"Some say that every soul, a star. But in this reality, every soul is a moon."

AU where Cinder and Kai are normal civilians in New Beijing, not royalties. Enjoy!

It was an evening late in the season of autumn, when the wind outside had turned cool and leaves began to turn orange or yellow or red or brown and fall from their trees. Linh Cinder, a mother at the ripe age of twenty-six, sat in her family home's kitchen. She was feeding her young daughter with macaroni and cheese at the counter. The little girl was too young to hold the spoon correctly and feed herself without a mess, so her mother assisted her, bringing the small spoon to the girl's mouth each time and playing little games with it, like acting as if it were an airplane. By her age Cinder had had two children, one a toddler already and the other almost a year old.

Motoki, her son, came bounding into the kitchen with the nanny and family friend, Iko, trailing behind him. Iko was actually an escort-droid that had lived with Cinder since she was eleven years old, but she was the closest an android could get to being a human and she was Cinder's oldest friend. Iko's form was tall with an hour-glass figure and dark skin, long, tiny blue braids, and amber-colored eyes that were remarkable and so realistic, both of the children thought she were a human. They had never been told otherwise, not that they needed to be. Sometimes even Iko forgot she wasn't human.

Motoki took after his father in a lot of ways, not just in appearances but also in his personality. He had copper-brown eyes, olive-toned skin and black hair that he hated to be combed or straightened, so it was always ruffled and unkempt. His smile could melt hearts. Motoki absolutely loved to have fun, which also meant that he loved his aunt Iko dearly, and whenever she came over (which was very frequent) they would color with each other or play pirates with wooden swords. Sometimes, when Cinder would be tending to her younger daughter, Tori, she could hear them from down the hallway, singing along to nonsense together in Motoki's bedroom.

"Mom, look at the paintings we made!" Motoki came jumping over to Cinder, giddy to show her the pictures he and Aunt Iko had made. His picture, she could tell from the overuse of the color green (Motoki's favorite color was green), was of a sort of space ship. She looked all over the paper and found in the bottom corner where he had scribbled in his name, in crayon, Motoki Linh-Huang.

She smiled to herself, and her eyes rose to Iko, who was standing behind the boy and grinning herself. "Do you think maybe he's spent too much time with Thorne?" She asked after she had noticed that he had also put a girl inside the spaceship.

"Hey, it could be good for him," Iko defended. She looked like she was on the verge of having a laughing fit. "Maybe he'll grow up to be smooth with the ladies instead of a stammering dork like his father."

Both of the women laughed. Cinder had admitted to herself a long time ago that part of the reason her husband, Kai, had charmed her so much was because of how nervous and awkward he was when asking her out on that first, fateful date. They had met about ten years ago, when they were both still young teenagers. Kai had somehow wrecked his podship and brought it to Cinder's Mechanic booth, as anyone he had taken it to before couldn't fix it and had suggested that he go see New Beijing's most renowned mechanic, who happened to be her. He apparently had thought she was pretty and nice, so when he came to pick it up from repairs, he tried to ask her out for lunch, albeit very awkwardly. Iko was there at the moment, squealing over how adorable it all was when Kai's ears turned pink and he scratched his neck, and Cinder said yes. They had been making jokes about it since then.

They had dated for about three years when Kai had decided to propose to Cinder, and their engagement had lasted two months short of a year. They had now been married for five years. Motoki was born a year after they married and Tori was about three years later. They were a happy, middle-class family. Everyday Kai got home from working as a lawyer around five in the evening, and Cinder had made a room for her mechanic projects so she could still take care of the kids when she could.

She still had her market booth that she also tended, but being a mother came with responsibilities that she couldn't just toss away. She wanted to be a mother to the kids, and so she was. She was a great mother, and she made sure that when she wasn't there that someone else was. Her friends would usually volunteer to babysit them, like Iko, and if they had their own kids to watch that day then they would just arrange a play date. Life was nice to them in many ways.

Cinder turned her attention back to the boy, who was looking up at her through his black bangs and trying to gauge her reaction. She smiled at him," Mo, this is amazing! Your father will love it! Do you want to put it up somewhere for him?"

