Title: Red String of Kismet

Author: Pipsqueak Ninja

Summary: Fate. Destiny. All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. In this case, Akane lives. Except, well, not really.

Warnings: OC's, descriptions of gore, maybe some mild depression down the road, AU, Akane lives, cursing, and Ferid (who needs his own warning). NOT OCxCanon Character

A/N: I don't even know. Basically, I wondered what would have happened had any of Mika or Yuu's other family members survived and, well, this happened. I'm sorry?

If you're extremely against reincarnation or OC's, feel free to skip back. If you choose to proceed, please tell me what you think!

"Take it from me, Fate doesn't care most of the time."
― Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air

Chapter 1: Kainophobia; the fear of anything new

One thing in life is certain: you are going to die.

I don't mean right now, right this second, tomorrow, or even this year. Heck, maybe you'll live for another fifty years before Death claims you as his. Who knows? I'm certainly not one to judge.

But, the fact remains. It will happen. You are going to die. Your body will cease with all functions that make you, you, and it will remain nothing but a shell, decaying and wasting away. Your family and friends will probably be sad, or maybe they won't if you never had them.

Sorry, that was probably kind of depressing. If you're really going to get through this, though, you might as well get used to it, or leave now, because the beginning of the end is certainly anything but rainbows and butterflies.

Still. Someone will know you are dead, that you were once a living, breathing person. The man that cuts the grass around your grave every other week will brush the dirt off of your headstone, say a little prayer to a god you may not even believe in, and move on with his life. The little girl walking with her parents to their car after her very first funeral will look over the vast graveyard, sweeping your own within her watery gaze, and she will pity you. The nerdy teenager that trips over your grave in the dark of Halloween night by his so-called friends as a test of courage will trip over your stone will probably cry and then apologize, even though you're dead and it's just a stupid stone anyway. They may not know you personally, but they will still know you through what they do.

Death is meant to be cold, harsh, the end to all things good. Most think upon it with fear, since death is also the unknown. However, there are those that think of death in a poetic sense. Death is sweet, like the brace of a lover, or someone calling you home at long last.

It could be either, I suppose, but let's face another fact:

Dying, as it turns out, is not a fun experience.

I mean, obviously death isn't fun. Of course not. There's the whole not breathing part, and the lack of bodily functions, and you're, well, dead. Death and fun are typically not associated, for very obvious reasons.

For me, though, Death was quickly becoming my best friend.

My death was very similar to my life: boring, anti-climatic; a cruel whimper drowned out by the bang of someone living their life to the fullest.

I had never been a healthy child. Before I can even remember, I was diagnosed with primary immunodeficiency, which is an increased susceptibility to infections. Long story short, my immune system couldn't fight off infections and illnesses like most people could. If I got sick, my body didn't fight back, and every little sneeze from the time I was born until my not-so-tragic end always set my parents on edge.

I was always sick, it seemed. From the common cold to pneumonia, I had basically seen it all. I contracted bronchitis two or three times a year, my blood platelet counts were dangerously low, and I was constantly getting the stomach virus. No matter how clean and sterile my home environment was, I somehow contracted illnesses.

Because of this, I never went to school. I was homeschooled by my mother, a sweet lady, but a terrible, twitchy worry-wart. I was never involved in a sports team, no matter how much I pleaded and begged to play soccer.

In short, I didn't live. Not really, anyway.

With only one friend (who was more of a rival, anyway) and no adventures to call my own, I looked elsewhere for the intrigue I so craved. My mother would read Peter Pan to me, the original of course, and I would dream of creating the Lost Girls and battling Captain Hook and the Lost Boys. Harry Potter was always on TV, and after watching several marathons when I had nothing else to do, I longed to go to a school where magic and mysteries awaited me at every turn. I immersed myself in the adventures of others to feel included, and for a while, it worked. I could pretend that I was Alice falling into Wonderland, or that I was an extreme badass like Black Widow in Marvel, or even a ninja like Naruto Uzumaki.

Still. Nothing compared to the real thing. For as long a I can remember, all seventeen years of my existence had been full of pining for adventures I would never take and friends I would never meet and foes I would never fight. My greatest adventures were the trips to the ER in the backseat of my mom's minivan, and that was that.

My life was nothing special, and my death was just as pathetic.

It started out as a common cold, but those kinds of colds always had me bedridden. Within two days, it had escalated into a sinus infection, and then pneumonia. For the third time in the last five months, I found myself hospitalized.

