Hikaru Kamiki.

The words echoed in his head with the resonance of a gunshot in an auditorium. The man behind the suffering and torment that had been the single-minded drive Aqua had fought for all these years.

The man that had taken Ai, the north star of his life from him and shrouded his world a veil of darkness and despair. The man that had caused his mother to cry, sobbing as she bade him her final words. The words that had given her peace, soaked in blood with a metallic sting of iron coating every syllable as she spoke.

Even now his stomach churned, and his heart pushed deep into his throat as her words reverberated through his head. His nose scrunched up, the memory of iron flooding through his nostrils and nearly driving him to his knees.

Idol.

Actress.

Star.

Mother.

She had been everything to him. And she had been taken from him far too soon. His head throbbed as the vision of her dead eyes and faint smile flashed in his mind, the edges caked in blood and her hands damp with red as she cupped his cheek.

Light faded with her final tears, and with a limpness that still made him sick, Ai Hoshino fell still, dead. He would never forget those last minutes with her for as long as he lived, her gentle smile and voice looping in his head in every quiet room and every time he closed his eyes.

Even now, with his boot on the limp corpse of his father, her kind smile and brilliant purple eyes radiated into him. The same starry eyes she had given him however had a visage much different, as he stared down at the bloodied corpse of the man who had stolen the light from him all those years ago.

As he had grown, the line between his past life as a doctor, and his new life of Aqua had mixed and blended until he found it hard to tell if he was a man reincarnated into a boy, or a boy with memories of someone he once was. Either way, his emotional state conformed to his body and mind, a mind fractured by the horrific death of his mother and star.

Gorou Amemiya would've been appalled at such violence, but that was no longer all he was. He was a Chimera, a mixture of the kind and casual doctor and the quiet and intellectual Aqua, both twisted by the trauma of a horrific death into this creature of cunning and grief.

As it was, he had become wholly consumed by this state and found himself powerless to resist. The front he had put up, that of callousness and cold indifference, an attempt to shield his heart from further pain cracked and fell away with his mission accomplished.

Everything since her death had been for this one goal. His shield had been his aloofness and calculation. While the traits remain, he felt the mask fully shift and fall away as he stared down at the corpse below him, the product of his life.

Rage floored him and he screamed loud and feral. With a snarl he swung the blade downward, connecting over and over again with the corpse of his father, ripping and tearing him with a frenzied pace. Blood splattered and splashed over his face and clothes, but he cared not.

All the pent-up rage and grief had consumed him fully and would not let up. The dark specter that had followed him and reminded him of his mission when his guard was down, the shadow of his former self and that of the ichor-stained child that lay in Ai's lap watched him gleefully from the shadows as he ripped the body below him to shreds. Mouth set in a deep snarl and tears shimmering in his dark eyes, Aqua kept at this pace for some time.

Until at last, with the body below him unrecognizable and his hands bleeding from the force at which he held the knife, Aqua staggered to his feet. His breath came in heavy pants and gasps with the gleeful laughter of his Specters behind him.

Aqua cried. Tears flowed down his cheeks, those of anger, of sorrow, and of pain. He had fulfilled his lifelong purpose of vengeance against the woman he had loved as both mother and fan. With shaking hands, he dropped the knife to his feet.

Blood dripped down his side, flowing like a river from the deep cut in his abdomen. His father was just as vile and dangerous as he had been led to believe, and their fight hadn't let him come out unscathed. Stood on a dark street, unguarded by lampposts and unbothered by other people, the silence was only broken by his panting breaths.

This silence was quickly and violently replaced by his heartrending shriek of anguish as he collapsed to his knees. It was over. He had won. Ai had been avenged.

But why?

"Why don't I feel any better?" Aqua sobbed as he curled in on himself. The rage and grief that had propelled him this far, across every obstacle, across every relationship, and across all pain, it all vanished into the windy night around him. He swung around to the dark figures behind him. "It's over, we've won, we avenged Ai, right?" Aqua screamed at the apparitions behind him, who merely grinned, before fading into the shadows around them. Gasping in shock, Aqua keeled over on his side and rolled onto his back.

