A/N: Okay, it's not often I post here on DevART, but I had to do something with the pic for this. It was just too pretty not to use somehow. Sephiroth's POV, I think.

This was inspired partly by the way I feel about fitting in. I hate it. I like standing out.

-O-

There they are. They're just standing around talking about vapid, shallow things. Or at least that's the impression I get looking at them. They're probably talking about me again. About how I refuse to follow them and whatever lame trends they're hawking. I hate them. They never have anything interesting to say.

At least, that's how I felt before. I was pretty antisocial.

It may have had something to do with the way they treated me. I didn't want to fit in, so I deliberately alienated myself. It didn't take long before they completely ignored me, which suited me just fine. I didn't want anything to do with them either. But after enough time in the shadows, you start wishing for someone to be there too.

It didn't hurt that I was gay. My school was full of homophobes. Go figure.

But I never found anyone for a good long time. There was, and still is, a caution about me, a sort of wariness that keeps others at arm's length. If I open up to you, completely let my guard down around you, then I trust you. This doesn't happen very often.

I couldn't find anyone among those others, the ones who ignored me. This was to be expected. I was too different, too much of an individual. The others were all one colour, one crayon from the Crayola big box. Probably grey, but white would be more appropriate. There was nothing to them.

I sort of regret those days, now that I've actually found someone.

It took me a while, but I found someone else in the shadows.

It probably helped that he was the new kid. Nobody knew him, nobody had any preconceived notions about him. His odd appearance only served to ostracize him further. He has this really thick silver hair, and it hangs down to his waist. I've noticed that if any of the others had an unusual hair colour, they'd hide it. His eyes are pretty different as well. How many people have yellow eyes?

He looked like a football player when I first saw him. He was pretty shy at first. I remember when he first stepped into our class. His clothes were a bit like mine, sort of fringe. The teacher pointed him out and had him say his name. He said it was Ansem. The teacher directed him to sit next to me. The other class had already begun talking about him. I could hear some of them.

"Poor new guy. He has to sit next to Sephiroth the freak."

"Should we talk to him?"

"Nah."

He sat in the empty desk next to mine. I glanced at him, then returned to my drawing.

My art was another thing that got me alienated. The teachers loved it. They always said it was completely unlike anything they'd ever seen, and thus it was always on display. I think the others were jealous and a bit annoyed that they could ignore me all they wanted, yet the teachers wanted to display me.

I'm surprised none of it got me kicked out. Most, if not all, of it was pretty dark.

Ansem pulled a roll of papers and a pencil out of his pocket. I was mildly intrigued. None of the others would go around with papers and a writing utensil in their pockets. Hell, their pockets were all too small. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He was writing something. I wondered what. I shrugged and returned to my drawing. He'd probably end up hating me like all the others.

A few minutes later, some idiot bumped into his desk, probably on purpose. They sent a stack of his papers flying. They didn't even apologize, just left him to clean them up himself. I helped. Just a chance to learn more about him. I casually glanced over one of the pages I picked up. I don't remember the exact contents, only that two of the sentences ran something like this: "And at the end of the world, you still left me for dead. At the end of the world, nothing was left but me and my sorrow, until the end of time itself."

I was definitely intrigued. I handed his papers back with a murmured "That's pretty good." He turned crimson and thanked me.

He was in all of my classes somehow, and he always ended up next to me.

At lunch, as usual, I sat at a table in the corner, no one else around. I was watching Ansem. He stood at the front of the cafeteria, looking for an empty table or something. Of course there were none. So he had no other choice but to come to mine.

"Can I sit here?" he asked. As usual, he sounded sort of unsure of himself. I shrugged, not really caring what he did. The minute he sat down he pulled his papers and pencil out of his pocket again.

"What are you writing about?" I asked, curious. The thing I'd picked up was interesting enough to stick in my mind.

He jumped and looked up. "Vampires, Armageddon, that kinda thing," he answered. "Nothing really interesting…"

"On the contrary," I replied. "I find it interesting." I could tell from the look on his face what he thought of that statement. "That's what I draw." I pulled my sketchbook out of my books and handed it to him. He paused at the first page. I remember what was on that one. A girl with blank eyes and wings dripping with blood. I expected him to hand the book back right away after that. But he kept looking.

