Warnings: Extreme fluff/WAFF near end of chapter (and throughout story), minor cussing, the usual

Key: "blah" talk

'blah' thoughts

"blah" Dark talking to Daisuke in his head

"blah" Dark talking outside of Daisuke's body

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Of Wings, Feathers, and Blood

First Drop: Warning of Secrets (and Revalations)

Dark was bored. He had been bored for an entire week, ever since Daisuke and Riku started dating. Dark hadn't disappeared, and Daisuke knew that, deep down. The only problem was he didn't consciously notice. He did notice, however, that his love for Riku had been dwindling, falling, fading. In fact, that morning the two had broken up; that morning Dark had decided to reveal himself to Daisuke, in the evening. It was currently the last class of the day, and Daisuke was overly eager to get home, especially since the news of the 'perfect couple' 's break-up had traveled to every student who knew anything about the two of them within a split second. Dark was very, very bored. Daisuke went on about his business, albeit much faster than usual, working on his homework in his study hall so he had none to do that afternoon. Daiki, who had a limited link with Dark still, had known that he was still there but smartly kept his mouth shut since Daisuke seemed convinced that Dark was gone. Daisuke had no idea of the prophecy, or the fact that he had had a twin sister, and his parents had been sure to keep it that way. But as the week had gone on, after Emiko had scoured the scene of the final battle and found the black feather still there, the older Niwas had slowly realized exactly what the second half of the final line of the prophecy meant. Daisuke could not love a woman.

On the other hand, Daisuke was completely oblivious to things happening around him, didn't even realize the dead give-away: One of his hairs in the bright red mass was reverted to the original white of his birth. He walked home that afternoon eager for something he couldn't pinpoint, ready to sketch to calm himself if need be. He got home, hallway still full of traps, stepped through the door and immediately started falling through the trapdoor. He caught the ledge of the door-frame, thankfully, and flipped himself onto his feet, closing the door behind him. He tucked in his shirt and prepared to leap across the hole, pulling his backpack as tightly to his back as he could, and leaped, dodging laser sensors here and there. Unfortunately, his foot caught one near the end and he ended up running from a small pack of flamingos. 'Where the hell does mom get these things, anyway?' He came up to the door, stopping as he noticed heat radiating from the handle. Pulling out some of his trusty deep-freeze spray, he cooled it off instantly and opened the door to the dining/living room and kitchen. "Tadaima!" he stated, instantly being grabbed and hugged by an ecstatic Emiko.

"Honey, welcome home! You did everything flawlessly! I'm so happy you didn't burn your hand!" she squealed, obviously much happier than she should be that she heated the handle of the door to just under melting point.

"Er- mom, don't you think it's about time you stopped setting traps for me? I mean, for one thing I haven't needed to train any aspect of my skills in over a year, and for another thing, Dark is gone. I have no need for the skills anyway."

"Sure, sweetie, it's just that since you haven't had need of them recently, you need to keep those skills up anyway. After all, you never know when they'll come in handy."

Daisuke dismissed his mother's last statement and headed up the stairs. He needed to draw something, not look for something to draw, necessarily. He just needed to draw and find out what it was he drew when he was done. He entered his room and dropped his bag on his bed, picking up his sketch pad and one of his hard pencils, turning to a fresh page and drawing what came to mind. He let his mind wander, not really looking at what he was drawing, put down the hard pencil and picked up a medium pencil. He semi-watched his drawing take the shape of someone's face, a smirk and a pair of almond-shaped eyes staring back at him. Daisuke picked up his soft pencil next, shading in the eyes, hair, and in places that would put the light from directly above the figure. It took a total of an hour, in which time Daisuke had gone over his entire day, especially the break-up with Riku. He didn't know why he thought she was anything more than a friend for all that time, he just didn't realize how little she was really on his mind.