Motoki's eyes sparkled and lit up as he thought of an idea."I wanna give it to him as a present! Can I, Momma? Please? I wanna wrap it up and put a bow on it and put it on his bed for him to see, and he can hang it up somewhere and everyone will love it!" He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet now, the excitement overtaking him. Cinder giggled.

"Of course you can, little man!" She tried to hug him, but he protested.

"I'm a big man, Momma!" He squirmed around in her arms and she laughed.

"Alright, big man." She said. He stopped wriggling and hugged her back then. "Daddy gets home soon, so you better get to it!"

She let him go and he took off running down the hallway to his parents' room, Iko going behind him after gathering some wrapping paper and a bow. She looked brightened. Cinder knew that Iko was far off from being a regular android, but she had a similar trait: the worst feeling they could feel was uselessness, and with Motoki, Iko never felt useless.

She turned back to Tori, who was babbling in her highchair. When she saw her mother's face, a toothy grin that had no teeth came to her face, and she giggled with happiness. Cinder took a moment to try and commit her daughter's face to memory, her little button nose, her soft, tan skin, her slanted eyes the color of chocolate. She had beautiful dark eyelashes, and tuffs of fluffy, dark brown hair sprouted from her scalp.

A bit of drool came from the corner of Tori's mouth as she clapped her chubby baby hands together. Cinder smiled and dipped the spoon back into the bowl of macaroni and cheese, getting a little spoonful and blowing on it before bringing it to Tori's mouth. She made little airplane noises as it got closer, and Tori spit a little bit out as she ate it. Cinder smiled again and picked up the little bits on her chin with the spoon and put it back in her mouth, then wiped her face off with a damp washcloth. As she was cleaning up the food and washing her hands in the sink, she heard the front door open and close.

She looked at the clock to see it reading 17:10. Right on time, she thought.

She heard Kai take off his work shoes by the door as she got out various items from the fridge, preparing for dinner. His footsteps padded through the house until he was in the kitchen, standing behind her. She heard him sigh, and then his arms were around her waist as a hug from behind. She grinned and laid her hands over his, and she felt him kiss the side of her neck. "How was your day, love?" he asked with his mouth next to her ear.

"Just short of perfect, dear. The only thing keeping it from being so was your absence,"She turned her head to the side and kissed him, and soon he had her turned around. His arms were wrapped around her waist and hers were around his neck, her fingertips playing with the hair there. Five years of marriage and they were still sickishly in love with each other and enjoyed finding new ways to show each other their adoration. They wore their affections for each other on their sleeves.

They broke away from each other, hearing a gagging noise in the doorway of the kitchen. They turned and found Motoki and Iko peeking around the corner, both pretending to vomit. The first times Iko had spayed on Cinder and Kai in an embrace, she had squealed so long and so high-pitched that Cinder had thought once and a while that she should temporarily disable Iko. But now, after years having spent seeing them flirt and make out and profess their loves for each other, Iko just found it all gross. So did Motoki, him being the two's child and being so young in age. Tori just sat in her highchair,playing with the washcloth Cinder had left there.

"Alright, you two. That's enough," Cinder said, pointing to Motoki and Iko. Iko made the closest sound her unorganic body could to a snort.

"We could say the same for your PDA. Right, Mo?" Iko looked over to Motoki, grinning, and pinched her nose as if smelling a foul odor. Motoki giggled and nodded.

Kai worked as a lawyer, fighting for cyborg rights. He had to work a lot, getting up early in the morning to leave, and sometimes he had to stay at work late in the night. On those days he would call Cinder and tell her that he would be getting home after dark and she should just have dinner without him. Those lonely nights pained the both of them, but they knew it was worth it. Kai's work was important to the both of them.

Cinder had been a cyborg since she was eight and was in a hover accident. The wreck took both of her birth parents' lives, and she had gotten trapped under the hover. Her left leg was crushed, ending with the density of saw dust, and she had to lose it and her left hand. Four ribs of hers were metal, along with splints along the bones in her right leg. Her vertebrae and the silicon and boot issue around her heart were man-made, as was a control panel at the base of her skull.

