exasperation, getting up off of the couch, "Or better yet, you could tell me that I have no idea what I'm doing and I need to get a psyche exam, or take time to think about what I'm about to-"

"You want me to talk you out of it then." She said, her voice taking on a tone of understanding and sorrow, stopping my pacing and making me sink to my knees as it hit me.

Maybe I'm in the black! Maybe I'm on my knees!
Maybe I'm in the gap between the two trapezes…

"Please." I whispered, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do here." I looked at my gloved hand that was shaking as hard as ever, "I don't know how to deal with this." She was next to me before I even noticed that she left her seat, and then I was in her arms and she was hugging me, something that she had never done before. I stiffened at the physical contact, unable to take it, the love that was pouring out of her because I didn't know that this was a way that it could be expressed. And it still couldn't be. Not like this. Not for me. Not now or ever really. I pushed away from her gently. "I just…" Wow, Why was I getting so chocked up about this? "What am I going to do if I can't come and talk to you ever day?"

And then the doctor really surprised me. She laughed! She laughed long and hard about my words as I sat there looking at her in wonder wondering if my fucked upness had finally broken her, but the she finally started breathing again. "Geez Doc…" I grumbled as she grinned at me, "I'm so very glad we had this conversation…"

"Oh Sora…" She smiled at me, and then she giggled once again as a tear ran down her cheek, "Will you ever learn? What have I been telling you since you were thirteen?"

I blinked, "To let people in."

"Exactly," She said proudly kissing my cheek, "You aren't lost or broken, you're just finally opening up. You're listening! You finally learned all that I needed to give you."

"B-but Dr. Hea-"

"I'm not saying that you aren't still in need of therapy," she told me, regaining most of her doctory composure, "All I'm saying is that you, Mr. Valentine are going to be just fine. You just need to let yourself live, open up to more than you're music, and this," she motioned to my hand, "Might be just what you need to let in this new family and this new kind of love." She smiled at me and for a second I almost smiled back. But there was that word again! I looked at the doctor and she looked at me, and for a moment it was as if I were translucent, made of nothing but cellophane and she could see into all of the secrets I had kept from her. All of the things that were so important to keep to myself now that there was no way to fix them. "Sor-"

"I have to go." I said quickly, getting up before her outstretched hand could reach me, walking to the door. "I don't want to make Cloud wait too long…" I sighed as I put my hand on the knob and opened the door, breaking our bubble of doctor-patient confidentiality. I looked back at her with a light smile that didn't reach my eyes as I spotted her pale face. "Thank you." I told her, "For everything." Then I ducked out the door, but not before I heard her amen.

"I'm not the one hiding Sora…"

But my heart is beating and my pulses start…
Cathedrals in my heart.