Wings of Avalon: haha! Only because she knows A. Riku doesn't have any interest, B. Sora is a big chicken, and C. both of them are on the verge of passing out, themselves. But yeah, I'm now imagining the scene upon waking up the next morning to realize how close they all are...

Mitsuo the Universe jumper: Thanks so much! Glad you liked it!

coolmegan123: Yes, happier chapters ahead, for sure. I think today is the last of the super depressing ones ha.

I'm glad everyone's enjoying the story so far! I'm still plugging away at editing...over halfway done!

Chapter 3

Perspective – Riku

My mom was as happy as she ever got to see me home again. She didn't push for answers to where I had been, probably knowing that I wouldn't give them. Still, something inside of me said that if she really cared she would ask anyway. Even if I told her nothing else, I would have told her about Meli, as much as I didn't want to have to repeat it. But she didn't ask. So I didn't tell. She'd find out eventually from somebody, I was sure.

Since she was hardly ever at home, she didn't even realize that I didn't return to school. If she was going to be home in the morning, I made sure to leave before she got up so that she couldn't question my lack of uniform. Otherwise, at the end of the day I'd just tell her that school had been 'fine', and we'd go our separate ways as usual. If she noticed a change in my demeanor, she didn't mention it.

Mickey called after a couple of days, like he said he would. I told him I was 'fine', too. He was ten times better than my mom at seeing through lies like that, but he didn't push me to confess the truth. I didn't tell him that I wasn't going to school, either, though I had a feeling that he, out of everyone, wouldn't blame me. Our conversation didn't last long, since there wasn't much to say, but he promised to call again soon.

Sora and Kairi were the only ones who knew I was purposely skipping school – at least I assumed, if they had actually gone back themselves like the good kids they were, and if they had refrained from tattling on me to any teachers or parents. I didn't actually see them again for the first several days, though. Should I have sought out the company? Probably. Was I avoiding them because I didn't know what to talk about with them, besides the one thing that I didn't want to talk about with anybody? Definitely.

Sooner or later they were bound to catch up with me, though. It was just in their nature. They knew me better than anybody – other than Meli – so they knew when I was isolating myself for terrible reasons. This time they found me sitting on the mainland beach, just down the road from my and Sora's houses. My ears picked up the quiet crunching of sand behind me before they both appeared in my periphery, settling down on either side of me without a word. We sat like that for a long time, Kairi's shoulder pressed up against my right arm, and Sora's knee nudged into my left leg, just staring out over the ocean. Their presence was steadying, the physical touch soothing my anguished heart. I just wished that it didn't still feel so much like something was missing.

"Somebody was asking about you today," Sora finally broke the silence minutes later. "A...teacher, maybe? She said her name was Annaisha."

Shutting my eyes, I let out the smallest of sighs through my nose. Of course she was. Annaisha was the last person I wanted to talk to, because I knew I would spill everything as soon as I saw her. She just had that effect, somehow. "What did you tell her?"

"Not much. That you were back, that you were okay, and that you were...around." He poked his index finger down into the sand. "I didn't tel her that you hadn't been coming to school, if that's what you're wanting to know. Though I guess if she's one of your teachers, she would already know..."

If he was fishing for an answer to who she was, I was ignoring that bit. "Okay. Thanks."

Kairi rested her head on my shoulder. "You shouldn't be alone so much, you know."

"Yeah. I know."

I didn't have it in me to reach out for them when I needed them, but after all these years, they seemed to get that about me. At least, that's the way that it appeared, since after that day the only thing that changed was the two of them coming around more often, even if it was just to sit in silence.

So why didn't we get that about Meli? Why couldn't we see that she needed us so much more than she was getting, until it smacked us in the face? With nothing better to do with my long days than rehash the last year of my life over and over again, I found that there were a thousand new things to feel guilty over. So many signs that I shouldn't have missed, so many opportunities that I wasted, so many moments that I would never get the chance to do over.

Another week had gone by when my morning was interrupted by a soft knock at the front door. Frowning, I peered out the living room window, but couldn't see who it was. With a sigh, I reluctantly crossed to the door and swung it open wide.

"Hello, Riku." Annaisha smiled her gentle smile at me. "I'm terribly sorry to intrude like this, but...I couldn't help but notice that Sora had returned to school and you had not. He told me that you were back in Destiny Islands, too, so I was a bit worried that something may have happened to you."

I clenched my jaw and relaxed it, dropping my gaze to the porch. I should have been mad at her, for barging in on my life like that, but instead I already wanted to drop all of my defenses and tel her. Talking with Annaisha had done me so much good in the past, but now...now I was just barely hanging on by a thread. I was afraid of what talking about Meli would do to me.