She had gone to the doctor awhile back for a check up, and while there she learned that her ratio was 36. 28 %. She was 36. 28 percent not human. She would have cried right then in the office if she could, but she didn't have tear ducts to produce tears (she also couldn't blush). She didn't sleep at all that night, and Kai stayed up with her, cradling her in his arms as dry sobs racked her body. It was a big surprise that she could have even had a child, let alone more than one. Her surgeons had been careful enough not to hurt her reproductive system, allowing her to be able to have heirs, unlike most cyborg women.

Cyborgs were generally looked down upon, disrespected, and did not have equal rights. Some stores or booths in the market Cinder worked at wouldn't let her come inside because she was a cyborg. People on the streets would avoid her species, ignore them or treat them lowly. Once, she had accidentally grazed a woman's hand in the market when scanning her ID, and the woman cringed away from her and glared. Most of the time Cinder would wear gloves and pants that covered all her legs, and closed-toe shoes.

Kai hadn't even known she were a cyborg when he first met her. Of course, she had revealed it to him early on in their relationship. She had showed him her hand on their first date. At first he seemed a little shocked, but he was completely unfazed by it all. Cinder could faintly remember him saying,"You being cyborg is irrelevant. What is relevant is us, together." It was quite possibly the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her before, and she believed that that moment was when she began to fall for him completely.

Not many customers knew that she was a cyborg, which was better for her business. But if they found out about it, most of the time they would cancel their work with her and hire another mechanic. Usually people were suspicious as to how such a young girl was such a good mechanic (she had started up her business around age fourteen), and the suspicion wasn't good for either of the parties. Kai wanted to fight for cyborg rights and equality, and he tried so hard to get it. He was the most known lawyer fighting for cyborg rights, and it made Cinder proud of him.

Sometimes she would ask him why he did it, why he sacrificed himself in many ways for this, and he told her every time that it was for her and all the people out there who became cyborgs and were degraded in society. He was such a hard-worker, he was so genuine about everything he did, it was as if he could bring anyone around him up from the marshes of life. He would lift them out of the sinking trouble they were in, and he couldn't care less about how the opposing parties thought of him. Kai was the greatest man Cinder knew. He was also her husband, who she loved, and who loved her.

Any moment she could get with him, she spent well. She poured all the pent up affection into those seconds. The couple barely ever fought, and when they did, they were petty arguments that would end once they would be silent for a few seconds, staring at each other, then both would roll into a laughing fit bigger than the both of them. There was never any need for apologies in their relationship. To some, it may have sounded like infatuation, but it was their love, as true as the sky's blue hue in the morning and the Earth's foggy blur in the cold seasons.

"Come on, Motoki, let's leave these lovebirds to their. . . Business, yeah?" Iko nodded to Motoki. Her eyes briefly met Cinder's, and she smirked. Cinder was flustered beyond compare and Kai's ears were a bright red, standing with his mouth agape.

Iko and Motoki took off again, and Iko came back quickly to get Tori, running down the hallway to Kai and Cinder's room. After a few silent moments of looking at each other warily, Kai asked Cinder,"What're they up to?"

Cinder grinned. "It's a surprise."

Kai groaned, disappointed, but then a mischievous spark blew into his eyes, and Cinder knew exactly what he was thinking. Her eyes widened and the grin disappeared from her lips. She shook her head vigorously, putting her hands out with her palms facing him. She pushed against his chest to get away from him, saying,"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you don't, mister!"

A long grin spread across his face and he grabbed her, locking her in his arms. "Gotcha," he said.

A squeal erupted from her mouth, practically ripping itself from her vocal chords. She struggled in his hold, trying desperately to get away from him. He was laughing now, and she peered up at him to see him flexing his hand and wiggling the fingers. She sucked in a breath and successfully pushed him away, effectively knocking him to the ground. He groaned and his oncoming chuckle turned into a gasp, but she had no time to waste on helping him back up.

She knew he would be back up and chasing after her in just a few short seconds, so she ran for it, almost death-sprinting out of the kitchen, out of the house, and into the backyard.

She looked around the yard a bit frantically, trying to find somewhere to hide from Kai and his fingers of sudden death. She let out a relieved breath when she spotted a tall oak tree in the far corner of the yard, and she ran for it. She slipped her socks off of her feet, tucking them in her waistline, and wrapped her arms around the trunk. She climbed up the tree as fast as she could, and about half-way up the tree she heard the sound of the slip doors whooshing open, and Kai sang into the wind,"Cinder, I've come to find you!"

