I am very very sorry for this extended hiatus. Spring semester was out to end me so I had to use all my energy to survive that and then I just fell off the radar. Best I can do is say I'm back now with renewed motivation and I'm shooting for one update a week (maybe more) so enjoy!

He dreamt of endless fields and roses and cloudless skies. He heard voices calling out to him and waves breaking on shores. He saw his mother and he reached out to her with fingers ensconced tightly in black gloves. He saw Kairi, loose and limp, suspended in empty space. He tried to scream and no sound came out.

Sora opened his eyes and coughed, the bleary world enclosed him and presented him with such strange comfort that he was tempted to close his eyes again. He turned his head and glimpsed through his sleep induced haze the imprints left on the other side of the bed. He furrowed his brow and tried to think. Everything was unfamiliar, and then it all flowed back in a rush. Memories of the previous night, the drive, the party, Tidus, Aqua, Riku.

Kairi.

Sora shot up and scanned the room. He was alone. She was gone. He pushed the covers off and hopped over the bed to the window with its panoramic view of the borough below. He scanned the entrance. Most of the cars that had been parked along the sidewalks and inside the gated entrance were gone. Kairi's limo was nowhere to be seen. She had left him alone, he realized with growing dismay. She had kissed him, again, and then she had left him. He sat on the window sill and pressed his forehead to the glass. It was almost too funny.

He was thrust from his dismal contemplation by the sound of footsteps below. Sora tensed, his head swiveled to the door. At least she had the decency to close it before she ran off, he thought bitterly. He realized that he was stuck in Riku's house and that if he was looking to get out in one piece and with minimal humiliation, it would have been wise to depart hours ago.

He tiptoed to the door as quietly as he could manage. He turned the knob and slowly pulled it open, peeking his head out and looking for any sign of life. The footsteps continued to sound off below. Sora crept out into the hall, taking all the care in the world not to press his toes too hard into the mahogany wooden floorboards. He heard the sounds of light snoring and shuffling and noticed for the first time people spread out in corners along the hall. It seemed that he was not the only one who had found themselves incapable of leaving.

Confidence rising, he descended the spiraling staircase. The footsteps had ceased and now he heard a sighing rising from the room below. Sora wasn't certain why his heart was beginning to pound, didn't particularly care to analyze it. Instead, steeling himself to greet whomever it was below, Sora took a breath and continued on.

It was not a pretty sight. The party of the year had left a mess to end all messes. Food, wrappers, napkins, and glass bottles littered the floor. It looked like a hurricane had traveled over them and swept everything up in its wake. Sora supposed that in a way that is exactly what had happened.

"Like what I've done with the place?" a voice rang out over the heavy silence.

Sora turned and was almost surprised to find Riku, slouched over one his tables, a bottle of some type of alcohol in his hands. He caught Sora's confounded stare, winked, and downed some more of his bottle.

"Um…" Sora scratched the back of his neck.

"Well, they're not gonna drink themselves," Riku hiccupped and gestured to the many bottles of unopened alcohol placed neatly on every table. "You get all this stuff out for people and they don't even drink it," Riku shook his head. "Bunch of phonies."

"Right…" Sora wondered if he could just turn around and leave. The front door was only a couple dozen feet away.

Riku glanced at him again, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the boy standing awkwardly amidst the remains of his party. He gestured with loose hands to a seat at his table. "Sit," he said. Understanding that this entire situation was going the exact opposite of how he had hoped, Sora stepped forward with a hearty sigh and sat down across from Riku. May as well, he thought.

They said nothing for a long while. The silence punctuated by the occasional suckling of Riku on his bottle. Sora tapped his fingers on the table nervously, looking around the room, looking anywhere but at the person sitting in front of him.

Riku sighed. "Kairi brought you here, didn't she?"

Sora looked at him. Riku wore an expression too complex, too resistant to interpretation. The bruise under his eye was beginning to fade, leaving a blotch of yellow in its wake.

