All right; it's finally time for plot! Yay! XD I took long enough on this, huh? Enjoy chapter two, everybody!

Ch. 2: Luck

You want to know something else annoying about not being able to see?

Running into things.

Well, duh. That's a given, right? You're bound to run into things when you're blind – even when you've got a guide dog or a long cane or whatever other navigational aide there is. You walk with a cane, you hit something, and you stumble. That's the general order, isn't it? As most of you can and probably do tell, that's really, really irritating.

But worse than running into objects is running into people. Dear God, don't even get me started on them. You run into somebody, and they expect you – yeah, you; the blind one – to apologize. Seriously, what kind of bullshit is that? That's not how things are supposed to work! Hello, idiot; you're the one with working eyes! You watch where you're going, damn it. Why do all these people have to be such asses when it's their fault, not mine?

…

Okay, fine. I'll admit; not everybody is like that. But I swear – about fifty percent of the time, I run into someone who blames me for something that wasn't even my fault. That makes absolutely no sense.I'm seriously weeping for the sake of humanity here. Yeesh.

So where was I before this?

"Vanitas, my boy! Are you up yet?"

I started. Oh, right; I was in bed. Lying in bed cursing my life was one of my few hobbies. Hey, everybody needs one, don't they? Look, when you're blind your options are pretty limited!

My favorite by far is listening to music (though I can't do that very often; when you can't see you tend to have to go by ear). It just sort of disconnects me from life and reality, and it helps me forget – forget about my life, my problems, everything – and just lose myself in the world of music. At times like that, I'm glad I wasn't born deaf, too.

But I digress.

"I don't know," I called back, putting my hands behind my head. "I still don't see the sun, Gramps. Should I be awake now?"

That's what I call my grandpa. Everyone else just calls him by his real name – Xehanort. Stick a title in front of it like mister or sir every now and again, and you have him.

He's been taking care of me ever since my parents died in a car accident when I was nine (though honestly I'd sort of seen that coming; no pun intended). I have an uncle too, but I don't know too much about him since I never met the guy. Gramps said he was always too busy with work or something like that. What was he, anyway; the CEO of Departure, Inc.? There was no way he could be that busy otherwise.

"Now, now; what have I told you about that attitude, Vanitas?" I heard him admonish me from right next to my bed. "Being bitter won't make anything better."

I flinched involuntarily. For an old guy, he sure could move like a freaking ninja. I didn't even hear him open the door to my room. He did this to me all the time and I was still caught by surprise. Ugh. Having your own grandpa sneaking up on you and catching you off-guard like that is pretty embarrassing.

But I'm going to leave myself a shred of dignity and just think that I forgot to close the door to my room last night.

"Whatever," I said as I kicked off the heavy bed covers and sat up. I glared in the general direction of his voice. "Why do you want me up right now, anyway? It's a Saturday. We do jack shit on weekends."

"Language!" he chided sternly. "What have I told you about cleaning that dirty mouth of yours?"

"A lot, I think. Don't remember too well." I stretched and then propped my arm up on one knee. "Can't do too much about it, Gramps; I think it's permanent residue. So anyway, why did you want me up again?"

"Ah, yes!" He brightened up instantly. Talk about eccentric. "It's a lovely day out, my boy. You can't stay cooped up inside on such a beautiful day!"

I groaned inwardly. He always got like this on sunny days. He knew full well that I couldn't see this so-called "beautiful day", but he always insisted on dragging me outdoors so that my skin could get some much-needed Vitamin D. He always tells me that it's "whiter than fine-powdered milk" or something also similarly pale, but unfortunately for him that sort of comparison kind of loses its meaning to a blind person. I don't know how white powdered milk is, so it never really has any impact on me. Why do people always forget that?

But he wasn't lying – it sure felt like a sunny day. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my bare skin through the window that I knew was at my other bedside. Now there was just one more thing I needed confirmed before letting my old man drag me out of this townhome.