She felt her eyes bulge and she sped up the tree with renewed energy. Leaves crunched under his footsteps as he came closer to the tree, and she could hear him tsking from where he was on the ground. "You can't hide from me, love."

She whimpered as her hand slipped on a branch and scraped the bark. She scrambled onto a large branch that would hold all the weight of her and her metal limbs, then peered down at him. He was looking up directly at her, grinning as wide as he ever could. She let out a scream, afraid of what was to come.

He had taken off his suit coat and tie, and his dress pants were rolled up his calves. His black hair was messed a bit. He must have had rubbed his head after falling. He always gelled his hair a bit before going to work, and the product he was using made it stick up a certain way that made him looked even more handsome and she mentally scolded herself for thinking these things in such a time.

"Gotcha," he said again, and he began mounting the tree like mad.

"No, Kai, you don't have to do this!" She pleaded. She inched back on the branch, away from his advancing body.

"Oh, but I do."

"Kai please, last time it hurt so much I couldn't walk for a week!"

"Well maybe you shouldn't keep things from me." He sang. He was two branches away and she was still backing up. There wasn't much of the branch left to scoot onto.

". . . Forgive me?" She asked quietly once he was at the same branch as her. He had stopped to stare at her for a few seconds, his eyes boring into hers, their noses just inches apart.

He hummed, seeming to think about it, and hope flooded her bloodstream.

"Hmmm. Nope!" He pounced at her and she yelped, her eyes pinching shut. She wobbled from the impact of Kai throwing himself on her, and she clutched the branch beneath her to try to keep herself from falling.

And then he was tickling her.

For some, tickling may sound like a small threat. Not even a threat at all. But when Kai was in charge, it was a whole new game. Kai was fast and had long arms. Kai was merciless when it came to tickling. And so, when he wanted information out of her, Kai would tickle Cinder until she conceded.

"N-no, Kai! Stop, p-please! I can't take it! K-kai!" She screamed. The laughing hurt.

"Oh, but that would be no fun," he mock pouted. In these moments he sounded more sadistic than teasing.

"Kaaaai!" She tried to wiggle away from him on the branch, but he was straddling her hips at the moment. She tried to claw at his arms to get him away, and he seized both of her hands in one of his and pinned it above her head. His tickling was vicious. She clenched her teeth and pinched her eyes shut, trying to imagine herself somewhere else, in a different situation.

She was climbing the tallest mountain in the world.

She was skiing down in front of an avalanche.

She was fighting a feisty grizzly bear.

She was lost at sea, trying to sail back to shore.

She was at her old adoptive family's house, working on the newest project.

She was in a tree, in her backyard, getting pinned and tickled by her husband.

Her eyes snapped open after she heard a cracking sound below her. The branch was giving out. Of course it's giving out, she thought. The branch surely wasn't going to be able to hold both of their weights together. They were grown adults.

"Kai, the branch is breaking," She gasped. She was trying to warn him of this between huffs of breath and painful laughter, but he would let up. He was relentless when it came to this torture.

"Liar," His voice rumbled in her ear as he leaned toward her, and then there was a loud snap, and the branch broke. Their eyes went wide as saucers, and they tumbled toward the green Earth below hen as the support of the branch fell away.

Their screams filled the air, both of them shrieking like little kids. Cinder had shut her eyes and braced herself with her left arm and leg in front of her to dampen the injuries. Mid-fall, she felt long, warm arms wrap around her body, and the Kai's whole body enveloped hers as a sort of safe jacket. When they hit the ground, he would take the blunt of the fall.

Or he should've.

But they didn't hit the ground.

Instead of hitting solid ground, they landed in a large pile of autumn leaves. The impact sent little leaves flying though the air and winding through the wind. Cinder could feel leaves crumbling underneath their lying bodies, and they were both still for a moment as they slowly cracked open their eyes. She untucked her head from Kai's chest and looked up at him, little pieces of leaves of different colors clouding his hair. They stared at each other for a long minute, and then a leaf floated down onto Cinder's nose an laid perfectly still there.

