Ventus awoke in the forest, laying on his back in the middle of a crowd of trees. He looked around, his entire body feeling sore. He then felt that it was safe to start moving so he sat up, groaning as he forced his aching body to move.

'Where am I?' He thought to himself. He remembered vaguely that Xehanort had carried him back to the car. Maybe that was a dream. He sighed, getting up onto his feet and looking around, dusting off some dirt that had gotten onto his shorts. Which way did he need to go? The forest was almost unrecognisable as though it had changed overnight. He started walking slowly, thinking that if he walked around aimlessly, he would just end up at the entrance of the forest.

He walked around for a short while, the wind howling in his ears as though it were trying to talk to him. He ignored it, continuing to walk through the dark forest only illuminated by the small amount of light that had made it past the leaves that covered the sky above him. After what seemed like an eternity of walking to the small child, he felt the wind start to become stronger, the whistling of the air starting to sound more like a voice. He stopped walking, trying to listen in on the voice in the midst of the various sounds of te forest; The rustling of the leaves as they danced in the wind, the soft whistling of the wind as it rushed past him. He sighed, dissatisfied with the silence that his ears were met with. There was no voice.

He began to walk again, shivering as the cold wind hit his skin. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, wishing that he would've at least a brought a jacket. After walking through the trees, the wind started picking up the pace again, this time faster than before. The leaves rustled once more as they were attacked by an invisible enemy and the whistling noise was back and louder than before. Another noticeable difference was the the voice was louder, it's words were coherent.

"Ven...! Ven...!" It called out. The boy stopped walking, his heart leaping as he heard his name in the midst of the other various noises. He listened to it closely, it would call out his name every few seconds, as though somebody were looking for him. He listened closely, the voice was deep and familiar. His eyes widened as he realised who it was.

"Daddy?" He gasped, his words mixing in with the whistling of the wind.

"Ven!" The voice echoed out once more.

"Daddy!" Ven called out as loud as his throat would let him, a slight itch in his throat had formed as he made sure his voice reached the ears of the man he assumed was his father. His real father. The boy broke out into a sprint, running towards the source of the voice without paying much attention to his surroundings. Occasionally, part of a tree's protruding roots would hit his knees, the boy reacting with a loud grunt, stumbling a little before regaining himself once more.

"Ven!"

The voice seemed closer this time, tears starting to form in his eyes. Maybe this was his chance at truly being free. Maybe his chance at finally escaping the hell he had been living with for an entire year. He ran faster and faster, each step he took brought him closer and closer to his father until he reached a familiar clearing.

It was circular meadow lined with trees around it. He looked around before spotting a man with brown hair in the middle of this small clearing, his back turned to the boy.

"Ven!" He called out again, except this time his voice was as clear as the sky on a cloudless day. The boy stood at one of te many entrances to this meadow, panting loudly as he tried to catch his breath. The man called his name out again, before the boy called out to the man.

"Daddy!" He called out in a raspy voice as he stood there, still trying to calm his breath and slow his heart rate to a reasonable level. Despite this, the man didn't respond or even turn around. He just kept calling out for him as though he never heard him.

"Daddy?" The six year old started to walk slowly towards the man, his heart leaping once more but not from happiness this time. This time it was out of fear and confusion. He slowly approached the man, making sure not to make much noise as a way to not startle the man. His voice still rang out in his ears, still saying the same thing over and over again in the same tone of voice as he had said everything else in. The boy stood behind the man for a short while before tugging on his shirt in an attempt to get his attention.

"Daddy, I'm right here!" The voice stopped, but the man hadn't turned around. "D-Daddy?" Soon, the man's head snapped around to look down at Ven, his body not following suite. A loud cracking noise that one could only assume was the man's neck had startled Ven, the boy looking up with his eyes wide open, letting out a shriek as his gaze finally rested on the man. His face was distorted and almost demon-like, his eyes a glowing yellow. The face seemed to only vaguely belong to a human. The forest started to cave in on itself, Ven's surroundings starting to fade to black as the man hissed loudly at the boy before dissolving into a swarm of Shadow Heartless, as Xehanort called them.

The boy stepped back, screaming out loudly as the swarm started to slowly creep up his body, their claws scratching at his arms and legs as the latched onto him. As the monsters held onto him, he could hear a distorted voice whisper loudly.

"Why did you run away? Why did you leave me? Don't you love your father anymore?" The voice would keep repeating those words over and over again. The boy letting out a final scream before he was fully engulfed in the shadows.

Ven woke up with a jolt, quickly sitting up as his eyes opened wide. He was quickly met with a throbbing pain on his face, clutching his hands around it before laying back down. His heart was thumping in his chest, beating at an inhumanly fast pace which made it almost impossible to breath. He gasped for air, looking up at the ceiling as he tried to calm himself down.

Soon, his heart slowed down, making it possible to breath normally once more. He sat up once again but slowly this time, taking some time to gather his thoughts.

'It was just a dream...' He told himself in his mind. His mind was still racing as the images of the dream- no nightmare- had been burned into his memory. After a while, the memory had started to fade away into his subconscious, his mind deterred from the events of the nightmare and back to the events that had taken place lasts night. Ven's eyes widened as he remembered what had happened, and soon he had jumped out of his bed and swung his door open, not bothering to close it as he made his way to the bathroom.

He closed the door behind him even though he knew no one else was in the house. He took a stool and stood in front of the mirror to observe the results of last night's training. The first thing he noticed was the big, ugly scar that had already started to form on his left cheek. It seemed that the wound had been cleaned up but not covered. He looked down at his clothes. Another 'result' that he noticed was that his clothes, or at least the part that covered his left shoulder was drenched in his almost dried up blood. He sighed, lifting his shirt over his head and taking it off, throwing it into the basket next to him. He then opened the door to the medicine cabinet to find a bandaid big enough to cover the wound. He took a packet out, taking out a large square bandaid.

