Hello, all, I apologize for the wait on this chapter, with school starting my spare time has really been cut in half, but no worries, I'm still working on this story. Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own KH

"She had managed to appear utterly independent when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company."

~ Paulo Coelho, "Veronika Decides to Die"

Roxas

On a particularly warm spring morning Roxas awoke to a very disturbing sight. His eyes fluttered open to meet four pairs of eyes examining him with a mixture of worry and amusement. He propped himself up on his elbows and the four faces moved back about an inch. He squinted his eyes as the lights gave him a searing headache. The blonde carefully moved him legs and noticed he was sprawled out on a carpeted floor. Roxas groaned and blinked rapidly before glaring up at the four individuals above him. He recognized three of them. "Axel, what are you doing?" he conjured up enough focus to ask. His tongue felt heavy and he noted that this was one of the worst hangovers he'd ever experienced.

His red haired friend gave a nervous chuckle and replied, "I'm worrying about you, Champ. Tidus and I lost ya last night and we couldn't find you for a few hours. Where did you go?" Roxas turned to the right and glanced at Tidus, who shared the same inquisitive glance as Axel. He thought back to the previous night, but try as he may, he only remembered up to Axel handing him a cup of beer. Anything after that was a black abyss. Roxas raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and said, "I don't remember anything after you handing me that cup of beer, man." Axel glanced and Tidus, Larxene and the forth girl that Roxas didn't recognize and asked Roxas, "So you don't know how you ended up in Aqua's house?" Roxas glanced at the girl with blue hair and vaguely recognized her now; he thought she was a second cousin of Axel's or something that he'd met once or twice before.

Roxas scratched the side of his head, trying to remember how he had ended up on Aqua's floor, but he still couldn't recall anything else. He simply shook his head and glanced around at "prompted, to which Roxas shook his head in response to. Axel sighed and backed away from the blonde, and the other three did the same. "Did I hurt anything?" Roxas questioned as he rubbed his eyes. He heard Tidus snort and Axel answered, "Not that we know of. Come on, bud, get up, let's get you home." Axel extended his hand, which Roxas took, and propped the blonde up, under his arm. Roxas ignored Aqua's glances as he exited the house with his four friends and quietly laid in the back seat of Axel's pick-up truck and tried to ignore Larxene bickering with Axel in the front seat. He closed his eyes and let himself drift off again.

"Hey, come on, bud, let's get you to my couch," Roxas heard Axel's voice call and he simply complied and blindly walked into Axel's tiny apartment and crashed onto the patchy sofa and rolled into the worn in furniture, grateful for its comfort. As Roxas tried to fall back asleep, he heard Tidus ask Axel, "For real, man, you don't have any idea where he was?" in a hushed tone. There was a slight pause and then, "Aqua said that when he first stumbled in he was a mess, bawling all over himself, he tried to punch a few holes in her wall. She couldn't tell if he was really hurt about something or just pissed, but she tried to calm him down and the bastard tried to kiss her, she said he kept mumbling something about her watching over him." Axel paused for a moment and Tidus snorted and muttered "Jesus Christ," under his breath. Axel continued, "Then she told me he just wandered around her kitchen and living room for another hour or so, before he passed out on her floor. She let the kid sleep there for the rest of the night, she said he worried her and didn't want to bother him, "Axel scoffed and the sound of ice falling into a glass could be heard. "So he just paced in her house for an hour?" Tidus questioned evident curiosity in strung in his voice.

There was another pause, the sound of someone sipping something, and then Axel said in a constricted voice, "He was mumbling something, she said she couldn't figure out what he was saying for the first twenty minutes he was there, but she finally figured out he was saying a name. Some chick, I've never heard of her, but she said he seemed awfully upset about her." "What was her name?" Tidus inquired, a hint of urgency laced in his tone. "Naminé," was Axel's response. Roxas bit the inside of his cheek so hard that he felt blood ooze in his mouth.

Xion

In April she awoke from her winter hibernation with a strange and almost alarming feeling in the pit of her chest that came every spring right when the weather got warm- she felt happiness. Xion blinked several times and sat up on her inflatable mattress. She watched her surroundings closely, and when she realized that she was in a small shed she hopped up quickly and opened the door to the shed carefully. She was in the backyard of old man Yen-Sid's place. She let herself relax slightly and deflated her mattress and gargled her mouth with the last of her mouthwash. She wrote a mental note to buy more later and packed her things in her brown duffle bag. Once her mattress was completely depleted of air she rolled it up and stuffed it into her bag and zipped it tightly. Before she left the shed she tossed a few pills into her mouth and swallowed them dry. Hopefully it would ease the ache in her head and limbs. She felt almost instant relief. Xion made her way out of the shed and around to the front door of old man Yen-Sid's place. As she knocked on the door and waited, she glanced around her, and found that the sun was nearing the middle of the sky, it was either just before or after noon, she couldn't decide.

The glass door to the large house opened and Yen-Sid stood on the other side of the threshold, clad in a long purple robe, billowing in the breeze finding its way into his house. "Xion." He acknowledged her with a polite nod and she made herself smile pleasantly at the man. "Good morning, Yen-Sid. Or should I say afternoon, I'm not quite sure which one it is…" she trailed off and he gazed out at the sky and said, "Xion, why don't you come inside for a moment." She gladly complied, normally this meant food and a semi-enlightening discussion when Yen-Sid invited her into his home.

After she was situated on his couch and he stared at her from a master chair across the room from her as she wolfed down tiny sandwiches he sighed and told her, "Xion, I've grown increasingly worried about you." She stopped mid-chew, raised her head, and raised one eyebrow, silently inquiring what he meant. "I've seen you with a few men after dark, Xion, and quite frankly, it worries me." He started, and her heart took off a thousand miles an hour. "I'm not going to pretend to know what you're doing with those men or why, but It gives me a bad feeling, I don't want to see anything horrific happen to you." He said as he stroked his beard, "If you wanted to I would let you stay at my house, you know I have a spare room always open, of course, and I'd feel much better if I knew you were safe in here than who knows what out there." She let out a puff of breath and told him quickly, "I'm sorry to have worried you, Yen-Sid, but those men are people I meet with to go play poker with some nights. One of them is my cousin, I'm perfectly safe with them, trust me." She gave him her best smile as she mentally criticized herself as she knew everything that just came out of her mouth was a lie.

"Are you sure? Know that my doors are always open." He said, a crease developing in the middle of his brow. "I'm very sure though, but I appreciate that very much, thank you, Yen-Sid." She said, and the last part she did really mean. The old man's concern was the only concern that she had. He nodded and picked up his cup of tea again. An hour later Xion left and returned to the shed, of which Yen-Sid did not know she was staying in. Before she let herself go to the grocery store for more cough syrup and mouthwash she pulled out a sharp edged stone and punished herself for lying to Yen-Sid. She wrapped a bandage around her middle once she was through and carried on with her day like normal. Her happiness she had awoken with had vanished.

Well, I apologize for the short length of this chapter, I'll get better, I promise, but nevertheless I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you with review, favorite, etc.

Special thanks to: IDontHaveANameDude, SummonerDagger88, and Light-Sakura, thank so much for reviewing!