Chapter One: Prolog/Alone

The smell penetrating in the air was putrid and suffocating. There was a small breeze making its way through the room, but it didn't help alleviate the smothering feeling of the humid air that hung inside the apartment.

The one-bedroom apartment, if it really deserved to even be called that, was small and dark. Almost all of the furniture had been overturned or broken; there was glass strewn everywhere, making the ground glint ominously. Old shattered plates and cups could be seen all throughout the room, remaining still from where they had originally been thrown in a fit of rage. The little doors of the cupboards in the kitchenette were either hanging on the last of their hinges or missing completely; the small faucet was rusted over and left running, letting out small drops of water. There was a giant crack in the center of the small round table, where it had caved in a week previously when a couple of the more rowdy men got into an argument over a game of poker and accidentally split it. Cards and game chips met in the center of the "cave in", and the four chairs that had originally gone with the table were thrown in different directions. Empty beer bottles of different kinds covered the dirty tar-colored floor; stains of beer, human excrement, and blood trailed all over the floor.

There was one lone, barred window on the right side of the apartment that had been hastily boarded up; aside from the small gap in its left hand corner, where the breeze had been coming from, it provided the natural daylight to seep in the shadows roamed the room. There was an old, beaten up, metal-framed bed directly underneath it; the sunlight made its metallic frame glint in a dark fashion as the sun rose in the sky. There were cuffs at the four corners of the bed chained to the small figure in the center of the hay–filled mattress.

The person lay painfully still over blood soaked sheets; the skin of his small wrists and ankles were torn and raw from the cuffs chaining him to the bed. His torn and baggy shirt was the only article of clothing shielding his body from the world. You could see the outline of each his ribs and the dip of his belly where his ribcage ended through the old shirts' thin fabric. Horrific-looking scars littered his skin; jagged lines covered his arms and the inside of his thighs where someone had carved the word "slut" during the first month of his stay. Infected sores and cuts on his body where being attacked by flies and mosquitoes. One of his legs was bent at a strange angle; the bone at his knee had been shattered and the snapped bone was sticking out of his flesh.

Old blood that had pooled down under his leg had dried out and was starting to look like a dark reddish brown stain on the sheets, just like the rest of all of the dried out blood surrounding his body. His left arm was slightly resting over his heart while the other one lay still above his head. Long, dark, black-looking hair was matted to his forehead and framed his face like a curtain; his chapped and flayed lips were slightly opened, an old trail of blood ran from the left corner of his mouth down to the mattress. His once-beautiful face was littered in bruises and was facing the almost identical looking bed opposite of his own; unseeing, glassy green-brown eyes "stared" at the other person lying on the bed.

Despite his ghastly appearance, his expression was (while a bit worried and pain-filled was overall) peaceful; he suffered no longer in his eternal "sleep". His once agonizing and pain-filled breaths had stopped three hours previously as he tearfully told his sobbing twin that it hurt too much to keep going; he had lost too much blood…. As his last raspy breath rattled out of his abused body, the last words he had heard were the soft-spoken and sorrow-filled testament of his dear twin's love for him. He died peacefully gazing at the only human being that had ever truly understood and loved him; he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Dry sobs racked the body of the girl lying on the mattress as she stared into the soulless eyes of her brother. A year—they had been tortured for more than a year; the only reason they had made it this far was their constant presence and company, but now she was alone and she knew. She knew she wasn't going to make it for much longer either; she couldn't live without Dylan, and who knew when her captors would be back? They had been missing for a week. She allowed herself to briefly think that maybe the police were close to finding their—no, her location, before she completely dismissed it with a painful scoff.

Her physical appearance wasn't unlike her twin's on the opposite bed; they had the same color and length of hair, same big, hazel-green eyes, only hers weren't glassy with death, but with unshed tears. There were burns from cigarette bums and scars of different length and shapes littering her weak frame; you could see old blood had once pooled between her legs and the inside of her thighs seemed to have been mutilated mercilessly by her captors. Much like her brother, the most aggressive of their captors had taken their time to carve the word "whore" into the pale and heavily scarred flesh of her right inner thigh.