"I'm going to be fine," I croaked through a throat of broken glass, no doubt failing at reassuring my panicked parents. My nerves screamed at me, pain wracking my body in horrible waves.

"I'm really worried, sweetie," my mom fretted for probably the billionth time since I was born.

"This happens all the time," I coughed, exasperated even as my father paced the room endlessly. "I'll be fine." I coughed into a tissue again when they weren't looking and did my best to discreetly through away the white cotton speckled with blood.

Turns out I wasn't fine, and I would never be fine as Nina Adler ever again. That night, more fluid flooded my lungs than ever before. My organs were struggling to keep my body working, and it got to the point that I needed a ventilator.

Dr. Reid sidled up to my side when my parents had stepped out to grab a bite to eat. He was a man I knew almost as well as my father, since I spent much more time in his hospital than I had in my own house it seemed.

"I've already talked to your parents, but they've never been as calm about this as you," he said, brushing my bangs off of my sweaty forehead. "What you have now was caused by fungi. From where, we can't be sure."

"Oh," I murmured, shivering. Whether it was from the fever or the weight that came with his words, I didn't know. "Oh."

"Do you know what that means, Nina?" Dr. Reid asked gently.

Of course I knew what that meant. When you were always sick, you tended to learn as much as you could about what could one day kill you. "No antibiotics," I recited around the tube in my throat, and coughed violently. I tasted blood, and a mixture of that and pus dribbled down my chin. I absently grabbed the corner of my sheet and wiped it away with shaking hands. "No medicine, no operations, no chance for survival."

"That's a little much," Dr. Reid chuckled, but his eyes were full of pity. "You can still pull through this. You're a tough girl, even if your body doesn't get the memo sometimes. You can pull through."

Except I didn't. I kept getting worse. I didn't have any energy, and I laid in my lonely hospital room for almost a week before the end came.

"Think of all your adventures," my dad whispered, smiling even though there were tears in his eyes. "You still have to go to Canada to meet the Evil Canadian on her own turf, remember?"

I smiled weakly, probably looking high as I blinked sluggishly. Ah, Evil Canadian. Where to even begin with such a novelty.

Growing up, the internet had been another journey I pretended was grandiose and exotic. I had discovered sites like tumblr, and fanfiction, and deviantart. These sites working as creative outlets were beautiful and scary all at once, and you could find both good and bad people there. It was like the real world, but in an environment where I wouldn't come into contact with foreign germs.

It was on fanfiction that I had my first true brush with adventure, and her name was goddessofdiscordandcookies, although I later learned that her real name was Jenai Zhang. She was a Cantonese-Canadian girl, only a year older than me. We exchanged reviews on shitty stories that we had written when we were twelve and thirteen respectively, and then PMs, emails, and even Skype names through which we constantly harassed and did our best to one-up the other.

I'll be the one to assassinate you, stupid, she had said in the past when she had found out about my condition. No stupid disease will be lucky enough to kill you off. That's my job, duh.

"Will . . . you tell . . . her?" I whispered hoarsely. "She'll . . . want to . . . know I'm . . . I'm—"

"That you'll be fine?" my mom piped up. "Of course we will, dear. We'll let her know when we go home tonight."

"Okay," I coughed, even though we both knew that I wouldn't be getting better.

"Do you want me to grab one of your manga?" Dad asked.

I nodded, and my dad went to the backpack my parents had packed for me and pulled out the first book he touched.

It was Owari no Seraph. How ironic, now that I can sit here and think back on it. I absently flipped through the pages, wishing that I had learned to draw in my short life. There were a lot of things I wished I had done as I laid on my deathbed.

"Those of you . . . who die, blame . . . yourselves for not . . . training . . . hard enough," I quoted, taking the book from my father's trembling fingers with a wet hacking noise escaping me seconds later. "Guren . . . Ichinose. What a bastard."

The tears in my father's eyes spilled over, and he didn't even reprimand me for my foul language. "No one has ever tried harder than you," he whispered fiercely, grabbing my hand in his.

"To die," I whispered back, my mind clearer than it had ever been, "will be . . . an awfully big adventure."

"Peter Pan," my mom finished. "Oh, honey, think of all the adventures you'll go on one day."

"Yeah," I said hollowly, looking very hard at my parents. Something told me I wouldn't be seeing their faces for much longer, and I wished I could remember a time where they didn't have worry lines on their foreheads and baggy shadows under their tear-shined eyes.