Sora nodded. "She did. Not really sure why I agreed though."

"Well," Riku lifted his glass as if in a toast, "Glad you could make it."

Sora huffed, his lips rising in the very smallest of smiles.

"Sorry about your arm," Riku slurred, eyeing Sora's brace.

Sora blinked. "Forget about it," he said.

Riku shook his head, slowly, as if going too fast would force him to fall over. "No…'m sorry."

"Yeah, well, I did attack you, didn't I?" Sora sighed.

Riku laughed, a big, bellowing thing of a laugh. He went on and on and couldn't stop. Sora smirked at the sight. He supposed it was kind of funny.

"Yeah," Riku managed to spit out, wiping his eyes and struggling to stop the giggles shuddering through his body. "You sure did."

They fell silent again. Sora watched as Riku played with the bottle, passing it from hand to hand, twirling it around on the table. He thought back to the conversation he and Tidus had engaged in the night before and what they had tacitly agreed upon. He suddenly felt sick.

Riku mumbled something and Sora leaned across the table. "What?" he asked.

"…said 'm glad she has you."

Sora fell back in his seat. "What?" he asked again.

Riku looked up at him and this time Sora could see the softness in them, the vulnerability, and he almost wanted to turn away but found that he couldn't.

"It wasn't always like this," Riku whispered, and to Sora's amazement, his bottom lip began to tremble. Undeterred, he decided to press forward. "What was it like?" he asked.

"Better," Riku nodded to himself, his eyes focused squarely on the table, "Nobody got hurt."

Sora was quiet for a moment. "But you did, didn't you?"

Riku looked at him and Sora found himself staring into the vacant dullness that he had become acquainted with. The dullness that was always there and yet truly revealed itself only in the most private of moments. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes."

"And someone's hurt Kairi," Sora stated.

Riku said nothing for a long while. He raised the glass bottle to his lips and found there was nothing left to drink. He let the bottle drop to the floor. It did not smash, but bounced and rolled away.

"I didn't know it would be like this," he said.

"You didn't know what would be like this?" Sora questioned, beginning to feel the flickering flames of frustration deep in his gut.

"This place is a disease," Riku said, his hollow eyes gliding over the room.

"Your house?" Sora turned in his seat and looked at the place. "It's a little bit of a mess, but – "

"Brooklyn. Never should have come here," Riku muttered.

"Oh…well," Sora twiddled his thumbs, "it's not the greatest place on Earth, sure, but it's your home, isn't it?"

"Destiny Island is my home," Riku said, perhaps a bit sharply. Sora just looked at him. "This place swallows you whole," he continued, "chews you up until there's just nothing left."

"Okay…" Sora said, he rubbed the top of his head, absently trying to get the spikes to come down. "Look, Riku-"

"Don't make my mistakes," Riku said, angry tears forming in the corner of his eyes and Sora sat, stunned. "You got it? Don't fall for it like I did."

"I don't know what you're-"

"Because one day you're gonna find out that you've gone in too deep, and then there's no way out."

Sora stood and had begun to make his way towards the door. He didn't want to hear it anymore. He wanted to leave. He reached to push open the wide double door and paused when he heard Riku cackling drunkenly behind him.

"You can't stop them. You can't stop them."

Sora trudged through heavy snowfall, the wind roared and streaks of frozen precipitation lashed at his face. With no car, it had taken him nearly forty minutes to get back to Brownsville, and by then his shoes were soaked from the inside out, his hair was matted down and dripping water and his muscles ached fiercely. Despite having woken up only an hour and a half before, he was ready to pass out in his own bed.

Sora's dreams of fresh sleep were squandered when he entered his apartment and saw Naminé sitting nervously on the couch. He stopped in the doorway, a bit put off by the sight. He wondered briefly how they had gone from nobody frequenting their apartment to what seemed like new people all the time. Things were, in fact, changing.

"Hi Sora," she greeted politely, looking up at him with big blue eyes that reminded him of someone whom he was trying very hard not to think about.

