Disclaimer: Oh believe me, if I owned this game, then Shadow and Relm would've been living together at the end like a cute lil' happy family!

Okay, so here's the one-shot that actually started it all. I've rearranged it to fall in the middle because I guess I'm super edgy or a rebel or ~unorthadox~ or something.

Please, enjoy!

"Shadow?"

Shadow turned from the hot, burning, distant sun to look at his firecracker of a daughter. So recently reunited were they, that he still felt uncertain even using the word 'daughter'. He was a friendly stranger with dear, threads of memories of a girl much younger than Relm; she, a teen desperately searching in this near-stranger for a man she perhaps remembered as a father. But they were both trying.

Sitting together under the dozing Thamasan sun, Shadow wore his usual deepest black attire (which Relm insisted was a stupid colour for camouflage), and Relm was clad in her usual assortment of ferociously bright scarves and other material. Together, they were an odd pair, seated atop emerald grass on the crest of a hill; looking down on a field, scantily dotted with tall giants of pine trees. And then a horizon unfolded beyond that which gave little hint of the ruin the world had so recently been: thick forests to their left and right, with Thamasa sitting just far away enough to their left, and a beach fading off into the fiery sunset to their right. Shadow remembered hot summer days spent on the velvety sand of that ocean, a very long time ago. The furious insistence of the calm, lapping waves caught Shadow's attention; sucked into the eternal to and fro, which helped him to remember what the world really was. Everything around him seemed so pure and untouched, and he still could not quench the feeling that he was not meant for such a place. As though he had no business being in a new world, a world where everyone had a second chance. He was past second chances now, skimming like a cat through his nine lives until he was left with but a thread of one.

Blinking his tired, poisoned eyes, Shadow watched Interceptor sprint around before the pair of them instead, probably searching for an enemy to kill, before looking into Relm's green and brown swirled eyes - so much like hers - showing his attention to her call. Relm was so much like her mother - her hair, her eyes; she even smelt like paint.

She met his eyes quite suddenly, surprising him into looking away.

"So, uh..." She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ears, nervously. "I was just wondering about this one thing."

Shadow nodded, uncertain how to put that affection feeling that squeezed at his heart into his voice yet.

"Kids always used to ask me when I was younger, and I was just wondering about it but... Why did you call me Relm? Did you look in a dictionary instead of a baby's name book?"
Shadow resisted a snort at his daughter's question. Always witty, just like her mother.
Shadow opened his mouth behind the ever present inky black mask but found he had to pause to answer. Relm, quick to catch on as always, raised an eyebrow and smirked, as though she knew she was right. She almost was – they never did look in any books.

He cast his mind back in time. To the only memory too precious to rip into fragile shreds. So repressed, he found himself doubting it had ever happened at all, in a kind of guilt-induced, self-imposed madness.

It was the day Relm had been born. Clyde had been expecting a boy, a boy they'd call Adam, so a girl was really a surprise. The old man had gone off somewhere - Clyde didn't really care where - and Ruby was sound asleep at the fading of the day. Ruby had wanted a colourful name like hers originally, suggesting 'Jasper' or 'Ash', but Clyde couldn't get his head around the use of a stone and a tree as a name, even if that was closer to the custom in Thamasa. They'd met halfway in the end, choosing a name that was common in Clyde's hometown, and one that Ruby insisted also meant 'red'.

So when a girl arrived, he was in complete shock. What would he - an ex-thief and one with blood on his hands at that - really be able to do to support a precious baby girl? How could he be a role model to a beautiful little girl who would be oh-so-much like her mother? With a boy he would've been fine, he could've taught him all the noble things in life that Clyde never knew and all the right ways to live that Clyde never felt. But a girl... Ruby would have to teach him for years before he understood it. But first - a name. He liked Ruby, but that, of course, was because of his love for the lady in question. How many women did he know anyway? There was his mother, his sister, his deceased grandmother… But they were all gone now. Using such names would raise too many questions anyway, he could not let a sniff of his heritage pass his lips. And the few women who had passed before Ruby… he didn't want to utter their names again.