"Well, as you can see, I'm fine." I gestured vaguely to my body. "I...appreciate your concern."

Annaisha made no move to leave, merely tilted her head to one side and smiled again. "Are you actually fine, though? Because you don't seem like it."

I squeezed my eyes shut. Curse your intuition. I don't want to talk about it. I can't. I can't...

"Meli's dead."

Her demeanor changed drastically, one hand going to her mouth as she gasped, eyes going wide in shock. I barely noticed, though. I was too busy dealing with the tears that had finally decided to come pouring down my cheeks.

Meli's dead. She's gone. She's gone, I'm never gonna see her again, she's dead, she's gone...

The next few moments passed in a bit of a blur. All I really knew was that we ended up sitting side by side on the front porch step, and I had cried even harder because that's where Meli sat the night Sora and I came home, and she was waiting to meet my mom, and somewhere in the middle Annaisha had come up with a couple of tissues, which was good because I was a total mess. As the tears began to subside a little, I blew my nose, and scrubbed at my face, and felt a little like Meli because I kept wanting to apologize for my behavior. I wasn't used to people seeing me cry. I wasn't used to crying, period.

Annaisha had stayed mostly quiet through the whole ordeal, but now she spoke softly. "Can you tell me what happened? Start wherever you want to."

So I started back at the Mark of Mastery exam, and told her everything – how upset Meli was with me for advising her not to take the test; that I had passed even though Sora deserved it more than me; that Meli struggled with her darkness and was left out of the guardians; that I had abandoned her for my mission, thinking I was keeping her safe; that Meli had given into and eventually been taken over by the darkness; that I had seen all of her darkest memories in my fight to save her and realized how little I had truly understood her; and finally, that she had let herself be taken by the darkness to keep us safe, and there had been nothing I could do to save her.

"You're taking all the blame on yourself again," Annaisha cautioned as I swiped away more tears with the wadded-up tissues.

"Yeah, well, I should have known, I should have seen...I should have stopped her..."

"Meli made her own choices. I'm not saying that you and others didn't have any influence on them, but they were, in the end, hers." She paused, looking out over the empty yard and street. "I tried to help her, too. I tried to convince her to let Kairi and others in, to share what she was going thrugh with her friends and take some of the burden off of herself. I could sit here and blame myself, too, for not trying hard enough." Glancing back up at me, she sighed. "But I won't. I did what I thought was best at the time, and I can't fault myself for that. Neither can you. Questioning and blaming are a natural part of the grieving process, but you..." She tapped me lightly on the arm with one finger. "The past indicates that you will stay right here in this unhealthy cycle of blaming yourself forever, if you don't take measures to stop it."

"I don't know how," I admitted hoarsely. How do I stop blaming myself for things that were clearly my fault?

"Open yourself up to the healthy relationships in your life, for starters. Don't stay alone. Let them show you that they don't think it's your fault, and maybe you'll start to believe it yourself."

"Sora and Kairi have been coming around to spend time with me."

"Good." She nodded. "What about your mom? Have you talked to her?"

I scowled. "No. You said 'healthy' relationships, remember?"

Out of the corner of my eye I could see her staring at me for a long moment before she spoke again. "Okay. Sora and Kairi, then...oh, and what was his name? Mickey? Let them be there for you. Talk to them whenever you can. Grieving is a process, and a long one. Don't do it alone, okay?"

I nodded, but didn't speak.

"And you've got me, too, of course. I understand why you don't want to come back to school right now, but I'd still like to start our Tuesday afternoon sessions back up, if that's alright with you. It can even be more often than that, if you'd like."

"That's fine," I muttered. "Tuesdays are fine." I had a feeling if I didn't agree she would end up showing up at my house again.

Annaisha glanced at her watch. "I'm sorry, Riku, but I have a session I have to get to."

"Yeah, of course." We stood, and I squeezed the tissues into my fist, keeping my eyes on the ground. "Thanks, for..." I swallowed. "Thanks." As much as I hadn't wanted her there, hadn't wanted to break down, I knew that it was probably for the best that I had gotten all of that out.

She gave a sad smile and squeezed my arm gently. "I'll see you Tuesday, okay?"

That talk with Annaisha apparently broke some kind of dam inside of me, because from then on the tears wouldn't stop coming. When Sora and Kairi visited the next afternoon, I broke down again, much to my dismay, which resulted in both of them crying, as well, and piling on top of me in some kind of over-the-top group hug.

"I miss her so much," Kairi whimpered into my shoulder. "I still can't sleep in our room by myself. It's just so empty. And her clothes are still hanging in the closet, and her stuff is on her desk, and..." She sobbed. "And I don't wanna ask Mom and Dad to clean it out, because they're missing her, too...plus I don't even know whether I really want it gone. It's like...I don't know, it feels so disrespectful, to just get rid of her stuff, even if it's only to the attic. We wanted so badly for her to have her own space with her own stuff, and she only had such a short time to enjoy it."