"Hey," Sora said, slowly closing the door behind him. "What's up? Is Roxas-?"

"He's fine," she said quietly, "He's still asleep. I came here to talk to you actually."

"Oh," Sora felt his insides begin to churn. "Well, okay. What is it?"

Naminé said nothing. He could see she was tense and he wondered how much courage she had been forced to conjure up to even show up like this. He could not remember a single time where he had held a conversation with Naminé simply by themselves.

"I'm really worried about Roxas," she said finally.

"Oh…um, well, he's been taking things kind of hard," he said lamely. He wasn't sure what to say.

"I know," Naminé nodded, and her eyes blazed as she locked her gaze onto his. "I think he should talk to someone."

"Well…that's what you're around for, right?" Sora asked, smirking as if he were dropping some whimsical jest. He cringed internally when her expression hardened.

"You're his brother. You both lost someone, didn't you?"

Sora nodded, unsure even if he should speak.

"He told me about what you both had to do to make munny, about what happened to you when you went missing," Naminé admitted, her face softening as she spoke.

Now he was truly at a loss for words. "He told you all that?"

Naminé nodded. "He told me that he's worried about you."

"I know, look, I've been trying to talk to him, but he doesn't listen to me…at all," Sora said, his voice descending into a harsh whisper as he listened to the sound of Roxas shuffling in his sleep echo from down the hall.

"I think we should both encourage him to talk to someone other than you and me, then. Like…a therapist," Naminé concluded, her words mimicking her determined state of being.

"A therapist," Sora repeated blandly. "Yeah…I mean, yeah. If you think that'd help him."

Naminé observed him with an odd look. "What's wrong?"

Sora shook his head. "Nothing. I guess I just…didn't think he'd need one."

"Well, I think he does…" she trailed off. Their conversation was reaching ever greater uncomfortable depths the longer they stood there.

"Just…give me a call when you find someone? I'll talk to him about it," Sora assured her.

"Okay," the girl nodded, seemingly satisfied with his response. She made to leave and Sora stood staring ahead as she moved past him.
"Hey, Naminé." She turned around to look at him, her eyebrows raised as she waited patiently for him to say something.

"Have you seen Kairi today?"

She gave him a strange look. "No. Why?"

Sora shook his head. "Just wondering."

She watched him for a few moments and then left; the door clicked shut behind her.

Kairi moves along wintry streets, her face buried deeply in a woolen scarf. The wind whips at her and she shudders in the cold air. She stops outside a house and looks up at the windows that almost look like eyes. Rubbing her arms anxiously, she steps up the porch and enters the home. Already she can hear lazy voices drifting through space.

"-and so they did this experiment that showed that the properties of the particles were correlated exactly like he said!"

"Nah man, they were already like that from the start."

"C'mon, you're interpreting it wrong, they aren't in a definite state until they're measured."

"Can you prove that?"

"It's all in the theorem. No hidden – uh – no hidden theory of…um…local hidden variables can ever reproduce all the experimental results of quantum physics. It puts a constraint on reality itself man. It's experimental fucking metaphysics. I'm telling you, everything is everything."

Kairi kicks her shoes off and rubs her eyes tiredly. It's been a long twenty-four hours. Very long. She steps into the den, where the lights are dimmed and the open fireplace crackles in the heavy air and all eyes turn to her.

"Hello Kairi," someone says to her. She moves her gaze to the speaker, sitting comfortably in a dark corner of the room, swallowed by shadows. She resists the urge to run off and sits down with the rest of the people gathered in a loose circle, taking care not to fall over. Her head still aching from the previous night's activities.

"You seen Aqua?" Vanitas asks her. His eyes are black in the firelight and she shakes her head.

"She was supposed to be here," he mutters. "You friends with that spikey haired kid?"

Kairi perks up. "Who?" she asks.

"Sora," he says and bares his teeth angrily.

