14; caps lock

I woke up before the sun had risen. The clock on the night stand read 4:23am. I hadn't been asleep for long and I doubt I would be getting back to sleep anytime soon. My mind was a wreck, racing with thoughts of last night that I couldn't shake.

I turned to my right to check on Axel—knocked out cold. I sighed, rising from bed and threw the sheets off my body. I heard the jingle of Soro's tags and immediately leaned down and picked her up before she could start whimpering and wake Axel up. I wasn't in the mood for the psychoanalysis right about now. She licked affectionately at my cheek as I made my way out of the bedroom and down the hall to the living room.

I set Soro down on the floor when I neared the kitchen and opened the door to the refrigerator. I canvassed its contents for a moment before pulling a bottle of red wine out of the door. Wine glass in hand, I watched the contents spill into the glass in the dim light of the overhead kitchen light. I set the bottle down along with my glass and looked at the space between the two of them, honing in on the granite countertops before me.

Why was everyone looking to me to hold things together? I can barely hold myself together half of the time, why the hell did I have to look after everyone else in the process? Was this compensation for years of abuse? What the fuck did everyone want for me? I don't have the answers to everything … to every little problem that comes our way.

Oh, Roxas, you understand people. You understand what it's like. You know where I'm coming from, right? Roxas, I always feel like I can talk to you because you never judge me. I can't trust anyone else to give me the answers that you'll give me.

First they abhor me, now they adore me. Shower me with ardor that's gone missing in these last six or seven years? And what am I supposed to do? Willingly accept it? Tell everyone that it's okay. That this makes up for all the distance that was put between all of us?

I don't hate my family. That's far from it. Perhaps … I often consider myself distant from all of them. Not like them, nor caring to extend a hand and reach out to them … but I don't hate them. I just … I just don't know how to deal with them. Most of the time, I don't want to deal with them. I've gone through so much with my mother in the last few weeks … helping her readjust to life with my father, letting her stay with Axel and I … helping her find her own place. Just supporting her and giving her so much of myself to make sure she's okay.

And then there's Cloud ... with the twins … and now his engagement to Tifa. That's bound to be a whole new round of stress that I'll most likely try and opt out of. At the very least, there hasn't been too much happening with Sora that I've been dragged into or have to worry about. And … finally … there's Rikku. The one person that's been on everyone's mind since her abrupt departure from London.

My sister …I don't know what was going on with my sister. I … could see what Sora had been talking about. The little quirks here and there. My little sister isn't exactly the definition of normal per se, but Rikku definitely wasn't herself. We'd talked about her feelings on the lack of direction in her life before. Wasn't that enough? Couldn't she figure things out by herself like the rest of us had to? I wasn't opposed to helping Rikku if she truly needed it, but I wasn't going to coddle her like the rest of my family. I suppose … I should be the last person to say these things, with regard to how much I screwed up in my teens. But, perhaps, I'm bitter right now. This whole thing has left an unappealing taste in my mouth that I want to get rid of. Now.

…Is this what it feels like to be on the other side?

I took a sip out of my wine glass and closed my eyes for a minute to hone in on the sounds of the apartment. The gentle hum of the refrigerator at my side, Soro licking in places I don't want to mention at my feet. The rush of the cold, February air pushing against the windows of our apartment. Just as the silence was beginning to hurt my ears, that's when I picked up on the sound of loud crinkling … and someone retching up their guts.

Rikku.

I sighed, emptying my second glass of wine and turned around to head to the guest room once again. The door to the guest room was open, but the door to the bathroom was closed and I could see light filtering out of the bottom. I paused, hearing my sister sobbing from the other side of the door and then knocked twice.

"Rikku."

Silence.

I sighed, knocking on the door again, "Rikku, if you're sick you need to let me in."

I heard heavy breathing on the other end. What in the world was she doing? She cleared her throat and I heard more crinkling, "I'm fine, Roxas. Go to sleep."

I heard her coughing and dry heaving. I grasped the knob of the door and turned it a couple of times. It was locked. I knocked on the door again and crossed my arms over my chest. "Rikku."

"I said I'm fucking fine, Roxas! God, go back to sleep!"

