I'm home!!!!! Hizzah! And here's another ((AS, AS)) installment. Hehe... This one is sweet and angsty, which is great. And we're finally introduced to Sephiroth!!! Hurrah!!! Hehe... I hope you all enjoy...

WARNINGS: a confused/lost/happy/frustrated/angry Riku…Sephiroth…Axel goodness…

Disclaimer: meh…you all know this already…

"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets."
--Paul Tourniner…

((Another Side, Another Story))
Secrets and Lies…

The second time Sora had fallen asleep, I hadn't been able to. To make us both a little more comfortable, I carefully slid him to my side and held him close with an arm around his waist. He sighed quietly and snuggled into my side. It was a perfect fit, not that I was expecting anything else. I didn't need any more proof. After hearing him tell his dream, I knew that he was my Sora and that there was no changing it.

I laid and watched his slumbering face for what felt like an eternity, but when I glanced at the clock, I saw that it had only been about an hour. I sighed as I thought of how crazy Axel was probably driving Sephiroth right now. The fiery redhead that was my best friend had a personality like water, ironically. Given time, he could make his way into the hearts of anyone. Unless their personality was one of oil like my older brother's, and everyone knew that oil and water didn't mix.

Sighing in despair, I pulled myself away from Sora. My side felt cold the instant it was separated from him. I searched his desk for a piece of paper and a pencil and scribbled a note for him to read in the morning. Then I made my way to the window and quietly pushed it open, giving him a soft glance. I wanted to resist it, but I couldn't. I returned to his bedside and placed a single kiss against his forehead and one on his lips. Before he could even mutter his approval in his sleep, I was out the window and driving away down the street.

The drive between our houses wasn't a long one. I knew that, but it felt like forever. Was it always so hard to leave something you loved behind? Wait…loved? Yeah. Even if he didn't remember everything yet, he was still my Sky. I loved him and would do anything for him, all he had to do was ask.

More than anything, I wanted to take away his pain. I don't know why he suffered with such severe depression outside of his father's death, but I was going to find out so I could make it better. Preferably before it was too late for me to do anything about it. I clenched my eyes closed and shook my head as I pulled into my driveway. No! I wouldn't think like that. Somehow, I would help him overcome it.

The garage door opened before I had chance to push the button and I sighed, knowing that I was in for an earful when I went inside. I pulled my car in and quickly killed the engine. I took a few moments to calm myself and replace my mask of indifference before climbing out of the sports car and going inside.

Just as I had expected, I had a two-man army waiting for me in the kitchen. Axel bounced up from the chair he'd been sitting in when I entered. Sephiroth stayed leaning with his back against the counter, not moving an inch albeit the little smirk that formed on his lips at the sight of me.

"Sorry I'm late," I muttered.

Sephiroth grunted and rolled his eyes. Axel punched me playfully in the arm with a punch that should have sent me to the ground. All I did was jolt a bit and glare at him. He shrugged it off with a smile.

"We were starting to get worried about you. Another hour and we were going to get the rest of us together for a search party."

I rolled my eyes and took a seat at the kitchen counter. "You all need to learn the meaning of overdramatic."

Axel scowled. "The last time you disappeared on us was when…." He sighed. "Well, you know. We were worried. Is that such a bad thing? Where were you anyway?"

I shook my head. "I just needed to get out. I took a little drive around."

"I can smell him all over you, otōto (1). Don't try to play dumb with me."

I glared at my brother and he smirked at me with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

"Don't look at me as if you thought I wouldn't know. Unlike our dear Axel, I know that you are as dumb as you look."

I snorted and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, thanks, Seph. I love you too."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes and pushed himself away from the counter, striding out of the kitchen with an air that said that he owned everything, even a person's happiness, and he could take it away anytime he wanted. I wasn't so sure that he owned everything, but I knew that he could send all of my hopes shattering to the ground with only one word. He was my only blood brother, after all.