She looks at the other people gathered about the room, Ventus, Terra, Wakka, Tifa, Rikku, and the man sitting in the far corner, body and mind shrouded in darkness.

Kairi chews on her cheek. "Not really," she says and her voice comes out ever smaller.

"Need to teach that little fucker something about manners," Vanitas grits out.

"Riku's missing too," Wakka notes. "Thought he said he was coming."

"Kid doesn't know right from left," Vanitas dismisses with a wave of his hand. "A loose cannon if you ask me."

"He'll be fine," Tifa smirks and Kairi's heart clenches in her chest. The man in the corner leans forward and Kairi sees that same smirk imprinted in the darkness.

"It doesn't matter," he says and everyone stiffens. "One day he too will be gone just like the rest of them, because just like the rest of them he is a part of the perpetual, the infinite-cum-indefinite. Cycles of fate, cycles of destiny, cycles of history. Man makes his mark on the world not through his action but his inaction and unless he allows the wave of history at its sum to carry him forward he will be disposed of all the same."

"I'm in control of what I'm doing," Ventus speaks. He looks down at his hands with wide and fearful eyes as if he's seeing them for the very first time.

"Dude," Wakka says, "Libet's experiments."

The man interrupts them. "The illusion of conscious agency descends from the fallibility of mind to recognize what it is in itself. The branches of world-hood stem from a single source. The root of all evil is the root of all people. Man is the result of a process that stretches back through the aeons and through many lives and many bodies. You are the end result of causal powers determined and set in the soil and soul of the universe reaching backwards through temporality and meeting the very inevitability of the uncaused cause."

Ventus tries and fails to smile. "'If this is the best possible world, what must the others be like'"? he quotes.

The man smiles. "I am creator and destroyer and this world tastes the sweetest."

Sora was on his annual run again. He retrieved his package from Demyx and made quick work of the drop-off points. The munny piled up. All in a day's work.

He was on his way back to deliver the Organization's share when his name was called.

"Sora!"

He turned and saw Tidus running up to him. He sighed wearily. He didn't want to talk to anyone right now, especially not Tidus. He stuck the munny pouches in his pocket and awaited the inevitable.

"What is it?" he asked, slowing down and allowing Tidus to fall into step beside him.

"How was the rest of the party?" Tidus asked. Sora looked at him with a disbelieving expression. Tidus narrowed his eyes at him and shook his head. "Just being friendly," he muttered.

"Whatever. What do you want?" Sora asked.

"Just wanted to know if you gave any further thought to what we talked about."

A dreadful feeling spread throughout Sora's body. He had been fearing this. It had seemed so easy, so simple to agree back then. But now he wasn't so sure.

"Listen…I don't know-"

"Sora," Tidus interrupted. He held out his arm and they both stopped.

"What exactly do you have against Riku?" Sora asked, unable to prevent the biting anger from tinging his voice. "You sit at his table, you're friends, so what the fuck?"

"I figured you'd know by now that appearance isn't always reality," Tidus shrugged.

"So you're a fake is what you're saying. Why in the worlds would I ever trust you?"

Tidus said nothing, his mouth hung open in a small O. "Huh?"

"What?" Sora asked, thoroughly confused.

"What did you say?"

"I asked why I should trust you."

"No. Worlds?"

"What are you saying?" Sora huffed in exasperation.

Tidus shook his head. "Nevermind. All that really matters is that he's a problem for both you and me, right? Don't want him making time with your girl, do you?"

"I don't know that he's a problem for me. Why is he a problem for you?" Sora asked, ignoring the jab about Kairi.

Tidus looked around, as if searching for any eavesdroppers. "Why did you take the job?" he finally asked Sora. Sora stared at him in absolute befuddlement. "What job?"

"You know what job," Tidus nodded to the pouches of munny sticking ever conspicuously out of Sora's pockets.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sora said defensively. He began walking again and Tidus remained at his heels.

"Oh yeah? Who are you meeting at the docks every week?" Tidus hit back smartly.

