Title: and all the lovely angels sing

Rating: M

Summary: You are born in a body that's wrong, in a world gone wrong. It's a disaster from the very beginning. [OC, AU, dark, heavy warnings]

Warnings: Violence, gore, disturbing elements, etc. Additional trigger warnings for coercion, sexual abuse, descriptive violence/body harm in future chapters. Please note that certain views/actions of the characters portrayed in this story are not necessarily reflective of the author's own beliefs, and are not socially acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

AN at bottom.

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and all the lovely angels sing

"1. of songs unsung and songs unheard"

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Like most people, you do not want to die. Perfectly understandable.

But death is a cruel mistress, and no one is capable of resisting death, when death comes calling. The mightiest of leaders, the lowest of beggars –all are equal when lain prostrate before the unrelenting maws of death, and you are no different from any of them. Plain, average white-collar young woman that you are, there is absolutely nothing special about you that sets you apart from the countless thousands of men who've died before you, and the thousands who will doubtlessly die thereafter. You are no exception. Until you are.

This is what happens:

You die. Then, miracle of miracles, you wake up again in the body of a newborn infant.

And that's where things start going wrong.

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(Reincarnation is a myth. A fantasy. But it's also a mistake. Something undoubtedly, undeniably wrong.

Maybe it was some small oversight in the working cogs of the cosmic universe that resulted in your being reborn with memories intact. Maybe it was at the absentminded whims of some careless deity. But no matter what the reason might be, you're firmly of the opinion that it's nothing but a mistake of such stupidly colossal proportions that it had better never fucking happen again.

Once is already one times too many.)

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White-washed walls. Dilapidated room.

You are born again in some nameless hospital to some nameless couple as the younger twin to another similarly nameless child. There is never a chance for you to learn anything about your newest blood relations, because the next time you blink open your eyes from the murky depths of fitful sleep, you've been whisked away to some shady warehouse and are being raised with a dozen other screaming, wailing infants.

(Never. Again.)

You do not mourn the startling loss of your new family, because they are not yours, not in any way that truly matters, and you have no attachments to them aside from a vague, fuzzy impression of warmth and soft voices. To you, they might as well be strangers. Paper cut-outs. Fake and fickle and fleeting.

In all honesty, you're far more concerned about being stuffed into an infant's body than anything else. Something like this, it's… it's so utterly, utterly wrong that you can't even put into proper words how uncomfortable and disgusting and grotesque it all is. You feel like a filthy parasite, leeched on and trapped in a body that is quite clearly not yours. The body of a newborn child, even. It's sickening and macabre and downright inhumane when you think about it in those terms, and it makes you want to die all over again.

It's even a male body that you're now inhabiting, and that itself is on so many other levels of wrongness that it's long bypassed creepy and directly moved onto revolting instead.

You want to die every time you look into a mirror. The only thing that stays your hand is your own cowardliness, and even then, you're not sure how long it will suffice.

Or if you even want it to.

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You grow up with some twenty-odd other children in a rundown warehouse, and you are utterly alone. Children are smart. Smarter than adults usually give them credit for. You are a ghost piloting the body of a boy you unintentionally murdered, and the other children are aware of the wrongness in you, on some level, and this suits you just fine. You've never really liked children, anyways.

The adult caretakers in charge of all of you are… heavily scarred, missing limbs, or any mix of the two. Soldiers, perhaps, but their bearing and posture and language reminds you of street thugs who jumped into one street fight too many instead. They do not want to be here looking after rowdy brats, and they make their displeasure known. It hadn't been as bad as infants, but as children, able to roughhouse and much, much sturdier than delicate little infants…

You are by far the quietest of the lot, and it keeps their harsher attentions off of you. The other children notice this, and this perceived favoritism from the only adult figures in your lives means that there is a solidly united force of jealousy that very quickly forms between them and is specifically aimed at you.

Fact: Children are cruel.

So are you.

