Hey readers! A bit ago I was asked to write a Solomon and Sheba fanfiction. I had some free time so thought, why not? I decided to try and make it a little more serious than most of my stories, but hopefully it's good all the same. Anyway, here it is, hope you like it.

Sheba loved Solomon. He wasn't perfect, but she loved him anyway. Others called him stiff, uptight, mysterious. She had been discouraged not to like him before. Everyone thought he had no place in his heart for any kind of love that wasn't friendship. Sometimes, she thought he was right. But ever since that day, when she was younger, she knew that what they said wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter what everyone thought of the two of them together. Because she was already caught. Already spun up in his web, a fly unable to break free. And she liked it.

It all started with just a book.

…

It may have been silly, how it started. That little crush that had become the love of her life. When she had first met him, if anyone had told her she would eventually fall in love with him, she would have hit them with her staff. The thought of loving someone like Solomon always shocked her and the idea would make her laugh. How could someone as silly, and fun-loving as her ever fall for someone as strict, important and high up as him? No, to her they were friends. Just friends, sometimes even family. There would be nothing that would change from that pattern. She couldn't imagine it. She wasn't prepared for anything else.

But one night in the library finished those ideas. She was sleeping, snoring in her bed one night, only to get kicked in the shoulder. Looking back, she couldn't remember if she had woken up right away, or slowly pulled herself out of her dream. But she did remember opening her eyes to see the fleeting figure leave the room. She recognized Solomon's braid as the door shut behind him. Confused, she had turned to Arba to ask where he had went, but the older women hadn't woken up. Sheba remembered being afraid when she realized she was the only one who had been awoken by Solomon's leaving. And once she had been awoken, she couldn't go back to sleep. It bugged her, she remembers, That Solomon woke her up and got to go do something fun while she had to lay there, bored. That had seemed hardly fair to her.

So she'd gotten up, carefully as to not wake anyone else, and followed him out of the room. The hallways of the temple they resided in were cold at night, and she hurried so her feet wouldn't get to cold. She remembers seeing a light, shining in one of the rooms that was supposed to be empty. In her mind she decided that it had to be Solomon in there. Who else would it be? So she followed him into the room, and what she did next was a little fuzzy. Did she hide behind the desk? Or did she peek in from the entrance? It wasn't important however. What was imported was Solomon at the moment.

He had walked into the library. Already he had managed to surround himself with books of all sorts, making his own little fort of paper. Sheba had thought it was silly that someone would wake up so late to just read. It made her curious, wondering what was in there that he couldn't read during the day. He always was so interested in the boring facts that were in those books. He must have been as much of a dork as Ugo was, she remembered thinking while snickering to herself.

She must have made a noise then, for Solomon had turned and their eyes locked. Sheba remembered feeling frozen, a child being caught seeing something they shouldn't. At first Solomon's eyes narrowed, and she assumed that she was going to be in trouble. But to her surprise, even as she remembered it, Solomon had smiled. "Do you want to come in," he'd asked, his voice almost musical in the night. She was surprised again when she had come to that conclusion, but even more surprised when she agreed and walked over to him.

He'd made room, in his little fort for her to sit. In his private fort, that Sheba later learned, was the place that he truly felt happy being alone. He'd made room for her in his private spot. She wonders in the future, if he had realized what a bit thing that was. Or if he'd just done it automatically. Once she had sat down, he picked up another book and showed it to her. "Have you read this book?"

Sheba remembers shaking her head. "Why would I have read one of your dorky books?" Solomon didn't seem fazed by her words. Instead he turned back to the book, completely lost in the cover. Sheba remembered his face vividly. How his eyes held a mixture of sadness and excitement. How his mouth was set in a firm line, unable to decide what he wanted to do with it. How his brows had furrowed, annoyed at his own confusion. She'd grown to love that look. At that time however, it only confused her. She'd never seen Solomon look at a book like that.

"What is it," she asked, unconsciously whispering. Solomon had turned to her with a bit of surprise, as if he had forgotten she was there.

"Just a book," he replied, holding the leather covered book for her to see. The title she couldn't remember, but it had something to do with a swan. Sheba constantly got angry at herself for not paying attention to the title. Once she'd learned to love him, she'd always wanted to find that book again. Solomon had looked at it as if it was a foreign object. "It's a story of a princess who is turned into a swan."

"What a horrid thing to be turned into," Sheba had said to herself, sticking out her tongue at the thought. Solomon had chuckled, and she had liked the sound. Solomon had never laughed very much.

"In the story, the princess is turned into a swan, and taken away by an evil magician. Her prince goes looking for her, but he doesn't find her for a long time. Once he's even tricked into believing that someone else is her, and almost marries her instead. But he realizes his mistake, and in the end he defeats the magician and finds the swan princess he was looking for." He rattled off the story like he had read it a hundred times. Knowing him, he probably had.

Sheba on the other hand, had quickly gotten bored. "What's so special about it?" Solomon had continued to stare at the book, as if it held a secret that he would never get to.

"Sometimes I wonder what would have happened. If he hadn't found her." He paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts. "What's it like to never be found?" Sheba didn't have to wonder. She already knew what it was like, to not be found. To be left alone, waiting for someone to come find you, hoping for someone to come and rescue you, say you belonged. It was a heartbreaking life, one she still looked back on. Her waiting in that church, wondering why her parents had left her. Thinking maybe they would come back for her someday. Or if not them, someone would come looking for her. Someone would finally find her, and make her feel loved. When she was little she had stopped caring who. She just wanted to be found.

But as she had grown older, she decided it was a lost dream. She knew what the swan princess would have gone through if he hadn't found her. The princess would have kept hoping, kept dreaming about the day that she would be found. But as time went by, new ideas would take over. Ones of being left alone forever, of never being found. Eventually she would stop assuming they were dreams, and decide that they were a reality. She would start living them, assuming that she would always be lost forever. She would tell herself it was her moving on, but deep down she would never be sure. Deep down those dreams she had, the ones of behind found, would never go away. They would haunt her, every time she was feeling vulnerable, or when she saw others who had been found. It would always come back to her. What was a dream would become a haunting nightmare.

"Not everyone gets found in the end." Sheba had told him, standing up from her spot. She remembers the pain she had felt when she left, at the memory of being abandoned on the steps of the church. It had made her angry at him. Angry that he had woken her up in the middle of the night, than just made her feel terrible as she went back to sleep. Her footsteps had echoed in the silent room, she remembered that.

"Sheba," Solomon had called after her, and she had stopped. She remembered turning and looking into his eyes. Blue eyes that held some much more wisdom and understanding than she thought she ever would reach. And he smiled at her.

"It's a good thing I found you in that tower, huh?"

He had said 11 words. Eleven words that she always looked back on, that she always remembered with fondness and hope. But 8 of those words seemed unnecessary to her. Eight of them she would be alright with forgetting if it ever came to that. But there were three words in that sentence. Ones that she would never forget, and ones that always brought hope and joy to her heart when she thought of them.

I found you.