"Is it windy today?" I listened carefully for the howling of any sort of wind blowing around the house. I didn't hear anything, but that didn't necessarily mean that there was no breeze.

I don't know; for some reason I've always liked the wind. It at least makes it feel as if I wasn't walking through a perpetually airtight box everywhere I went. A change in the environment in that sensual way was another nice indication, too, that I didn't live in some stagnant space. Change of scenery for you, change of climate for me. Win-win. Kind of.

…Okay, not really; it still sucks. But I have to compensate somehow.

"A wind?" There's a brief two-second pause before he continues with, "Hmm, I can see the trees' branches swaying about. Seems like a light breeze."

A light breeze. That was enough for me. It was all I needed to know – or it would've been, but you don't know my grandpa like I do. He could possibly be lying to me to get me out of the house – he knew I was a sucker for windy days. And believe me; he's done it once before, and by the time I'd realized it I had no way to get back inside. He can be an annoyingly slick bastard in that sense.

"Open the window, Gramps," I said shortly, crossing my arms. "I want proof."

"Hoho, so you've learned from before, eh?" I heard him chuckle. "Seems like that trick won't work on you anymore." His voice was moving to the foot of my bed, from where the window latch could be reached. I heard a sharp metallic click! as he unlatched the window and smoothly slid it open.

Almost immediately I felt the chilly air brushing against my skin. Like he'd said, the breeze felt relatively light, getting stronger in short and sporadic bursts of gusts. Now I knew that it wasn't a fan or something out there trying to trick me (he's done that once, too, though I'd figured it out quickly and managed to stay inside for that day).

That's another thing about being blind – you're never really sure of anything that's been told to you, since you can't see it for yourself. Believing what somewhat says right off the bat like that would take pure faith, and quite unfortunately for me, I don't have any of that.

I automatically leaned in the direction of the wind, almost like a knee-jerk reaction. I breathed in the fresh air to doubly make sure it was authentic, and I proceeded to say with a heavy exhale, "Well, it's like you say all the time. Learn from our past mistakes, right?"

"Of all the times you actually take my advice," he chuckled again in that gravelly voice of his as he moved back to my bedside, "you use it against your old man."

"I'm special like that," I said as I scratched my head and my fingers ran through the porcupine quills that were my hair. "Okay, well; you got me. Where's my cane?"

No sooner had those words left my lips that my grandpa slapped a plastic object into my free hand. I felt with both of my hands, and realized that he'd already extended the cane.

I sighed in defeat and pinched the bridge of my nose as realization hit me like an invisible mallet. This old man, I swear.

"You planned all this, didn't you?" I asked in disbelief as I lowered my hand.

He let out a hearty guffaw at my words. "My, my; nothing escapes you, Vanitas!" He grabbed my arm and practically yanked me off my bed. "Well, there's not much you can do about it now, my boy! Go on, up you get! Let's get you ready!"

I cursed silently. Man, I couldn't believe I had to live like this.

By this point you're probably thinking that the whole "running into people" rant was just my random complaint of the day. It's not. It totally has relevance to what happened, I swear – in that I was standing completely still and someone ran into me.

…

Yeah, I know. Shocker.

Seriously, people can get even more blind when they can see. I'm just amazed at humanity's stupidity sometimes. I really am.

Well, anyway, here's how it went down.

I was just standing on a sidewalk (that's what it felt like, anyway – I could feel the rough concrete through the soles of my sneakers) and minding my own business – just leaning back and letting the light wind ruffle my hair and tickle my exposed skin. I had my long cane out a little ways in front of me so no would obstruct my path if I decided to walk again. I was leaning against a building – probably its window, because I could tell that through my hoodie my back was touching something smooth, cold, and hard – and listening to the random chattering of the passersby.

"You know, I saw my ex at the mall the other day!"

"Oh my God! What did you say?"

"Did he even look at you?"

"I didn't say anything; it was super awkward! He looked so mad…"

A group of girls talking about a boy.

