A/N: The chapter title is a Genesis song.

Dementia

Chapter 5: Mad Man Moon

If this desert's all there'll ever be
Then tell me what becomes of me.
A fall of rain?
That must have been another of your dreams,
A dream of mad man moon.

Genesis

Busy, busy, busy. That's what Riku was. For the past three days, he used any free time he had at the campus to do research. He had to figure out what was wrong with Sora. The younger boy had locked himself away in his room ever since he got home. So Riku went to the campus library everyday and looked through books. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking for, but he knew it had something to do with psychological behavior. He had to put a name to this problem so he could work towards solving it. At first, he thought maybe it was a magical thing. Perhaps this was a violent side effect of a Keyblade ending the life of a Princess of Heart. But then Riku dismissed that theory. He sensed no magic in the air, so it wasn't anything like that. He determined it was all in Sora's head.

Eighteen days had passed since the night of the accident. Riku came into the flat after a short day of classes and put his stuff in the front hall. He was mildly surprised to see Sora out of his room, sitting in the kitchen eating some fruit. Perhaps he was getting better? Then an idea popped into Riku's head. Maybe all Sora needed was to let off some steam. Sparring was a good way to reduce stress and relax.

"Hey Sora," Riku greeted as he sat down at the table. "How you feeling today?" Sora shrugged. He did that a lot recently. "Listen, I was thinking… did you want to try sparring? We haven't had a good sword-fight in months. What do you say?" Sora seemed to examine the pit of the apple he was eating as he considered Riku's proposal.

"Sure, I guess…" Then his eyes lit up as if he suddenly realized what he was being asked. "Yeah, let's go!" Riku grinned. His plan was already working!

A short while later, the two were back on the small island where they used to play where the bent paopu tree trunk was. Riku was excited. He had a good feeling about this. Sora was acting like his old self again.

"Alright, don't hold back!" he called as he summoned his Keyblade, The Way to Dawn. Sora grinned and got into a defensive position. He held his hand out and summoned the Oathkeeper…

…And he yelled in surprise, throwing it aside. Riku's cheerful smile disappeared when Sora began freaking out. The brunette was frantically trying to get away from his Keyblade. Riku rushed over to his side.

"What? What is it?" he asked quickly. Sora pointed hysterically at the Oathkeeper.

"Blood! It's covered with blood!" Riku glanced at the pristine Oathkeeper and back at Sora's pale scared face.

"No, it's fine! Sora, there's no blood, I promise you!"

"No! It's Kairi's blood! Get it away!" Sora clenched his eyes shut and waved his hand in the direction of the offending Keyblade, making it disappear in a flash of light.

This was the last straw. Riku couldn't handle this alone anymore. He needed to get Sora professional help.

After spending a few minutes calming Sora down, the two headed home. Riku sighed sadly as he rowed the boat that would take them to the mainland. He uncomfortably cleared his throat, drawing Sora's attention.

"I think…" he started, then paused. He tried to gather his thoughts. "I think you should see someone…" Sora's eyebrows crinkled in confusion.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Who?"

"Someone who can help you. Someone like… like a psychiatrist." Sora frowned deeply.

"Why? I'm not crazy."

"I'm not saying you are!" Riku quickly explained. "Look, Sora, you have to admit, some of the things you're seeing don't make sense, do they?" Sora said nothing in response. "Let's just go and talk to them. At least once, please. I just think… a psychiatrist might be able to make your nightmares and visions go away. You'd want that, wouldn't you?" The younger man seemed to seriously mull over the last statement.

"Fine…" he whispered. Riku breathed heavily in relief.

OOOoooOOO

"Sora?" called the receptionist. The young Keyblade Master nodded his head, rising from his seat. "The doctor will see you now." Sora looked to Riku and the older man nodded in encouragement. They had been sitting in the waiting room for the last ten minutes for Sora's appointment. Riku had been the one who arranged all the details with the psychiatrist.

Sora nervously went through the large oak doors leading into the doctor's office. Inside, he saw an elderly man with long gray hair tied back into a ponytail and a gray mustache, sitting behind a mahogany desk. His walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed full of books and files. There was a black leather couch on one side of the room and chairs in front of the desk for guests to presumably sit in. Sora took a seat in one of the said chairs. The old doctor smiled warmly, clasping his hands together on the desktop.