I went silent for a minute and then narrowed my eyes at the door. All right then, if she wanted it this way. I stepped away from the door and uncrossed my arms from over my chest. I leaned against the wall across from the bathroom and looked up at the ceiling. I wasn't going anywhere.

She was silent for a minute and I heard more of that crinkling followed by a crunching sound. Was that plastic? …Did she have food with her? Rikku coughed and heaved one last time before I heard the sound of rushing water and finally she exited the bathroom.

I caught sight of her in the dim light of the bathroom. Her mascara was smeared across her cheeks and her skin looked as if it had taken on a grayish pallor. Her bag was dangling loosely from one limp arm and she threw a soiled tissue back into its messy confines. Her blonde hair had been pulled away from her face and was currently resting in a messy bun high on top her head. She looked a bit startled when she finally focused in on me in the darkness.

"I thought I told you to go back to sleep."

I took in her haggard appearance and sighed deeply, "I guess it's ... true then, isn't it?"

"What?" She asked, sniffing and readjusting her bag.

I shook my head, "Rikku …how long has this been going on?"

"Nothing's wrong, go back to sleep." She made a move to walk away from the bathroom door.

"Then explain to me why you were just throwing up right now?"

"Because I'm still fucking drunk—God, Roxas. What is this? Can you stop with all the inquisitions? Or, really, accusations?" She turned around to stare at me, her green eyes wild and questioning, "I just want to go back to sleep. Can I do that at least? This night has already been enough of a disaster already. I don't need any more added stress from you, you know?"

"Paine said I needed to talk to you."

Her demeanor eventually changed and she narrowed her eyes in suspicion at me, "Oh, did she?"

"Yeah. And, possibly Yuna if it came to it." I crossed my arms over my chest and cocked my head slightly to the side, "Now … care to explain why?"

"Nothing is wrong, Roxas. Would you drop it already?" She dropped her bag to the floor as her voice escalated, "We had a fight tonight, okay? That's what happens with friends. Sometimes you have disagreements and you resolve them when the time is right. There's no reason to talk to me about anything. Everything is fine as it's always been." I heard the break in her voice as she bent down to pick her bag up from the floor. I watched my sister with a bit of detachment for a minute. This was different.

I'd been in this position. Years ago, I'd been in a place like this. Trying to hold everything together when it felt so wrong … but my break down was so different. Less contained, more raw in some respects.

"…No." I began, uncrossing my arms and shaking my head, "Something tells me it's more than just a little discrepancy between friends. In the fifteen years that you've known, Paine, I've never heard her speak about you on the phone as she did tonight. Something is going on, and whatever it is needs to come out. Now."

"You know …" Rikku lowered her eyes from me and shook her head, "Out of all of the people in my life, I thought you'd understand the most, Roxas… I thought …"

"You thought, what, Rikku?"

She looked at me, throwing her bag to the side and fell back from the crouching stance she had assumed near the wall. Soro wandered over to her and whined a little as she proceeded to lick my sister's arm. She curled up beside Rikku who had started to shake at this point. She drew her legs up to her chest and buried her face into the gap between her knees.

"Rikku."

"You know it's not easy, Roxas. You know, out of all people." She murmured, sniffing pathetically. "You know what it's like. You know it's not easy to hide things, to pretend like you have it all together."

"I never pretended, Rikku." I shook my head, "I regressed into myself."

"That's not the point, Roxas. The thing is … you know what it's … it's like to have things that are wrong with you that you can't fix. Or … that you try to hide from others. That you don't care for other people to see or know about. Sure, you may not have come out to everyone and said those things … we never knew what was going on in your head ..." She inhaled deeply and continued, "People still … well … people still found out."

"Rikku."

"But, for me… I don't want anyone to know. Or I didn't want anyone to know. It started with Gippal … and then … Paine … then Yuna … and they all … they all want me to get help, but I don't know if I can. I don't want to." She finally looked up at me, "…And then … mom and dad were just straw that broke the camel's back …"

"You're still not making any sense to me."

"When I left for London … nearly three years ago, everything was perfect. You were healthy, mom and dad were working things out, Sora was doing well with his restaurant and Riku and … Cloud … was Cloud still with Leon back then? Whatever, it doesn't matter. …I had just broken up with Gippal that spring and I was … so to speak, a free woman. Yunie was with me in London to keep an eye on me, I had gotten into modeling and Style had just picked me up for my own reality show. ...Everything was going fine. Everything was great, you know?" She frowned, "…I … I just had an unhealthy way of coping with stress."

