Standard disclaimers apply.

+Desert Descant+

"The sea creeps to pillage,

She leaps on her prey;

A child of the village,

Was murdered today."

+Sea Lullaby, Elinor Wylie

Malik ran a hand through his pale blond hair. He knew he was sweating, which he found positively disgusting. But lifting boxes and moving furniture for three hours would do that to oneself.

Life was a downhill slope. When he was 10, his father had begun to abuse him viciously. The abuse continued until the age of 15, when his father died in a drunk driving accident. Isis, who had already moved out of the house, took him to live with her. He lived happily for two years, thinking that life was finally going uphill for him, until his sister Isis was found dead in an alleyway. He got not one penny from her; all of her money had gone to a greedy man she was engaged to.

He didn't even want to think about Rishid. Just the name made his head pound and his blood boil. Rishid had known about the abuse, and he had done nothing to stop it. He moved out after getting engaged to some whore, and then proceeded to forget completely about him. The last he had heard about him was that he was living comfortably in the country, newlywed. Malik hadn't even received an invitation to their wedding. In fact, he hadn't even showed up at Isis' funeral.

Now, at seventeen, he was working ten hours a day trying to pay off his bills and the funeral costs. He had long since dropped out of high school, unable to work enough hours while in school to support himself.

A sudden, rough push to the side brought Malik out of his thoughts. He regained his balance and glared at his muscular coworker. Most of his coworkers were literal mountains of muscles, completely opposite to Malik, who was dangerously thin.

After finally coming back to reality, the blond-haired boy noticed that there was nothing left to move. A rough shout from the depths of the house—possibly the attic—signaled that someone else needed help. He made his way up the rickety stairs and into the adjacent hallway. In the hallway, there was a small ladder leading up to the attic.

"Malik!" There came a voice from the attic, somewhat distance. Carefully, Malik made his way up the ladder. The voice called again—just as distant—but when Malik finally poked his head into the attic no one was there.

"Huh," He said. "That's odd…"

He brought the rest of himself into the attic, looking around. The same person called his name again, and it seemed to be coming from a part of the attic that was blocked off by a wall of boxes and huge shelving units. He moved into the enclosed space, looking around again. There was some shuffling, but other than that, no one seemed to be here either.

'Okay…' Malik thought, getting a bit creeped out. He looked around him; everywhere, there laid papers. Even under his feet as he went into the area further, crunching together. Some of the paper was rather old. In the corner, there lay a tall mirror, with cracked gold trimming. He bent down, picking up a random piece of paper.

There was some strange eye on the paper. Notes seemed to be written on the page, but they were in some foreign writing. He sucked in a breath as he finally realized what the eye was. "Eye of Horus!" He murmured.

Then, there, a loud rustling and two crunches. Suddenly he was shoved up against the wall, and a hand slapped something sticky covered his mouth.. The other hand grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head. He found that even when the mystery person removed his hand, he could not move his lips.

His vision came back into focus just in time to see the face of one of his coworkers bend down to look at him. The hand that previously silenced him snaked up his shirt and began caressing skin.

"Let go!" He attempted to scream, but it came out as a muffled cry. He recognized the man that loomed over him as one of the older, and more drunk, members of the moving crew. As the hand began to move over his chest under the thin fabric of his lavender belly shirt, he mustered all his strength and began to kick at his captor. The person above him laughed.

The captive boy suddenly let out another cry as the hand moved to cruelly pinch at one of his nipples. The hand slid down to the hem of his khakis.

'Oh my god,' he thought, panicked. 'This isn't happening. This can't be happening. I-I…' and his thoughts trailed off into an incoherent, garbled mess. Malik began to tremble fiercely as the button of his khakis was undone. He actually felt a tear slide down his cheek.

A gust of anger ran through his mind, suddenly. He couldn't remember the last time he had cried—not even at Isis' funeral. Now, some piece of filth was making shed a tear like…like some kind of baby. Gathering what little scraps of energy he had left, he kneed the man in his groin.

The man fell to the ground with nothing more than a choked scream. His head fell back as he lay unconscious due to the sheer amount of pain that overloaded his system. The blonde spat on his face.

Now, Malik himself had known he was a beautiful individual. In fact, his beauty had gotten himself in trouble many a time. Nothing as serious as this, though—only a persistent woman or—on occasion—man. Still, Malik couldn't figure out what was so alluring about the combination of blond hair and dark honey skin. Perhaps it was because of his eyes—he had yet to meet someone with the same type of eyes as his light violet ones. That made him proud, to a degree.

He heard the man groan, and he knew that he had to get out of there before the man awoke in a blind rage. The struggle had brought him closer to that old mirror propped into the corner. As he turned sharply on his heel, the papers under him shifted unnaturally. It caused him to spin around, so he was now facing the mirror, before falling backwards. His foot hit the mirror.

There was a dull thud when he hit the floor, but there was no thud when his foot met the mirror. There was a strange, icy sensation, but no hurt. He dared to look down—and—and…

He barely repressed a scream. His foot was no longer there, the cream colored material of his pants cutting off where the mirror began. Trying to get a grip on his emotions, he wiggled his foot. The surface of the mirror rippled as if someone had thrown a stone into a pond. Now more curious than terrified, he pulled out his foot, got up, and walked over to the mirror.

It began with small touches, seeing how big he could make the ripples, then sticking whole limbs into the mirror. Finally, he decided that he could take a chance and stick his head in.

"How weird," Malik whispered, sticking his head through the mirror. On the other side, there was only sky surrounding him. He looked down and gulped. What looked to be miles down were land masses of cream. He leaned in father, the tops of his shoulders appearing through the other side. This was his undoing.

The papers shifted again, and he lost his balance, falling forward. He tumbled into the air, "landing" on his back. He could only watch as the mirror seemed to merge with the sky and became invisible. A few papers fluttered in along with him.

Strangely, though, it didn't look or feel as if he was falling at a fast rate. The pace at which he fell was almost lazy, like a feather.

He let out a sigh of relief. Crossing his arms behind his head, he decided to let fate take control of the helm. Wherever he was falling too, it would surely be a better place than his home.

+AN+

Written to: Final Fantasy X Vocal Collection – All The Way

This is my first fic in a while. I guess this chapter came out okay, but I thought it was kind of monotonous. The whole point of this chapter was, basically, to explain Malik's back story and get him to fall through the mirror. I apologize for my bad writing (I'm really not that good), and any errors I might have overlooked. This is my first ever attempt at writing Malik, and I'm very concerned about keeping him in character.

This was really done on a whim. I'm not sure where this is going, or how regular updates will be, so bear with me. I'm not even sure about the plot or the pairings. Sigh I'm such an irresponsible writer (If I can even be given the honor of being called a "writer").

Got any tips? Any suggestions for future revisions? Requests? Anything important you think I missed? Review or email me at Rukkashin hotmail . com(remove spaces).

Many a thanks to Em-chan, for your betareading and encouragement.