"Welcome, Sora," he greeted. "I assume this is your first visit to a psychiatrist office?" Sora stared intently, but did not reply. "Well my name is Dr. Galuf Doe. You can call me just Galuf. For the next few weeks and longer if you wish, we'll be having sessions likes these just to… talk." Galuf put a slight emphasis on the last word. Sora said nothing. "So… why don't we start with a bit about you?" He put on a pair of glasses and pulled out a file. "According to your friend out there, you haven't been sleeping well, is that right?" Sora remained silent. "And it also says here you've been experiencing brief hallucinations and seclusion." Sora made no attempt to answer. Galuf smiled again. "Don't feel like talking?" Sora looked down and shook his head ever so slightly. "Well that's alright. It's okay to be nervous in your first session. You don't know me, so I don't blame you." Galuf removed his glasses and clasped his hands together pleasantly. "Why don't we talk about something to get some common ground? Your favorite foods? Music?"

Sora had a reason for his silence. He was afraid of a slip-up. He had made a promise to Riku that he wouldn't tell anyone about what really happened the night of Kairi's death. And he was nervous that the psychiatrist, Galuf or whoever, would find a way to force it out of him. He even thought Galuf already knew and he was just waiting for Sora to say it. The first thing he had imagined was a psychic putting him into a trance and having him recite the events. Or perhaps Sora's own guilty conscious would blurt out the truth without even being asked. So rather than let it happen, he simply remained quiet.

Galuf continued his one-sided conversation for the entire time they were in the session. He talked about random things, like the weather, movies coming up, anything he thought would get Sora to talk. He was a patient man and he didn't mind Sora's silence. As he spoke, Sora's comfort level slowly increased. This Galuf man seemed kind enough.

The time was soon up, so Sora left the office and met up with Riku in the reception room. As they walked back to the car in the parking lot, Sora told Riku about the session. He agreed it'd be worth his while to go to another one. At first, he had been convinced that Galuf already knew the truth and he was trying to get a confession out of him, but Sora soon comprehended that Galuf was just trying to help him.

When they got home later in the evening, Sora went to the washroom to wash up his face. He turned the faucet on and rinsed his hands briefly before splashing some water on his face. He glanced up in the mirror and for the smallest instance, instead of seeing his own reflection, he saw Roxas staring back at him. Sora jumped back and bumped into the wall, but Roxas was gone and his own reflection was back. Sora breathed in quickly. What was that?

Still feeling slightly shaken up, Sora left the bathroom without another look at the mirror and went into his room to read. He thumbed through some of his favorite books on his shelf and pulled out one he had read about halfway through but never completed. He sat on the bed and opened up to where the bookmark was and started reading. At first, it was relaxing and quiet, but he soon became distracted by a slight trickling noise. His eyes slowly looked up from the book to search the source of the noise, and what he saw made his heart stop.

The walls were bleeding. Thick red liquid was oozing from the corners of the walls and ceiling. Sora blinked several times as he got his bearings. As calmly as he could, he placed his bookmark in his book, closed it, and left the room. Riku was right. He was losing it. Sora was at least aware enough to know that there was something incredibly odd about drywall leaking blood.

He took a seat in the living room and made another attempt to read his book. He needed something, anything, to take his mind off everything, if that made any sense. Opening the book, he read the first two lines and slammed it shut in terror. He tried again, read the same text, and he slammed the book shut once more. He was reading, "You're a murderer, Sora" over and over, a million times on all the pages, repeated. He opened the book slowly once more. There were those words.

"You're a murderer, Sora. You're a murderer, Sora. You're a murderer, Sora. You're a murderer, Sora," the book read. Sora didn't know how much more of this he could take. He closed the book and placed it down on the coffee table in front of him. Suddenly, a pale white hand grabbed his wrist with a vice grip. Sora held his breath and followed the arm up to the person's face. He saw fair blonde hair and sad blue eyes. It was Naminé! But she looked pale, almost dead.

"Yako si gnihtyreve, yako sti," she said. Sora shook his head. He didn't understand. Her voice sounded distorted, as if it were being played out multiple times very closely together. And then, she vanished into thin air.

Sora jolted awake on the couch. He looked around. It was morning. The only sign that anything from last night was real was the book he had brought down. Lying next to the book, however, was a brown cover sketchbook that hadn't been there before. Sora eyed it momentarily before gingerly picking it up and flipping through its contents. The rings holding it together had tiny pieces of shredded paper stuck in it, as if someone had torn out a good deal of pages. The first drawing he saw was of a spiraling staircase. It looked vaguely familiar, but other than the wisps of memory, he didn't recognize it. The next page was a picture of Riku wearing an Organization jacket and a blindfold, just like in Sora's dream. The brunette was confused. Whose sketchbook was this? How did it get there?

