A/N: This is a drabble that attacked my mind and wouldn't go away until I wrote it down and made it somewhat passable.  It has nothing to do with Faith or Emeralds…it's just…well, a drabble really.  An example of why I should never listen to the Crow soundtrack late at night.  Sigh.  Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING! DON'T SUE ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I have no money anyways.

Severus

            I've lost all sense of time or place in here…though I'm not quite sure exactly where here is.  Time has lost all meaning, and the passing of sun and shadows are only diversions for mind that has nothing else to focus on, nothing else to do except sit, and breathe.  It's the shadows that bother me the most, those strange shifting combinations that have no real meaning, no clear definition; all it is, is grayness, a haziness that just wont say what it is.

            If it even can.  As if I ever could…

            And I'm here, in this strange halfway place; on a ledge, on a limb – on something but I'm never sure what.  But I'm here, right now, and that's all I'm ever sure about.

            Sometimes.

            Some other times it's the absolutes that call me out from my wool wrapped shroud – the blinding white or the warm endless black.  They say truth is the whole of good, that it can burn away all evil in its path.  Burn away the blood and flesh of a madman, of a monster, of ignorance, of hate…But sometimes it just burns.

            And it burns and it burns and it never ever stops – burns so bright it blinds my eyes and I can feel tears dripping off my chin but I can't close my eyes…breath catches, and I know, I know they're watching but I don't care…I can't care because I can almost see it, a shimmer, a twinkle…something blue and enormous and oh Albus

            But it's the dark that's truly dangerous.  She whispers so often to me – like a lover, like a sister.  Like a mother with honey skin and warm vanilla scent – her soft hair creating a tent around us as she kisses my eyes and I – for once, in this long moment where nothing else exists except her scent – here I can slip, slide into something, maybe nothing, and just finally forget.  And it's here, in this blackness, where She smiles and strokes my cheek with razor nails that I can sometimes believe in forgiveness.

            Sometimes.

            I envy shadows on most days.  They have no hard-etched lines to keep them whole, no solid definitions to remind them of their place in life.

            Dirty.

            Defiled.

            Defined.

            Damned.

            Sometimes I bring feather soft fingers up to brush along the edges of shadows, convinced in my nighttime tent of dreams that maybe, just maybe they'll bend when I touch them; that maybe Hell wont be my next destination; that maybe, just maybe there's someplace left for me in the light…But my fingers never touch shadows.  Only flesh and even though flesh is warm and soft and pliant, it never ever bends…

            My toes inch away from the bright stripe of sun on the floor, the cheery gold bringing out the red in the wood, making me remember other things, not so pleasant things – things like scalding liquid on my skin, the taste of snot running into my mouth as I try not to sob; the screams of a boy, of a man, my one whisper and the silence, that damnable silence that followed after.  And of course I remember Him, and You…but there's no twinkle left anymore, and no emeralds or dark forests to lead me home.  Just silence…and golden cherry wood to haunt me, make me cringe, make me weep for something, some One to take all memory of Him and You away…

            The floorboards would be warm, I know they would; they beckon to my toes, cajoling them to come out and play, to lose their withered shell and become warm, golden, brown…burnt.  Fires, like truth, the memory of them wash over me and I shudder, hating it, wanting it, wanting something…Yes, the floorboards would be warm, warm like His skin, like fire, like a thousand different things I used to feel.  But my toes inch away, curling in on themselves, tucking the pale flesh under ragged closes and refusing to come out.  I turn blind eyes away from the light, away from the lemon colored demon and huddle on the ground, wrapping long arms around bony knees, keeping to cold shadows, and the promise of sleep.

End.

A/N: Well, I hope you liked it.  Or at least found it interestingly written.  Thanks!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, back to our regularly scheduled program…