"…Which was?" I had gotten sick of towering over her, so I sat beside her with my back to the wall. Soro was squished between the two of us.

"They say I'm like you in a lot of ways, bro." She said, glancing at me briefly, "…I started self medicating. I starting smoking cigarettes. Which isn't too bad. I mean, legally I can, right? Anyway … I … work in the fashion world, Roxas. You … know what comes with the territory."

Rikku refused to meet my eyes, "…An eating disorder?"

"It … never got that bad." She said, fiddling with the edge of her dress, "…I really don't want to talk about it that much… but … I didn't eat … properly for a bit. Yunie found out and she helped me through some of the rough patches. I just … I missed home so much at times … and I felt like there was all this pressure on me to succeed. I didn't want to let myself down so I kept it buried inside until I just broke and it came out in some destructive form."

"…Then what happened?"

"I … lost quite a bit of weight. ...At least twenty pounds. But, I managed to cover it up. The tabloids never really caught on, miraculously. Well, there was a bit of speculation, but once my weight stabilized and I stopped what I was doing … things never progressed further than that. A year went by … and Yunie eventually left because she had to go back to school. So … I was alone again." She clenched her hands together, "I … started doing something different this time."

"…And that was?"

"Purging." She shook her head, "Before, I used to restrict my intake … and smoke cigarettes constantly, too. But the stress … it got worse and I needed to do something else. I …had a little stint with drugs, too. Just … coke. Nothing more. Anything to keep me distracted from the loneliness I tried to keep at bay." She shook her head, "…This all started sometime after I finished my first line for Godhand and you guys came out to see me show. ...I couldn't do it anymore. I had so many people around me telling me one thing … while I was feeling another. I was ratings gold for Style. …And I had so much success… but I was so empty on the inside."

"…I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to overact and ask you why you never came to any of us and talked to us about this … but I know how it is, Rikku." I sighed, resting my head against the wall behind us. "…Go on."

"…Last year... that was when things began to buildup really badly. I had to come back home. I don't know how much longer I would have lasted in Europe without fully breaking down. I called up Gippal out of desperation. I didn't know what else to do. I needed someone who knew me, but wasn't necessarily family. He … he knows what's been going on with me … and he told me I needed to come back here. I needed to come back to a place where there was stability, but …"

"But?"

She looked back at me, tears threatening to flow out of her eyes, "It's as fucked up here as it is anywhere else! The one place, the one place that's not supposed to be like the rest of the outside world isn't safe, either. I've got nowhere to go, Roxas. Everything … everywhere I go. Every place that surrounds me is fucked up right now and I can't do anything to fix it. I can't stop anything from spiraling out of control! Why the fuck does it have to be like this, Roxas? Why can't everything go back to the way it used to be?"

"…You know, Rikku …" I began, closing my eyes, "I used to ask myself the same question when Hayner died. Why this? Why that? Why does everything … everyone … why do they all have to be so cruel? Why was the one thing in my life that provided some semblance of equilibrium taken away from me? Why me? Why not someone else? Why did I have to suffer? What the fuck type of vendetta did the world have against me that I had to go through all of this and suffer alone?"

"Yeah, and….?"

I turned to her, "I stopped."

"You stopped what?"

"I stopped looking for the answers because there were none." I frowned, "At least … not out there in the world, there weren't. It happened because it did and I had to accept it. The choices that I made … that we made on that night added up and landed me where I am today." I turned to her, "Here, with Axel … back in school … away from the things that caused me stress. I stopped pitying myself, stopped trying to return to the person that I used to be. I turned away from all of that. I was sick of all the drugs, the pill popping, the failed suicide attempts, the therapy and the general stigma of being some perpetual fuck up that could never get his act together."

"…I never saw you in that way, Roxas…"

"…That doesn't matter. It was how I saw myself. How I internalized my failures... how I thought little of what progress I might have been making or made. …Rikku, I'm sure you've heard stories but you don't know the full extent to why I am the way I am, do you?"

