Disclaimer: I own no part of The Corpse Bride. This fanfiction is for entertainment purposes only.

Chapter One: What Dreams May Come

Everything was darkness. A never-ending black that seemed to permeate everything more heavily than the very darkest night. No light of any kind illuminated this void of nothing.

An old, gnarled and half-dead tree came into being, fading in like mist retreating. It was only barely visible through the darkness.

A girl stood in front of this tree, hidden by both the unending darkness as well as the shadows of the trees limbs and trunk. Only her silhouette was visible, a ghostly outline of grey against the black of the tree trunk. Only her voice carried across to him, unimpeded by the lack of light.

Singing.

It was a song of love, of happiness, and happily ever-afters. But it was sung so sadly as to be bittersweet, sticking in your throat with such loveliness that you wanted to cry at the hurt portrayed in every note of the tune.

Evidently the song was as hard and painful to sing as it was to listen to, as the singer eventually collapsed to her knees and wept bitter, hard tears with deep sobs that seemed to be torn from the very depths of her soul.

He ached to reach for her, hold her and comfort away all her tears. Wipe away the wetness from her eyes and kiss her until her lips curved up into a smile that he somehow knew would be breathtaking.

But in this void of nothingness, he himself was nothing, possessing neither arms, nor body. Consisting only of thought and emotion.

All he could do was listen as the mostly unseen girl sobbed brokenly.

She eventually quieted slightly, bringing her right hand up in front of her and pulling down her glove, revealing a strawberry colored birthmark in the shape of a heart located directly on her palm.

This was the only thing of light in this entire world. The only thing he could see clearly.

But it was covered back up quickly as the sobs continued, renewed in some way from the sight of the mark.

She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed heart-brokenly into them.

Then, the world faded back into nothingness.

… … …

And Victor woke up, sweat pouring down his thin frame as he reached out his hand blindly to stop the girl from leaving. To draw her into his chest and comfort her in any way he could.

But there was nothing there. Only his bare little room.

He slowly drew his hand back to him, idly turning it over to reveal to himself his left palm.

Which had a strawberry colored birthmark in the shape of a heart.

His parents hated this mark.

Ungentlemanly, they called it.

Such a birthmark on a lady would be endearing, on a gentleman it was a cause of embarrassment. They had insisted he wear gloves to cover such a spot of shame for as long as he could remember.

But he liked it.

Somehow, it felt like a connection to the girl in his dreams, who shared a similar mark on a similar place.

He couldn't help but feel there was some reason he and she shared such a mark.

Even if she was just a dream…

A/N: This will be a full story, and I'm going to try to write it as fast as I can before I lose interest. I already have the entire story mapped out so I just have to write the chapters.

The scenes in this story that are identical to the movie will not be fully written for conservation of time. Please forgive the time jumps. I will provide small synopsis of the skipped scenes so people who have not seen the movie will not be confused, but they will be lacking a significant amount of details. As this story is told entirely from Victor's point of view, scenes he was not present to witness, such as Victoria's escape attempt and wedding, will be excluded.