Even though they looked nothing but sad these days, I knew they loved me more than anything, and I felt at peace. I would never trade them, not even for the best adventure in the world.

My father grabbed the book from my hands, and I relinquished it without protest, suddenly feeling tired. "Maybe you can immerse yourself in a new world at a different time," he said shakily. "Get some sleep for now, honey. Adventures can wait until later."

"Love you," I whispered with a forced smile, and closed my eyes. Their similarly declarations were barely whispers as I fell into the darkness of sleep.

I woke up feeling like I could breath for once. I even had the energy to sit up and stretch my arms above my head, feeling my shoulders pop as I yawned hugely. I blinked blearily at my surroundings, expecting to find my shocked parents and excited doctors, but I wasn't in my tiny hospital bed in a bright white room anymore.

"What the hell?"

Upon surveying my own body, I found that I was still in my hospital gown, with my Captain America socks on my feet, and I was surrounded by nothing but black all around. An abyss, so dark and so deep that I couldn't see where it ended or began.

"It's normal, you know," a familiar voice chuckled from behind me. "To be confused."

"Jesus Christ!" I screeched, utterly terrified as I whipped around.

"Not even. Try again, dumbass." A familiar face stared back at me, eyes that had always been brown now a bright blood red.

My mouth was no doubt on the floor. "Jenai?" I gasped. "What the hell?"

"Surprise?" Jenai grinned at me, and everything about her was basically the same except for her eyes. Her short black hair still had a shitty dye job with streaks of red and blue and purple, and she was even wearing her stupid black GEEK onesie.

"What—how?"

"It's a long story," she began, "But to make it short, I'm a Reaper. I work for Death."

"No way," I said immediately. "I'm dreaming. Oh my god, I'm high on morphine and I'm dreaming—"

"You're dead, actually," Jenai cut me off.

"Oh." For some reason, that didn't come as a big shock to me. I always knew I would die one day, and I guess pneumonia had finally beaten me down. It was a relief, almost. "Is this hell, then?"

"Nope," Jenai said, popping the P at the end. "This isn't hell or heaven, actually. This is an in-between, I guess, but it doesn't have a name. Just think of it as the Other Side or something."

"And how exactly does a girl from Canada become a Reaper?" I asked suspiciously. None of this seemed real. It was like I was dreaming, and all I wanted was to wake up and go back to my sickly existence.

"Jenai Zhang might be a demonic little shit, but she isn't a Reaper," the Not-Jenai(?) said. "Reapers take the form of someone the recently departed can relate to somehow. Never parents or siblings, or even grandparents, but usually friends and enemies. And in your case, frenemy. Aren't you lucky to have both in one person." The grin she shot me was like that of the Cheshire Cat, the real Jenai's signature that made her all the more creepier when trying to intimidate someone.

"Uh. I guess." My head swam with theories and ideas and holy crap, what was happening?

"Nina Kathleen Adler," Not-Jenai said, and suddenly there was an authority to her voice that I had never expected to come out of my rival's mouth. "You have lived one hell of a shitty life."

I blinked, waiting for the punchline. When it didn't come, I said hesitantly, "Yeah?"

"You had one friend, and all you did was pretend to hate each other," she said, stepping toward me with a look in her eyes that was almost maniacal, and not even in the funny way. "You never did anything. You had a false life, living stories that weren't your own and pretending that you weren't slowly dying as the days passed. You simply wasted away behind books that will one day crumble, and you used a computer as a window. How pathetic is that?"

"Did you only bring me here to depress me?" I demanded, feeling my right eyebrow twitch with irritation.

"You. Didn't. Live." Not-Jenai was in front of me, looking down at me from her five feet and seven inches. She was nearly a foot taller than me, and I felt in that moment that she could crush me like a bug if she so wanted to.

"So what if I didn't?" I huffed. "It's a little late to change it now if I'm as dead as you claim."

Not-Jenai smiled in a way that told me how wrong I was. "I don't live either, Nina. Not technically. I simply watch from the distance as everyone has their fun, and in the end, I get to end that joy and happiness, or maybe even end suffering and pain. Either way, it's like I'm watching a show, and I get to choose when to kill off characters that displease me. That's how little you humans matter to those of us that live forever and ever." She looked me up and down, like I was dirt beneath her shoe. "Are you following so far?"

I nodded, even though I was confused and scared and maybe even a little impressed, in a way.

