DISCLAIMER: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or Square Enix. All quotations not belonging to me will be cited herein.

WARNINGS: Implications, mature content, language.

THANKS TO: My beta, KavanBurningWings

Prologue

The universe— constantly expanding, becoming bigger and bigger, encompassing more rocks and dust. How stupid people were, to think they were an anomaly, a civilization above all else, when they were only a mere flicker of life, here one moment, gone the next, in a much grander scheme beyond their limited imaginations.

The stars— exploding and reforming, forever projecting the imprint of themselves long gone, lies that children wished upon, as if the dying legacy of a gaseous ball of fire had any magical properties.

A memory— of a slight, angelic boy under the sunburned arm of a much older woman, a woman who wouldn't stop burning cigarette tracks into his palms, wouldn't stop leaning down to cover his mouth with hers, sucking on him like a vampire possessed. The spectator had reached over, had knocked her elbow off the coffee shop counter. She'd broken away from that boy like a fish out of water, gasping for air.

Words— "You might want to give him a second to breathe."

Laughter— the cashier had covered her lips, as if this was the beginning of an amusing high school hallway scuffle. Nearby, a tired-looking father forced his daughter's eyes away from the scene. The woman had glared like daggers. Then, elongated orange nails digging into his arm, she had pulled the smaller boy along, out of the crisp air of the café.

A look— daylight blue eyes met his for the briefest of seconds. The intensity had hit him square in the chest, a fierce sting, the blunt edge of a knife being forced into his skin, and then there was the recollection of the same look settling into golden eyes in the mirror: the longing to be saved. He made an unspoken promise in return.

Lost— the remembrance faded into nonexistence.

Wind— weaving into delicate strands of blond hair as the broken angel shifted his feet, at the very edge, staring down. He looked up one last time.

A gaze— of shattered trust. The undeclared vow had been forgotten. There was no savior.

Brittle fingers— too far out of reach. Cigarette burns in the palms of his hands. A last goodbye. And then he let go.

Remorse— he hadn't remembered until it was too late. And he watched him fall.

Chapter One

Birth of a Star

"Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars."

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Vanitas was in pain, but that wasn't why he was scowling. He was scowling because that was what he always did, because it was the one thing that was comfortable on his face—and it kept the annoyingly vast population of the world away from him.

His sore hands balled into fists, Vanitas stalked down the near-deserted street to the least-wretched bar in town. His dark hair glowed almost blue under the moon, the only source of light in the sky. For a moment he trailed his yellow catlike eyes upward, wondering: when was the last time he'd seen the stars? He dropped his gaze. His feet made no sound as he treaded down the dirty sidewalks of New York.

The sound of muffled music flared up in his ears as he stepped into the bar, door swinging shut behind him.

Immediately, a slim blond woman ambled up to him, flashing perfect white teeth. Her sleek yellow hair fell to one side of her face, and she looked disgustingly heavenly in a tank top that clung to her skin and shorts that showed off her long legs.

"Vani," she cooed, eyes piercing his soul, "So nice to see you here tonight."

Her voice was honeyed, silky, and she was jeering at him. She knew full well he was here every night, that he couldn't stay away.

Vanitas gritted his teeth. "Larxene." He didn't particularly like this woman. He'd made the mistake of taking her home with him one night (although in his defense, he'd had one drink too many and his perception had failed him) and she had unfortunately latched onto him like a bloodsucking leech that could never get enough.

She swept her hands down his hips, moving closer to him so that her bare legs were against him, slender fingers sending shockwaves through Vanitas's tired body. Automatically, he pulled her even closer to him, letting his own hands wander down her back. Maybe one more night wouldn't matter…

Larxene leaned forward, her lips brushing Vanitas's ear, her words leaking out in a husky whisper. "Take me home."

And so the moment was over. Vanitas shoved the blonde away from him, disentangling himself from her arms, his breathing fast and heavy.

"Go find someone else to be your slave," he muttered. He turned away from her, disregarding the knowing smile that had spread across her face. She'd had him in the palm of her hand, and she would never let him forget that.

Feeling the eyes of countless jealous men follow him to the counter, Vanitas dropped onto a stool, motioning at the blue-haired bartender for a beer.

Saïx didn't even have to ask. He prepared Vanitas's usual drink in silence before slamming it down onto the counter with unnecessary force.

Vanitas lifted his eyes. "You look like hell."

Saïx sneered into space. "That kid's at it again. Just doesn't know when to quit. I don't know why he just can't keep his shitty mouth shut."

Vanitas had no idea what he meant, and he seemed to be talking to himself more than him anyway, so he remained silent, downing some of his beer and enjoying the burning sensation that moved down his throat.