Your current body is pint-sized and too-thin and male, but it's still leagues beyond your previous one, in terms of ability. You're a hell of a lot faster and stronger and sturdier than you remember being, than should even be physically possible for such a young child. No surprise, then, that it's the easiest thing in the world to come out on top in every scuffle.

Beating up ignorant children for petty schoolyard reasons should be beyond you, but violence sings a siren song in your veins, and sometimes the heady rush of adrenaline and breathless burn in your muscles is almost enough to make you forget about the perpetual discomfort of being trapped in a body that's not yours in a way that is utterly wrong.

Your fellow children soon realize that fists are not enough, and begin collecting pointy sticks and sharp rocks. The first few times this happens, you come away with a lot more nasty scratches and ugly bruises than all their previous efforts combined, and this redoubles their enthusiasm.

You are not going to be bested by a group of narrow-minded, violent children. You're pathetic, but not that pathetic.

It takes only two weeks for your body to adapt to this change in onslaught and become untouchable once more. Progress. Everything is easier in this body that isn't yours, but on cold nights when the wind stands still, you still wonder if you can escape by climbing out of this skin.

The final straw comes when the oldest and biggest kid of the lot sneaks into the kitchens. It's not like your caretakers ever really pay attention to what any of you do, preoccupied as they are with activities that they don't even bother hiding from the children. Women, drugs, alcohol.

The little ringleader lifts a knife from the kitchens. A fucking carving knife.

When he pulls it on you, something in your mind blanks out. Vicious scrapes and mean scuffles, you can understand, but this? This is way too far. This goes way too far. It's hard to pin down what your motions are in this moment, exactly, as you realize that the six year old kid has a knife and is fully intent on using it to eviscerate you. Indignant rage? Disbelief?

Whatever it is, by the time you finally come back to yourself, you find that the world has gained a purple sheen to it and all of the other children are staring at you with varying degrees of fear and shock. The self-absorbed kid who'd pointed a knife at you is a bloody smear on the ground, and you are caked up to your forearms in sticky, scarlet liquid. The entire front of your shirt feels oddly warm and wet, and something seems to have splattered onto your face as well.

You're also on fire.

… As in, there are literal flames burning across your body –oh, this would be why it looks like everything has been painted over in varying shades of purple. You're covered in a thick coat of purple flames that burn and don't burn all at once, and you've never felt stronger and more settled in this body-that-isn't-your-body.

In retrospect, there have been several hints before. This is the moment when you come to the clear, sinking realization that the world you've been reborn into isn't quite the same as the one in your memories.

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"Interesting. Didn't know you broke them in so young."

"Don't give me that shit; this one just went and spontaneously combusted in the middle of the yard on his own, according to the reports. Weird little kid, bit of a loner, keeps getting into random scuffles with the other brats for no apparent reason… Seems like he's a damn strong Cloud, though, going by those flames of his."

"I see."

"So, do you think he'll be satisfied? There's quite a large age gap this time; the kid's only seven…"

"But there's no harm in trying, is there? Send him over, and we'll see."

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Ever since you woke up and suddenly found yourself living in a run-down hovel with over a dozen other similarly parentless children, you've always been aware that your caretakers are probably the farthest example there is from good, law-abiding citizens. It's only common sense. Rather obvious, too, especially since they never bother hiding anything. Drugs, women, alcohol.

You'd say something about bad influences and impressionable children, but it's not your problem. It's not like you'd come away with anything but yet another vicious beating in the name of 'disciplining.'

… Although, after the spontaneous self-combustion incident that day, suddenly the caretakers are a lot more careful around you. They speak in softer voices and try to censor their language, give you the lion's share of meals and never raise a hand towards you again. It's mildly alarming and downright suspicious. It's not difficult to put two and two together and deduce that this is in all likelihood because of the purple flames.

Purple flames, what the hell.

Just, what the hell.

Fire isn't supposed to be purple. This you know for a fact. Fire isn't purple, and it isn't possible for people to set themselves on fire without a matchstick, either. Then again, people aren't supposed to die and be reborn as infants, so maybe it's just a small matter of perspective that's in question here.