Sephiroth and I had always been easy to pick out in a crowd. What with our silver-white hair and unnatural green eyes, it would be easy to spot us from a mile away. Add our indifference to society as a hole and Sephiroth's random bouts of violence into the mix and we were a recipe for popularity just waiting to happen. And so it had come. Wave upon wave of drooling girls, maybe even a shy, blushing boy here or there. But with popularity had come gossip and with gossip I had ended my promiscuity. Axel had always been my best friend and he agreed with me on the change. Said that we were getting too old to mistreat people anyway.

Sephiroth never talked with me about his sex life, and I really don't think that I want to no about it, either. For some reason, I have this picture in my mind of my brother being a bondage king, torturing his victims with pain and an intense amount of pleasure.

I had to shake my head violently to get out of the thoughts. Axel chuckled and patted me on the shoulder, pulling my attention to him. I smiled my best smile and stood from my chair.

"I'm spent. I think I'm gonna go to bed."

Axel laughed and shook his head. "What's so good about sleep? Oh wait…" A devilish smirk formed on his face. "You just wanna dream about doing dirty things to Sora, don't you? Riku, you horny little fiend."

I rolled my eyes and started for my bedroom. I sighed in relief as I got to the door, but growled in frustration when I pushed it open. Axel was lounging on my bed, his back against my headboard and his hands behind his head, with a cat-like grin on his face.

I stomped into my room and slammed the door behind me. I glared at Axel when he chuckled quietly, but as always, he shoved it aside with a cocky grin and shrug.

"I think it's time that we had a talk about the birds and the bees, tomodachi (2)."

He smiled when I glared at him again. I gave up with a sigh and fell into my black, leather recliner in front of my window, burying my face in my hands.

"He still doesn't remember anything?"

I shook my head. "In his dreams. He shared one with me. Him and Roxas, and he used a pendant to unlock his powers, just like he always did before. And Ansem."

Axel frowned and furrowed his brow. "I wonder if he's seen…—"

"I don't know!" I interrupted, knowing full well what he was going to say. "And I really don't want to know, either."

He laughed. "Then what do you want to know? You've only been worried about him regaining his memories so far. What if, when they all come rushing back, he doesn't feel the same for you?"

"That's not going to happen," I snapped, closing my eyes.

"I just don't want you to be set up for a broken heart, Riku." His voice was soft—sad—and reminded me of why he was my best friend. "I just don't want the same thin…"

"Oh shut up, Axel. Just because poor little Roxas hates you for what you did, doesn't mean that Sora will hate me."

I didn't have time to react before I was thrown out of the chair and onto the floor, a seething Axel straddling me. A shiver rippled down my spine when I looked into his deep, green eyes. There was no anger there, only pain. A deep, gut-wrenching amount of pain.

"I only did what I did because I thought it would help make him better! I didn't do it to kill him! Got it memorized?" Red-tinged tears had gathered in the corners of his eyes, but he held them back with every ounce of his unending will.

I sighed and turned my head to the side, locking my eyes onto my bookshelf. "I know, Axel. I'm sorry. I…" I sighed again and turned back to look at him. "I'm scared, okay? There, I admitted it! I'm terrified that the same thing will happen, but I can't believe that it will happen. I want us to be happy."

Axel laughed sadly. "You won't be able to be happy. Ansem will come soon after he remembers and whisk him away. I'm surprised he hasn't sensed Sora's dreams yet."

"I'm not doing to let him take Sora away from me. Not again."

Axel sighed and sat up so he was off my chest and leaning against the side of my bed. Even though I was free to move, I didn't. I closed my eyes and took deep, even breaths to calm me before lost all control. If anyone in the world had seen me lose it, it was Axel, but I would let him see it again. Not if I could help it.

A quiet laugh from Axel's general vicinity pulled my attention back to him. He was staring at the floor, a lost look on his face.