"Good. Now then." Not-Jenai stepped back and turned on her heel, her back facing me. "Like all beings, though, I get bored. Sometimes, I like to switch things around. Send a different person to this universe, get rid of this person here, add another villain there, etc. Because I. Have. Power." She turned and looked at me, grinning in a way that was now definitely more scary than the real Jenai could ever hope to be. "And you, you pathetic and tiny humans can't do a single thing to stop me."

"Okay," I said warily, not quite sure where this is going. She looked far too pleased with herself for my liking.

"But today," she continued, as if I hadn't spoken a single word, "Today, I've decided to be nice. Nina, as of right now, your new name is Akane, and I'm going to drop you off in one of your favorite stories with a dystopian society and real monsters and magic, and you'll finally get the adventure you so craved." Not-Jenai held out her hand, and I noticed then that her nails were sharp and black like claws rather than stubby and hastily chewed on like the real Evil Canadian's.

"How about getting another go at life, Nina?" Not-Jenai offered casually, like she was offering me a piece of gum or even flyer on the street.

I stared at the tanned, clawed hand before me, my stomach knotted and uneasy. "What's the catch?" I asked suspiciously, meeting her eyes again. "And isn't this, like, against the rules of death or something?"

"There is no catch," Not-Jenai said sweetly. "You'll even keep all of your memories of your first life while living this second one. You get another life, I get entertainment, and we all get to be satisfied in the end." She grinned. "Besides, Lord Death doesn't keep close tabs on his Reapers, anyway. I could be selling souls to demons and he would never even know, or planning a coup d'état." She paused, like she was actually considering her dumb ramblings as something potentially substantial. "Hm. That's not a bad idea, actually . . ."

"Akane," I murmured, drowning out Not-Jenai's last words as I struggled to figure out just what this awful being had planned for me. "Monsters, magic, dystopian . . ."

"Oh, come on," Not-Jenai huffed, exasperated. "You quoted it right before you died. Your father took it away from you, remember?"

It hit me like a ton of bricks, and if I was actually alive and breathing, I'm pretty sure I would have stopped at that moment in shock. "Owari no Seraph," I whispered. "Akane was the girl that died, and she couldn't have been more than ten at the very most! You're offering me another shitty life in an orphanage, and then in the captivity of vampires? What kind of stupid deal is that?"

"Think about the possibilities, Nina," Not-Jenai prodded, not moving her hand from where it hovered between us. "You can change things, make it interesting. You know where most of the story is going, don't ya?"

"But I don't know how it ends," I protested. "It's an unfinished manga!"

"That's the fun in it, though!" Not-Jenai laughed in a way that wasn't funny or nice, and I was really starting to think this chick had lost her marbles. "You know enough to change some major things, some minor things, but your ending will be a surprise, at least, even to me. It'll be so, so entertaining."

"That's sick," I spat, slapping her offered hand away from me as my anger rose. "You're sick! I'm not going to suffer more just so you can laugh and be amused. That's not a life, that's captivity!"

"But Nina," Not-Jenai cooed. "Adventure is out there. All you have to do is accept it."

"No!" I snapped. "I won't do it! I spent my entire life wishing I could live for myself, and if you think I'm going to use a second chance just to provide you some kind of entertainment, then I'd rather die for good!"

Not-Jenai's eyes widened, and she laughed, long and hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. I was a little scared, admittedly, and I felt my anger dissipate immediately.

"I get it now," she finally gasped through her attempts at evening her breathing. Her eyes gleamed maliciously, and I took a fearful step back. "Death doesn't scare you. Living does. You're actually scared to do a basic human function. Oh, living. How hilarious!"

I didn't want to acknowledge the twisting feeling inside of me that whispered just how correct she was. "Whatever," I grumbled instead, shifting uncomfortably.

Not-Jenai sighed, and I felt that our meeting was suddenly drawing to a close. "Well, Nina." She straightened up. "We will have pow-wows, if that makes you feel better. When you dream, I'll help you along, push you in the right direction once things really start going. Does that make you feel better? I'll hold your hand and tell you exactly how to fix things," she mocked.

"I'm good," I said scathingly. "Take me to heaven or hell or wherever the heck I belong. I don't accept your offer."

"Nope, too bad. I'm still bored," Not-Jenai sang in a tone that was almost sad, reaching out and tapping her index finger to my forehead. The nail was sharp against my skin, and her finger was almost skeletal. "I'll talk to ya in about, eh, five or six years, give or take? So . . . Have fun, good luck, and go save the world, yeah?" She grinned and nodded, obviously satisfied. "Yeah."