He flipped through a few more pages. The drawings were crudely done, but the content was recognizable all the same. It was mostly scenery of places Sora had traveled to, like Hollow Bastion when it was under the control of Maleficent, the Destiny Islands, the Pride Lands, even Port Royal. Other drawings included people Sora knew, like Axel, Kairi, and Ansem the Wise. But he couldn't figure out who drew them or where the sketchbook came from.

Deciding to try and shed some light on this, Sora climbed the stairs to wake Riku. As he passed by the front hall mirror, though, he caught out of the corner of his eye a figure standing behind him in the reflection. He took a full look and saw Kairi, standing as plainly as he was, but bleeding heavily from a wound in the center of her chest. Sora spun around to see if she was really standing behind him, but he saw nothing. He looked back to the mirror and was stunned to see Roxas replacing his own reflection. Unlike the night before, however, Roxas didn't just stare back; he reached out of the mirror, grabbed Sora by the collar of his shirt, and punched him across the face with a strength that knocked Sora onto the ground. The brunette gasped in pain and fear, holding his cheek, but upon looking in the mirror, he saw only himself and not a bruise on his face.

Sora scrambled to his feet, forgetting about the sketchbook, and instead of going up the stairs, he ran out the front door. There was something about the house. It had to be the flat! That's where most of the weird stuff had been happening. How could Sora explain to someone that a reflection that wasn't his own just knocked him out? But it didn't occur to Sora that the reason most of the weird things had been happening around the flat because he refused to actually go anywhere else.

He needed to take a walk around the block to clear his mind. That's all he needed. He was determined to shake off these hallucinations. He knew they couldn't possibly be real. But the foreground of his mind was telling him it was all real. His eyes, ears, and pained face couldn't possibly be lying.

He walked with a quick pace, hoping in the back of his head that he might be able to outrun the mirages. He began hearing voices. No… Just one voice. A very familiar voice. Roxas' voice. And it was coming in loud and clear.

You're a murderer.

"No I'm not," Sora replied, his heart wrenching at the accusation.

You murdered Kairi, did you?

"It was an accident…" Sora muttered aloud.

You killed Kairi, you clumsy idiot! I can't believe I was glad to have an Other like you! Well now I loath you!

"Leave me alone…" Passerbys were giving Sora strange looks.

No, this is your punishment, since you're too much of a coward to own up to your crime.

"Riku told me not to tell them. I couldn't let them take me away."

Coward.

"I'm not a coward!"

Then turn yourself in.

"No! I made a promise."

You selfish little coward. Kairi wasn't the only one you killed that night.

"What? What do you mean?" Sora stopped walking. The voice was gone. He shook with fear and regret. He killed two people? But how?

OOOoooOOO

"Welcome back, Sora!" greeted Dr. Galuf Doe. He gestured to Sora to sit and make himself comfortable, which Sora did. "So, how are we feeling today?" Sora hesitated and opened his mouth to speak, then paused. Galuf leaned forward. He was patient but intrigued as well.

"Good…" Sora replied at last. Galuf smiled warmly. This was progress.

"That's good to hear, but…" He placed a finger to his temple. "I sense you're not being truthful. Why don't I be more specific? How did you feel this morning when you woke up?"

"I…" Sora thought about. "I didn't wake up this morning. I haven't slept for a couple days. Five days, actually." Galuf made an interested noise.

"I see. Let's talk about the sleeping problem. Why aren't you sleeping? Not tired?"

"No…" Sora wondered how much he should tell the doctor. He had to choose his words carefully. "I've been having nightmares."

"What about?"

"About the night I k… uh, found Kairi." Galuf nodded and wrote something down on a clipboard.

"Do you remember the specifics?"

"Not exactly. It's mostly just a replay of the night, except there's more blood and gore." Sora fidgeted with his chain necklace.

"When you awoke from the first nightmare, how did you feel?"

"Scared. Kinda sick." Galuf wrote more things on his clipboard.

"So these dreams prevent you from sleeping?"

"That's right."

"Hmm… Well I'll have to keep a record of your sleeping habits, but if this persists, I may have to recommend some sleeping pills." Sora wasn't quite listening. "So tell me about Kairi." He shrugged.

"What do you wanna know?" he asked. Galuf chuckled lightly.