"Look at us," he muttered. "We're wrecks. I'm in love with someone who hates me, and you're in love with someone who can't even understand why he feels the way he does."

I snorted and swiped my hair out of my face, using the hand to cover my eyes. Silence fell between us for a while, broken only by the random sound of a cicada chirping outside my window. After ten minutes, I'd had enough. It was starting to suffocate me.

"Have you tried…you know…talking to Roxas at all?"

He sighed. "Every day, but he just shoves me aside like I'm a dog that annoys him. He won't even let me explain why I did it."

"Why did you do it?"

Silence. I glanced to my side to see Axel staring at me incredulously. I sighed and shook my head.

"Nevermind. That was wrong of me. I'm sorry…"

"No…no." He was frowning and a strange look was in his eyes. "He was…sick…and I couldn't stand to see him suffer any longer."

I frowned. "So you killed him?"

He sighed and hung his head. "It seemed logical at the time. It was either that or… No. I refused to let myself damn him again after he'd found salvation."

"And you had planned to kill yourself after you'd killed him, hadn't you?" I sighed when he didn't answer me. "I'm glad that I kept such a close eye on you, then."

He snorted quietly, but that was the only sound between us. I could feel from the change of the air in the room that that particular conversation was over. I was just glad that he had finally opened up to me. But I wondered why he hadn't said anything before. Sure…everyone had their secrets, but that didn't mean that he'd had to lock himself up.

I sighed when he looked up at me. The air had changed again, and this time it was directed toward me.

"What about Sora? He doesn't seem like the same Sora of Akari. He's…darker somehow. It might just be teen angst, but I don't know. It seems like something more than that."

I shrugged and closed my eyes. I knew what it was. Or, at least, I thought I did, but I couldn't just tell Axel about it. Sora hadn't even been able to tell anyone about it himself. If I told Axel, it felt like I would be betraying him in some way or another. Betrayal wasn't high on my "Things to Do to Sora" list, if it was even on it in the first place.

"Sora is going through a tough time right now, I think. He won't talk with me about it." I wanted to add, 'And I won't ask,' but I knew that it would just make Axel ask even more questions.

The redhead nodded and slid sideways so he was lying on his side on the floor, facing me. He propped his head up in a hand and I could feel every place his eyes touched my body. It left behind a burning trail. I shivered.

"Have any ideas on how to trigger his memories?"

I shook my head.

He laughed. "What triggered yours? Maybe that will help give us a head start."

"I saw him. I'd been having the dreams for a while, but the moment I saw him, something in me felt different. Then…you know…" I didn't have to explain. Axel had been there when my memories had come back. "What about Roxas?"

"He refuses to speak to me, remember?" he said with a dry, emotionless laugh.

"Oh…yeah…"

Then there was more silence. I didn't like it. Axel and silence never went together unless he was listening to music—loudly, might I add—or brooding over something that could have been avoided. Music was good. Brooding was not.

I sighed and rolled onto my side so I was facing him, using my arms as a pillow. Axel had his eyes closed and his shoulders were tensed beyond belief. Had it been a different time, I would have gladly offered him a back massage, but we'd changed since then. I didn't know how he would react to it.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

He opened his eyes and I had to bite my tongue to keep from gasping. His eyes were so dark…so dead…so unlike Axel. He frowned. "For what? You didn't do anything wrong."

I shook my head. "No. I've got you in your brooding mode because I made you think about Roxas."

"I think about him every day," he muttered.

"That's not the point. I made you think about him when you obviously didn't want to. I'm sorry."

"Meh…" He shrugged and ran a hand back through his long spikes. With a quiet grunt, he pushed himself up from the ground and headed for the door. "I'm turning in. See you in the morning."

I nodded and let him leave without saying anything. He wasn't going to sleep. I knew better than to think that he needed sleep, but I also knew that I'd bothered him enough. I didn't want to make him feel any worse that I already had.