"It's just not fair." The back of Sora's head was resting on my other shoulder, his spiky hair tickling my cheek as he stared up at the ceiling. "All the terrible stuff she had been through, and her life was just starting to get happy. It's not fair she didn't get to be happy longer."

And it's all my fault. My fault, my fault.

"Stupid darkness," Sora grumbled.

I couldn't figure out what he was referring to. "What?"

"The darkness. The stuff that...that came out of Kingdom Hearts. It's all that darkness' fault that she's gone."

I froze, remembering what Annaisha had said about my friends not blaming me. "Yeah. I...I guess you're right."

Kairi rolled her head over to look up at me. "You didn't think it was...your fault, did you?"

"Well...not that part, I don't guess," I admitted. Not when I really stopped to think about it.

She sat up and studied me with puffy, narrowed eyes. "So which part, then?"

I knew I was in trouble now. Kairi was even worse than Meli at pestering me about my feelings, even going so far a couple of times as to make me mad on purpose so that I would tell her what was really on my mind. Prying my arm out from behind Sora, I rubbed my sleeve across my face to dry it, trying to come up with an answer. "Just...well...mostly the whole giving into the darkness thing, I guess."

"How is that your fault? She had PTSD, and she didn't know how to deal with it."

"Yeah, because she was alone!" I suddenly couldn't stand being pinned down anymore. Shoving their legs off mine, I launched out from behind them and walked away from the sofa, raking a hand through my hair.

"Riku –"

"You guys didn't see what I did. In her memories. We all just left her to deal with it by herself...she felt like we had abandoned her. Like we didn't care."

Sora looked hurt. "Of course we cared. We just didn't know."

"Yeah," Kairi muttered. "Maybe if somebody had actually told us what was going on..."

It stung, but it was true. "See? Like I said – my fault."

Her eyes went wide and shot up to meet mine. "No, Riku, that's not what I meant! I wasn't accusing you." She bit down on her lip. "I mean, I don't want to accuse Meli, either, when she's not even... But it's true that if she had talked to us, maybe we could have actually helped her."

"It fits, though, no matter what you meant. Obviously I couldn't have just blurted her secrets to the two of you, but I could have done something to make sure you knew that she needed our support. She...yeah. I wish she would have talked to us more. That definitely would have helped, a lot. But regardless of any of that, the point still stands that I knew. Whatever anybody else knew or didn't know, I knew that she was hurting and I still left her behind."

Sora stood and stepped closer to me. "You had a job to do, Riku. You didn't ask to be sent to the Realm of Darkness, but I think we all agree that taking Meli with you there wouldn't have helped anything."

"Wouldn't it have?" I crossed my arms. "She would have been scared to start with, sure, but at least she wouldn't have been alone."

"She wasn't alone. She was with me." Kairi's focus stayed on her hands, fidgeting in her lap. "And no, I didn't know she had PTSD, not until she yelled it at us and ran off. But I should have been able to see that there was something going on. I mean, I knew already that she had nightmares, and her bouts of anger just kept getting worse. You'd think that would have given me the hint that she needed help." She dashed away an errant tear with the back of her hand. "Or I could have just gone after her when she left. What kind of friend am I, to find out information like that, and then just let her run off by herself and not try to find her?"

Walking forward, I dropped down to one knee in front of her. "Now you're the one blaming yourself. It's not your fault."

Her blue eyes were wet, but she managed to twitch the corners of her mouth up in the tiniest of smiles. "So you're the only one who's allowed to wallow in guilt? Is that it?" Before I could think up a reply, she shrugged, losing the hint of humor. "It sounds to me like we're all at fault, at least a little."

"I basically ran her off when she finally tried to be with me and Donald and Goofy," Sora offered glumly. "I told her she could only stay if she stopped using so much darkness."

I looked up at him, feeling a little overwhelmed all of a sudden with the need to reassure the both of them. "You were just trying to protect her."

"And so were you." Kairi poked me hard in the shoulder, and I turned back to her. "If you're gonna justify our mistakes, then do the same for yours. And if you're gonna blame yourself, then blame us, too, because we had just as much of a hand in it. Please, Riku."

I swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and nodded. "Okay. I guess...I guess I can at least accept that it was not solely my fault. It was...a bunch of things, all working together against her."

Kairi nodded, too, tears spilling over once more. Pulling myself back up onto the couch, I wrapped one arm around her shoulders as Sora curled up against her other side.

A/N: Leave a review and have a great weekend! :D