Basically me wanting to explore pairings that aren't cannon, are never going to be cannon and would be really weird in cannon. Hopefully, people will give me requests (feel free, seriously - I want them) if they are also interested in some rare or unique pairing. That includes Nix and stuff that isn't so much weird as not-canon. You can ask for slash, femslash, whatever, and I'll do my best.

This first one (if I do write any more - depends on whether people like it or not) is One and Eight, two characters who have no interactions as far as I can tell, and I'm a hardcore Navrina and Adam/One shipper, but I think it's interesting to see other, more creative pairings in fics.

Disclaimer - I don't own LL, and never will. But please REVEIW and enjoy!

Sweven - vision seen in sleep, a dream

Eight and One

Rapture – a state of being carried away by an overwhelming emotion.

The waves swish gently along the beach, and One looks out with something akin to sadness. The waves look beautiful as they wash up on the sandy shore, changing the light tone slightly darker, and she wishes it were real, if only so she could swim again.

"What are you thinking about?" a voice says beside her, and One turns to look at the only companion she has here – Number Eight. His dark, curly hair hangs in ringlets around his face, framing it gently, and his mischievous green eyes sparkle in the sun.

"Swimming," she replies honestly, surprising even herself as she looks back out across the waves, blue eyes flickering to try and soak up a beautiful sight that never gets old. "It's – I used to do it a lot, you know, before…" She trails off, leaving the sentence unfinished. Not that she needs to continue. They both know what she's talking about.

Eight follows her gaze to the sparkling waves, taking in the sight with the same hunger she always does. He appreciates the beauty of nature, too – it's just a shame that they're stuck with this one place to appreciate.

"Oh," he says softly, and One knows that he gets it, he does, and it's wonderful to know that her only companion understands without having to be told. Out the corner of her eye, she sees him grin slightly, both rueful and wistful at the same time. "Guess it sucks to be stuck here, huh?"

Once again, she doesn't answer. She never has to – not with Eight, who understands everything she wants to say without her having to say it. Not with Eight, who smiles gently at her when he catches her staring when she thinks he isn't looking. Never with Eight, who knows when to respond to her bitchy attitude with a witty quip or a concerned question on whether she's alright.

He's the perfect companion – which is good, because it looks like they'll have to spend eternity together.

The weather doesn't change and the scenery stays the same, but sometimes she likes to close her eyes and imagine what the beach would look like, say, at night-time. One jams her eyes shut and concentrates, really does, on her memories of what the night looked like, with the stars twinkling down on her and the wind blowing gently across her face, shifting her hair.

She can envision it so well in her head, it shocks her to open her eyes to blinding sunlight.

Eight stands in front of her, looking down at her lying down form, and his lips quirk in bemusement.

"What?" she snaps, irritated more at the fact that she's not back in her head than at his actual expression. "What are you staring at?"

Eight opens his mouth, smile playing on the edges of his lips as though about to say some cheesy pick-up line, before his mouth shuts and his posture turns sad. He can tell that she's upset, missing Life (because that word is so much more than a word, and needs a capital letter), and he doesn't want to press her.

Good, she thinks, satisfied. Maybe he'll leave me alone now.

Eight does the opposite, however. He plonks himself beside her, arranging himself into a meditating position, before he screws his face up in what's possibly supposed to be a look of intense concentration, with a furrowed brow and a scrunched-up nose.

"You look constipated," One says bluntly, trying to sound callous and mean, but as she says it an awkward smile comes to her face. "What are you trying to do?"

Eight opens his eyes and laughs, head tilting to the side, curls bobbing as it does so. He has laughter lines around his eyes, and One knows that it wouldn't work for most people around their age – any age, really – but he makes it work. It makes him look happy and joyful, which he kind of is, as opposed to old and weary.

"I'm trying to read your mind, of course," Eight states as though it's a perfectly logical response. One fights the urge to roll her eyes and doesn't quite succeed. Of course he'd come up with a dumb reply like that – and of course he'd know exactly what she needs to cheer her up.

"Oh, yeah? " she teases, deciding to play along, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder and fluttering her eyelashes. "And what am I thinking, then?"

Eight grins, mock-proud and cocky, puffing up his chest in a way that makes him seem oddly attractive.

"You are thinking," he declares, as though delivering a mightily important speech worthy of royalty. "That I am incredibly handsome and you want me to carry you bridal style across the beach."

It's a slightly weird response, but One laughs anyway, knowing that Eight is pretty much the only form of entertainment that she's going to find here, wherever here is. As she's smiling, mouth hurting slightly from being stretched so wide, she feels a strong pair of arms slipping under her and sweeping her off her feet and into the air.

"Hey!" she exclaims, letting out a small laugh as she does so, and Eight smiles sweetly down at her and makes some comment about royalty and princesses, and One grins as he does, indeed, carry her bridal-style along the beach. He has to stop after a while, and they've made no progress as they flop down on the sand, exhausted, looking like they're in exactly the same place that they left off, but still.