Dark watched from the confines of Daisuke's mind as Daisuke sketched and thought back on his day. Dai had guarded his mind much less since he thought Dark was gone, and Dark had come to know his tamer much better in the last week than he had in the entire year that Dai had actually known he was there. Dark had known since the moment he met Dai, noticed his hair and eye color and his mother's dyed hair and contact lenses. Dark had known that he would eventually fall in love with Dai. His suspicions had become stronger as time went on, his protectiveness over the boy growing by the day, his affection shown in teasing and small gestures, shown in secret caresses of the face while the boy slept, and the suspicions had been confirmed when he watched Dai grow blood red wings to protect his best friend. When Dark had cried during the final battle, it had been more than because he would miss the boy; in fact, it was because he knew he would never be parted from him, and that meant that Dai would go through any pain he would. He also knew that even if Dai didn't know he was still there, Dark would only start to love him more. That was why when Dai was unconscious during the field trip to the small island, where they met Towa later on, Dark had first gone to Daiki, with a small set of crystals. The crystals were each of a different shape and size, the one that was not to be tampered with was a pear shape, cut in small angles and colored crimson. The first 'key' crystal was a small diamond-like shape without the top part cut, coming to a point; the second 'key' crystal was a long, slim version of the diamond-like one, with fewer cuts; the third and final 'key' crystal was a smaller version of the first, with the tip stained, like Dai's hair, the crimson of Diana's blood.

When the two of them (Dark unknown to Dai still) looked down at the sketch, they found it to be a picture of Dark with part of his black wings showing, feathers in the background, one floating in front of his nose shaded lighter than the black of his own, and his neck and part of his shoulders exposed, completely topless. The smirk had become sad and lonely, longing for the origin of the seemingly red feather floating in suspension. It was then that Dark finally decided to reveal his presence, "Thinking of me even when you think I'm gone, Dai? I'd have thought you were over me by now." Dai jumped about a foot in the air at the sudden exclamation.

"Dark?! But I thought you left when-"

"When you kissed your best friend? I never left Dai, if you had bothered to look around or feel for my presence you would have known that. My feathers never left, you never kissed the one you loved. You only thought of her as a friend. You didn't know that you were in such an extreme denial that the thoughts you were in denial about never reached your conscious, though they did reach mine."

"What?! What were they? Does anyone in the family know you're still here? What's going on?!"

"Hahahaha, I'm afraid I can't tell you your own thoughts, you will have to find them yourself. And yes, the whole family knows. There are a few things your family never...let you know. A few things that should be kept hidden until you have figured a few more things out."

"Aw, you're no fun. I like things told to me when they're this important. Like the fact that I even turn into you in the first place, I didn't learn that until my 14th birthday, the day I was supposed to carry it out. It's throws me off when that happens and then I can't go through with anything right.""

"I'm afraid I can't help with that, after all the type of thing this is HAS to be found out bits at a time or things will be done out of order and you could easily throw the whole world off." Daisuke didn't have enough time to ponder this because his mother had called him down for dinner. Dai walked downstairs, sat at the table, and waited for everyone to be seated and plates filled before speaking to the table as a whole.

"So when was someone going to tell me that Dark was never going to leave when I kissed Riku?" Dai's voice was calm but accusing, causing everyone seated at the table to freeze in place, food in their mouth or not.

Daiki answered for the frozen parents, coming out of the freeze himself, "We didn't know when he was going to reveal himself, we had to wait until you realized that Riku wasn't more than your Sacred Maiden. Sacred Maidens are only meant to help one turn into Dark until things settle down. Your true love is still out there, and from certain things we can't reveal to you yet, we believe it's a man." Daisuke was not really phased by this, since he had found himself bisexual a while ago and more leaning toward men anyway. It was the fact that his family had come to that conclusion without telling him either that they had come to that conclusion or the reasons behind it.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? It would have made things so much easier."

"We have reason to believe that saying that sooner would throw the world off balance. Should you have known this, you would alter what would have happened. You would never have started dating Riku, and Dark would continue thieving because there was never a time for you to realize anything, and thus neither of you would have the time to do what you are about to do, and Dark needs to be with you through the whole thing."

"And just what reason would it be that I'm not to learn about this until it happens?" No one said anything, but Dark appeared in his black leather pants and vest with the many-layered necklace and two linked rings hanging from it, one red the other purple.

