A/N: I received an interesting review from FearMeRawr, who thought that the mysterious man was the world's favorite Brat Prince: Lestat de Lioncourt. Alas, it is not him (after all we can't use Anne Rice characters), though I do admit I accidentally gave the man some of Lestat's physical features. -_- However, Lestat's hair only curls at the end, and this man's hair is entirely wavy. Lestat's hair is pure blond, this man's is strawberry-blond. Anyway, I suppose this happened because the Vampire Chronicles was the only vampire series I actually enjoyed, and my ideas of vampirism used in BMTL, COD, and this story come from those books.


Chapter 3: My Darkest Skies

I woke up the next morning and Lenushka was gone. I asked my father where she was. He said he had sent her to a convent, where she would repent and forevermore live in purity. I was crushed, as one would expect, and my life felt hollow without her. I only realized after she was gone how much I depended on my sister. How much time I spent with her.

Any of the normal activities we did together did not feel the same without dear Lenushka. Snow was just not beautiful. Not to mention that I was alone with my father.

There seemed to be a great chasm of space between my father and I. Conversations were not natural, interactions were stiff. We seemed not a family, but more so two people forced to live together. Most of the time my father seemed indifferent towards me, which led me to leave the house quite often. (But I'll get into that later.) However, when Elizaveta visited it was not so. Whenever I had come back from whatever tantrum she had forced me to throw, I saw so much primitive rage in Damyen's expression. I could tell in those moments he would be tempted to strangle me, do anything to get his dead wife out. He never touched me once though, I think he did that because I looked so much like Elizaveta, he couldn't bear to touch me.

But I digress. That's not really the point of this chapter. What is the point is that because of the indifference, my life grew to be unruly.

By the day after Lenushka had gone I was restless and unsure of what to do. I was even unsure of what my purpose in life was, what had God put me on this Earth for. This was all because of Lenushka's absence. My older sister had always been the one to guide me, and now that she was gone I didn't quite know what to do.

Spontaneously, out of boredom and impulse, I asked my father Damyen if I could go into town. This was an unusual request for me. I had never been to town without my father Damyen or my sister Lenushka. However, it was more so surprising to me when Damyen only grunt an affirmative response. I had expected him to say no, so it felt very awkward to be leaving the house by myself. I trudged through the slush and snow hollowly, not knowing what to do with myself. I went in closer to the city, though not by much.

It was there in my wanderings I came upon a small, almost shabby looking schoolhouse. I concluded immediately that the school was for the middle class, for only the richest could go to the nicer schools.

I stood there for a while, staring at the building. When I started to lose the feeling in my feet, the front and only doors burst open and about twenty or so boys clamored out. They varied in age, from those a little younger then me to those a few years older then me. They were shoving and jostling and yelling, holding their books by the ends of the leather straps that held them together.

I stared, transfixed. I thought, this would make a lovely painting.

Then I blinked, because of the snow that had hit me square in the forehead and fell limply to the ground. A boy pushed himself through the crowd, clearly the thrower, glaring at my lack of response.

"Hey!" He called sharply, stomping over to me. I probably looked like a fool to him, mutely gawking in my worn and faded clothing. "Who are you?"

"Mihael Keehl." I responded immediately.

"The tailor's son?" He asked.

"Yes."

The boy's gaze sharpened, as if there were something wrong with the answer I had given him. "Why are you here?" He inquired eventually.

I shrugged sheepishly, and then changed the topic of the conversation. "What is school like?"

The boy seemed to scrutinize me, as if my question was preposterous or unbelievable. "You don't go to school, not even somewhere else?"

Seeing as he was more educated then me, I restrained from pointing out that it was rude to answer a question with another question. Instead I shook my head slightly. "No, I do not."

The boy sneered. By that time I had decided that the boy found my situation disgusting and despicable, but not pitiable.

"Illiterate bastard." The boy spat. He turned to leave, and I saw his knee rise as if to prepare to kick me, but he did nothing and was gone.