Just like that he was a child again, standing beside Ai's body as it grew cold. Powerless and hopeless to stop her death no matter how hard he wanted to. Even with his revenge satiated, Ai was still dead and gone, and he was here alone. He felt sick at the memory of feeling her warm blood begin to cool and stick to his skin as he sat in her lap, shocked and catatonic.

Lying on a dark street, bleeding out with only the stars above to keep him company. His vision blurred, with more tears spilling out, as he noted agonizingly that the north star he had once gazed at and thought of Ai wasn't visible, obscured by clouds in the darkness high above.

Despite avenging her, he was still alone, lightless in a sea of utter darkness. The logical, former doctor side of his psyche screamed at him, noting his excessive bleeding.

His abdominal Aorta. How heartbreakingly ironic.

"I'm sorry Ruby, I had hoped to see you again at least one more time." Aqua cried in his mind, the thought of leaving his sister behind as well making his heart seize and mouth dry. "Maybe one day we'll see each other again."

He felt weaker and weaker. Glancing his eyes over at the body of his father, he felt the familiar fluttering of rage deep in his stomach, the warm feeling giving him some feeling in his weakening body.

"Is this how you felt, at the end?" He breathed out into the night air, bringing a hand to his gut and feeling the warm blood spill out onto his hand and slip onto the pavement with a wet splash.

"I love you." The words echoed in his mind once more causing him to choke on a sob as her gorgeous voice, so weak and hollow, spoke to him once more. "As the two of you grow up…I want to be there to see it."

Aqua's breathing became shallower, more blood rolling out of his gut as his arms fell limp to his side. His eyes trailed hauntingly up into the dark night sky. In the stillness of the darkness the clouds began to move ever so slightly.

The words she had spoken as she died had always sat in a dark, repressed corner of his mind, their very essence causing him to break down every time he remembered them. Now as they came back to him on his deathbed, he could only frown painfully as he recalled them.

She wouldn't have wanted this. This was not the life he had been meant to live. Why? What was the point of his reincarnation?

From behind the veil of darkness the light of the north star peeked out, bright and proud. Despite his condition Aqua felt the barest sense of warmth. It was just like the night he had first met her, on the top of the hospital with her hair blowing in the wind and a brilliant smile on her face.

For the first time since her death, the light returned to the star in his eye, the birthright he had been given to him by the Legendary idol, and the loving mother Ai Hoshino.

With one final breath Aqua Hoshino died, the light from his eye melted into the dark blue of his irises, and the still nighttime area lit by the glow of the heavenly north star.

While on the brink the last thing Aqua had assumed he would see would be light. It was blinding and all consuming, its brightness overwhelming all his senses. His skin felt numb, and his ears rang with an incessant droning tone that quickly gave him a headache.

Wait, wasn't that a bit odd? Do you even feel pain after you die?

It was with that thought that his senses began to clear and open, the ringing fading away and becoming replaced by the familiar sound of a gently whirling Air conditioner. He felt blankets sticking to his skin, sweaty and warm. This was odd.

He became aware of the pounding of his heart in his chest and the heaving breaths that left his lungs, and with that revelation his body moved almost on his own. Aqua shot up, his body feeling smaller and lighter than he remembered it being.

The swimming haze of light that he had become accustomed to also faded, with it being replaced by the dim natural light flooding the room he was in. His heart almost stopped when it finally clicked for him. This was his room at Ai's apartment. The apartment she had died in.

His gaze was drawn towards his hands, much too small for a teenager. The hands of a child, barely even four years old. Clenching and unclenching them, he could feel everything. The blankets against his skin, the fabric of his pajamas rubbing against him.

Aqua felt nothing but dread as he sat there in a stunned silence in the darkness of his room. "This is hell." He swallowed heavily. This was his punishment. To live in the home that had been tainted by Ai's death. If this was purgatory, he could see why it was a vitally feared concept.

