The child struggled still, but weakly now. And Krad grew tired of his anger and his screams. He lifted a hand to his heart and pressed calm, then sleep into the child within. Protest trickled into silence.

And he was alone.

Well, not alone. He did not know what it was to be alone. Never.

But…

He knew the feeling of being among the sleeping, of walking the night, stepping around the dreams of solitary sleepers. The light breaths, the feeling of paleness even in the dark, and the knowledge that, even if he was not alone, no one knew he was there.

Sitting up at night, he would begin to wander through the dreamscape of his host. Surreal, impossible scenes, thick with meaning only Satoshi knew. But he, also, knew them, because they were the same. He watched, and Satoshi would forget him entirely, fighting his own nightmares as White Wings stood by, phantom observer to the hours Satoshi spent "alone." Inside his mind. But Krad could not forget, not even in the escape of dreaming. There was no escape for him.

He made it his day-to-day goal to remind Satoshi, in his tedium, that he was no more free than the monster trapped inside him.

This was not true.

There was escape. No doubt far-off, if Krad could have his way. But each Hikari had a Future, a time that would be their own, their space to fill with silence or with sound as they chose.

Jealousy of this was why he sometimes killed them.

But he could never kill them all, or he would douse his own light. And what did it matter, really, when each death only meant more time, more waiting in his own sleep until the next cage blossomed with his power. Murder was meaningless, but it assuaged his pride. He needed it to.

No fame, and he didn't want it, anyway. Acknowledgement, certainly, but he knew Dark's secret, through all the flash and gleam of his showy pride. And it was this: that he was like unto his brother. He hung on his adorers because it gave him a semblance of life. Let him. Neither of them really wanted to be known. What they wanted was to be something else entirely, something that could never be granted to them. And because they could not have it, they would never be alone.

Krad folded back his wings and, feeling morning reach its still cool fingers round his neck, he faded back into the light.