Hey guys, it's Cam! I'm copying this from my DA account and posting it here for you xD

The title of this story - "Just Water" - will be explained in later chapters, but for now: "Melted ice is just water."

Anyway. This is a MarVex fic, and it is very dark, and their are many branch pairings. Including MarlyXPretty much everyone. It is based on things I've done, said, or gone through, and I'll let you know if I'm writing something that never actually happened or leaving something out. Vexen's POV, as he is representing me :D

I own nothing.

Vexen Caulfield hummed boredly as he stared at his laptop screen, watching some AMV on a fandom with a name he couldn't pronounce and effects that bored him after about ten seconds. He drummed his fingers idly on the area next to his laptop's mouse pad, enjoying the slight click sound his short fingernails made on contact. School started up tomorrow.

Ugh. he thought to himself. Why tomorrow? I love school, sure, but…. the image of hallways, filled with people, pushing past one another to get to class, flashed through his mind. Stupid people.Why does every school have hundreds of stupid people?It's completely asinine!

Try as he might, Vexen couldn't bring himself to be interested in the AMV, so he changed sites. A picture site called DA opened up in a welcoming green, replacing the reds and white of the previous one. He 'hm'd quietly in contemplation before typing a random anime title in the bar for fan art. He got, as he expected with this site, about three normal pictures and a smorgasbord of yaoi. He grinned to himself. Ah, guilty pleasures. His internal yaoi fanboy sighed.

After a few hours of aimless touring, he grabbed some paper in a burst of inspiration and began to draw. He was pretty decent, able to make shapes vaguely resembling humans (or whatever he happened to be drawing) and he was steadily getting better. He dreamed of one day being able to produce perfect replicas of the people he'd met. Right now, he swore never to draw anyone unless he really cared about them. It felt somehow…personal to him. Like it was a connection no one quite understood.

He grinned at the finished product. It was quite nice, really. A beautiful drawing. It was one of a person he'd never met, as he often drew. He often pictured a person and doodled their face, and felt one day he'd meet his subject, and they would be important to him. The person had long hair, light, like a light brown or dark blonde, a face that seemed feminine and masculine at the same time, and eyes that made it instantly Vexen's favorite drawing he'd ever done. The drawing looked okay, nowhere near art hall worthy, but good enough for Vexen to put it in his desk, rather than his folder. He always saved his pictures, no matter how awful, and learned from them, but only the best stayed in his drawers, so he could view them without digging through shelves of folders and files.

He sighed, taking notice of the late hour, and shut down his laptop. He had school tomorrow; he needed to sleep…for once.

Vexen had terrible insomnia, and rarely slept for over an hour, tops. When he did sleep, it was fitful and he could feel every second of it, as though he simply had his eyes closed, rather than it being actual sleep. He rarely dreamed. When he did dream, he wished he hadn't, as they were usually awful dreams that made him question his sanity, as if he didn't do that enough already. He wouldn't call them nightmares, as they never scared him. They were things that would scare most people, such as ghost and darkness and being lost without a way out and blood, but he always woke up simply confused. He even went as far as to buy a dream journal and a "Hidden Meaning of Dreams" book. Though, to be honest, he probably would have done that anyway, because he was just into things like that.

He set his dream journal on his nightstand so he could access it immediately if he dreamed, clicked off the light, and closed his eyes as the stories began. Vexen always did this. He thought of little scenarios to help him find a sense of peace to sleep: about himself, about characters from shows, mangas, or animes, about people he knew, about people he didn't know, etc.

As he settled into an interesting plot of his possible first day at school, Vexen felt reality bur and fade, new images taking over, until he could see, feel, hear, smell, even taste, everything he thought. He was in a new world, his own world, his own safe haven no one could take from him.

He was untouchable.