This couldn't be real. He had died. There was no way he could be back here again. Unless…. unless it had happened again. The logical center in his brain may have been worn down by his emotional turmoil, but it still worked. He had died once and been reborn, had it happened again?

A sick feeling settled in his stomach, and he felt his eyes burn as a thought came with that particular realization. Did that also mean…

Was she here too?

A rush of emotion flew through Aqua, making him clench his teeth and writhe about. He couldn't handle it, if he saw her now, he didn't know what would happen. After her death he had dreamt of her every night, dreams that started peaceful and happy before becoming soaked in blood and smelling of iron. He often awoke those nights drenched in sweat and nauseous.

Aqua started to shake, breath coming out in shallow heaves. "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this…" The mantra repeated in his head over and over again. He had longed to hear her voice and see her in person for years, every day he thought of it, but now the very thought of it was enough to drive him to the brink of insanity.

If he saw her and she wasn't real, he would break. There would be no saving him from that hell. His eyes widened at the specters standing still in the corner of the room, the adult Goro glared, his mouth a thin line of anger. Beside him the red soaked reflection of himself stared back, tears spilling from his eyes.

He could feel them, they were the melding of the old and the new still inside him, and now back within this underdeveloped child form his emotions felt even more conflicted. "This is your punishment." Goro spoke, contempt laced within his tone. "You will never escape. She will never be real."

Following that ominous statement, flashes of Ai's dead form appeared in his mind, inky darkness at the edges. Aqua felt sick with his breath catching in his throat. He had to force himself to breathe through the vice-like tightness gripping his chest.

And so Aqua sat, nearly catatonic as the minutes ticked by and his breathing shallow and panicked. He was vaguely aware of the clock ticking on the bedside table, its drone the only thing he could hear aside from the gentle whirl of the AC unit.

"What do I do now? If she is alive now, that means there is still time to save her." Aqua's thoughts raced like a runaway train. Speculation of how to change this future, if he even could change it. If any of this was even real. What to do about his memories being intact and how he was going to hide that. Too many questions that he wasn't ready to face yet.

If she was alive, he would know soon. If the future could be changed, then he would have to start now. If this was real….

He didn't know how long it had taken, but he heard footsteps approaching the room. His heart stopped. Her walking pattern was something he knew so well; he knew it was her without even needing to see her.

"No, please, I'm not ready. I can't do this!" Tremors shot up his spine and his eyes burned. The gentle footfalls approached the door. The knob turned, the sound breaking up the noises he had become used to. He shook harder as the door slowly opened.

From around the corner, with the gentle light of the dim lamps in the living room, Her head poked around the door. Aqua's breath seized. He couldn't breathe. It was like a truck was siting on his chest.

Long, beautiful bluish-purple hair, a bit unkempt and messy with bedhead. Brilliant pink-purple eyes, with the shining light of the north star. That cute gray and white dress she loved so much adorned her form as she fully entered the room. Her smile, gorgeous as always, gentle and loving, captured him.

Finally, she stood fully in the room, and it was like time crept to a halt as she slowly, quietly approached the bed of her son. In the corner, the specters disappeared, as if a light around her had simply blown them away.

Ai Hoshino, Idol, Actress, mother.

And with an ear-piercing shriek of pure despair, Aqua screamed. Ai rushed forward capturing him in her arms and holding him to her chest as she lightly rocked him back and forth. Within her warm and comforting embrace, Aqua released 12 years of pent-up sorrow and anger. And Ai? She whispered in his ear, tearily. Her own tears dripped onto his head and Aqua knew that in his heart everything would be ok this time.

This time he would save her.

After the burning pain in her gut ceased and Ai felt her body slacken against the door, she had expected to meet nothing but darkness of the afterlife. Ai had expected that a liar such as herself would be sentenced to an eternity of pain for her sin. What she hadn't expected was to be greeted by a glass window, staring down at her own lifeless body and the catatonic form of her son.

