Euthanasia

Disclaimer: I don't own it, but that much is obvious. SquareEnix, you have my undying respect.

Dedication: Ammy, who pwns at many things that I'm not even capable of halfway accomplishing.

Summary: Riku wants nothing more than to remember Sora forever. So, it should be perfectly fine to use Roxas, who is (and isn't) a copy of Sora.

Pairings: RikuRoku

Chapter One: Some Kind of Masochism

"I'm not the one who broke you. I'm not the one you should fear."

-Goo Goo Dolls, "Here Is Gone"

"Hello?"

He runs his tongue anxiously over his chapped lips, and thinks over what's he doing, not for the first time.

"Who's this? Hello? Hello?"

He doesn't recognize the voice. It's not deep enough to belong to a full-fledged adult, yet not high-pitched enough to be the voice of a little boy. He fancies that maybe, the speaker is about Sora's age.

"Who's this? Hello? Hello?"

The speaker sounds irritated, as if he thinks his valuable time is being wasted. Don't get mad, Riku thinks from his end of the phone line. Don't get mad, okay? It's funny—he used to fly into rages when he was younger, and now, they were beyond him. Every movement, once so boisterous, was muffled into some twisted version of timidity. He could've been named 'introverted', if he wasn't who he was.

Riku Kisaragi was not introverted. The mere thought was perverse.

He takes a deep breath, and the force of it alarms him as it hits the mouthpiece and bounces back to him.

"Is Sora there? Can I talk to him?"

There's the crackle of static, and he wonder's if he's lost the connection for a moment. He ponders hanging up now, and risks the possibility of having an unknown person hate him. Before he can place it back in its cradle, the boy-man returns to the phone with an angry bark of, "You sick fuck. You…you absolute bastard! Who is this? I swear to god, if you ever call this number again-"

Riku lets the telephone fall from his grip, causing it clatter into its holder. He straightens up, feeling his friend's eyes grazing his back.

"I'm done," he informs the redhead behind him. He knows he shouldn't have used Axel's phone to make a (stupid, useless, purposeless) call when the lanky man's already having issues with the bills, but he couldn't help it. And he knew Axel was the only one who wouldn't question him about it, like Tidus would, or ask him if he wanted to talk about his feelings, like Demyx would. Axel would merely allow him to use the device and amble back into the room when Riku was finished; never thinking to interrogate his best friend about what he was up to.

Now, he stands in the doorway, cigarette latched between his fingers as he watches Riku. He isn't on the floor curled up in a ball, or staring blankly at him, like he'd been doing last year, so Axel guesses that Riku must be kinda-sorta- okay. Axel does care—enough not to interfere.

But he does part his thin lips to deliver a soft curl of smoke, accompanied by his comment of, "Riku, you're such a masochist."

Riku shrugs. "Not really. I don't like pain."

This is a lie, of course. It's so plainly obvious that Riku's some kind of masochist, maybe not the slash-your-wrists kind, but some variation of it, surely. Why else would he call up a dead friend, just to hear someone berate him? Why would he stare at photographs of the before mentioned friend, alone no less?

The bad pretense sits in the room with them with all the subtlety of an army tank.

Axel raises his eyebrows, and a sarcastic smile etches itself onto his lips. 'No?" he says, taunting. He doesn't know what to do with this Other Riku. It's like a year ago; someone switched his best friend with this miserable creature, dooming Axel to uncomfortable silences and blank reactions to everything. Axel half wants to reach over to Riku and introduce himself like they're strangers. "Then why? If you'd like to explain. I don't care if you don't."

"I want…"

Riku wants a lot of things. He wants to take the world in his ever-grabby hands and rearrange it so that hurting people wasn't possible or wayward hormones, or the inability to stop staring at someone who didn't belong to you. He wants to reach back into the past, and fold over the places where he messed everything up. He wants to yank Sora from the past and place him in the present by his side, smiling that happy smile. He wants to see himself and Sora in the future in a middle-class town, in a not-too-crappy apartment with 2.5 children and a dog named Sparky.

