She steps from her cage and spreads her wings, a gentle dove woven from the light of a million stars. Darkness flees before her radiance.
And he, naught more than a helpless child caught in the cold fingers of sacrifice, can only watch, and love the light she gives him.
.
He is a demon. Or so they had said, before they sent him to a place as forsaken as he is and left him to die. Not a soul in the world cares for a monster. Not a soul in the world can look upon the terrible horns that shatter the sky wherever he goes, and smile at him.
Not a soul but her.
She smiles at him. She reaches to touch those terrible horns, curiosity in her fingers. And she speaks to him - though he understands not a word she says.
But it matters not. Only her smile matters, and her light.
He decides he cannot escape the castle alone.
.
Some might say that she needs him; needs him to guide her through lonely halls, needs him to hold her hand and show her feet where they must step, needs him to pull her across desolate chambers of coldest stone.
But it is he who needs her. He needs her to show him the way, to chase nightmares from the deepest corners, to shine brighter than the full moon upon this terrible castle of night. Without her he cannot see. Without her there is no light to illuminate his path. Without her he feels cold, and empty, and there's a strange hollowness to his palm where hers should be.
This castle stands ancient and cruel and full of hatred, a lonely, forsaken place where only devils go to die. It is ice. But when their fingers entwine, fire courses through their veins, and it is enough to melt the world around them.
.
She is light.
He is darkness, they had told him. When he steps into the shadows alone, they swathe his helpless form, and they laugh, and glare, and swallow him.
When he steps into the shadows with her, they screech, and turn away, and her luminance drowns them in purest white.
He cannot do it alone.
So - sometimes, when the darkness grows limbs and tries to take her from him, to snuff her brilliant light for perhaps eternity - he fights. Fights although his arms shake and his heart slams against its cage like a desperate beast begging for freedom.
And when that darkness finally dissipates - when the cold air swallows their remnants after his meager weapon and his meager frame have done all they could do - then he runs to her, panting, eyes wide and frantic, and takes her hand again into his own trembling one.
She only stands there with him, and that delicate hand of hers that should be so frail is strong enough to pull him from the brink of insanity each time.
.
She was light.
Without her he cannot see. Icy rain cuts his skin and cruel wind howls. The world will not silence; will not let him mourn her loss, not even for a moment. So he presses on. And perhaps the water streaming down his face is not rain but tears. Does it matter which?
The old, familiar shadows envelop him. They whisper in voices smooth as silk - whisper for him to join them, to sink to the stone cavern floor and wilt, because he is their kin after all. It is only natural for him to rejoin his family.
But he does not. Stripped of weapon and of precious light, he can only stumble through the dark, wrapping insignificant arms around his shivering frame, and hope that light waits at the end of the tunnel.
That she waits at the end of the tunnel.
For a moment he lets his gaze rest upon a boat, a boat so painfully similar to the one those awful men had used to bring him here to this forsaken castle. It would be so easy to escape. To row away, and slice mighty ocean waves beneath the prow, and feel white sands of freedom scrape the hull.
But what would life be without the light of stars to cleanse the everlasting night?
He reaches for a sword, a sword far too large for a body so small as his, and fingers much too young curl around the hilt. A mere child caught in the web of ancient war. A mere child to end it all.
.
He fights to revive the stars.
Demons surround him, glimmering eyes piercing the dark, mockeries of her, and they threaten to take everything away from him. But he does not fear them, not anymore.
If they tear away his spirit and cast his lifeless corpse to the coldest corners of the castle to rot? It matters not. If they steal the last shreds of his sanity and rip them apart before the screaming wind? He does not care. They can have his sanity. It left him when they took her away - if he even possessed any in the first place. No, only she matters now. And he realizes - she has always mattered more than himself, the only one who smiled, and reached, and touched, ignoring the fact that he is shadow and she is light.
He needs her. Needs to feel the warmth of her silk-smooth hand against his own, needs to bask in her light and needs her to drive away the nightmares that plague his shattered mind.
So he destroys anything that opposes him. Destroys his shadow-brethren, each slice of his too-large sword sending smoky blackness hissing through the air. He is fierce in his determination, in his love for the starlight and his desperate need for the moon to bathe the night in silver.
Beyond stone stairs the mother of all darkness awaits him. She sits upon a throne of blackness, and threatens to devour the moon. He, the rogue shadow, the one who did not bow to his queen, fights with a storm raging on his blade - and he drives it deep into her chest, stopping her icy heart.
With her dying breath she tries to return the favor.
And she might have succeeded, he thinks, as - after all this time, and all this desperate fighting - the blackness finally consumes him.
.
He does not wake as his prison crumbles around him. He does not wake as the world heaves and shudders beneath his unconscious form. He does not wake as she approaches, feet silent amidst the chaos.
She was his light. His torch to guide him through blackness. Her smile like the sun chased the darkness from his mind. Without her he would have died in the shadows, a hopeless child consumed by a dark and terrible prison.
It is ironic, then, that when she saves him from the dying castle -
- she is just the same as the shadowy demons he had so desperately slain to protect her light.
A/N: I just recently finished the game (I'm really late, yeah, I know) and it was absolutely beautiful. I just had to write this after I completed it. Unfortunately I wasn't satisfied with how I wrote the ending, so I let it sit on my computer for a while until I figured something out. Originally I was going to end it on the beach but I kinda like this better.
Anyway, it seems that the poor Ico fandom is dead, which is really sad considering I just barely got into it and I would have loved to be here when things were more... lively. Oh well. Hopefully this will restore some life to the fandom, even if it's just a little bit.