It's nice.

000

Often, the two of them wonder why they're here. Is this Heaven? Hell? Limbo? If there is a God, then why did He choose to send them here, of all places? Why not a woodland or a desert or the arctic?

To be honest, though, that's not the biggest question. This is Life After Death – what more do they need to know? And it's nice being on a beach. There's a cool view, there's good weather… what more could they want?

No, what they want to know is why it's only them here.

One was inside Adam's head as he watched both Two and Three die, so both her and Eight know for a fact that the other two dead Garde should be here.

So, where are they?

"Maybe," Eight muses as they lie spread-eagled on the beach one day, garnering One's attention. "It's because we didn't die straight away. Like – we did, but we stuck around afterwards, you know?"

"You mean," One says slowly, running this idea past her own mind as much as Eight's. "Because I hung out in Adam's head and you did something weird with that Lorien thing, we didn't, like pass on properly, or something, and Two and Three did?"

Eight nods, curls rustling as they rub against the sound, and she kind of gets what he means. Kind of.

"I think," he states, sounding kinda depressed as he says it – which is enough to make One pay close attention to whatever he's saying. If there's one thing she knows about Eight, it's that he's never, ever outwardly depressed. "When you die-" His voice falters on the word, but he takes a deep breath and keeps going anyway. "I think when you die you get one chance to pass on officially. And if someone forces you to stay behind a bit, well…" He shrugs and doesn't finish, but One gets the message.

They could be stuck here, forever, unable to pass into Heaven or Hell or whatever, simply because someone else wouldn't let them go straight away.

One feels a brief flare of anger for Adam, before the surge dramatically dies. It was never his fault, and seeing as she wasn't in his head straight away, maybe it was something else – some higher deity or Mogodorian scientist (and she can't believe she's comparing the two) saving her, storing her mind.

"Does that mean what I think it does?" she murmurs, letting a slight panic seep into her words. She knows Eight hears it, and knows that he must be feeling it, too, but both of them have just had the same scary thought and now neither can get it out of their head. "Like… we're gonna be stuck here forever? Just you and me?" Not that he's bad company, and she knows that he knows that this isn't what she's saying – she's scared that this is it, that this is all there is ever gonna be, that they're missed their chance forever to move on.

"It's just a theory," Eight says quietly, but those words that have so much weight don't mean a lot.

They're just them trying to delude themselves.

One runs, and runs and runs and runs towards the waves, and they always get away from her and she growls and frustration, desperately trying to reach them.

"One!" Eight shouts, running after her, feet heavily pattering along the sand and sending grains flying. "One, come back!"

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she registers that she's probably seriously scaring him right now and she really should stop, but despite the ache in her feet and the pounding in her heart she wants to catch those waves.

She's done this before, but not since Eight arrived. She did it when she first arrived here, when she vanished from Adam's mind and found herself here in this strange place. She had squinted at the horizon, seeing the beach go on forever in three directions, with the sea being never-ending in the last. She ran along the beach and towards the waves, but no matter how much she runs she never seems to get any closer to the edge.

Eight did it, too, when he first got here, and right now is an alarming reflection of when she chased after him, shouting at him to stop, running after the mysterious boy (she hadn't even known who the hell he was) with burning soles on the bottom of her feet.

"One!" he calls again, closer to her now, and she'd put on a burst of speed if she wasn't so exhausted, and she collapses to the ground instead, curling up on herself and breathing harshly.

Eight reaches her side pretty quickly, falling to his knees next to her and murmuring about how it's okay, it's alright and he's here for her.

"It's not fair!" she gasps, ending Eight's mantra as she violently throws her fists down on the ground, sending sand spraying onto her clothes although she really couldn't care less about that right now. "I just want to swim! I want to walk through the waves and reach the sea and it's not fair!" One screech the last part, falling down.

She clutches the ground and Eight clutches her and they stay that way until he lifts her up gently and carries her backwards, although the view and the scenery won't change, and she vaguely thinks that he just wants something to do.

She wishes that she could sleep , so she didn't have to be awake all the time, and she wishes that she didn't have to feel so very, very human.

Eight holds her strongly in his arms, and One closes her eyes in exhaustion, though she does not sleep.

One isn't quite sure how to describe this thing they have – both have described their full histories and feelings to each other, so he knows about Adam and she knows about Marina and both of them know that neither is over their crushes (and maybe the others were something more than that, but she forces that thought out of her mind).

She shoves all images of Adam away as she's sure Eight pushes all of Marina away, and lets him kiss her and kisses him back.

Sometimes One gets lonely on the beach – Eight is great company, but you can only spend so much time with someone.

The two part ways, sometimes, both wandering off in opposite directions to just… think, and reflect on their lives then compared to their lives now, and it always gets to the point where they see each other's figures in the distance and the a lonely pang will echo in their hearts, and so they inevitably wander back to each other.

Eternity is a long time.

At least she gets to spend it with someone.

Thanks for reading, and please review and let me know what you think!