"This isn't for my benefit, this is for yours. Tell me what kind of person she was. How close were you two? Did she have any nicknames? Describe her in 4 words." Sora leaned back and thought about this. For some reason, he never really thought about who Kairi was before. She was just… Kairi. But now he realized there were so many things about her that made her unique.

"Warm. Happy. Energetic. Beautiful." Sora held up four fingers, as if showing off an accomplishment. "She… was my light. My princess. I was supposed to protect her. And I failed." Galuf frowned.

"Now let's not get negative, Sora. Remember the happy times. It's not your fault that she's not with us right now." Oh, if only he knew. "What else can you tell me about her? What was her favorite pastime? Where did she like to hang out?"

"She loved playing at the beach whenever we had the chance. She loved to see how many different faces she could make behind the professor's back before he'd turn around…" Sora smiled at that. Her personal record had been seven different faces. "We used to hang out in this cave down by one of the bay islands. We called it our secret spot and a bunch of us used to doodle drawings on the rock wall." Sora stopped suddenly when he remembered the special drawing. It was the one with Sora and Kairi exchanging stars, sort of like paopu fruits. He chewed his bottom lip, a nasty habit he had picked up recently whenever he was nervous, which was a lot lately. Galuf noticed Sora's sudden change in demeanor.

"Is there something that happened with you two?" Then he chuckled quietly. "Actually, if it was a private moment you don't want to share, forget I asked anything." Sora glanced at Galuf through his long bangs and cracked a smile.

"It's where I told her I loved her." Galuf nodded sadly. "You know that legend about the paopu fruit?" Who on the Destiny Islands hadn't heard of that legend? "We drew pictures of each other giving a paopu fruit to each other." The doctor sat back.

"I'm beginning to understand while this loss has been so hard on you in particular." He wrote down something on the clipboard. "So tell me about the daytime dreams you've been having."

"You mean the delusions?" Sora asked grumpily. "Mostly, it's visions of blood and bodies. Sometimes I see Kairi, bleeding. Sometimes, I hear voices and I'm beginning to wonder how real they are. It's like my logical side says it's not possible, but my brain sees and hears it, so it has no choice but to accept it as real."

"When was the last time you had a vision?"

"Couple days ago. I was washing my face and…" Sora trailed off, realizing the next part wouldn't make sense to Galuf. How could he explain that there were two people inside him without sounding crazier than he actually was? "I saw Kairi standing behind me." It was half true, just mixed up with a different occurrence.

"And these voices? Are they recognizable?"

"Not all the time."

"Can you understand what they're saying?"

"Usually it's just whispers, but sometimes they're calling me a failure or a coward." More writing onto the clipboard.

"Tell me, have you found your concentration is lacking these days? You feel increased fear or anger?" Sora nodded. "Hmm…"

"Hmm…?" Sora repeated.

"I think I have a theory as to what's wrong, but I'd like to see you in a few more sessions, if that's alright. I'd rather not disclose my theory until I'm absolutely sure." Galuf checked his watch. "It looks like our time here is up. So I'll see you next week, Sora. Good day."

"Bye…" Sora rose from his seat and walked out the oak doors to see Riku. The taller man nodded his greeting and they walked to the car.

"What'd you guys talk about today?" he asked.

"Mostly about Kairi. A little bit about what's wrong with me."

"Any good news?" Sora didn't respond. He was intently examining the ground beneath his feet. Riku hesitated. "Did you want to visit… Kairi's grave tomorrow?"

"No," Sora burst out immediately and covered his mouth in an embarrassed sort of way.

"Why?" Riku glimpsed at Sora from the corner of his eye. Sora went back to examining the pavement.

"Can't let it be real…" he muttered more to himself than Riku. Thinking it was a bad idea to bring up Kairi, Riku went back to their original topic on the therapy session.

"So this doctor didn't go prying?" Sora shook his head. One of Riku's major concerns about this whole arrangement was that the doctor might accidentally glean over the truth of the accident and call the authorities. "You didn't say anything about the Keyblade?"

"No…" Riku unlocked the car door.

"Just checking…" He sighed just before he opened the door. "I just don't want you saying anything that will get you into trouble. I mean to protect you, I hope you know. You're my best friend, Sora. You're all I have left." He opened his door and climbed into the car, leaving a very stressed and guilt-ridden Sora standing on the outside.

No pressure, eh?

OOOoooOOO

A/N: Galuf Doe is from FFV. I hope I'm not making Sora too OOC, but then again, he is crazy.