This wasn't originally meant to be angst, but it's how it came out.
Next time, something more Kei/Sho-y. Promise 8D

Disclaimer - If Kei and Sho, and indeed Moonchild, were mine, I'd be one very happy girl. But alas, they are not....

Moonchild

Resumption

He'd spent so long hiding from the sun as a child that now living his life during the night was the force of habit. It was a habit he had not broken for a lack of wanting to in nine years.

So what if it meant he got next to no sleep? Looking after his child and city district during the day, walking around late at night in the hope of catching a glimpse of telltale red; Sho was getting used to the mindless cycle now.

But it would have to change. There was no reason to go out after sundown anymore, there was nothing left out there for him. Kei had already been put to death. Since the very moment Sho slammed the phone back down into the dock, some part of him, a large part of him – everything he held dear in his life – just withered away. His memories had quickly followed, deemed too stressful by his subconscious to let him recall the promises and the kisses. All that remained was the red of the vampire's jacket; his smile and the strange warmth of his arms. They were things that he would never see or feel again.

His light was lost to him.

It was just he and Hana now, in the place that the world had chewed and spat out and called Mallepa; everyone else had died or deserted… or were in the process of doing so. Even his own city was against him.

He had left Hana alone for a moment, playing before the painting her mother had finished over nine years ago, as if the woman portrayed was Yi-Che herself watching over the girl. The painting was a symbol of hope in the old town, a hope of redemption and a new beginning to a brighter future. It was a beacon covered in slang and obscenities – a gift from those content with the chaos.

Sho used to be one of those children… a long time ago, but he could remember that those days were as fun as they might have been dangerous. He knew deep within him that he had never, and would never again smile as much as he did with a gun in his hand and Kei at his side.

Those days were gone now.

Sho turned back to his daughter when he caught a glimpse of that telltale red. He was sat beside the black haired girl, watching with a smile. She continued playing like he wasn't even there at all. It was that reaction in the girl that had Sho believing for a moment that this was just the remainder of the Vampire, the spirit that Kei sent him as a reply to his desperate plea not to be left alone; sent to give him strength… But Kei wasn't like that. He knew that a intangible ghost would never be enough for Sho.

The steps he took back were calm and orderly; inside he was burning. That light, the one that took seed in him as a child, had returned at full force - so much so it hurt. He tried to distract himself, wondering if Hana's obliviousness was an effect of Kei's enigmatic draw or another show of the blind trust in people that Sho had tried and failed to train out of her. He was far from being the perfect father. And husband. And lover. He had searched for years after Kei had vanished. It was when the revelation that Kei had gone and left no trail because he didn't want to be found by his Sho came that he given up and gone back home, broken-hearted.

Kei stood, smiling, with his hands in his pockets. It was just like nothing had changed; that there wasn't nine years between them. And the question why. Sho was about to ask; to shout and demand an explanation, but he found all he could do was smile. He broke the spell of the Vampire's hazel-eyed gaze long enough to bend down to give Hana the cotton candy.

She took it with thanks, glancing at Kei quickly before running towards a bench. Perhaps she understood that the two needed to be alone for a while; perhaps she didn't.

For a while, they just stared at each other, and then…

"Tadaima."