"…Well … there was …"

"We'll start at the beginning." I readjusted myself, crossing my legs out in front of me and sighed. "When we were kids, our father's business partner, Xemnas, molested me. …I'll spare you the details, but it's enough for you to know that much. Mom …found out and there were a bunch of under the table deals regarding me and going to the authorities, but it eventually sorted itself out and they put me into therapy with Ansem."

"Roxas …"

"Let me finish." I said, holding a hand out to stop her from talking, "I was in therapy until middle school when they thought I had repressed whatever abuse I had suffered through. This was around the time when I met Hayner for the first time. …In the beginning, he was someone I looked up to. Eventually, ours was a relationship that progressed into something else, you could say. Nevertheless, there were drugs … a lot of them. From the age of fourteen on, that was all I cared about. Hayner, drugs and the sick, unrealistic reality that we had created together. It wasn't healthy … but it was what I knew at the moment. He gave me something … that I won't forget. The first real feeling that someone actually cared about what happened to me."

"…And then …didn't he …?"

"He overdosed and that brought me right back to where I had been after Xemnas had been subtracted from the equation. Mom and dad sent me to rehab out in Arizona. No one wanted to be bothered with me or see me …"

"That's not true, Roxas. Me and Sora worried a whole lot about you when you were gone … but daddy … he …"

"…Didn't want any of you to have anything to do with me. I know, Rikku." I sighed, "Either way, after I spent the summer out there, I was even more fucked up when I came back to New York. I went to live with Cloud because he was fed up with our family as it was. Essentially, we were both outcasts from the family at the time."

"It was because of Squall … I mean …Leon." Rikku said, "…It was always because of Leon. Daddy found out …"

"Hm." I shrugged, "Either way, it was his turn to help me. He couldn't get in touch with Ansem because he was out of the country in those years … so he found another therapist. Saïx. All he was good for was doping me up to the point where I wasn't sure if I was dead or alive. My reality was already warped enough; I didn't need anything else to fuck it up. So, following that was my first suicide attempt. I was so sick of everything, I wanted out. Just as you had said? You were lonely and confused? Well, I was beyond that, Rikku. I was at the point where I could barely tell where I was anymore … or what I was doing. My mind was a battleground and I couldn't tell which side was winning."

"…Didn't … didn't you …"

"Slit my wrists." I rubbed at one of the scars on my left wrist and shook my head, "A year later, I was living with Sora. Cloud had to move out to California for awhile and Sora picked me up as soon as Cloud had left. No one wanted to leave me by myself back then. I was fine living with Sora for awhile … but then two years later on Hayner's birthday … I almost succeeded in killing myself again. But, I guess fate had other plans." I turned to look at her, "…And we all know what happened after that."

"So … what are you trying to tell me?"

"I let the circumstances of my past define me for too long." I replied, "I let the failures of the past dictate my future. I never thought to lay them to rest. I was too caught up in what I could have done and what I didn't do. My regrets, the lies, the pain and all that had blinded me … I was caught up in all of it, Rikku. My guilt … my guilt was so strong. Everything always appeared to be my fault; there was no changing what was already written in stone." I shook my head, "But … you learn with time, that that isn't the case."

"I … I don't feel like that, Roxas. I just want everything to stop spinning so badly out of control. I want to have back the life that I left here with. I was to be confident again, I don't want to stand around questioning if every move I make is the right one. I don't want to live my life like this. So stressed, depending on unhealthy manners of coping…" She sighed, trying to catch her breath, "I'm … I'm afraid. I'm afraid that it'll always be like this."

"It won't." I replied, rolling my eyes and laughing to myself, "If anything … I've learned that how I play the hand I'm dealt is completely my choice. Just ask the red headed menace sleeping in the room down the hallway. Rikku, you can't get stuck at this point in your life. You made the choice to go to England because that was something you wanted to do, and you weren't sticking around to waste time on getting it started."

"…I just … I don't want to do this anymore."

"Were you throwing up from alcohol … " I began, "…Or something else before?"

"...I …was …" She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. Her hands instantly flew to her eyes and she began shaking her head as she fought to get the words out, "I don't want to live the rest of my life suffering from this, acting out like this. Recently, the tabloids have started catching on. Back in England, they were reporting on how much I was going out … saying I was a mess … saying all these things that I was trying to keep hidden…but they kept hitting the nail on the head and …"

"You can't get caught up in that stuff, Rikku."