"…I couldn't believe what that boy was wearing. Nose piercings and plugs! You make sure you never dress like that, you hear me?"

"You don't need to tell me that! I don't want to look like some juvenile delinquent, Mom! Geez, who do you take me for, anyway…"

A mother telling her kid to not dress like a weirdo.

I stifled an irritated sigh. It seemed like cruel irony to me that all people ever talk about is what they see. It was unavoidable, obviously – sight is probably the most taken for granted of the five senses – but I felt frustrated anyway. It's tough to describe how empty it feels when you can't attach an image to spoken words, especially since that our brains bring up the image before the word associated with it. It's ridiculous.

My eyes started to sting after a bit, so I blinked a couple times to rewet them. I wiped away the tears that followed with my sleeve. That's another thing with living in the dark – sometimes you forget to blink. Doesn't happen too often, but it happens often enough to annoy me.

My arm had barely left my face when something big slammed into me from somewhere to my left. It had happened so fast that I didn't even have the chance to cry out in shock when my head cracked against the sidewalk. I barely had time to brace myself; I'd toppled over onto the sun-warmed concrete and been pinned there by something…no, someone, though by the time I realized it the person had quickly scrambled off of me and started spouting apologies.

"Oh my God; I'm so sorry!" I could tell right away from the voice that it was a guy, maybe around my age. He sounded winded and frantic, like he'd been running from something that was chasing him and didn't have any time to lose. "I wasn't watching where I was going – that was all me; it was completely my fault, I – a-are you okay?"

I could barely process what he was saying until that last bit. "W-wait just a second," I said in a rattled tone, sitting up and facing in the direction of his voice. "Did you just say –?"

"I'm sorry," the guy repeated fervently. "I didn't mean to, I swear – I was just in a hurry and –"

"No, no; that's not it." My cane was still in my hand by some miracle, so I had little trouble confirming his actual location – it bumped into what I assumed to be one of his thighs. I was taken a bit off-guard by the rebound – pretty well-toned for a teenage guy. "Y-you just said you were sorry."

"Oh, um…" He immediately sounded confused, and a bit contrite, too. "You didn't want me to?"

I wanted to laugh at the sound of his voice, but I managed to keep myself in check. "You kidding? You're the first one to finally spit those words out after running into me."

A pause. "You serious?"

"As a heart attack," I sighed with a roll of the eyes.

"That…that really sucks," he replied, a hint of disbelief in his tone. "I mean, you're – um, aren't you…"

I waved a hand dismissively. "It's fine. Say it." Go on. I dare you.

"Well, uh…you're…blind, right?"

Bingo, we have a winner! "Yep. So, what tipped you off? Was it the stick?"

"Er, yeah. That and…your stares are pretty vacant. You're not looking me in the eye while talking."

I nodded slowly at that. He was a sharp one. I was actually kind of glad he ran into me; you don't meet people like this every day. Especially under my circumstances.

I forgot that I was still sitting on the sidewalk until he took my hand and pulled me to my feet. I almost stumbled at the ease in which he'd done it – holy crap was this guy stronger than he sounded. It was completely unexpected – it's like going to a rock concert and suddenly hearing folk songs.

"Uh, thanks." I cleared my throat as I expressed my gratitude. "So…who are you, anyway?"

Another pause. "Oh, right. Completely forgot about that," he admitted rather sheepishly. "Sorry, my name's –"

He was cut off by a man's voice calling from a distance away, "Sir! Please stop right there!"

Whoever it was sounded like they were headed in our direction, and was doing it pretty fast – there were more than one set of footsteps, too, so multiple people were headed our way. I was confused for a minute. Who were they calling –

"Ah, geez; they don't know when to quit!" I heard him complain next to me, much to my shock. Wait a minute, someone had called him sir? Who was this guy?

Before my thoughts could go any farther than that, I felt his strong hands grip both of my shoulders. "Sorry, but I gotta run!" he said hurriedly. "If those guys catch me, I'll never be able to get away. I'll see you some other time, okay? Tell them you didn't see anybody! 'Bye!"

