A/N: This little plot demon came up after a conversation with my girlfriend, and I consider it my first foray into deconstruction fic, specifically of twincest. Really, MK is an odd fandom to choose - as far as I know, twincest isn't exactly common here, so I might just be going against the point, ahah. I meant to post this only after I'd written other chapters and expanded the storyline more, but perhaps it works well enough as a stand-alone piece.

The first thing you remember is bright light shining in your eyes and a voice saying, "He finally woke up!" Looking back on it now, you think the voice was probably Dad's. At the time, you thought the light hurt your eyes, and you tried to close them and stop the pain, but it burned red behind your eyelids until darkness mercifully blocked it out. Someone was standing over you. You opened your eyes to look at your savior, and that was the first time you saw your twin brother.

You didn't know you looked like him then. Nowadays, you don't look in mirrors much anymore when you could just look at him instead; there's so little difference between you two that even Dad forgets how to tell you apart. He calls him Vayne sometimes, then gives him your clothes, and he calls you Ein, then hands you his books. It used to happen only when Dad was caught up in his research, but now he mixes you up so frequently that you don't bother to correct him. Ein usually laughs and tells you not to worry about it, Dad's just going senile and losing what's left of his brain, and you know it's just a joke, but it scares you. He smiles at you, takes your hand, and squeezes it until you can't feel anything else.

He had smiled at you then too, and it made you feel safe, so you smiled back. He reached down and hugged you, pressed your face into his shoulder to keep your eyes away from the light, and whispered "my brother" in your ear. You were glad someone understood that it hurt to look at that whiteness above you, and it felt nice and warm in his arms, so you kept your eyes closed and let him hold you. You didn't know how many times he would embrace you and call you "brother", and you didn't know how much that word would eventually mean.

You are looking at him now. He's sleeping beside you, his arms around your waist, and his body is sticky and warm against yours, but you feel cold inside and you're not sure why. As you watch his lips twitch like Sulpher's whiskers do when he's dreaming, you try to remember how this started; it began with "brother", as things always had with him.

He came into your room whispering that word. Something bad had happened. You try to remember what it was, but you can't even recall when this occurred, exactly; all you see is Ein crying and you didn't know how to help. You panicked as you reached out to hold him because Ein never cried, he was always the one laughing and smiling and telling terrible jokes, and you were the one who cried for little things because you felt too much and everything hurt, and in that moment, you were feeling too much again, you both were. He was saying something, but it didn't make any sense, something about Dad and "I'm tired, Vayne", and you just nodded against his hair and rubbed his back because you didn't know what you were supposed to say.

He moved his head up to press his forehead against yours, and he was too close to see much of anything, which you were glad for; you didn't want to see the tears in his eyes. You wiped his cheeks with your sleeve, and he made a little noise that sounded sort of like a laugh, probably thinking about how stupidly long your sleeves were, he was always telling you to roll them up, and then he leaned forward just a bit more to place his lips over yours.

(You pull the blankets over yourself, hesitate, then wrap them around Ein too.)

You knew his lips were soft. Ein had kissed you before, on your cheeks, on your forehead, on your nose and your eyelids and your hands, but he had never kissed your mouth. It felt different from all of those other kisses somehow, and you remembered that it was supposed to; kissing someone like this was important. Significant, Ein had said. You wondered why he was doing this now and why he chose you, if a kiss on the mouth was so special - did he need to kiss you to stop crying? He leaned forward even more, pushing at you like he wanted you to lie back. You wanted to help him, so you did, and he kissed you harder, his hands grasping at your face with a sense of urgency you have never seen in him before. You gasped, and suddenly his tongue was in your mouth, and it felt slippery and awkward as he moved it around like he was trying to eat whatever part of you he could reach. You were even less sure of what to do now, you had never kissed anyone like this, but Ein was the only person you'd ever kissed anywhere, and wasn't that fitting? So you just let him kiss you and sometimes shifted your tongue against his and wondered at the sounds he made.

When he pulled away, he was breathing hard, and you could see enough of him to make out red in his eyes and his cheeks. You heard a sound wrench its way out of your throat, this choked kind of squeak, and he smiled and murmured, "it's okay" before he kissed you again. A hot, uncomfortable feeling wriggled in your stomach when his fingers brushed against your neck, worsening when they moved down across your shirt and then started to creep underneath it. You heard yourself gasp again, and Ein whispered, "It's okay, brother... it's okay, it's just me, I won't hurt you, I just need to..."

He trailed off as his hands met your skin and your whole body shuddered. "Did you like that?" He asked. He looked at you like he desperately wanted you to say yes. You couldn't make the word come out, even as you opened your mouth and cleared your throat and licked your lips, already wet with your saliva and his, and you watched his eyes linger on your mouth. There was a desire in his expression you didn't know how to name, something predatory and hungry - you thought of Sulpher hunting some unfortunate creature, and the comparison scared you until you realized you could still see tears in Ein's eyes. He had blue eyes, like yours, but his weren't supposed to look like this, so sad and desperate and wanting. You didn't want him to cry anymore. Slowly, you forced yourself to nod, and he finally relaxed, most of the tension seeping out of his shoulders and his face. You felt relieved too, your shoulders sinking back against the floor.

"Then let me do more for you..."

He started to pull up your shirt, and a white hot warning shot from your spine to your brain as your chest was fully bared to him - but you held your breath and let him do whatever he wanted. You let him each time he asked after that. You couldn't stand to see him cry, and Ein has never cried since, so you must have done the right thing.

You must have. Ein reminded you every day how much he loved you.

He shifts in his sleep, his arm moving a little further up your waist. You're still looking at him, at his dark, silvery lashes, long enough to touch his cheek, and you could count each one a second ago but now your vision is too blurry to see them, and you wipe at your eyes, wondering why you're crying.