… Who are you kidding, it's not just a matter of perspective.

You stare contemplatively at the purple flame dancing in the palm of your hand. Flickering, like luminous candlelight in the swaying breeze. If you had to put it into words, it's like there is a slow, steady warmth somewhere inside you, some extra layer of… other. No. It's not something you can put into words. It just is, and now that you've uncovered it, you realize just how cold and empty you were before.

You still feel like an imposter dressed in someone else's flesh and blood, but it… helps. Because even though you breathe and eat and sleep with the body, oftentimes it comes across to you as a well-oiled machine that you happen to operate instead of, y'know, your own body. But these flames? You can feel them, and they make you feel… real.

"Six?"

Ah, that is your designation. Kid no.6, out of twenty-something other children. You close your hand into a fist and extinguish the fire in your hands, but judging by the half-wary, half-cautious look on the face of the caretaker who came to fetch you from your room –and you actually have a room all to yourself now, the novelty of it– you probably weren't fast enough to prevent him from catching sight of you playing with your flame entirely.

Fair enough. You would be concerned, too, if you had a pyromaniac kid living in your very wooden, very flammable warehouse-hideout. So far, you've only managed to deduce that the purple flame will not burn you, but everything else is fair game.

"The overseers are here to pick you up, Six. You'll be able to live in far better conditions than this shi- than this hovel. Consider yourself lucky."

The self-loathing mockery in his last words do not escape you. It's not exactly confidence-inspiring, but you stand up from the floor and follow him nonetheless. You might be indisputably the strongest among the children, but you are well aware that any of the caretakers could probably crush you like a bug, purple fire or no.

"You're a smart one, so I'll keep this short," he grunts to you. His hands clench around the filthy crutch he uses for his missing right leg. "Kazu, Scrapper, and I all had our chances before, but we're just messed up failures. We're just grunts, though, so it doesn't matter. You've probably figured out by this point that you're special. Not gonna deny that. But it just means that the price of failure for you will be far worse than something as tame as being kicked aside to play babysitter."

"… How much worse?"

He slants a sideways glance at you with his one remaining eye. "Imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. I can guarantee that it'll be a hundred times worse than that. Higuchi-sama is a cruel man. Great, but cruel."

In the few moments that it takes for him to lead you to the doorway and hand you off to men in suits, he's spoken more words to you than the entire years you've lived here.

It's the kindest thing anyone does for you for a long, long time.

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Neither of the suited men speak to you in the car, and that's fine. You don't initiate conversation beyond muttering the obligatory greetings, either. More opportunities for them to take offense for some godforsaken reason and beat you to a pulp. Yes, they certainly appear to be much more disciplined than your old caretakers, but you'd rather not take your chances.

It's… maddening. Everything about being a kid is maddening. You've only been gone for less than a day from the warehouse, but at least in the warehouse the caretakers hadn't really cared about what any of the children did, as long as they didn't raise a ruckus or get underfoot. Here, it's so painfully obvious that your every action is observed and controlled, and it almost makes you want to break something.

Almost.

You're not sure how long the drive lasts. By the time the car finally comes to a stop, the noontime day has already faded to dusky night, and your body is tired and hungry and you want nothing more than to just lie down and curl up and never wake up again.

But you're poked and prodded and forcibly dragged out of the car by the suited men and hauled into a fancy-looking building and led into an elevator. Several twists and turns and subtle trapdoors later, you're standing in a pristine European-style room.

"Higuchi-sama." Both men slip into deep, reverent bows in perfect synchronicity. "As you've ordered, we've brought the boy to you."

There is only a single man sitting behind the large desk in the center of the room. Higuchi-sama. Well-dressed and respectable-looking, with a face that would not be unhandsome by most standards. A young man in his twenties, coal-black hair and gold-brown eyes that gleam beneath the lamplight as he looks up and stares straight at you.