"Wait just a –" Before I could finish the sentence, he had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. I could feel the empty space where he used to be – that guy moved pretty fast, too.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed in annoyance. What a weird day this was turning out to be.

The sets of footsteps that had been heading our (well, technically his) way slowed to a stop somewhere behind me, and I instinctively turned around even though I couldn't see the people responsible for them.

"Excuse me, have you seen –" the man that had called out earlier began, but I cut him off, highly annoyed.

"No, I haven't seen anything," I said shortly. "I'm blind, you moron. Do you not see this stick?" I held my long cane up in front of me (vertically so I wouldn't accidentally skewer anyone) for good measure. "You know what this is, right? Now go bother someone who can actually help you."

There was a minute or two of silence before the same man spoke again, this time somewhat stiffly, "Er, well; sorry for taking up your time." He then directed his voice to somewhere to my left, "Come on; we need to keep going. We can't lose him or else the Director is going to throw a fit."

The footsteps moved rapidly right past me at those words, and pretty soon I was left alone again – well, as alone as you can get on a busy sidewalk – but I didn't really take that into account as I processed what had just happened.

Someone had run into me trying to get away from those guys. That someone was the first person to ever apologize for running into me. The guys chasing him had called him sir. If the guy got caught, he'd "never be able to get away", in his own words. It sounded like the guy was the son of a bigshot millionaire or something. Who was he? Who were they? Why was he running? What the hell was going on?

"Vanitas! There you are!" I heard a familiar voice call out from in front of me, and a jolt went through me when I realized that I'd been left alone during that entire fiasco.

"Gramps? Where the hell were you this whole time?" I demanded as his footsteps drew nearer, feeling downright irritated.

"That is no way to speak to your elders," he chided me sternly as he stopped in front of me. "I simply lost track of you; you wandered off on your own without me noticing."

"Yeah, losing track of a blind person is bound to win you the Guardian of the Year award," I said, my voice thick with sarcasm. "Bonus points since that blind person is your freakin' grandkid."

At that, I suddenly felt a heavy slap on my back that made me stumble a little. Accompanying that smack were the stern words, "I won't have any more of this sourpuss attitude, young man. It will get you nowhere!"

"So what?" I retorted as I rubbed the stinging spot on my upper back where he'd slapped me. We started walking again – presumably back home. "You can't expect me to change my tune just because you say so; you know that? And you were the one who left me alone in the first place – if it weren't for you my face wouldn't have met the sidewalk."

"Ah, so you fell again, did you?" I almost popped a vein at his maddeningly casual demeanor. "What did you trip over this time?"

"I didn't trip," I snapped, my temper rising. "Somebody ran into me."

"Do tell! How quickly did this one squeeze an apology out of you?"

I swear; there are so many moments where I want to bean this old man so badly for being so nonchalant about certain things – kind of like now. I didn't care if he was my only family; he should at least have some sort of respect for me given how I was!

But with my grandpa, that sort of thing gets you absolutely nowhere. You just have to sit there (or stand there; whatever's most comfortable for you) and take what he dishes out without so much as a complaint, because he simply does not give a shit about your pointless whining. He would just tell you to suck it up and be an adult.

"It didn't happen this time," I sighed irritably as my cane hit a crack in the sidewalk and made me stumble for a split second. "The guy apologized first."

"Hrrm, is that so?" He sounded just as surprised as I'd felt. "That's certainly something new. Did this person give you his name?"

I shook my head. "No," I said in a low voice as my thoughts went back to the events of several minutes ago. "He had to run from some guys chasing him before I could catch it. He sounded close to my age, though."

"Did he, now?" he murmured as we rounded a corner. "What was this young man like?"

I was surprised at that question. "Um, why do you want to know that?"

"Just to confirm a few things, that's all." We walked for a couple minutes in silence before he prompted, "Well?"