Sighing, I pushed myself up from the floor and fell onto my bed. If I had been tired before, all traces of it were gone now. I closed my eyes.

A sharp knock on my bedroom door pulled me back to my senses.

"Hm…?"

My door opened and Sephiroth leaned against my doorframe. "You really are hopeless," he muttered.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Thank you for pointing that out, but you're a little late. Axel and I already figured that out ourselves."

He rolled his eyes and, in the flash of an eye, pulled something out of his pocket and threw it at me. I caught it just as quick and looked at him in confusion. He shrugged and gestured for me to look at it. I did and it only made me even more confused. It was a little black card decorated with Jack-O-Lanterns and ghosts. I opened it and read was inside.

I smiled. "Is this an invitation to a Halloween party, Seph?"

He shrugged. "Don't get the wrong idea, loverboy."

I laughed and set the invitation on my beside table. "Don't worry about it. Demyx and the others already invited us. Dem won't shut up about it."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "I don't understand how you can be friends with such immature drivel."

I sighed. "They've been family forever, Seph, you know that. They're the same as us. Just because of that, I can push Demyx's immaturity aside and live with Axel's obnoxiousness. It's all I ask for."

He rolled his eyes and pushed away from my doorframe. "Come or don't come. I don't care. Maybe you can take your little boyfriend. I hear that interesting things happen at these parties."

And with that comment he was gone. I rolled my eyes and shook my head, falling back down into my bed. Could my family be any stranger? The only parent-figure I had was a man I had never seen before in my life, my blood brother was heartless bastard, my best friend was an obnoxious pyro when he wasn't depressed, and the rest of my family was scattered. Demyx and Zexion were the only ones left who weren't that much older than Axel and I.

I sighed and closed my eyes, letting the sleep that had snuck away from me before come crawling back. Sometimes it sucked being the youngest in a family of people who never seemed to die…

o-o-o-o-o

School came and went in a blur the next day. I watched Sora like a hawk and talked to him anytime that I could. People gave us strange looks, usually girls who had managed to get themselves twisted up in the mistakes I'd made in the past. The only thing that managed to make the day worth remembering was my talk with a certain bitchy blonde boy during my free period.

Axel hadn't bothered to leave his room for school that morning, so I wandered the halls alone, longing for something to do that would keep my attention and take away the boredom that was tugging at me. I had an idea of what to do, but I didn't risk it. Sora would probably be pissed if I pulled him out of class just so we could make-out.

I turned the corner that led to the "long hallway" and smirked when I recognized the body that was half-leaning inside a locker. My smirk slowly morphed into a serious frown as I made my way toward him, coughing quietly when I reached his locker.

Roxas pulled his head out of the red metal rectangle just long enough to frown at me in disgust before returning to his digging like I hadn't even been there. I frowned and furrowed my brow, sighing loudly.

"You can't ignore me, Roxas."

He laughed. "Was doing a pretty good job of it 'til you had to open your mouth," he spat, slamming his locker closed. In his arms was a book that I recognized from Father's collection.

"A Millennium of Pain, huh? Reading up on our history, I see."

"It's not for me," he sneered. "It's for Sora. I've read it enough to have it memorized."

If it was possible for me to get any paler, I think I would have, but since that was impossible, my jaw dropped and my eyes widened. The look seemed to satisfy Roxas because he smiled coldly and turned his back on me to return to his class.

"Roxas! Wait! Please?!"

My voice must have sounded more desperate than I thought it had because Roxas stopped and slowly turned back to look at me. My eyes widened slowly as another realization overcame me.

"That book…will it help Sora to remember anything?"

He frowned and shrugged. "I don't know, but he needs to read it anyway. Maybe it will."

"So you think that he's the Sora, too? Axel and I aren't the only ones?"

Something flashed in his deep blue eyes, but then Roxas shook his head. "No. He may not remember anything, but I'd know my best friend…my Other…anywhere. Sora's the real thing."