"He's useless. I can't see why we can't just drop the bastard off a cliff."

"Whoa there. I've never seen you like this." He wouldn't exactly consider them friends, but Vanitas had talked to Saïx enough times to call him a good acquaintance. And the man had never lost his cool before. "Who are we talking about here?"

A loud yell carried over to them across the bar. Vanitas turned in his seat, his eyes hurriedly sweeping over Larxene making out with someone passionately against the right wall. His gaze settled at the back, where a tall man with dreadlocks was shaking someone only to send him sprawling across the floor. Vanitas got up from his seat, surprised at the rare commotion.

"Just sit back down," he heard from behind him, but he didn't listen. He wasn't sure himself what made him move, what made him get his ass off the barstool he occupied almost every night. Then again, that might have been precisely the reason why. Abandoning his drink, he weaved in and out of couples and wasted men hanging off their chairs until he was standing over the boy.

The kid, who appeared to be in his late teens and was already nursing an ugly welt on his arm that was visible even in the dark, staggered onto his feet. He faced his attacker in silence, but from what Vanitas could see it was more out of fear than defiance.

"Who do you think you are, you piece of shit?"

Now that Vanitas was closer, he identified the large figure as Xaldin, a regular at the bar—and perhaps more, now that he thought about it.

The boy just shook his head wordlessly. This seemed to only fuel Xaldin's anger, and he lunged at him.

Panicking, the boy whirled around in an attempt to make a run for it. His eyes found Vanitas, wide in their terror. Before Vanitas knew what was happening, the boy flew past him and something hard connected with his jaw.

Vanitas staggered backwards, holding his mouth. When he pulled his hand away, he noticed a smear of red and licked his lips, tasting blood there. His eyes burned with anger.

"What the hell?" He advanced on Xaldin. "Watch where you're punching!"

Xaldin spat at the ground. "Watch who you're defending." His voice was unnervingly even.

Vanitas didn't understand. But the realization clicked when he felt a shaking hand on his shoulder and turned.

The boy that had been getting beaten up by Xaldin now cowered behind him. He smelled of fifteen different perfumes and rotten apples. Vanitas shook off the boy's hand and then turned to Xaldin.

"I wasn't defending him. It's none of my business."

Xaldin towered over him. "Then get out of my way."

Vanitas hesitated. It was true. He hadn't been defending him. But now he couldn't think of a reason why he shouldn't be.

Now, Vanitas was no savior. He'd done a good deal of terrible things in his life so far, and he didn't doubt that a lot more would follow. But life had given him few opportunities to be a good person, and when Vanitas saw the opening he slipped in before he could change his mind.

This was one of those moments.

"No."

Xaldin didn't waste a second. This time when he struck, he didn't hold back, and Vanitas was thrown backwards by the impact. His vision clouding, Vanitas slammed into the boy, who tried to catch his balance using Vanitas's arm and ended up pulling the both of them onto the ground.

All Vanitas could think about the boy was that he was freaking pathetic.

Xaldin swung back his leg, and Vanitas rolled away on instinct. He'd made the wrong move, because Xaldin's foot connected with the other boy's side and he screeched in pain. Vanitas leapt to his feet and threw his full weight on his assailant, barely making the burlier man stumble.

He laughed, but Vanitas wasn't finding this remotely funny. He prepared his next attack, and then—

"ENOUGH!"

They froze. Xaldin dropped his arms to his sides and stared over Vanitas's head. Vanitas turned. Saïx was glaring at the two of them. Through his blurred vision, Saïx's dyed blue hair was the only thing Vanitas could see.

"Stop this immediately," Saïx said coldly. Vanitas realized that the whole bar had gone quiet. Someone had even turned off the music.

The bartender's stare went down to the boy, curled up on the ground in the fetal position, shaking, whimpering like a defenseless animal. Saïx's eyes narrowed to slits, and Vanitas wondered what the hell the boy could have done to be hated so much by everyone in existence.

"We don't need him any longer."

Vanitas wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He watched in silence.

"But the boss…"

"Just do it, Xaldin. I'll explain to the boss."

Xaldin muttered something incoherent under his breath and then yanked the kid up by the arm. The boy just continued crying, the tears rolling down his cheeks in waves. Vanitas shook his head. Absolutely pathetic. How old was this kid, anyway? Xaldin dragged him towards the door and the boy screamed momentarily—Xaldin had probably twisted his arm—before a loud slam echoed around the bar.

"And you." Saïx turned to look at Vanitas. "You are no longer welcome here."

"What was that?" Vanitas asked, standing his ground. "What did that kid do?"