A paintbrush laden with orange paint dropped off a nearby table, snapping Clyde out of his name induced revere.

Painting. His life had been opened up by the worlds that had been swept across her once blank canvases. The colours and texture fascinated him, although he was a terrible artist himself. It was like the careful skill and lightness of hand produced another world in his mind. With each cautious flick of her delicate wrist, she created a new realm in his mind.

Relm. It was perfect, the thing that had brought them together - this realm, Thamasa; the thing that had made them fall in love - the realm she created in his mind; and the proof of their love - Relm. With the beginnings of strawberry blonde hair atop her pale face. Currently sleeping soundly, Clyde couldn't see her eyes, but he remembered them being a beautiful brown in the centre with the lime green colour of his own eyes ringing the outside. She would be a beauty, just like her mother.

And that was when he remembered the first dark thought creeping into his head: Was he even needed?

He averted his eyes, snapping out of the memory with shame. It had been then that the seed for his decision had been planted; then that the series of events that would see Ruby dead and Relm abandoned began. He could not face up to the shame that plagued him for that.

"It was for your mother's paintings." He finally rasped. "For the realms inside them."

Relm hummed. "Okay. Okay, I can work with that."

Shadow looked back out over the forest, at the rapidly plunging sun. "Your mother saved me from injuries that likely would've killed me. That was how we met. When I woke up the next morning, I was in her bed, covered in bandages, and watching her paint a forest. I was so confused that I really thought I was there."

"And then you fell in love and made the best artist the world has ever seen?"

Shadow tried to resist the urge to force down the smile that pulled at his lips. "Yes. Something like that."

"So, you named me after the way you two fell in love? That's much better than some of my classmates' ideas." Relm smiled approvingly.

"What were their ideas?"

"That you just couldn't spell."

"Oh." Shadow decided not to point out that they were kind of right. "I can always introduce myself to them, if they carry on saying that."

"It's alright, pops. I can handle 'em all myself these days." Relm grinned, but her eyes betrayed that she had seen far too much for a normal fourteen-year-old to stomach. Yes, she was an extraordinary girl, but Shadow wasn't sure it was in all the best ways.

"Hey, at least I was never confused for anyone else! No one has the name Relm." She chirped while taking out a small notepad and the ever-present pencil from behind her ear as she got to work on sketching Interceptor, who was bounding like the wind around the open pastures.

Shadow laughed internally, a harsh, uneasy cackle, but too late he realised that Relm felt the vibrations when she proceeded to tease him mercilessly for it. Shadow couldn't help but smile under the black fabric covering his face. Maybe one day, he could reveal his face. But not today.

His eyes turned skyward, watching the beginnings of night descend from the tips of heaven, and his thoughts turned to his late love once more. His mind spoke with the voice of a man long dead.

I hope you're well. I hope you can see us. I hope you can forgive me.

Relm is far more like you than me. I'm glad.

I know I'm not what you wanted me to be, but I'm trying. But then again, you're not where I want either, so I suppose we're even.

I remember your hair the most. The long, pomegranate-ruby hair; the way it felt between my fingers. I remember how sincere your eyes always were, how they'd widen in surprise and then crinkle at the edges at my jokes. The freckles that dotted across your nose and the smooth skin beneath them. How you used to get annoyed when I'd lean an arm on your head as we stood side-by-side. I'd have done it less, if it meant you stayed a minute more with me.

I may not have a heart anymore, but it never stopped me loving you.

Shadow was surprised to hear the last line in his voice, not Clyde's.

Forgive me, please. Forgive me, Ruby. Forgive me, for Relm.

There we have it! Just a quick little one shot, not brilliant but hey Ho! So, I've always imagined Clyde-Shadow to have been a reckless teenager, caught up in bad events, then he met Relm's mom [Ruby] and they had Relm on the young side because what's a kid when impulsiveness exists, right? Perhaps that's just me though.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, drop a review if you liked it and I'll see you guys later! Thanks!