A/N: Another little ficlet inspired by a Blaqk Audio lyric. This one is "Walk right through me/I'm not really there" from the song "The Love Letter"
From the Shadows
The redhead crept in shadows, fading into the dark corners in his black coat. It had a deep hood that concealed the red bristle of hair, the pallor of his skin, the emerald of his eyes, and a hem that fell just short of his booted feet. He wasn't sure when it began, when he decided that he liked the concealment of an unlit alley over a bustling street. There were a lot of things he wasn't sure of. Where he came from, his age. Why he wore the black attire, how he'd even found something to fit his tall, skeletal frame.
He knew his name. Axel. And another name, Roxas, but he didn't know who or what that belonged to.
He knew the shadows. They were calm, now, not the vicious, seething mass of darkened hearts they were before, the ones he'd preyed upon, but a cool, empty embrace that he was familiar with, nonetheless.
He had no sense of time. Lives flowed around, past him. It wasn't much different from before, he knew, even without really knowing what before was like.
A tuft of blond hair in a crowd drew his attention, sometimes, but he couldn't say why. He just continued his silent observation of the world around him. Blue was the only other color he saw, really, in the occasional sparkle of intelligent eyes. But it never matched up with what he was looking for. He didn't know that, either, but he knew he'd recognize it when he saw it.
"It" turned out to be a short blond, hair a deliberate swirl of spikes, eyes like a clear spring sky, a scowl of lips that were better suited for smiles or pouts. Time took on meaning again, even if he didn't know how to measure it.
For days, weeks, months, he stalked the other, becoming a shadow himself.
"Roxas." The name came unbidden from his lips, but it was a match for his quarry, he realized. The blond didn't hear him.
Axel started to sense things, bits of before. Unconnected pieces: the color of a sunset. The taste of salty sweet cream. The smell of scorched flesh. Cold, heavy metal gripped in his hands. An unbearable heat. The sensations snuck up on him when he was near the one he followed.
Roxas felt his presence, maybe. He would search the low-lit alleys, eyes probing his darkened room at night. Axel would step deeper into shadow, gazing at the teen with impassive eyes.
"I know someone's there." Blue eyes bored into him, and Axel wrapped the black tighter around himself. The blond wouldn't see. He didn't want to be seen, but he couldn't remember why.
"Who are you?" The redhead resisted the urge to throw back his hood. He couldn't gauge how much time had passed, only that it had. Was it only a moment? Was it a day? Longer?
"Nobody." It was a whisper, just a breath, but the sound was booming in his ears, a wrenching, twisting feeling in his gut. Nobodies weren't supposed to feel this way. Nobodies didn't feel anything at all, he remembered someone telling him that, once.
Roxas groped blindly into the darkness, stepped into it, so that he was just shy of touching the tall, hooded figure. "Nobody?" Axel's breath caught in his throat, and he backed away.
He felt fingers wrapped around his arms, but it was just a ghost.
"Axel? Are you there?" The words froze him in place. The first time he'd heard his own name since…when?
His hood fell back. He didn't remember the motion, reaching up to remove it, but his hair spilled out nonetheless, a shock of red even in low light. He stood outside of time. "I'm not really there."
The voice reverberated in the dark as Roxas moved to embrace the tall man. It was a compulsion, a tripping in his heart that directed him. He didn't know the source, but it didn't matter. It felt right.
But he walked right through Axel.
The tears echoed the tattoos below his green eyes.
Only Roxas saw the red-haired specter that dogged his steps. He wasn't there, not really, and that tore him up. But they both came from the shadows. They were never meant to be more than nobodies to each other, anyway.