A/N: Hi again! New fandom for our collab – though it's one we've both tinkered with before. So many fandoms we share. :)

We're writing this for the Diversity Challenge at the Anime and Manga Fanfiction Challenges Forum, prompt B10 – a drabble collection with drabbles under 200 words. We're alternating drabbles with this, so I (Remi) am doing the first one, Aiko is doing the second and so on.

Enjoy!

When They First Saw the Stars
1. Hei

He looked for them even after they had vanished.

Maybe it was just wistful thinking that made him drag that telescope to the park – and then later, to all corners of the world. America and Japan and Russia and so many other places besides. Some he didn't remember anymore. Most he didn't need to remember.

The old stars…he didn't need to remember those either. When the new sky had appeared, he hadn't been on it. He hadn't been tethered to a star.

Or, really, he'd always been tethered by a star. Her star. Xing's. Bai's.

Fate had even given her the name of "star".

And now it was his. Her power. Her star. Her dreams, whatever they had been before the old stars vanished and new ones reappeared.

They'd been young then. They hadn't thought the world would vanish before they could even make their dreams, and give words to them.

So he looked. As though the past would speak now to his present self, and tell him what dreams she – they – had lost.