"You should illustrate some of my stories," he said. "You're really good."

"You sound like the art teachers. They're always putting my stuff up around the school," I replied, toying with my pencil. Ansem looked up.

"I'm serious. Some of your stuff really fits mine," he said. The bell rang.

"I'll think on it," I replied. And with that I took my sketchbook back and disappeared in the mass of people. No, I didn't disappear. I never completely do. They're all one colour, after all. I'm too different to blend in.

Ansem and I talked a little bit more in the next class. He was telling me about how people always seemed to respond negatively to his writings. He'd been sent to several different psychiatrists, but they'd always pronounced him mentally healthy. He'd been shunted from school to school because none of the teachers felt like dealing with him.

"This school, as chock-full of shallow idiots as it is, probably won't treat you like that," I said to him. "I doubt that they'd respond like that to your stuff if all the teachers like mine."

Somehow we just clicked. For once I had someone to share the shadows with, and for once he apparently had someone who understood him. I eventually did end up illustrating his stuff, and we did a joint submission to the school's literary magazine. It got accepted right away. Ansem had gotten a reputation as a skilled writer among the teachers, and to see one of his works with one of mine attached pretty much made the submission a shoe-in.

Around two months after we started hanging out together, I received a not altogether unpleasant surprise:

Ansem was as gay as I was. I'd already told him about myself, and since he hadn't stopped hanging out with me, I figured he just accepted it. But to find out he was homosexual as well…

It wasn't long after that we started going out.

It spread through the school pretty quickly. Sephiroth the notorious antisocialist and Ansem the fringe kid as a couple. With the way those others loved their rumormongering, I wasn't surprised it got out. We weren't exactly quiet about it either. We'd walk through the halls hand in hand, lean on each other during lunch, kiss in the hallways… one time during lunch I even fell asleep in his lap.

That was in the tenth grade. In our senior year, we were still going out and had lasted longer than all the other couples in the school. We moved in together during the second semester, both of us having turned eighteen in January.

However, sometime during March Ansem fell ill with a particularly vicious strain of the flu that had been going around. Three people had died from it, though they were elderly.

My concern was understandable.

I stayed home with Ansem. At first he lurked on the couch, huddled under numerous blankets. I kept a near constant vigil, not really willing to lose the only friend I had. After a few days, he slipped into a coma.

I never left his side. For three days I stayed beside him, neither sleeping nor eating. After a while, though, I ended up falling asleep on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat, and to my relief it was still strong.

I woke to the sound of his voice calling my name.

My eyes opened slowly, and the minute I heard Ansem's voice I jerked awake and looked up at him. He was watching me through half-lidded eyes. I don't remember ever feeling more relieved. I hugged him tight, and he loosely wrapped his arms around me.

"I thought I would lose you," I whispered brokenly into his chest. Now that I knew what it was like to have someone, I didn't want that feeling to be lost. I cared too much for Ansem to ever wish him gone.

"I'll never leave you," he replied, twining his fingers in my hair.

Ansem recovered with each passing day. His strength was returning, but I still refused to leave his side. It wasn't long before he was completely well again, and we returned to school. But Ansem's illness had left us both with a crushing sense of mortality. Both of us were painfully aware of how fragile human life was. We both wanted to be more than just a couple.

So, during spring break, we became lovers. We were infinitely close after that, and went nearly everywhere together. We were the only ones in the school whose love was pure and true. However, fate seemed to be conspiring against us.

Ansem's family wanted him to go into law and he wanted to be a freelance writer or a novelist. I intended to go into an art field, and I knew that Ansem would go wherever I did.

But while my parents completely accepted me and Ansem, as well as my ambitions, Ansem's parents were very unsupportive of us. There were nights when Ansem would come to me, crying his eyes out. I would simply hold him close and give him whatever comfort was mine to give.

So, without telling anyone, the two of us left our home state after graduation and moved out West.

We've been together ever since.

I don't think I could ever find anyone else. And I think Ansem feels the same. We're still lovers, and nothing will ever tear us apart. Around Ansem, I'm calmer than I used to be, and less antisocial as well. My opinion on fitting in remains the same, and I doubt it will ever change, but I can accept it better. I still think those at my school were one colour, utterly monochrome, but I don't care anymore.

I have Ansem, and that's all that matters to me.

-End.