"What? What's going on?" Ai tore her gaze from the scene before her, glancing around. There was nothing but whiteness, not blinding but like that of a snowfall in winter. A peaceful haze surrounded her, that of mild warmth and light.

High above her there was a funnel of clouds where the light seemed to emanate from. Despite the circumstances, Ai felt oddly at peace. She had died. This must be some kind of afterlife where she would get to watch over her kids, the one thing she had hope for as she lay against the door, bleeding to death.

A trembling smile found her lips. She had finally been able to love and admit it to her kids, the two people she was more terrified of lying to than anyone else. A painful feeling settled in her stomach; despite being happy, she felt pain. Ai wanted to live, she wanted to be there for babies as they grew up.

Tears filled her eyes, but the smile remained. "Ahhh…I'm sorry I had to leave you." She agonized in her mind. "I want to be there for you two, I want to see you grow." She kept the façade even as the tears streamed down her cheeks, plopping against the blank ground as she silently cried.

Even now she was still lying.

Her inner crumbling monologue was interrupted by the scene before her changing. Ai's eyes widened as the world through the glass changed, showing her children sitting in a car. "It's…my funeral…"

Ai grimaced. It was weird to see her own funeral, she thought with a small smile. Her smile vanished as she heard the voice of her children, hollow and pained as they reminisced, Ruby asking about whether she should pursue her mama's career, with Aqua's hollow voice shooting her down.

Before she could say anything, the scene shifted to Aqua's inner monologue. Ai gasped in shock, a hand flying to her mouth as her eyes shimmered. "My ex?" How? Why would he do such a thing to her? To Their Children?

Ai fell to her knees, covering her mouth. "My baby boy…" She whimpered as her son's beautiful blue eyes glazed over in hatred, a twisted smile playing at his lips as swore upon the murder of his own father.

It was too much. Her lies, her sin, her own son was now suffering for it. She had hoped to be the mother she had never had for them, to be there for her kids when they needed her. But now as she stared at the hatred filled eyes of her son and the blank despair of her daughter's, Ai knew that she had only repeated the cycle. She had left her kids in the clutches of the harsh reality of the world.

Here in the void with nobody to hide from, Ai broke for the first time in her entire life, huddling over as agonized sobs wracked her frame and sent violent trembles down her body. "I'm…sorry…I'm so sorry." The distraught mother cried out in trembling breaths.

After minutes of agonized weeping, Ai lay on the ground, watching the visions play out with burning tears dripping down her cheeks. She watched as Aqua made moves over the course of entire years, growing into a brooding, aloof teenager, filled with cunning and hatred. She watched as her daughter tried to imitate and follow Ai's own path into the idol industry, with Aqua doing his best to keep out of it. She watched as her son tread along morally questionable grounds to get into positions that allowed him access to targets of interest.

"This isn't what I wanted for you, my sweet son…" Ai frowned painfully as she watched Aqua destroy himself in the acting industry, as the demons of the past haunted him with visions of her corpse slumped against a wall, covering him in blood. The vision of him at his stage show, the genuine despair as he cried, living out the future where she had lived, was like a knife through her heart.

He hadn't deserved this. Her boy was bright and intelligent, even as a toddler, full of life and ambition. But within these visions all she saw was the remnants of the child still trapped in his dead mother's arms, a boy whose growth and future had been stolen and replaced with a raging fire that consumed everything within him.

Ruby was something of a different story, her daughter flourishing to the best of her abilities, living out the future set-in stone for her. She had made friends and truly grown into the spitting image of her mother, and Ai found herself smiling tearfully at that.

She could see that her children loved each other and cared for one another, even Aqua's misguided efforts to shelter her from the idol path were built on a staunch overprotectiveness, not malice.

It was plain to see to Ai that her children were tormented however, with many nights even years after her passing being spent in fitful sleep, crying her name and huddling in on themselves.