"There are some things about us"—Saïx's eyes flashed—"that you just don't need to know."

Vanitas's eyes narrowed. "What kinds of things?"

Saïx no longer had any more words to spare. "Get out."

Not apologizing to Saïx, Vanitas pushed past Xaldin and out the doors into the cold night.

The boy was gone. Vanitas looked up at the sky. Starless, as always. He started his walk home, finally acknowledging the aching all over his body and the throbbing in his eye where Xaldin had slugged him the second time. He lifted his arms, trying to see if he had broken any bones in the brief fight.

A loud wail interrupted the assessment of his wounds and he glanced towards the noise. Right there at the corner of the street stood the boy, his head in his hands, his shoulders trembling with the force of his sobs. Suddenly any pity Vanitas had felt for this boy vanished, and he cursed himself for attempting to defend him.

"Oi, loser."

He gasped, his head jerking up. He stared at Vanitas open-mouthed.

"Getting the shit beaten out of you doesn't give you the excuse to cry like a baby."

With shaking hands, the boy wiped at his face. "But I…"

His voice was much softer, much frailer than Vanitas had expected. "But nothing. Do you have anywhere to go?"

He wasn't sure why he had asked. He assumed, at that moment, that it was Kairi's everlasting influence. He sighed. Well, now that the question was out, there was no taking it back. He hoped the boy would say yes.

The boy shook his head slowly.

Crap. Shit. Now he had to take him home.

Vanitas thought fleetingly of leaving him here. Seeing his condition, he'd probably be sitting here all night and no one would give him a second glance.

"C'mon."

He started walking again, but the lack of sound made him check behind him.

The kid was frozen, still standing in the same exact place. The only difference was that his expression was unexplainably horror-stricken, his light eyes filled with dread.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, man. Do you want somewhere to sleep or not?"

The boy whirled around and bolted.

Vanitas slammed the door to his apartment open, dragging the squirming boy along with him. As soon as he let go of his wrist, the kid ran for the door—

—but only made it halfway there.

His hand wrapped around the boy's arm, Vanitas yanked the blond towards the kitchen and forced him to sit down at the kitchen table. They were both breathing heavily; for some unfathomable reason he could not understand, Vanitas had gone through the trouble of chasing this fucking idiot down two streets and through some poor guy's thrift store until he had finally gotten ahold of him, and he hadn't stopped moaning in agony ever since.

Tuning out the loud whimpering, Vanitas double-checked to make sure the door was locked before throwing off his jacket and sitting across the annoyance he had unwittingly brought home.

Renewed dread washed over the boy's expression and his crying assumed a more desperate tone, his wails bouncing off Vanitas's eardrums: frustrating, loud, unavoidable.

"Shut up," Vanitas snapped at him. To his surprise, the boy sniffled once and then pressed his lips together, finally falling silent. Too late Vanitas realized that the boy was shaking, that he had frightened him. With great difficulty, Vanitas attempted to soften his voice. "Just…be quiet, alright?"

The boy—Vanitas still didn't know his name—nodded, and his shudders subsided. He folded his hands on his lap and stared at the floor.

Like a dog, Vanitas thought.

He sauntered over to the sink to clear up yesterday's dishes (he'd been too tired the night before). The fresh cuts and blisters on his hands from that morning seemed to burn where the water touched them, but Vanitas didn't make a sound. Behind him, the boy was suddenly so quiet he could have been nothing.

Setting the last plates aside to dry, Vanitas turned to face the teenager, who was still staring at his feet. He took a moment to study him. The boy was sickly thin; his clothes hung so loosely on him that they could have slipped right off. His blond hair was messy and jagged, thoroughly unkempt. And his eyes, currently trained on the badly patterned kitchen floor, were a light blue: the color of the sky on a peaceful summer morning. Vanitas couldn't see why anyone would want to further damage this broken angel of a boy. He shone like a newborn star.

Deciding that he'd let his thoughts wander far enough, Vanitas snapped his fingers to get the blonde's attention, but immediately regretted it when the boy jerked his head up at him, his expression that of a frightened puppy.

"Your name," said Vanitas. "What is it?"

The boy's eyes widened, as if this question had caught him by surprise. He didn't say a word.

If there was one thing Vanitas didn't have, it was patience. Despite the sudden sympathy that had risen up for this boy, his uncontrolled anger sparked up again. He opened his mouth to say something indisputably cruel, and—

"Ventus." He cleared his throat. "I… Call me Ven."

Vanitas despised nicknames. "Ventus"—the boy shuddered—"How old are you?"