'This should do...' He thought to himself, sticking it onto his face and looking back into the mirror. He gave a small nod as it had covered the injury and hopped off the stool. Not bothering to change out of any other part of his clothes, he got a new shirt and put it on, making his way to the living room. It's not like he had many other clothes anyways.

From the living room, he could see the clock that sat in the kitchen. It was 12am. It came to his attention that he had missed both dinner and breakfast. However, despite this he didn't feel hungry so he decided to take the keys and go outside again to distract himself. With this newfound routine, he knew he could get at least a few hours of normalcy. He walked up to the door more confidently this time, unlocking the door and stepping out.

He ran up to the fence, checking to see if that girl and her friend were still next door. He looked up at the fence, waiting for the familiar faces to appear. 'Terra and Aqua.' He reminded himself, feeling a small sense of relief that despite the horrors of the night, their names still remained fresh in his mind. His train of thought was interrupted when the blue haired girl from yesterday appeared in front of him, her face peering over the top of the fence.

"I was hoping I would find you here!" She exclaimed, not bothering with a greeting. Ven smiled.

"Me too!" He called back to her. Despite being practically in front of her, they were still yelling at each other.

"Why are we yelling?!" It seems that she noticed too. Both the children broke out into a giggle which lasted for a short time before they decided the joke was over and done with. They both stood in silence for a while. He then noticed that something was very different.

"Where's Terra?" Ven finally said.

"Oh!" Aqua exclaimed, as though she had just remembered something. "He's at training today!"

"Training...?"

"Yep! He's learning how to be a Keyblade wielder.' She smiled, obviously looking very proud of her friend. Ven, however, had a very different reaction. His face fell, looking at his friend in shock.

"A... Keyblade wielder...?" He asked slowly, making sure that he had heard that sentence right.

"Y'know... A person who wields the Keyblade? They protect us from the Heartless that appear at night."

Ven still looked at Aqua with concern, not entirely sure what to say. The girl laughed lightly. "Relax, Ven! Its not like he's actually fighting the Heartless, he's just training!" This only left Ven even more confused. Wasn't that how you were supposed to train, by fighting Heartless? If Terra didn't have to fight them, then why did he? The conversation seemed to have fallen flat on its face again before Aqua picked it up again.

"I'm really proud of Terra, you know? He's doing something to help our town... And not just this one, all the others too! Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, Traverse Town... I wouldn't even have the courage to fight those things let alone hold the Keyblade..." She stared sadly for a bit, her expression suddenly changed as she realised that she had just said that out loud. "But, I really am happy for him!"

Ven stared for a bit, before he started to talk without much thought, as though his body was making him do this automatically. "I'm sure that you'd be great at it! Even if you don't feel like you'd be brave enough, eventually I think your heart will know when it's ready."

"Hey Ven?"

"Yes...?" He started to feel nervous, wondering if what he said had offended her.

"Could you stand on something so I can talk to you properly?" This whole time Aqua had been standing on a bunch of crates that had collected in her backyard over the years she had been living in that house, the boy having to look up from his spot in the ground. The girl kept a straight face, but it was almost obvious that she was trying to hold back a smile.

Ven nodded, running around his backyard for a bit before finally finding a chair, dragging it back to where Aqua was and standing on it, almost level with her. It was then that she leaned over to Ven and gave him a big bear hug, something that the younger boy hadn't experienced in a while. After a short silence, she then whispered "Thank you Ven... I needed that."

Ven stood there, his heart beating fast as he wasn't sure if it would be okay to reciprocate the hug. After a very short while, he reached and arm around her, letting it float close to her back awkwardly before she pulled away, smiling widely.

"Hey, I got an idea! Why don't you come over to my place! It'd be nice to be able to talk to you properly!"

"No!" He almost instantly replied, catching himself afterwards. He signed, lowering his tone of voice. "I can't..."

"Why not?" She asked him slowly, slightly taken aback when her friend had raised his voice at her.

"Because my... dad won't allow me..."

"Have you tried asking him?"

"No, but-"

"Then why don't you? I'll come with you if you want!" She extended her hand to him, her smile had returned as she said those words.

"He's not home!" Ven yelled out quickly, obviously very flustered. There was a short silence. Normally, Ven would be lying but it was the truth... for the most part. It wasn't entirely the reason why he refused to ask such a simple question. "Oh..." Aqua said unenthusiastically, before her smile returned once more. "That's fine! You can just ask him later then!"

They talked for a while longer before Aqua's mum called her for lunch, the both of them sharing their goodbyes before they both jumped off what they were standing on and went back into their houses.

Ven ate much later than usual, still not hungry after his conversation with Aqua. He decided to watch TV again, as there wasn't much else to do. However, knowing that he had the freedom to go in and out as he pleased, he didn't feel so bored when he watched the TV again.

Over the course of the next few hours, the same routine had taken place; Xehanort would come home, pick Ven up, drive him to the forest, walked to the clearing, trained him, drive home, eat then sleep.

A/N: Thanks so much to everyone in the reviews for their kind words! I didn't expect this story to get such good reception so I'm really happy!

To explain the AU a little more, or at least better than how I did in the last chapter, basically in this universe, twins another kind of multiple conceptions are extremely rare and are mostly localised in one specific region (spanning across only the 4 towns/cities mentioned here) after an experiment gone wrong. The second born twin is always born without a heart, and physical features that seperate those from who have hearts are that they have a birthmark in the shape of the Proof of Nonexistence (Nobody Symbol) and their names have to be an anagram of their older sibling's name with an X in it. Only 13 Nobodies have been born and they have all formed Orginisation XIII.

I might write this as a story here but ~who knows~