A/N: I'm just writing these chapters one after the other with no input in between for various reasons – a) FFN is messing up, but that's nothing new. And b) I got barred from the internet for a week for putting it on automatic dialup so I wouldn't have to know the password to get connected. The password got changed, and I have to try and live till then. It doesn't help that I lent my Playstation to my brother for a few weeks – I'll be lucky to get it by the end of July. (nobody in my family is very prompt).

PLUS, my mother has decided that my friends are descended from Satan or something or other, so every time I go out and do something I have to give a detailed explanation about where I'm going, who'll be there, what we'll be doing, and when we get back. And if Aaron is going, she says, then I'm not. Anyway, all this amounts to a helluva lot of free time, and I burn it by fucking around on a word processor. God that does not sound good… (you've got to have a sick mind to get it).

Disclaimer: You've seen it before, it ain't mine.

Shadows of the Past

Chapter 3: That's Treasure Hunter!

"So why are you here, anyway?" Locke asked. It was perhaps the third or fourth day Shadow had been here, and the thief was already starting to annoy him with his questions.

"Why shouldn't I be here?" Shadow replied.

"Well, what are you going to do here?" Locke persisted.

"Right now, I'm having my dinner."

"I give up!" Locke threw up his hands. "You're impossible!"

"Thank God for that."

"What, me giving up, or you being impossible?"

Shadow didn't even dignify that with a response. He was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up his image with Locke buzzing around him like a fly. "I thought you'd given up with the questions."

"I haven't. Is this typical of assassins, to be so damned incomprehensible?"

"Is it typical of thieves to be so damned annoying?" Shadow growled.

"That's treasure hunter!" Locke stood up and yelled so loud the innkeeper blinked and looked over in their direction, asking if anything was wrong. Shadow shook his head and motioned for Locke to sit down.

"And that's Shadow, to you."

Locke sat down and blinked. "What?"

"I'm not an assassin anymore. Just Shadow."

"You sure look the part."

"I like the reactions I get. Anyway, I'm used to it."

Locke had been talking to Shadow for a full fifteen minutes, and realized this was the most words he had ever heard come out of the ex-assassin's mouth at one time, possibly ever. "What's with the conversation?" he asked. "You never seemed to talk at all, before. The most I could say about you was you said more than Gogo."

"Maybe you never tried to talk."

Locke was silent. Shadow had always been the odd one in the group. Never said much, kept disappearing and then showing up in the most unexpected places. Locke had never really known anything about him, and had been too caught up in his own worries to even wonder. He still didn't even really know who this man in black who called himself 'Shadow' was.

They sat in silence for a long time, before Locke broke it. "What's your name?"

Shadow looked up, mildly surprised. "What?"

"Your name. What is it, really? I can't think of any mother in the world who would name her kid Shadow."

Shadow looked down at his cup for a while. "I haven't told anyone my born name in over ten years."

"God, is it that bad?" Locke grinned.

Shadow's face broke into a slow smirk. "Hell, it can't be any worse than Locke."

"HEY! I resent that!" Locke threw a piece of bread that had been lying on the counter, and Shadow deftly caught it.

"I'll give you three guesses." Shadow threw the bread back at him, hitting Locke between the eyes.

"Give me a hint!"

"It rhymes with bide."

"Hide. Adelaide. Formaldehyde!"

Shadow smirked. "Wrong on three counts. I guess you'll never know, thief-boy."

"That's treasure hunter!" Locke said dangerously.

Shadow just smiled and leaned against the wall on his seat, raising two of the barstool legs off the ground.

"You're gonna fall on your ass if you keep leaning the stool like that," Locke warned. Shadow sat like that for a few moments, then, in one fluid movement, Locke bent over and pulled the bottom rung of Shadow's stool, tipping the stool and Shadow onto the floor.

Shadow fell with a clatter and looked up at Locke. He went through surprise, fury at himself for being such a moron, and finally joined Locke in laughing his head off. "That was very immature."

"I know." Locke smirked.

"You'd better be glad I'm mature enough not to take revenge," Shadow remarked, getting up ad taking his seat again. Before Locke knew it, he was on the floor with his stool tipped over and Shadow was laughing at him. "Or not."

"Boys, boys, boys. Such rough play. Settle down before I have to sit you in the corner."

Locke scrambled to his feet and turned around. In front of him was a green-haired woman clad in plain, brown, practical clothes and cloak. Her hair was tied up in a no-nonsense ponytail and the sparkle in her eye said that she lived her life to the fullest and enjoyed every moment of it. "Terra?"

"No, it's her long-lost twin." Terra's attitude and sense of humor and lightened up enormously since her days as a sword-swinging, Ultima-casting, half-esper screaming banshee. She seemed genuinely content with her life and saw beauty in everything, and was everything Locke could want as the best friend he had ever had since Rachel. She was only a friend though, and made that clear. Locke personally thought she had a hankering for a certain young king, but when he had asked she had only smiled and said, "If that's what you want to think go right ahead, but I'm perfectly happy on my own." He had long since given up trying to figure out if she was interested in anybody.

"I haven't seen you in… eight months!"

"I never moved anywhere, you're the one who keeps getting lost."

"Getting lost!" Locke cried. "Anyways, speaking of getting lost, have you seen any of the old group lately? I came up here to look for the moogle cave and see if I could find Umaro, but it's been too damned cold to go up into the caves and look for them."

Terra smiled reminiscently. "Oh, that overgrown teddybear. Him and Mog were always so funny."

"Overgrown teddybear! You've got to be kidding…"

"Oh!" Terra interrupted. "Locke, I didn't tell you she'd be coming, she's just outside taking care of the chocobos, but…"

Locke had stopped paying attention long ago. The door to the inn opened, and a woman in thick furs stepped in. She closed the door behind her and let down her hood, revealing ice-blonde hair held up in a blue bandana. She took off her white cloak, showing that she was dressed in a thicker and plainer version of her usual – green shirt and darker green pants with heavy winter boots that went up to her knees. She turned towards him, and gave him a little smile.

God, she had a gorgeous smile.

"Hello, Celes," he said, holding out his hand to her. "I haven't seen you in a while." She took his hand and shook it firmly, the way she always had – but maybe, a little warmer this time? Maybe, when she smiled, she meant it, this time?

Celes looked at him and smiled again. "Well, if you're always this far north, it's no wonder."

As Shadow sat in the corner finishing his meal he watched them greet each other, saying nothing and melting into the background. He felt as if there was something he had missed there, something that was between Locke, Terra, Celes… had been between everyone then. Everyone but him.

He'd always stayed on the outskirts, watching things happen as if he was watching it through someone else's eyes, not his own. He wasn't really there, he was off in some other place, sitting with his head in his hands, oblivious to the world around him. Then, he'd never really cared. He hadn't cared about anything, then… everything had been forced, mechanical. He'd been living in a sort of daze, then.. sometimes he awoke from the daze, and when he did, he generally holed up in an inn and got so hammered that in the morning when he awoke everything went out of his mind except his stomach and the privy hole. It had sometimes occurred to him that maybe when he felt this way it felt so strange for exactly that reason… it felt. For a man who thought he'd killed his emotions, Shadow knew exactly what he was missing out on, with them being so happy together, laughing and hugging. It was something he had never wanted to feel for ten years.

It was love.

~*~

Cheesy, I know. By the way, If you so choose to give me constructive criticism, I will feel very enlightened, but if you flame me, I will hunt you down, find out your email, and send you pictures of Barney the Dinosaur eating McDonalds food!! (eew!) I'm so threatening, I know… And hell if I know what color Celes' bandana is.