I spent the rest of the afternoon brooding. Stalking the streets glumly. The sight of those boys coming out of the schoolhouse unlocked something in my mind. I suddenly realized what education could do for me, the sheer benefits of simple literacy.

When returned home at sunset, slamming the brittle door as I came into the house numb and wet, the first thing I did was demand that my father place me in a school at once. My father Damyen's reaction was laughter. Then he turned serious, and said that we couldn't spare the money. Besides, he told me, what good does literacy and philosophies do a tailor?

I shut my mouth after Damyen had denied my wish. I was stubborn and angry, not willing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me whine and beg. But because of that decision to remain silent, my mind had given up on the idea of an education for me. I spent as much time as I could out of the house, away from Damyen. I found other boys like me. Boys who were poor, uneducated, and unhappy.

We formed a gang of sorts, these vagabond children and I. We spent time together, cursing our families, cursing the government, cursing anything we wanted. Because we were our own sort of family, the boys accepted my attacks from Elizaveta. They held me down when her rage consumed me, and overall their understanding comforted me.

The gang stayed together at least until I was thirteen. After that I cannot be sure if they disbanded or not.

On the night before my thirteenth birthday, December 12th, 1605, a couple boys and I were in the city, going about our business. Twilight was prime time for pick-pocketing, and we needed money.

It was just after my friends and I split up. I was about to approach my first victim, when I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I sprang around, surprised and ashamed that I had been caught.

It nearly gave me a heart attack to see who it was. Standing before me was the blond man from when I was seven, dressed as splendidly as before, smiling again in that soft, enigmatic way.

"I guess I was wrong." He said, his eyes slowly taking in my image.

"About what?" I snarled, taking a step back from the man. I knew I should have acted more thankful towards him, he had save my life after all, but in my present adolescent mind frame I didn't think of that.

"When I had encountered you just over six years ago, I thought you were so pure. All your thoughts were happy, and you expected nothing more from the world then what it had given you. You were greedless and sinless. I had though, because of that, that you would follow in your father's footsteps, and eventually surpass him and become the greatest of all tailors." His voice tapered off, as if the solidity of his fantasy was fading.

"My father," I responded, struggling for my tone to remain civil with the man. "Is a sad, sad man who be prayed for, not admired."

The man frowned, mere slight downwards curve of his lips. "And you, Mihael, have resorted to petty crime, as opposed to honest work. Some would find you just as sad."

"Who are you?" I demanded. It infuriated me that this man talked as if we were familiar with each other, and that he seemed to read me like a book. And him? Well, I could read that man as well as I could read a book at the time.

"I apologize that I could not give your gift in person, Mihael. I do not have it with me. However, your birthday is tomorrow, not today, and I shall see to it that you receive it when you wake up in the morning."

I stood there, bewildered. Utterly shocked that he had shirked my question. And of course, utterly shocked that he somehow knew my birthday, and that he had prepared a gift for me.

I tried to ask the man's identity once again, but the man disappeared in the blink of an eye. Just like before, he had left me hanging, so many questions in my head.

During the time before I had to meet up with the gang again, I wandered around Kargopol aimlessly. After the man had said that people would find me sad, I didn't have the will to pick pockets. The man's words echoed in my head like they were some sort of truth that needed to be listened to.

I made up some silly excuse as to why I showed up with no money to the gang. They didn't mind, they were forgiving. When I went home, I shut myself in my room without greeting my father Damyen. I was angry. Angry at my father for being a cruel man. Angry at that man who seemed to know me so well. Angry at God for the position He had put me in.

The next morning, I grudgingly ate breakfast at the table with my father Damyen. He did not acknowledge my birthday. His head may not have been clear enough to do so. He did, however, acknowledge a piece of mail that had been slipped under our door in the night. My father handed it to me, clearly wary of its sender.

It was rich paper, thick and creamy with lace trimming. The envelope read what I knew to be my name, in an elegant and deep script. I ripped it open a little more forcefully then needed, and took out a sheet of paper. It was written in that same flowing hand, but I could not read it. I knew the words were written beautifully, but to me they mean as much as a madman's scribbles would.