Instinctively, you dislike him. Not only does he look at you the way one might assess or appraise their merchandise, there is also a distinctly sharp air to him that says that this man is a man who knows what he wants and has no qualms about the methods he uses to get what he wants. Confident and self-assured in his own superiority, suave and charming. It's rather distasteful.

Goosebumps do not break out on your skin at the continued intense scrutiny you receive from him, but it's a close thing.

"Well done," he finally says, and you know that he's not addressing you. "You may leave now."

"Yes, Higuchi-sama."

The men leave, heavy footsteps clapping against then ground, then fading entirely. For a moment, silence hangs in the room, thick and suffocating. Then:

"Show me your flame."

You do not like being commanded. Briefly, you consider disobeying. Higuchi-sama is a cruel man.

… You're still a coward. You do not want to die quite just yet. So even though it makes something ugly and stifling sit across your chest, you wordlessly raise a palm in front of you and dredge up a small flicker of the purple flames for the viewing of your one-man audience.

Luckily, it seems that Higuchi-sama does not take offense at your reluctance to abide by his order, though he does smirk wryly. "Ren-kun would not have brought you to my attention if this is the extent of your potential. Show me your flame."

You hesitate. Again. This time, it's not just your mind. Even your body –the body you so effortlessly operate and control, the body that is not yours– protests against it, protests against revealing the purple flames to this man, strangely enough. Intellectually, you know that there shouldn't be any reason to dither around and drag your feet so much, but instinctively, it's another matter altogether. There's something about this entire situation that raises the hairs on the back of your neck, even if you can't quite put a voice to what it is, exactly, and it–

"Show me your flame."

This time, the command is accompanied by a sudden flood of hot, scorching intent, that burns you, and you instinctively draw on the flames in a heartbeat. Purple flames roar to life around you, a wild, untamed inferno of desperation to keep out the gold-orange flames that have appeared out of nowhere.

"Magnificent," the man breathes, and smiles. Something else flickers in his eyes when he looks at you now, and it makes you want to run. But there's nowhere for you to run to. "It's enough. More than I ever expected… you're a gem, little one. I'm definitely keeping you."

No.

For once, your mind and body are in perfect agreement, perfect harmony with each other. No, no, no, no, no. Whatever Higuchi is doing, you want no part in it. The want that all but radiates from him, this covetousness and desire, so strong and tangible with your flames lain out before each other, it's… disgusting. It's disgusting, the way it reaches out for you and grasps at you and coils around you and–

And in the end, you've always known somewhere inside that this was a losing battle from the beginning, perhaps from the very moment you summoned purple flames to defend yourself from a boy who wanted to kill you.

(What it all boils down to is this: You are a scrawny little kid, tired and underfed. No matter your body's resistance and your mind's revulsion, there is no contest. There was never any contest.)

It happens suddenly, the way a balloon bursts. Like fireworks in too-close proximity. Something crackles and snaps in the air, and in a burst of fierce, fiery pain that lances throughout your entire body, the revolting sensation of something reaching in and just burning itself inside you, so deep that you will never be able to uproot it, branding you just like cattle…

Dimly, you're peripherally aware that you've fallen to your knees at some point. You're vomiting on the ground. Your stomach churns nauseatingly, and something burns in the back of your throat. Higuchi is crouched next to you, gently stroking your back not unlike the way one would a favored pet. You feel like crawling out of your own skin all over again, any semblance of peace you've found through discovering the purple flames ruthlessly crushed in a heartbeat.

In this moment, you don't think you've ever hated anyone or anything as fiercely as you do Higuchi.

"Welcome to the family, little one," he tells you with a smile.

You do not understand the implications of his words, nor his actions. It does not stop your blood from freezing like ice in your veins.

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...

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Author's Notes:

New plot bunny! This should be relatively short, I think. Will probably add extra POVs and such in later chapters at some point. We'll get to canon characters eventually...

ALSO: Views espoused by certain characters in this story are not necessarily the author's views. Obviously. This is kind of a dark fic similar to this road, so pay attention the the warnings at the top of the page.

-XxZuiliu