Disclaimer: I own nothing but the oneshot. Tsubasa and all it's amazing characters belong to Clamp.

From a young age Fai had grown accustomed to the cruelty of humanity and had learned to expect it. It wasn't something he liked and it wasn't something he would force on another person, never… not after his own experiences of such a dark aspect of the human mind and persona. It hadn't been fair, after all, even as a child - before he had taken his twin's name as his own - he had known that.

(Humans are cruel…)

Solely because he and his brother were twins the two had been ostracized instantly. The people around them wanting nothing to do with the 'unlucky' children. Why it was seen as a bad thing when twins were born was still beyond Fai, he never could see the reasoning behind it. Then again, those who were being subjected to the cruelty never could see the point of it… All they knew was the pain and suffering without ever fully knowing why or being able to comprehend the tormentor's justifications.

Maybe it was just his fate, something he would have been subjected to even if he wasn't a twin… Maybe it was just the hand he was dealt and he would have been subjected to that brutality either way.

For it was brutal…

One stuck in the tower above…

One stuck with the putrefying and frozen bodies below…

But even before that ultimate form of ostracizing the two had been snubbed. Large crowds of people would get out of their way as if a look at the two would so much as give a person the plague. The children had been especially cruel, going out of their way to torment the duo. They also did not have names to the people around them. They were simply "creatures" or "cretins." The name Yui and Fai were never uttered when addressing the boys, as if they had never been given names in the first place.

(Names are important things… Stripping a person of their name was ruthless…)

But from the sidelines, unable to participate with the crowds Fai had begun to see deeper into the corruption in man's heart. The selfishness was most prevalent he had noted as a boy. Each person only looking after him or herself and worrying about others when they were sure they were safe or well off… The crowds had deluded themselves into thinking they were unselfish

(and yes there were the exceptions, there were always exceptions to the rules)

when really they were just as bad as the others who did not attempt to hide their greed and envy. Their's was a different selfishness. It was being privy to this strange occurrence in mankind that had been the beginning of the iced over heart that Fai had had during most of his life. It hadn't been until the ultimate form of cruelty - the separating of the twins to be left to die

(frozen and alone. It was a ruthless way to kill children)

- that his heart had turned completely to ice, just like the wintry surroundings he had been birthed in.

Fai blinked at the wall ahead of him in the middle of the night as he remembered. Laying upon his stomach as usual, arms folded around the pillow below his chin he resisted the urge to sigh. He didn't want to risk making even the slightest of noise and possibly waking the others around him. He needed the time to reflect or else he might crack again, slip back into that cold

(and cruel, oh so, cruel)

demeanor once more. His lids closed over his eyes as he finally decided that humans were merely cruel by nature. He would just have to fight against the cruelty that was, too, in his heart. Having experienced such a thing himself… Fai was determined to never allow his loved ones to suffer from anything like it again…