Her arms and legs were chained down from the cuffs tying her down to the rusted metal framed bed; the flesh of her ankles and wrists were raw and flaked because of her jerky movements from trying to flee over the time of her captivity. Like her brother, she only donned an old, tattered, baggy T-shirt that went up to her mid-thigh; the fabric was thin and worn after an entire year of being on her, allowing you to see where her ribcage ended and where her belly dipped due to malnutrition. Each rib was visible, and at least two of them were broken; bruises trailed from her breasts up to her neck, where black and blue handprints could be seen going around her small throat; a small scar went down vertically at the nape of her neck to her collarbone.

Her face had paled over the time of her captivity and it was no longer the beautiful olive tone that she and her brother had been known for in their community. Her lips were chapped and bleeding; her throat was dry making each breath a painful croak surfacing from her mouth. Her wrist was twisted in a weird angle and had numbed over three days ago. She was in pain, an unending pain. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts….

Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dyl… it ran like a mantra through her mind, blocking out the rest of her senses, even the pain and agony she felt from her own wounds…Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dyl… he was gone, really gone; he had died, leaving her alone with his corpse, flies, and mosquitoes for company. Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, DYLAN….

Dorian thought back to the day she and Dylan had been kidnapped off the streets a block away from their home. It had started out as a normal day—the twins had been sharing the same bed since they had been brought home from the hospital 14 years previously. It wasn't as if their parents (and their parents' maids) hadn't tried to separate them before, but it was that the twins had always refused. They needed to be together; it was just wrong when they weren't. They woke up at seven like they usually did, took baths, and made themselves a quick breakfast. The twins lived alone in a penthouse apartment because their wealthy parents literally couldn't stand to see their faces, once a week a maid from the main house came to check up on them to see if they were still alive. They had been living alone in that apartment since they were five and they had no delusions that one day their parents would wake up and decide that they had actually loved the twins the entire time. No, they knew where they stood in their parents eyes. They were abominations.

Their parents, Takahashi Kaito and Marie Montenegro-Kaito, had been adventurous in their youth, and a one-night stand-in led to the conception of the twins and their forced marriage by the elders in their families. Due to their arranged marriage, they both lost their lovers and grew to resent their unborn children. They both came from wealthy families who didn't care that they were condemning their children and, by extension, their grandchildren to a loveless marriage.

Takahashi Kaito was a tall man for being Japanese; he had pale skin, dark brown, almond shaped eyes, and jet black hair. His family owned one of the oldest and most successful video/movie production companies in Japan, making one of the most desirable bachelors when he was in his prime. He was the only child of his two strict and very old-fashioned parents. Marie Montenegro-Kaito couldn't be more different from her husband. She was a Hispanic woman through and through; her mocha-tan flawless skin, hourglass figure, and large, bright, exotic, emerald-green eyes made her pop out from the crowd. She was the third child and only daughter of a rich Venezuelan family that owned an infamous model agency. Her parents were extremely religious and didn't believe in abortion; when Marie became pregnant with the twins, they forced her to marry Takahashi in hope that it would a good business proposal and that they would fall in love with one another and raise their children together.

When the twins were born six months after their wedding, the relationship between Takahashi and Marie continued to deteriorate, until a close friend of Marie came up with a solution. They would place the twins in a separate apartment once they turned five years of age and wouldn't have contact with them unless one of the grandparents wanted to see them (they wouldn't know about the sleeping arrangements, as they actually cared about their heirs).

The maids taught the twins how to cook, clean, manage their allowances, and basically take care of themselves from a young age. It was always that way, but that didn't mean that they didn't know that it was not at all normal for children to live by themselves. They had been acutely aware of that fact since they were small tykes coming home from kindergarten, waiting for someone at the gate of the school who never came. In the end, they convinced themselves that they didn't need any one else as long as they had each other; they were a father, mother, sister and brother to each other. They were a family and, to them, they were a perfect one.

The day that ended in disaster was, like stated previously, a normal one; they continued their morning routine before they went to school. They were let out at2:30 PM like usual, and they proceeded to rush home to change so that they could go play basketball with the kids that lived in the orphanage three blocks away from the apartment. It was only until after the game that everything went horribly wrong.