He chokes these wishes down like bile, and settles on the most important one. "I just…want to remember him. I need this. I don't ever want to forget."

He fears forgetfulness. He fears oblivion like small children fear the dark, and wants nothing to do with it. He can't ever let go of the memories, or he'll go insane, and he's grasping at straws as it is.

Axel lets out a perfect ring of smoke. "Don't we all?"

The two them lollop around campus, going nowhere near their scheduled classes for the day. Riku was going to, but Axel had visited him at the crack of dawn (also known as 7:35 a.m.), announcing "Darling, I've brought brekkie!" and insisted that the combination of skipping class and indulging in various homemade muffins was healthier than studying and listening to Professor Xenmas drone on about anatomy.

They lean against the building, dropping crumbs everywhere as they watch the students shuffling by, all wearing the same glazed-over, I-hate-Mondays-with-a-passion expression. They had seen Tidus a total of five times, always in the process of attaching his face to his girlfriend, a brunette named Selphie. They'd also seen Demyx, who waved energetically at them before racing off to find his lab partner, a stoic kid named Zex, or Ion, or something appropriately weird like that.

"Hey, Ri," Axel remarks, "Are you ever going to tell Sora's family about the thing? You know. You and Sora. Your being together, I mean."

Riku blinks, completely caught off guard. "Why should I?"
"Why shouldn't you?"

"It'd be awkward. It doesn't matter anymore, anyways."

'Cause he's, y'know, DEAD.

"It's…inappropriate?" It sounds like Riku's pleading with his friend, which is stupid. Axel's never solved problems, never known all the answers. Axel created the questions, not the solutions. But this time he's got one.

"I bet Roxas would wanna know. Sora's cousin. You should at least tell him, if not Sora's parents."

"Who?"

"Roxas, man. Over there."

"I don't see him."

"You need glasses. Fine, I'll bring him over here."

Before Riku can stop him, Axel's making a spectacle of himself; shoving his arms through the air like a windmill, attracting the attention of everyone and their pet turtle.

"HEEEEEY, ROXY! GET OVER HERE!"

Oddly enough, Roxas slinks over to them. If it had been Riku in his place, he would've run in the opposite direction.

"What do you want, Axel? If you've been lighting crap on fire again, I'm not covering for you."

"What makes you think I'm still into pyromania?"

"Because it's you."

"Fair enough," the flame-haired man says agreeably. He extends a hand to acknowledge Riku's presence. "I wanted you to meet someone. Roxas Abe, meet Riku Kisaragi. Riku, this is Roxas."

The two shook hands. Riku privately thought how cool and unaffected Roxas's handshake was. Not at all like Sora's grip, which threatened to squeeze off your fingers and make you whole arm go numb.

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted." Axel calls, loping off to go annoy someone else, or mooch off an unsuspecting teacher who took pity on college students.

Roxas shifts his weight (not that there's much of it, the boy's practically a skeleton) from one foot to the other, giving the awkwardness between them a more tangible form. "Did you need something?" It's in that same tone; the voice caught between adult and child. He's the boy Riku talked to on the phone.

He feels it'd be wise not to bring that up just yet.

"I, uh, knew your cousin. We used to-"

wake up at noon and just lay around in the bed talking about random junk that never matters, kiss until I needed an icepack for my swollen lips, stare at stars that were probably just helicopters.

"-hang out a lot. Um. I just thought I'd let you know-"

That I'm sorry. I loved your cousin.

"-I used to fuck Sora."

Roxas's mouth all but hits the ground, and his fist slashes forward, effectively causing Riku to see stars that are most definitely not helicopters.

The last thing he sees is Roxas's eyes.

They're exactly like Sora's.

A/N: Mmm. My first series on . I'm fairly certain that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and that I screwed it up somehow. I will get around to describing Sora's death and how it happened in an interlude, most likely in the next installment. Please, please send me a review on this series. I've been working on it for a while, and isn't humoring the n00b the friendly thing to do?