Sora rounded on him. "Have you been following me?" he asked. The very notion was unbelievable to him.

"Maybe," Tidus dodged. "I know what goes on down there."

Sora stared at him. "Tell me what your problem is with Riku and maybe I'll help you," he growled.

"Help me deal with Riku or I'll tell everyone what you're doing," Tidus countered.

"You want him out of the way so badly? He's drunk out of his mind back in his fucking mansion. Why don't you go handle it yourself?" Sora fumed, his hands balled into fists.

It took him a few seconds to realize the footsteps beside him had faded away. He turned back, confused, and saw Tidus standing still, eyes and mouth scrunched up in concentration. Contemplating madly.

"What?" Sora asked. He really wished he could rid himself of this situation, but the funny look on Tidus's face had struck some nerve and now he waited with bated breath to hear what he was going to say.

Tidus finally looked at him. "You said he's back at the mansion?"

"Yeah…"

"Drunk."

"Yeah…?"

"Huh," Tidus turned slowly and began to walk away. Sora watched him go. Watched him make a left down towards the Gardens, down towards Riku's residence.

Sora stood stock still and tense, wondering why he had opened his mouth at all. He looked back towards the docks. Demyx would be expecting him, he was supposed to be there to deliver the munny soon. But Tidus was heading towards Riku's. And that could only mean one thing.

Sora began to run. He pulled out his flip phone and quickly dialed Demyx.

"Sora, what-"

"Listen – don't have time to explain – I'm gonna be a little late – I've got the munny don't worry," he huffed and hung up. He turned the same corner Tidus had just turned and saw the boy was nowhere to be seen. He must have taken off fast. Sora sprinted, he sprinted as fast as he could and when pain began to accompany every intake of breath he slowed to a lighter run. In and out, he tried to pace himself. He needed to stop Tidus from doing whatever he was about to do. All thoughts but one had left his mind.

I don't want more blood on my hands.

When he finally came to the gated entrance to Riku's house he could see quite clearly that the front double doors were open and his heart screeched to a halt. This was it. He was too late. But then he saw the familiar dirty blonde mane sticking up from behind the hedges lining the bottom window's and his confusion grew.

Trying to catch his breath, Sora slid through the wide bars of the gate, he would thank the heavens for his thinness later, and crept up behind Tidus whom he could now see was staring through one of the windows with a stoic expression.

Sora placed a hand on his shoulder and Tidus jumped, looking back at him angrily. Then he raised a finger to his lips and pointed at the window.

"What?" Sora asked and Tidus again pointed at the window. Sora crouched beside Tidus and peered through the glass.

A man and a woman were strolling casually through the bottom floor. Sora recognized Larxene from his first venture to the warehouse, the man seemed vaguely familiar. He was bulky and had numerous deadlocks drooping down and around his head. They were peering under tables, lifting them over and

"Organization…" Sora murmured. Tidus turned to him.

"Seriously?" he whispered, the shock evident in his voice.

Sora nodded. "I know the girl. I think it's them."

"Guess Riku's finally on his way out then," Tidus said. Sora turned to him in disbelief. "You mean...?"

"Yeah. I think they're going to off him."

Sora turned back to the scene playing out inside, stunned, his mind working in overdrive. He thought back to his conversation with Riku. Just that morning. Why did it seem so long ago? Riku had been upset. Afraid, even.

Regret.

Sora stood and rushed out of the bushes, slipping around the side of the mansion as Tidus scrambled behind him. "Sora, wait!" he heard the boy calling in a hushed tone.

"I can't," Sora said, arriving in the spacious backyard with its pool and its hot-tub and Greek statues. "I have to get inside."

"Look, whatever you think you're going to do in there is definitely not going to work out," Tidus spoke matter-of-factly.

Sora ignored him and raced to the back door. Please open, he thought, Please open.

It did. He held his hand on the handle, hesitating, listening to Tidus's rush of whispered persuasion and he wondered if he had ever had one good idea in his entire life.

He opened the door and slipped inside.