Author's Note: I'm wiping my hands off this fic. It was so much fun and I appreciate everyone's support. Thank you so much :D

Disturbia
Epilogue

There were times, for Sora, when he could forget his fears, his anxieties. But those times were few and far between, and Riku knew that.

Those moments that Riku desperately tried to give Sora...they were a calm. It was snowing again—like ash falling in a burning city. Do you remember Sora? Riku wanted to ask. That day when they sat on the swings just like this...and their world was turned upside down. If only Sora knew how desperately Riku had wanted to tell Sora how he felt about him. To clutch him by the collar and kiss him because Sora was the only person in this world that had ever made him feel like living.

Riku and Sora swayed side to side on swings and listened to the creak of rusted chains. Sora held a drying pink rose in his fingers; didn't speak a word as he stared with eyes that had lost their glow over the years.

"Too bad Squall couldn't have had a funeral," Sora said as he twirled the flower.

"You put flowers there for him. That counts," Riku said, turning away because he knew he shouldn't have been so insensitive. But he never cared about Leon. Sora shouldn't have either.

Sora sighed. "No, it doesn't." He narrowed his eyes at Riku and turned away. Riku sighed. He was tired of Sora treating Leon like he was some sort of ghost, crying in his ear every now and then. Sora hd asked Riku once if ghosts existed. At first, Riku denied it. But when he sat down to really think...how could it not be possible? Vampires existed after all. Why couldn't ghosts? Tied together by an afterlife, damned by their living mistakes.

A flutter of a black scarf waved as Yuffie came to a light stop atop the swing. "Patrol is over. No sign of Vanitas' guys. They left a long time ago, Riku. You can quit checking." She jumped down to the ground, her boots crunching in the sky. "They wouldn't dare mess with Traverse Town's new big bad vampire." She giggled.

"Who? Sora?" Riku elbowed Sora in the side but there wasn't much of a response. He was numb. A year later and still...

"Well, just wanted to check in." Yuffie couldn't help but notice Sora's disposition and with a wave, took it upon herself to leave them be. They preferred it anyway.

"When are you going to be over him? We're together now," he leaned over and grabbed onto the chain of Sora's swing so that their seats touched. He cupped Sora's chin and kissed him lightly. Sora's lips were dried and chapped, but Sora kissed back, and Riku hoped this meant he hadn't lost him completely.

"I don't like it here, Riku." Sora pulled away and stared at Riku with a coldness in his eyes that Riku was unfamiliar with. He looked dead inside; like there really was a sickness inside Sora that he couldn't get rid of even with the feed. "There's too many graves, and Squall knows this town too well. I just want to escape him. I can't have him chasing me around for eternity."

Riku's brows furrowed, their faces close, but the discomfort he felt made him pull away. A puff of white breath trailed behind him. He didn't want to say it: Leon's dead, Sora. A part of him tried to tell him that it wasn't the right thing to say. Sora didn't need this right now. But Riku did know there was a sickness in him that he couldn't shake. Maybe it had been the cross that had left the wound on Sora's forehead. Or maybe Leon really was haunting him.

It didn't matter. Riku had screwed up. And he had an eternity to make it right. "Well then, we'll leave Traverse Town. Is that what you want?" He asked. He had left his heart with no town. It only longed to follow Sora.

"Anywhere. Anywhere but here."

"Okay," Riku said as he hopped off the swing and grabbed Sora's hands. "If it'll bring you closure. If it'll make you whole again." He still felt guilty about taking a bit of Sora with him that night. Stealing Sora's human life and replacing it with this one. Riku wasn't ever sure he'd ever forgive himself. But he wanted to hold on, as if they belonged together, as if they were meant to be. But Riku was naïve. Young in both flesh and mind. He still had lifetimes and lifetimes of pain ahead of him, and he didn't even know it.

Riku had never thought himself to be the type of creature who would leisure around with books in his lap. Then again, Riku had never figured himself to be the type of creature who would find them as his own company. To be a vampire was a lonely existence.

It had seemed that Vanitas had made sure to cultivate his circle of vampires in close range. Traverse Town had been among the only place affected. Vanitas had turned the children there into monsters for his army and no one had dared stray.

"Reading again?" Yuffie asked as she landed on the banister that lined the red-carpeted stairs of their new home: Hallow Bastion. "When are you going to start learning about people again? You've lost touch."

Riku knew she hated it when she found him here. Treating solitude like it was some sort of punishment. But wasn't it? It was all he deserved after what happened with Sora.

He ignored her, becoming more focused on his book because she had said the same things to him over and over again, and he was just tired. Tired of hearing it.

It had been so many years. Riku wondered if Sora was alive somewhere, but all signs pointed to his friend's suicide. It was why Riku left Traverse Town for good. He was sure Sora and Leon were there in their afterlife together. The prospect of ghosts had become much more real in the past hundred years. It was also why Riku refused to make any new vampires. He wasn't going to do to someone else what Vanitas had done to him, what Riku had done to Sora. He promised himself he wouldn't turn another vampire, but that led to some loneliness for Yuffie and him.

"Christianity Stigmas?" She asked with a quirked brow. Riku nodded. It made him feel just that much better to think it wasn't his own fault that Sora had drifted away. How it had warped his mind. But Riku was just fooling himself.

"Maybe there's a clue in here to whether or not that cross skewed Sora's head. He was never the same after that."

He didn't see the sad look Yuffie gave him. Only heard the sound of her squeaking boots as she jumped off the banister and left him alone to wallow. He read the book cover to cover only to find at the very end a message written in fine ink with messy hand writing. His heart stopped: it had to have been Sora.

Letting go was the only thing you weren't strong at. We'll take care of each other now.

And it was when he realized it wasn't Sora...but Leon. Because this message had to have been for him, right? He couldn't let go, imagined in his worst fears that this meant Leon and Sora were together in purgatory where Riku could not claim them. If only his mind hadn't become so distracted with death...if only it could have stayed connected with reality: he then would have realized that message was from Yuffie. And he was never alone. Until she finally let go.

Riku would have nothing left. And would have not the strength nor the courage to take his life. For fear of meeting Leon and Sora there. For fear of another having made Sora happy without him. One day, perhaps he'd realize just how reliving it was to let go. But it would not be for centuries. But Riku had all the time in the world for mistakes anyway. What was another hundred years?