Kai snorted.

Their bodies were surrounded by leaves. They lied in a pile of leaves on the cool Autumn floor under a tree, limbs in a tangled mess. Their clothes and hair was covered in leaves of many colors. They were a big mess, and they were laughing about it.

Kai had been the first to laugh, close after was Cinder. It was a slow process, but in the end they were both laughing maniacally at themselves. They were sure that, if people walking by could see them, they would assume they were insane idiots, or that they were drunk kids in college.

Their laughing was so loud that everything around them seemed to disappear for a few moments. Cinder leaned up a little and kissed him, holding onto his shirt collar. The kiss was sweet and slow, and he put his hands on the sides of her neck, cradling her head. The moment seemed so romantic, so right and so perfectly them. Tangled bodies in leaves, lovers in the cold.

They heard the sliding door click open and slide back, and they looked up to see Motoki running toward them. "I wanna play with you guys, too!"

They laughed and moved around a little in the leaves to make space for them. The arms they had wrapped around each other wrapped around Motoki, and Cinder looked at Kai over the top of the child's head, grinning from ear to ear. He got the hint and they both grabbed as many leaves they could in their arms and poured them over the top of Motoki's head. The boy gasped, then started giggling wildly and reached out to grab a few of the falling pieces. Some stuck in his hair, sticking out in different directions, and his mother cracked a grin at the funny look of it.

The parents looked back to the door at the sound of it clicking back into place, trapping the cool air outside, and found Iko holding Tori's small hand as they walked out. Tori had been walking for more than a few months, but the child still hadn't spoken a word. Kai chuckled and jumped up, out of the pile of leaves, making his way over to the two. "Why, hello, girls! What brings you here?"

Iko quirked an eyebrow. " They saw you two dorks laughing in a world of leaves."

"Well, then, care to join us? Lady Iko? Lady Tori?" He winked at the both of them and rolled his arms toward the leaf pile, where Motoki and Cinder sat, laughing.

"Ah, I would, but it's really hard to get the tiny pieces out of the joints, you know? Okay, you don't know. . . I'll just take pictures." Iko shrugged. "But I'm sure that little Miss Tori would looove to play with you, Kaito."

Kai swooped down to Tori's level and put a finger on her nose, then bounded her in his arms and ran back to the pile, falling back into it. Tori was laughing and squealing as she fell with him, and leaves flew up as the went down. When Kai lifted his head he was greeted with no one there, and he looked around, a bit confused as to where his family went. He quickly stood up, bringing Tori with him. He walked in a circle, scanning the yard.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called, " Cinder? Motoki?"

Nothing. He started walking all around the yard, Tori clutching onto his hand. She seemed enchanted with each leaf, patting the air with her little fingers. Kai lifted her up into the air for a moment, spinning her high enough to see over the yard. Iko had gone back inside. "Mo?"

Still nothing, and he began running around the edges of the yard. He began to think they had left him or something bad had happened, but then he heard a giggle from behind a tree.

Cinder had been watching this all from behind the large oak tree, Motoki being held against her hip as they both tried to keep their laughter in check. Until Mo giggled. Loudly.

Kai whipped around toward the tree and ran for it. He tripped half-way there, falling into another pile of leaves with a grunt. Cinder doubled over with laughter, watching Kai. His voice was muffled by the leaves when he said something, and she walked over to him and crouched. "What was that, dear?"

He spit out a stubborn leaf from his mouth. "I said, not funny."

She chuckled. "Oh, but it is."

"Whatever." He grabbed her hand and yanked her down into the leaves with him. She yelped, tumbling on top of his back.

"Dog pile!" She heard Motoki's scream from the tree, and she could hear him running to them.

The End

Thanks for reading! Please vote if you liked the writing, and comment if you have any thoughts. Go check out LunarticHeadQuarters on Wattpad, a collab group I'm part of that writes fanfiction solely for The Lunar Chronicles. This was originally posted on Wattpad for ScribbleTwoShoes, written for the mini-ship weeks day one.

Signing Off, Charlotte Leigh/Copper

P.S. Does anyone know when guavas are in season?