The twins were dressed in identical, light gray, long, skinny yoga pants, black converse, and opened light blue sweaters over a large and baggy black (Dylan) or white (Dorian) T-shirt. Their short, wavy golden-brown hair was parted in different directions and stuck to their foreheads after having been playing nonstop since they arrived at the court at three.

Dorian and Dylan were playing their favorite game—pretend they're drunk and make a lot of commotion in the neighborhood to bug the neighbors! They leaned heavily against one another as they "drunkenly" stumbled towards one of the quieter streets; the only sounds that could be heard were their loud laughter as they teased and joked with one another. Dylan had finally managed to convince Dorian to give him a piggy-back ride the rest of the way home when they heard tires squealing behind them.

A sleek, brand new-looking black van blocked them from walking down the rest of the street; the sliding doors of the van were practically ripped open as four armed men from inside of the van stormed outside, surrounding the twins quickly. The man holding the metal bat swung at Dylan a few times as his sister behind him tried to cover his back from the other men. But they were grossly outnumbered; the man with the bat (whom they later affectionately named Demon Eye, or DE for short) whacked Dylan on the back of his head with the heavy metal bat. A loud crack rang through the street; he blacked out instantly. Dorian didn't stand a chance; she could have run and left her brother behind to get help, but she doubted that he would still be there if she left. She stayed and was knocked out and kidnapped along with her 'baby brother' by five minutes.

The men who had kidnapped them did so with the intention to get ransom from the Kaito Corporation, which had scammed them into giving up their small yet successful fishing company three months before. What the Kaito Corporation didn't know was that the "small-time" successful business boss was actually well known in the underground world as the Akuma Avu~enjā, a ruthless and heartless Yakuza Boss known for giving back all of his misfortune by ten-fold to his enemies and victims. Through his form of revenge against the Kaito Corporation, Saito Izuna had been expecting to get the money he had ransomed through the form of the twins and more for having the Corp's only heirs; what he didn't expect was for Takahashi Kaito and Marie Montenegro-Kaito to not give a damn for their children and to practically leave them to their fates at the hands of the Yakuza. (Not that the parents had even noticed their disappearance until three months had passed when the twins teachers' had had enough of Dylan and Dorian "skipping" class and called them up.)

In the end Saito decided to just keep the twins until their parents decided to give a damn, so when he received a note from Takahashi Kaito and Marie Montenegro-Kaito six months after Dylan and Dorian were kidnapped stating to "keep the stupid little spawns that had ruined their lives by being conceived, and to make sure that they suffered," he was beyond infuriated. While he felt bad for the twins who had been abandoned by their extremely happy parents, he still needed to get his money back from the Kaito Corporation. He led the police on a wild goose chase after "accidentally" letting it slip that he had the two being held captive. Takahashi Kaito and Marie Montenegro-Kaito played the hysterical, loving, and concerned parents' role well as the news of the twins' capture went global.

That had happened almost a year ago. The almost-15-year-old Dorian Kaito lay on the thin mattress, staring into her 'baby brothers' eyes as she felt her uneven and painful breaths begin to come to an end. Dylan, I'm coming, she thought absentmindedly and briefly as she exhaled shakily one more time before joining her brother in death.

Or so she believed shewould, because fate had other plans for her.

Preview:

"What do you mean, I get a second chance?" Dorian whispered as she stared at the translucent figure in front of her.

"Exactly that, child. You and your brother both deserve to live your lives out fully," the unearthly being softly replied to her.

"Brother?" Dorian parroted absentmindedly before the creatures words seemed to make a connection in her tired mind.

"Dylan?!" she exclaimed, looking at Fate's eyes. "Dylan, where is he? Is he here too? Please tell me where my brother is!"

Author's Note:

This is my first FanFic, and you can see that there are definitely some differences in my writing style compared to that of my younger sister, Nana-Chin.

Just so you know, this is going to be an Ace/OC pairing because I absolutely adore Ace and can't believe that he didn't end up with someone before he… *chokes up*…died.

Anyway tell me what you think (good/bad/justplaindepressing); you know the works.

I'd like to give special credit to my beta Erin Hanyu Lynch (isn't she a doll whenever I get a little carried away she brings me back to earth)

FAV/FOLLOW/REVIEW

Mara-Chan (o l l o)