"How do you do it, Roxas?"

I shrugged, "I don't have time to waste on that stuff." I looked pointedly at her, "And you shouldn't either."

She sighed heavily, "You asked me earlier why Paine and I were fighting, correct?" She asked.

"Yes."

"…She … said she was going to tell someone. She … caught on. When I came back from England, I was at one of my lowest weights, Roxas. Don't think I didn't hear the comments. I knew you were all concerned but … I put it out of my mind and tried not to worry about it." She shrugged her shoulders, "She's …been on my case ever since. And tonight … we got into a huge fight over everything. I had nowhere else to go … I didn't wanna bother any of you because I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want to be around Paine, so I was looking for some way to get out. But, then I remembered Sora saying you were going out … you know, a guys night out kind of thing. And, so, I knew it was a far stretch … but I just needed to get out and away from the situation." She turned to me, "That's why I came to you tonight. I just wanted to be around someone … someone who understands what it's like when the whole world closes in on you and you don't know what to do. I wanted to talk to you about it … but you seemed so preoccupied tonight … distant … that I didn't know if I should have …"

"What do you mean?"

"You looked sad tonight." Rikku replied, "…Or …like you were remembering something that you didn't want to. I … didn't want to add to any more stress that you might have had, so I kept to myself …with Gippal for most of the night so I didn't bother you."

"It wasn't …" I sighed, "I was just a bit distracted by the atmosphere of the club. It just brought me back a few years. That's all."

"Oh." She replied, folding her hands in her lap. She had stuck out her legs sometime during our conversation, "So …that's it."

"Hm?"

"That's … all of it." She looked at me, "…I, what am I supposed to do now? …"

"I understand." I replied. I got to my feet and reached out my hand. She grasped it and allowed me to pull her up. "…I think you need to sleep. You've had a rough night… and that would be the best thing for you right now."

She nodded in understanding as I reached down for her bag and handed it to her. She thanked me and let it fall down to the juncture of her elbow. Rikku tucked a bit of her hair behind her hair and then looked up at me with wide green eyes, "What about mom? And … where am I going to go tomorrow?"

"We'll figure all of that out in the morning." I replied, sighing deeply. "I …won't push you to do anything you're not ready for just yet. But … but, I'll make sure you get through this. I won't leave you alone in this, Rikku."

She lowered her head for a minute and I thought she was going to start crying again. I was caught slightly off guard when she latched onto me and gave me the tightest hug she could muster. I thought I heard one of my ribs snapping in half. "…Roxas…" She began, her voice shaking. I knew she had started crying already when I felt the front of my white t-shirt getting wet, "…Thank you. Thank you, so much. You don't know …"

I patted her on top of her head and that only seemed to provoke her to squeeze me even more, "Rikku, easy."

She shook her head, "You don't know, Roxas. You don't know."

I rested my chin on top of her head and let her cry into my chest until she got all of it out. I didn't say anything, but I knew what she was trying to tell me. The thing of it was, I did know. I knew what it was like to feel as if you had no one in your corner.

I knew the emptiness, the feelings of loneliness. The guilt, pain and suffering. To know the feeling that there was something wrong with you. But, you had no idea what it was or how the hell you were going to fix it. I knew what it was like to be at your wit's end, so disassociated from the world that you no longer knew if it was night or day.

The sky turns upside down, presses at your feet and sends you tumbling into a free fall for which there is no landing. You try to breathe but you find there is a burning in your core, a heavy weight that you try to exhale. Your tongue turns acidic and melts back into your throat; just as the bile rises and begins to choke you. You hope to vomit out this weight, try to purge it from your system in some way.

But, that salvation never comes.

It is the endless struggle that you must endure. You become a shell, remembering yourself for what and who you used to be. You find a false sense of control as you try to find some way out of the personal hell you've built for yourself. Silently suffering and you implode.

I didn't want my sister to have to go through this. It could be said that she would learn from this experience. That she would come away from this as a stronger person like I had, but we're not built the same. I knew Rikku was too far enmeshed in her mania at this point, but, it was time to bring her out of it.

And, as things would see it, I would be the one who would begin that process.