Ventus acted like a young child, but was tall enough to be sixteen, at least. Vanitas considered the possibility that he had just hit his growth spurt early, but Ventus's shoulders were firm and he had the beginnings of a jaw line, suggesting that he was in the late stages of puberty.

"What, did you forget how old you are or something?"

Vanitas's sharp voice made Ventus flinch. "Seventeen," he said quickly. Something in his voice was breaking. "I'm seventeen."

Only two years his junior then, and yet a lifetime away.

"Okay, Ventus—"

"Please." His voice shook. "Please don't call me that."

Vanitas glared at him, and Ventus cowered under that fiery resentment, closing his eyes, as if bracing himself for pain that always came after such a look.

Vanitas sighed. "Fine. Ven. Let's go to bed."

Turning off the lights as he went, Vanitas made his way down the hall towards his bedroom, Ventus trailing close behind, his heavy footfalls contrasting Vanitas's soft ones.

Vanitas's room was disturbingly blank. He'd been living in this apartment for over a year and he'd never put up a single decoration, never once thought of adding a touch of personality. The room was lifeless.

Then again, perhaps it reflected him quite well.

Wasting no time, Vanitas pulled some old sheets out of his closet and spread them onto the carpet. Setting one of his own pillows on the ground, he gestured vaguely at the makeshift bed he had just made. It was a pitiful attempt, but it would have to do. Vanitas wasn't opening his apartment for any new residents. It was only one night, and he wasn't going to go out of his way to make this wimp of a kid comfortable.

Ven faltered, wringing his hands, his blue eyes moving all over the room, almost as if he didn't want to look at Vanitas's face. He directed his next question at the floor.

"We'll be…doing it on the ground?"

Vanitas raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Doing what?"

Ven's face reddened. "I… We… You…" He was breathless, his voice twisted with embarrassment and fear. "I thought…"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Vanitas couldn't understand why the young boy's thoughts would go there at all. It made no sense, and he had done nothing to suggest so. Resisting the urge to kick him out then and there, Vanitas threw a blanket at Ven's face.

"Go to sleep," he snapped, too exhausted to deal with any more weird shit. "Not another word."

Ven bowed his head and obeyed in helpless silence, avoiding eye contact with Vanitas as he pulled the too-thin blanket over himself. Vanitas stared at him for a moment, and only when he was completely sure that the boy had closed his eyes and was drifting off to sleep did he turn off the bedroom light and wander into the bathroom.

Vanitas winced at the sight of his own reflection. He'd always known that he was pretty good-looking, that he didn't have girls sleeping around with him in high school for nothing. Somehow, he had always managed to stay out of fights despite his apparently infuriating personality. He'd seen his face this bad only once before, and that he had done to himself.

A dark red bruise outlined the bottom of his jaw, and the cut on his lip looked worse than it felt. But the worst part was the dark circle forming around his left eye, and the throbbing pain surrounding it that Vanitas suddenly became very aware of.

But because he had never been one to complain, and because the injuries had been mostly his fault, he simply washed his face with freezing water and did nothing else to ease the discomfort and returned to his bed.

His bedroom glowed green. Every day, Vanitas forgot about the stars. And every night, he was forced to remember them, like an infected wound that grew numb and then seared with anguish once more. When they had first moved in, he and Kairi had put them up together. Kairi's high-pitched laughter echoed with the memories of the stars, with the memories of Vanitas lifting her up into the air so her small hands could reach the ceiling.

When the room wasn't washed in darkness, Vanitas was blind, and even when they started to fall to the carpet, he never paid them any attention.

Stepping over Ven's small body towards his bed, Vanitas tried to think about nothing but the dreamless sleep ahead of him. After she had gone, Vanitas had never experienced trouble sleeping, and the fact had bothered him until he'd convinced himself that there was just fundamentally something wrong with him, something he would never be able to fix. He expected tonight to be the same, but Ven seemed to have different ideas.

It hadn't even hit two a.m. when he started yelling.

His shrieking filled the room like a nightmare revived, like a bad dream that Vanitas couldn't make himself forget.

Vanitas woke up with a start, heart pounding in his chest. Thoroughly irritated, He scrambled out of bed and kicked in Ven's general direction to stop the dreadful noise. His foot caught the boy's fingers in the dark. Ven screamed once more, a tuneless, terrifying, familiar sound, and Vanitas backed away, falling back onto his bare mattress.

The blond tossed and turned all night after that, screaming and crying.

And Vanitas just turned over and pretended to be deaf as well as blind.

I've been working on this for quite a while now and finally got the time to edit it and put it up. Initially, updates will be once or twice a week, since I already have a lot of chapters complete, only in need of editing.

Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

~DestinyCrusader