Disclaimer: SA2 belongs to respective owners, again.

A/N: This chapter is purposely a little open ended, free to interpretation.
Dear Mr./Ms. thefiendishpuppy, don't let me stop you from writing your own story, because after all, I'm just a brash little girl.

Bete Noire

Part 2 // Pellucid

It was a dusty crackling morning. The thick curtains were pulled apart and there was sunlight that devoured his eyelids. His darkness had become ghouls of ghostly shades of red and blue that wisped to and fro from shadow to silhouette. His damp and soggy floor had become a creaking, age-ridden thing covered with cotton sheets and a very dead hedgehog laying like a man on his deathbed.

"Close them." he muttered, because he knew he could not stand or rise or close curtains by himself.

"You've to wake," Maria said, if she were Maria. If she were Maria, she would have closed them. If she were Maria, she wouldn't be here. He honestly wished she was Maria, but Maria wasn't there and the sun was scorching for dawn light. "Shadow."

He tugged and pulled and dragged his eyelids up, threatened his vision to focus from its dizzy, wild blur. He couldn't turn his head yet, could hardly even breathe, and couldn't exactly die yet, so he cast a wayward glance at where he supposed she must have been. He opened his mouth and found that his voice had abandoned him dry and empty.

"Don't move," she said. Shadow couldn't confirm whether she was floating or not, since he couldn't see that low as she approached gingerly, but he could have sworn even the dust parted for her. As she sat, the mattress pulled down, his legs along with it. "Don't move at all, Shadow."

"It's numb. I can hardly feel a thing." He croaked, watching and studying her through broken, limp eyes as she leaned over him to press her palm against his forehead. Her hands felt were soft but not too feathery; smooth like silk none the less and they were cold – colder than his skin.

"You've got a fever again." She said softly, bending down to lift a basin of water that drowned a cream white washcloth. "I was afraid of that. Don't worry. I'll just cool you down…"

"Don't call me that." he hissed, wishing her touch away, but the venom in his voice had seeped back into his throat and burned there instead. He masqueraded aching pain with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth that warned him that they would crumble if he shut his mouth tighter. "Don't ever, ever call me that…"

Lifting her head, lifting her eyes and golden tresses, "That's not your name...?" She looked so horridly curious, intrigued and disappointed; at what, he couldn't fathom. He knew too little, wanted to know too little, cared too little.

Her breath smelled like innocent peppermint. "I don't want your help."

She smiled ever so nicely, as if she had captured and stolen the sunlight from day, and as much as Shadow tried and wished and hoped he could turn away, he was intent on keeping his neck from breaking. Though he protested, he knew very well that he was, indeed, horridly helpless and in dire need of aid, but alas, he was so very, very proud.

"You're so stubborn." She said, tilting her head and throwing her voice about like a mockingbird. She washed her eyes over his face, threw a testing glance at him and added, "Shadow," while wringing and folding the cloth with careless precision. If he hadn't blinked, he would have seen her lay it upon his forehead and would have known what that relieving coolness against his skin was, wouldn't have forgotten to protest against his name.

"I don't like water." He quipped simply, closing one eye as a damp corner of the washcloth slid down dangerously near it. Maria, if she was Maria, reached towards him and pulled it up again before folding her hands politely across her lap. His attention never left the hovering edge of the damp material above his eyes as it loomed above his line of vision. However, his voice came as distant as a cloud on a mountain peak. It drifted like air, like very cold, very crisp air. "I didn't tell you my name, Maria."

Just in case, he reasoned with himself. Just in case it was real.

It was about a minute or two before she began to laugh a sort of laughter between a chuckle and a giggle. It sounded so amused that it was difficult to comprehend. He didn't recall saying anything funny. As the sound filled the sickening silence, he watched her with childish wonder before he could scold himself. Her eyes were closed, her hand barely covering her mouth and her shoulders shook, disheveling her golden hair. Just in case, he prayed, just in case it was Maria.

It took a while before he realized she was crying too – crying and mumbling something in a foreign tongue.

"Is that your name?" he whispered, as softly as he could manage to whisper. His own voice was comparable to the screeching of nails against a blackboard, but he didn't want to hear that language he couldn't understand. He wanted her to talk to him, because silence and nonsense was not good company. "Maria."

She looked up with eyes that kept tears captive in fear they would stain her porcelain cheeks and he felt so guilty for a crime he had no knowledge of. He didn't want her to stare at him like that, as if she didn't know him just because she didn't. Hopelessly, he groped the silence in hopes that he could find something to say, but all he found was a hasty "I'm sorry," which he wheezed out with amazing difficulty. It did no good, lost to the silence in a battle it couldn't win.

Her lips moved, forming shapes that meant words he didn't know. "Please talk to me." he pleaded, perhaps sounding a bit more desperate than he hoped.

"You talk a rare tongue, Shadow." She said his name without hesitation. "Few know that language, you know. My grandfather thought it to me, when I was young. He was a professor. It's the only reason I know. I found it so strange to find someone that only spoke that tongue. It was abandoned so many years ago. Where do you come from, Shadow?"

He closed his singed eyes in fear they couldn't hide relief as well as the rest of his face. "I don't know." He said slowly, as if contemplating. "I fell."

"The sky, then." She explained, more to herself than to Shadow. "You came from the sky, so I won't question it any further. Things that fall from the sky are gifts after all, aren't they? Angels fall from the sky. The world hangs in the sky. They're all things to be grateful for, aren't they?" She gave a merry little grin that didn't quite reach her ears, which didn't quite reach her mouth, actually.

The look he gave her was unreadable only because it held too many words at once, undescribable only because there was no word to sum it up. He said, "I'm sorry, Maria."

Blankly and with a voice so fine that it was a shame it was cracked and sounding so broken, "What are you apologizing for?"

He closed his eyes, opened them again, and looked at her as tenderly as he possibly could. His ears rang with gunshots and the sound of space. "I'm sorry, Maria. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."