Disclaimer : Legally trademarked characters and other items are not mine, this is not for profit.

Notes : I dislike notes prior to a story, but this bear mention : this fic originally started out as a fill for a 'sleeping beauty' request on a meme. However, somewhere along the way it turned from fluffy romance into what it is right now. Therefore, I decided to leave the fill for more worthy writers and post this completely non-anon, although credit for the story idea must still be given where it is due.

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Sunshine, sunshine

track one

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Quiet.

Quieter than a mouse.

Quieter than a bird sleeping.

Quieter than a dying clock, quieter than a dried-up creek, quieter than a boarded-up store. Too quiet to be heard. Too unimportant to be noticed. That was what he had to be, learn how to do. It was hard. He was used to running in the sun and chasing after robins in the garden, laugh together with everything in the world that surrounded him. The boy in the sunlight, not the ghost boy in the window. But it was his fault. And his promise, his pinky promise. So, for the time being, he had to die.

Alfred inhaled, then held his breath. He counted on his fingers. One two three four five six seven. Eight nine ten. Eleven. Twelve thirteen. Then he exhaled sharply. Thirteen seconds, still. It was improved somewhat, but not so much, not like the time he went from six to twelve. He wished he could do better- - -he was asked, If it was you, how long do you think you could manage?- - -and he really wished it could be longer. He was the one with all the luck, that was what his grandma and grandpa and daddy and mommy always say, so if he could not try harder, how could they have any hope? Be quiet. Be still. Stay as if you do not exist. Be unnoticeable. Be like Matthew. At most, he could kick the air underneath the table sometimes, when he was bored enough, because he remembered Mattie kicking the air, too.

How long could you manage?

One. Two. Three. Four.

How long?

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

(The sun was shining outside.)

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

(Somebody was playing ball with another somebody beyond the window.)

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seven. Eight. Nine.

(He wanted to go outside and play, too.)

He heard the sound of someone standing up, the swishing of something fabric, then of something leather. There was a sound of the door opening, then closing, then footsteps walking far away.

Alfred kicked the air, then exhaled. Did he do well enough today? Was that enough? He didn't really know. If he knew in advance, he would've spent less time playing and more time observing. Looks aside, they were as different from each other as can be, from the way they talked and walked to the way they ate their meals to the way they smiled. Even now, he wore slightly violet-tinted contact lenses and asked the nice ladies for a shawl to cover his hair. If only because Matthew liked it, the way it was different, and he didn't want to dye it or curl it or do anything to make it the same.

Somebody else stood up and walked in front of him. Alfred did not have to look to know who it was. The man opened his mouth to speak. He couldn't hear, so he didn't look at that movement, which would've looked like a dying fish. Instead he turned to the far side of the wall, to Mattie's shadow, for a translation. Because Mattie was always best for that sort of thing.

- - -It's all right, your mother is gone, the shadow mouthed. The man said. The shadow intoned. Alfred shook his head and turned from Mattie's shadow and looked at the floor, because this conversation always made him sad. There was another shadow of Matthew's there, sitting on the shadow of his bed. It smiled faintly at him.

- - -I am so, so sorry.

He could see the man's shadow moving in to hug Mattie's, and feel an old, distant warmth enveloping his shoulders, his arms, his chest. Here, in the sunlit room, he was being hugged, too. Both of them. Mattie's shadow giggled and Alfred buried his face into the man's shoulder and murmured, "It's okay."

'I love you, Al,' said the waves of sound caught in the man's shoulder, the strings of the voice-box in his throat.

- - -That's not fair! Mattie's shadow pouted, because the man's shadow said the same thing, too, and Alfred didn't even have a shadow to hear. He felt guilty. Matthew should have those words, too, because they were brothers and everything was his fault, but it would be fine. He would make it up for Mattie later, everything from one to thirteen to nine, the way they should've shared everything in the world together. Just in case he had to do everything else together with Mattie, too.

"I love you, too, Dad," Alfred said, smiling into the cigarette-scented fabric of the man's shoulder, hugging him back tightly.

Matthew laughed and said the words to their father with the shadow of the same lips.

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Do you know that boy?

Yeah, poor thing. The Jones family, right?

Alfred spent the afternoon walking in the hallways, like he always did. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with him, the nice doctor said, so he was allowed to take walks all he wanted when the afternoons came. Mornings was not all right because morning was a time for weeping woman and the silent man who only talked in apologies, but afternoons were fine. Afternoons, he could spend the time seeing new things. Afternoons, he could walk around and explore the place. He liked these. There were some unpleasant things on afternoons, sure, things like all those whispers without voices, words without faces. They were always about some sad, poor little boys from some sad, poor family. He didn't want to hear those things. They were boring, and they made Mattie sad and Mattie would ask him to count to nineteen again when he just wanted to run, so he tried to get away from them as much as he could.

That was why Alfred liked playing with his brother.

Do you know that boy?

Yeah, poor thing. I've heard that the two of them were really close.

The voices made him increase his pace from a walk to a run, running in the hallways past startled nurses and old ladies and janitors carting barrels of old gloves, he ran and ran to the old building no one really visited anymore. It was made of wood and smelled of centuries-old dampness, and it was where he and Matthew loved to play together.

"All right, Mattie," the waves in his voicebox muttered, "we're going to start our game today, are you ready?"