She laughed again, and then she pushed, and I was falling, falling, falling. I almost felt like Alice going down the rabbit hole, except the place she ended up was far nicer than the hellish universe that I'd end up in.

"Oh, by the way, I'll call upon you at some point to explain more," Not-Jenai's voice echoed throughout the dark as I fell. "Try not to screw this up!"

When I next awoke, it was scary, far scarier than that infinite black void.

I was alive again. I could feel it.

And, well, maybe the Reaper had been right about me. Life was scary, and a perfectly reasonable fear if you asked me.

But anyway, when I was thrust back into the world of the living from the dark void, I found myself unable to see or hear anything past dull shapes and muffled vibrations. It scared me, this loss of sensory information. I did the only thing I could. I cried.

And thus, I was a baby. I was alive again. It sucked, not being able to hear or speak or even move my own body properly. I wished for freedom now that I had been granted it, especially since I knew life would be ripped away from me once again in less than ten short years.

My vision sharpened within a couple of weeks after my birth, and I finally saw where I would be living short-term, since I knew for a fact that the real Akane had been an orphan when Owari no Seraph first began.

The woman who was my mother was young, and extremely so. She was no more than sixteen or seventeen, and she cried almost every time she came near me or held me. She called me words I hadn't even begun to understand (because everything was in freaking Japanese, and I would have to relearn language, ugh), but the way she spat syllables like venom made me realize that I wasn't wanted.

My grandparents were the ones who took care of me, mostly. They also looked at me with disapproval, but at least they didn't say anything that sounded harsh. They said things in soothing whispers and gentle words that I wouldn't understand for quite some time yet, and they gave me food and let me take naps and play all I wanted. They even changed my diaper because I was freaking useless as a baby.

I spent my first year of life exactly like that, hated by my family, ignored by my mother, and simply tolerated. I didn't know where my new father was, but I had never so badly wanted my real parents back, the ones with the sad eyes and worry lines. I missed them and their constant harping about my health, because at least they had cared.

After that first year, though, my grandparents suddenly stopped existing to me. One day they had gone out, and never returned. My mother cried for days, and I knew that death must have claimed them, just like it had claimed me. I wondered if Not-Jenai had taunted them, too.

With no one to take me on as a responsibility anymore, my birth mother had no choice but to take responsibility for me. She usually left me with babysitters, and whenever I was actually alone with her, she tended to ignore me unless I needed food or changing or bathing, and even then she complained extensively about what a burden I was.

I learned more Japanese insults than anime could have ever provided me with.

I knew something was wrong when, a little after my third birthday, my mother was all smiles and giggles as she bundled me up in my coat. "Come on, sweetie," she cooed, practically manic. "We're going on a field trip!"

I didn't ask where, or why, but the bag she had packed full of my clothes told me that I was going somewhere rather permanent.

We drove for a very long time, from early morning into the night before we reached our destination. I saw a familiar sign from one of my favorite anime and manga.

"Stand right here, okay?" My mom patted my head as we stood before the large doors to the building. "Knock on the door when I honk the horn, okay?"

She left me standing there and returned to her car, which she started and started driving before honking at me. She was halfway down the street when I knocked on the door.

Moments later, a stout, tiny woman answered, her eyes tired and droopy as she stood there in her pajamas. She seemed to wake up almost instantly when she saw me standing there all alone with nothing but a bag beside me.

"Hello, little one," she said, squatting down to my level. Her face was a little wrinkled, but she had kind eyes and a warm smile, something that I hadn't seen much in my short life as Akane. "What's your name?"

This was it. This moment would officially and inevitably bring me into Yuu's and Mika's life, and quite possibly bring me to my death. "Akane," I said quietly.

"Akane," the woman repeated, testing the name on her tongue. "Do you know why you're here?"

I shrugged my tiny shoulders, not really looking at her, but at the buildings and sky around me. I was so little in comparison to them.

Her hand came to my head and I finally met her eyes. "Would you like to come inside?" I nodded, and she stood, taking my bag and my pudgy child hand.

"Welcome to the Hyakuya Orphanage, Akane. This is your new family now."

A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoyed! I haven't written in a very long while, but hopefully it wasn't too bad.

I promise that the next chapter will include everyone's problematic fave and the loud-mouth. Until next time, though, please let me know what you think in a review!

~Pip :)