And as she watched the final vision through the window before her, Ai shuddered under its weight. Her sweet child, possessed by the despair and grief he harbored, murdering, slaughtering his own father like an animal in the night. He cried out her name as he did so, screaming and wailing as he followed through his life's work.

Ai smashed her fists into the glass, screaming wordlessly as Aqua collapsed after he had ripped the corpse to shreds, bleeding profusely from the same wound she had incurred. "This isn't fair!" Ai cried in her mind, why had her twisted fate followed her children?

Fate truly was the cruelest of mistresses.

As Aqua died in front of her, still barely a teenager, Ai felt nothing but heartbreaking despair grip her chest tightly. She was all out of tears, so she sat, whimpering and shaking as her child died in front of her.

That image stood still for quite some time, before out of the clouds she felt a presence speak to her wordlessly.

"This is the punishment for your lies, for the deceit you sowed." The voice spoke to her mind, not with judgement but with plain punctuality.

Ai was at a loss for words, merely sitting there with an open mouth. She had never really given much thought to the idea of the divine, so having that presence speak to her was more than a little strange. Then again so had everything else she had just borne witness to.

"The life you lived had been one of dishonesty and of falsehood, such is the ways of fate that you met your end under the same pretense." The voice carried on, still with the same monotone, however this time Ai finally found her own voice.

"This was all I knew! I didn't know how to love, how to be loved!" Ai wailed, eyes flooding with angry tears. "If I had known that my children would suffer so much, I wouldn't have gone down that path, but I had no other way…" The mother whispered, holding her knees to her chest as she leaned against the glass, staring in horror at the lifeless body of her son, alone on a dark street.

"I'm sorry Aqua, I'm so sorry baby…" Ai closed her eyes, hot tears staining her cheeks. Watching her baby boy suffer for her sin was too much, she wanted this all to go away, she wished she could change it. "If I could, I would be honest from the start."

"While you have sinned, it can be arranged for you to repent in another manner." The voice spoke, emotion leaking into it for the first time. Ai's eyes shot open, and she craned back to investigate the clouds. As the implication sunk in, she shot to her feet.

"Please I'll do anything! Just let me see my children again! I need to be with them!" Ai pleaded, shaking on unsteady legs. The voice was quiet for a moment, before speaking to her with a grave tone.

"You will be given a second chance, a chance to do things right for yourself and your children. This is the only chance you will be given." Ai let out a laugh, mixed with heavy emotion, happiness and relief evident in her tone.

"Thank you! Thank you so much!" Ai sobbed, hands clasped together in a prayer, an elated smile on her lips. She wouldn't squander this chance, she would spend every moment she could with her twins, regardless of career and spotlight she would make sure this time she gave them everything.

"However,", the voice spoke, "This time, there can be no more lies. You must be honest with everything. Especially your flesh and blood"

Ai felt a sharp stab of pain shoot into her abdomen, the wound that killed her aching, the proof of her dishonesty. Even now the thought of being honest, especially with her kids, was terrifying. As she died, she had finally told them the truth, that she loved them, that it hadn't been a lie.

But there was still so much left unsaid, to them and to the rest of the world. Ai was scared, terrified of exposing her soul to those she held the dearest. "I don't know if they'll ever truly love me if they know how awful I am, how much I've lied to them and to myself.

It didn't matter, she thought with resolution, if she had been given the chance, she wouldn't squander it. No matter what, she wouldn't fail them, not this time. Ai wiped the tears off on her sleeve, noting absentmindedly that she was wearing the same clothes she died in.

"Ya know, I've been wondering, who are you anyway? God?" Ai cocked her head to the side; she had never been much of a believer in the divine. Suffice it to say she had changed that belief.

The light was silent for a moment, before a noticeable mirth entered its voice. "I guess you could say I'm something of a God of Entertainment."

Before Ai had any time to dwell on that revelation, she felt her body be swept into a strong wind, while inky numbness spread through her body. As she felt the mirror world around her vanish, Ai smiled gratefully.

"Aqua, Ruby, I'm coming home. This time it will be different."