"Take it to a reader." My father said gruffly, stuffing the last of our bread in his mouth.

For once I obeyed my father, and I soon ran to the middle of Kargopol. Before I left though, I stopped in my father's room when he wasn't looking and rifled through one of my mother's drawers. Damyen had never the heart to throw out his wife's clothes. There, tucked hidden in a corner, was a thin silver ring with the tiniest of diamonds. It may have seemed like a cheep engagement ring, but to my father Damyen it must have cost a fortune. I took it. Yes, I know it was unethical of me to steal my deceased mother's ring, but I didn't want to spend time pick-pocketing, and besides. Elizaveta had given me enough pain, so this was sort of an act of revenge, and it didn't cost that much money to pay a reader. I could use the extra change for something else later on.

When I found a reader, he took the ring upfront and gave me the change.

"Dearest Mihael," the reader began. I cringed at the way the mysterious man referred to me as dearest, but the reader did not notice and continued.

"I am quite aware of your situation at home. I won't delve greatly into the detail, but I know that you are unhappy in Kargopol. I also know that you long for an education, and that you want to see more of the world.

"I have great faith in you, Mihael. My birthday gift to you is a place at my school in Moscow. Because I personally selected you to attend, your place there will be free of charge, and your father will pay nothing. You will live in the academy dormitories along with the other students. Weekdays will be spent studying everything from Roman literature to fencing. Weekends you will be free to roam Moscow as it pleases you.

"Mihael, please don't say this bluntly to your father, but you will be much better off at my academy then here in Kargopol. On top of the finest education, you will be clothed, housed, and fed better then ever before. The dormitory you will live in is worth more then your entire house.

"Please, Mihael, consider my offer. You will benefit greatly from it. I will know when you have made your decision, and I will come seek you out at that point.

"Choose carefully. I have placed much faith in you.

"Your, Afanasiy Allilyeva"

When the reader had stopped reciting, he stared up at me, gaunt and wide eyed. Though confused by his expression, I thanked the man and was off. I raced home, the words Afanasiy Allilyeva had written to me echoing in my head, ever present. I could hear his voice perfectly, the flowing casualty but precision of his voice having somehow been engraved in my head.

My feet raced as fast as my thoughts, and before I knew it I found myself flying through the door of my house. "Father!" I called out to where ever he was in the house, or in his joint workshop. "The letter says I have been personally invited to attend the academy of Afanasiy Allilyeva, in Moscow."

There was a bang, and much clatter, as if something had been dropped and let fallen on the ground. My father Damyen barged in to the parlor, a ragged and wild look about him. "You, my ungrateful son, personally invited to the greatest boys' school in all of Russia? Are you sure you didn't pay someone who tricked you?"

"Erm, no father." I shifted my weight between my feet nervously. My father had a rather intimidating aura when he demanded something of someone.

"And why do I have reason to believe you?" My father bellowed. "You could be making up stories, dreaming again."

I was very nervous, but then I though of Afanasiy Allilyeva, and suddenly I was filled with strength. I looked at my father straight in the eye and spoke with perfect clarity. "He was in Kargopol last evening. We spoke briefly. He must have-"

"Lies!" My father spat. "After a brief conversation, how would he know your name? How would he know where you live? How would he-"

I tore my gaze away from my father's burning eyes and went to my room, slamming the door behind me. I blocked out the noise of Damyen's voice, still rambling on about my lying and ungratefulness and who what. I now believed in Afanasiy Allilyeva more then my own father. He had found me twice before, and more then ever I now wanted to see him.

I wanted Afanasiy Allilyeva to take me away, to get me out of this trap, the trap of my family and this accursed town. As my mind raced, imagining the grandness of his academy, I wildly thought that maybe he could take Elizaveta away, too. He had done it once before, though temporarily, but couldn't he do it again?

I dreamed like that for hours. My mind created fabulous dreams of Afanasiy Allilyeva and the school he would take me to. The possibilities were endless, but all I needed was for him to show up…


A/N: This is kind of random, but has anyone ever though that Mello and Near would make good Orginization XIII members?