He actually had an edge to his voice this time, as if the consequences wouldn't be pleasant if I refused to answer. That thought made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on today?

Eventually I gave into the curiosity (plus I really didn't want to find out what would happen if I didn't answer him), so I explained everything – how young he'd sounded, the strange ways he'd spoken and acted, and how athletic he seemed to be when my cane had bumped into his calves and how easily he had hoisted me to my feet.

My grandpa was silent the whole time I was talking – and that in of itself was pretty odd. He usually never shuts up for longer than five minutes at a time.

I don't know how long I'd been talking, but eventually my feet treaded upon something slightly spongier than concrete – we were walking across a lawn; I could both feel and hear the grass blades rustle beneath the soles of my shoes. It took me a second to realize that we must've been cutting through this lawn to get someplace more quickly, because moments later my shoes hit the sidewalk again, and it took me another to realize that it was the way to our house thanks to my cane hitting the first steps of our porch and producing a hollow, almost metallic clunk. No other house in this neighborhood did that, to my knowledge – my grandpa had structured it like this on purpose so that I could recognize it if by some wild chance I'd been outside alone and I wanted to get back inside. Wholly unnecessary since I only went out whenever my grandpa dragged me out, but it still served to confirm that I wasn't about to intrude into some stranger's place.

We sure got here quicker than usual. Guess that's what happens when you're in the middle of a really engaging conversation (or monologue in my case).

I tapped the area twice in front of me so I wouldn't be tripping on the porch steps as I made my way forward. My grandpa still hadn't said anything, which – with all due respect – was kind of irritating me by that point. So I decided that I wouldn't wait for a response anymore and dived in.

"Gramps, do you know that kid or what?" I asked. "You're seriously weirding me out."

To my surprise he actually laughed at my question, though I couldn't see anything that was funny about it. "What?"

"It certainly seems so," he answered me as I heard the jingling of the house keys, laughter still laced in his tone, "If that boy is who I think it is, then you two are definitely bound to meet again."

"How do you know that?" I demanded, feeling unpleasantly miffed as I heard the door's latch unlock with a snap. I had to hold back the urge to whack him upside the head with my cane, though I couldn't properly judge where his forehead was. "You didn't even see this guy! And he was running away from some people; if he's got half a brain he's not going to run to the same place twice!"

"Oh come now, Vanitas," he chided me as the door opened with a squeak of the hinges. "Must you always ruin any and every prospect of excitement?"

I groaned at that. Okay, I know I'm not exactly the most optimistic person in the world, but that didn't mean I liked going around and actively killing all the sources of joy in the entire universe. I was just being realistic here; that was all. Not running to the same place twice once you've been found there is the sensible thing to do, isn't it? Unless you think your persistent pursuers are retarded or something and assume that they'll think with confidence that you wouldn't be stupid enough to even dream of trying to hide in the same place twice.

In which case you're either severely confident or severely stupid yourself.

Take a bombshell and drop it on your head so you can realize that things just don't go the way you expect it to in that sense. Go ahead and call me a hypocrite; I don't care because your argument is invalid. I'm only saying that me not running into him again was the more likely event than not, not that it'll definitely not happen.

…You know what; I'm probably just talking in circles now. Stupid old man, riling me up for no good reason…

"All right, in you go!" My grandpa seized my wrist (yet again with strength defying his age) and yanked me through the front door.

As I stumbled inside, I resolved to spend the next couple of days trying to get him to crack and spill everything he knew about this kid by using every method and trick in the book to do it.

…

What? He always says that you should go to any probable lengths to fulfill your curiosities. I'm just following his advice like any good grandson would.

…Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm not winning any integrity points here. I'm done now. Later.

It's about freaking time I updated this thing. Sheesh, what multiple stories and distractions will do to you!

Anyway, here's the first "proper" chapter to this story, and I hope you liked it. Please leave a review if you feel that you have any necessary criticism for me.

As always, thanks for reading!