Author's note: This was written mostly because the plot bunny scared me into submission. Have you ever had a vampire bunny living under your desk and biting your toes when you won't write for him? If you have, you know I did the only sensible thing.

I'm not sure if and when I'll continue this. There is a longer fic in planning, but I'm having plot issues. Too many ideas that don't really fit together, that sort of thing. -shrugs- Maybe it'll sort itself out once I'm done with Planets' Protector.

I hope you'll like it!

Anchors

Part I – Cloud

Cloud doesn't like having his differences pointed out to him. He knows he's not normal, even among Hunters, and there's no need for others to rub it in.

Jenova protects him from them when she can, but despite popular belief she isn't all-knowing. She can't hear all the whispers and jibes and speculations that follow him, and he will never tell her. She's been good to him, shown kindness when most Nobles would have used him, and he can't imagine using that compassion to make her fight battles that are his own. Cloud's father served her, died for her. She repaid that service by turning the young Hunter over to the one person she could count on to raise him well and protect him until he was old enough to survive on his own.

Older now, no longer naïve, Cloud knows that it was the only thing she could do for him without losing face – losing face means losing status, losing status means being questioned, and a questioned Lady soon becomes a dead one.

Vincent has been mentor, friend, blade-brother. He is the anchor Cloud needs, the one who understands what it's like to be different, the one who belongs as little as Cloud himself, the one who keeps him sane. In a world that will never welcome them, they've made a life for themselves. Pain, blood and death it cost them, but it's theirs now and no one will challenge their right to it. Jenova will give them orders, but she will not try to cage them.

Cloud doesn't miss life among the vampires. He knows what he is to them, and it is a picture as sickening as it is false. "Jenova's pet" they call him, and their disdain and fear is thick enough to choke him when he attends gatherings.

What he does miss is life in Jenova's household. Begging treats from the kitchens and sharing them with the triplets, just to see slit-pupiled eyes glow with innocent happiness. Having those same triplets call him niisan and demand he tell them stories when they won't allow anyone else inside their room. Being hugged by Jenova in private moments when she is just a mother and not a Lady. Borrowing books he's not yet learned to read because it gives him an excuse to enter Sephiroth's rooms and invade his solitude when others won't. Getting his hair ruffled for the disrespect and sometimes being invited to stay, but even when he's not there's gratitude and affection in eyes his family believe cold.

Cloud wishes there was a way to be that child again; the one that could be hidden away in private. But he's a Hunter now, the last of the Strife line, and that means he's a valuable commodity. Any contact with Jenova's House will be news among the clans. If he wants the warmth of them back, he must be willing to be paraded before the other Nobles. If he wants his old home back, he has to give Vincent up and show the world that the Strife Hunter is Jenova's property, as his ancestors have been for centuries.

He can't do that. Not to Vincent, and not to himself.

They are assassins, warriors – soldiers in a war that will never end. They kill and bleed and hurt. But they haven't forgotten how to laugh or joke or love. They are brothers, and as long as that is true, they won't part. They live and breathe violence, but breathing in time with each other brings them peace.

And they'll destroy anyone who threatens that.