The hallways echoed with the sound of his laugh and the afternoon sun accented the shape of Mattie's nod. Alfred began walking, then, looking all around him for rooms which weren't boarded up and corners which weren't locked, corners which were dim enough that shadows could vanish if they wish. His job was to hide in these corners, close his eyes and count to ten. By the time he opened them again Mattie would be gone, and he then spend the rest of the afternoon opening doors and looking, calling, calling for Matthew's smile to come back inside his shadow again.

Sometimes he wanted to hide and let Matthew be 'it', but he couldn't. He was the only one who could walk with human legs, and the burden fell to him to take them to places and find Matthew before the afternoon turns to evening and stretches his shadow to grotesque shapes. His brother always complained if he couldn't manage that, and he didn't want to see Matthew all elongated and tall and wrongly proportioned, either, because they were twin brothers and Matthew was not suppose to grow up without him.

You aren't supposed to grow up without me, either, Mattie's shadow whispered. You aren't, but mommy says you might end up having to.

Alfred smiled and shook his head reassuringly. That was just how his brother was, all worries and negativity and not a moment where everything was all right. Matthew was in his shadow, so they'd always end up doing everything together. Everything would be all right.

He ducked into the shadow of a wall, closed his eyes and started counting.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Nine.

Ten.

Deep breath. Inhale. Exhale.

Matthew was gone by the time he opened his eyes again, seeped into the shadows hanging over the dusty floors. He felt as light as a feather, his weight was his own, his shadow was simply floor space where the light did not touch. He could not hear Matthew laughing the way he always did and if there was one thing he would never tell his brother, it was that the temporary lack of his presence was one of the reasons he liked this game so much. And there was, of course, the part where he got to go find Matthew all over again.

First the hallways. The dust was thick on the floor, he left footprints like it was newfallen snow. Sunlight cast shadows from pillars and balconies and the corners of the stairs and sometimes Matthew would hide in one of these, but he couldn't see anything there today. After he had walked along the halls on both floors of the old building, Alfred decided to search the toilets. Most of them were boarded up and there was only a pair functioning on the lower floor, their fluorescent light flickering like the beating of a moth's wing whenever he turned it on.

"Matthew?" he called, opening the creaking metal door into the dimly lit toilet.

Silence answered him.

Alfred waited for a few minutes, watching the way the shadows of the swinging bathroom stall doors swam about in the dusty sunlight, then closed the door and left the toilet behind him. If Mattie wasn't hiding in there, he had to be in one of the rooms. Alfred disliked this possibility because there was always the chance that Matthew would seep into one of the boarded rooms and failed to get out, and to be honest he hadn't had to deal with it that often. Matthew usually didn't go so far when he hid. There were a few times when he was under the sink in the abandoned kitchen and when he was hanging from a tree in the courtyard, but there was one time, one and only one, when he was hiding under a bed in one of the abandoned rooms.

He decided to go about looking systematically. Starting from the end of the hallway on the first floor, he went from empty room to empty room, knocking doors and peering into the seams of the ones that were boarded up. Usually only the dim afternoon light stared back at him, and he did not find Matthew. Doors past. Room after room. Shadow after shadow. Silence after silence.

Despair was beginning to gnaw at him when he neared the final room on the first floor; it was eerily like the time he found Matthew last. Perhaps that was why he did not notice, even as he turned the knob, that the door was unlike the others, and he still did not notice when he took his first steps in.

Blinding sunlight.

Alfred found himself blinking, the muscles of his lower jaw relaxed. He was walking through dim and dust, this building was nothing more than dim and dust, everywhere else was nothing but faceless whispers and weeping women and men who had no voice. And here, for the first time, it was as if he saw.

Soft white curtains were billowing in the gentle breeze of the open window. Sunlight streamed through in cascades, dancing along the dustmotes as if they were made out of auroras. Butterflies hover in the air around the white vase filled with still-red roses, as beautiful and as colorful as Alfred's gardens used to be before he found his brother.

"Matthew?" Alfred whispered.

A breath of wind blew through the window, sending the curtains fluttering higher, higher-

That was the first time he saw the bed.

It was an ordinary hospital bed, square corners and clean, forgettable sheets. At the end of it perched Matthew's shadow, lingering in the shadow of the bedpost, looking at the bed curiously. Then he looked up and their eyes met. Matthew's shadow smiled.

Here, he said. Here, Alfred, here.

On the bed was the figure of a boy. He seemed a few years older than Alfred and Matthew, with a skin that seemed more suited to running across the hills and swimming in the lakes than staying still like a porcelain doll. His hair was a cropped shock of dirty blond, messy and all strayed ends. He was no sleeping beauty of any sort, no angel. Perhaps Alfred would never have noticed him at all if not for the sunlight, the sunlight on his shoulder, the sunlight on his hair, the sunlight on his folded hands. Perhaps it was only chance, but in that moment Alfred thought he had just seen the most stunning thing in the entire world.

"Matthew," he whispered, unsure whether it was the only word he remembered at that moment, whether he was trying to call to his brother, or whether he was trying to call to the sleeping boy in the sunlight.

The boy didn't wake up. His breaths were even, his eyelids did not stir.

Matthew's smile slid down from the bed, walked over and seeped back into the shadow underneath his feet.