I sighed and ran a hand back through my hair, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. Finally! Someone besides Axel and Sephiroth agreed with me! And he was my "enemy" nonetheless. That only made the revelation ten times sweeter.

Roxas shook his head. "I'm not doing this for us, you know. I'm doing it for Sora. If it doesn't do anything for him, then it will just be an interesting book full of fantasy novellas with characters that are named very coincidentally. If he remembers, then…"

I frowned, my momentary joy now completely gone. "You're not going to let Ansem just come and take him, are you? How could you do that after what happened before?"

He sighed. "No. Even if it means that I have to side with you, I will try my damnedest to keep Ansem and his lackeys away from Sora. And you better not take him to Xemnas or…"

"No. Xemnas will use Sora like a POW and as grounds to restart the war. I wouldn't give that fate to anyone, much less Sora." My frown deepened and I furrowed my brow. "But you know that you'll have to fight alongside Axel if you take our side, don't you?"

He didn't answer with words, but the same thing that had flitted across his eyes before appeared again and he diverted his eyes away from mine. I sighed.

"You need to let him explain. He feels even worse than I imagined."

Roxas snorted and shook his head. "He killed me. What more is there to explain? What could possibly make it any better?"

"That he planned to kill himself once he had killed you, but I decided to watch him like a hawk so he didn't. If you're going to blame anyone, you should blame me. Axel did nothing wrong."

He shook his head again and closed his eyes. "I don't care. I'm not going to talk to that bastard."

I laughed sadly. "You're not being fair, Roxas."

"Since when was anything between us fair?" he muttered.

He turned on his heel and left with that, and like I had with Axel the night before, I let him leave. Our conversation was over. I just hoped that he had enough sense to really think over my words before it was too late. Just as a shiver rippled down my spine, I heard his voice perk up behind me.

"I don't want him to be the real thing, Riku." His voice sounded so sad. "He can't be the real thing. He doesn't deserve to suffer like that."

I sighed and closed my eyes. "I know. We're going to make sure that things are different. We're going to change our destinies."

He laughed quietly, but when I turned to look at him he was gone. Another shiver rippled down my spine. I was shivering a lot lately, and it wasn't because of the fall chill that was starting to overtake the air. No. Something big was about to happen. And soon…

TBC…
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A/N: Meh…I don't like this chapter so much, but I needed to write it. I know that Sephiroth is probably most definitely OOC, and I apologize for that. It's the first time that I've ever written him. I guess I need to watch FFVII: AC again to remember the way he speaks…

Anyway…I've come to the conclusion that this is going to consist of 15 chapters and 5 ((AS, AS)), totaling 20 chapters by the end, not including the prologue. And I've already got the rest of it planned out and the beginning of part two (tentatively called Understanding) is in the early process of being planned. HURRAH!!!... Hehe…

And the Japanese thing... I'm too lazy to come up with my own language and this gives me a good reason to practice writing sentences and stuff in Japanese. I can always use the extra practice for my class. I'm not going to throw random Japanese into a sentence, though, unless it's used when they're addressing someone like in this chapter. Any other time, it will be a complete sentence in Japanese with the translation at the bottom, like below. The names of places in the worlds of Akari and Kurai are in Japanese, as well as other important words later on...::sighs::...But tell me what you all think about me using it. If you totally hate it, let me know and I'll take it out. Screw the Speech!! Hehe...

In upcoming chapters…
Sora has an icky relapse…costume shopping and a slumber party at Roxas'…Sora's secret is discovered…the Pumpkin Fest and Halloween party…Riku and Axel's secret is revealed…

Translations…
(1) otōto: younger brother…
(2) tomodachi: friend…

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed and is at least thinking about reviewing this chapter. It only takes 30 seconds to make me a much happier Kolie. Hehe... I love ya guys!!...

To chapter five...AWAY!!!! ::flies away::