"I'm afraid you'll have to find out slowly Daisuke, but we have something to show you downstairs." Dark proptly motioned for the whole family to follow his ghostly apparition, and walked to the basement door, heading to the ceremony room. Upon entering, he turned to the painting of two feathers, holding a third feather in his hand that no one had known he had: a feather from a bit before the final battle of Daisuke's. It glowed red and replaced the white of Krad's feather, then the over-sized goblet in the center of the room shifted and slowly moved away from the painting to reveal a small hidden stair case. Taking an old torch from the wall, Dark headed down the small dark staircase. The family followed him, Daisuke first and in single file, into a small (at least it felt small) pitch black room. As Dark went around the room lighting all the old torches with what Daisuke now realized was a fully solid body, the family discovered a small divice in the center of the room. It was like an altar of sorts, rounded on top with three distinct holes spread evenly around its perimiter. Daisuke walked over to it to investigate it furthur when his hand hit a violently repelling barrier. "Sorry about that, only someone holding something with your sister's blood on it can pass the barrier other than me."

"Wait, wait I have a sister?" Daisuke asked, throwing slightly deadly looks toward his family.

"Yes, Daisuke, in fact she was your twin. Her name was Diana. I cannot tell you what happened to her yet, as that is what this room is for, but I can give you something that can." Dark walked over to Daiki, and Daiki immediately pulled a set of crystals that matched the shapes on the centerpiece perfectly. Dark held them by the red pear-shaped one and pointed to the large daimond-like crystal. "This is the first crystal and the only one you will be able to use right now, as the other two need at least your magic and the last one needs magic from both of us. The first one will only need a bit of mine, but let us all see exactly what is in the first one to help you understand part of what is going on." Doing as told, Daisuke placed the first of the crystals into the proper slot, and Dark placed one of his black feathers on the center of the divice, standing back and allowing a projection to come up for the whole family to see. The hologram showed the Niwa family tree, and as Dark placed a finger on Daisuke's name, a picture was shown of a white haired, white winged, pink eyed baby, sitting entirely still in his cradle as something seemed to be in the middle of happening out of sight range. Dark tapped the picture again to go back to the family tree and tapped a name next to Daisuke's that read as Diana. The picture appeared again, this time of a crib next to the previous of a small baby girl with white hair, eyes closed sleeping peacefully. Dark tapped the name Emiko next to show a non-modified version of Emiko's high school picture with her white hair and light pink eyes. Dark then cancelled the images and took back his feather. Turning to Daisuke, he said, "The Niwas are a family of albinos." Daisuke slumped to the floor, dumb-struck.

"All this time, and you didn't even tell me that I'm officially an albino." Daisuke seemed calm, but they all knew he was anything but. The only normal calm for the boy was when he was super-hyper by standard means. "All this fuckin' time, and not even one word abut my true heritage apart from Dark, and that was only told to me when I turned into him. Can I, for once, just know my family heritage as it is and not as you need me to hear for your own purposes?!" Daisuke had gotten steadily louder as he went on his mini-rant, and by the end of it he was madder than anyone but Dark had ever seen him before. Dark was sympathetic, as he had often heared Dai swear and was not in a state of shock, as well as had known Dai's thoughts better than the boy did himself, thus was able to understand the underlying grief that Daisuke was unwilling to show his parents and grandfather. The remainder of the family had flinched when Daisuke had swore, unused to the idea of an innocent-seeming boy getting so angry. Dark stood behind Dai and waited for the anger to slow its building pace, then placed his hand on Dai's shoulder; Dai turned his head, expression twisted in anger only to see the understanding and sympathetic look that Dark was giving him. He immediately started to calm down, and breathed in and out slowly, never letting his eyes leave Darks. In those few moments, Dark had noticed that the thoughts that had reached him from Dai's subconcious were very slowly rising to the surface, and he knew it would only be a matter of time before Daisuke himself knew exactly what the impact of the prophecy that he didn't even know about yet would have on the line of Niwas. Dark could tell that Daisuke was slowly, conciously, realizing that he loved Dark.

I want to appologize for the really long delay for the first chapter, but I needed to get it going and I hit a snag somewhere in the middle and forgot to pick it up again, so here's the first official chapter. From here it should be pretty easy to write but if I hit more snags just give me time and I will eventually pop out a new chapter. I also want to appologize to those looking for the updates on my other two stories, as I am still working out general plot kinks in my DP story and have hit a major snag in the Bleach fic because the next part is training and I suck at action scenes, so I'm trying to get some help here at home. I'll probably update at least one of them before Christmas, and this story will more likely be updated in the next week or two.

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PLEASE REVIEW I'm horrible at picking things back up and if people review, especially with advice on what the future events may hold, then the updates will be longer and faster. Arigatou! .