Disclaimer: This doesn't belong to me. Okay, I own Cassie/Shadow and Allan, but that's about it. The rest of it – the concepts etc belong to people who are far more wonderful.
A/N: Oh, shiny, a review. Me likes. *Warms herself happily* Please more?
For days the school was swarming with police. Almost every student was interviewed, trying to figure out where she had gone, who she might have known. They had absolutely no luck. All they found out was that she had been a loner, an odd girl with no friends, who seemed to go out of her way to have as little contact as possible with her peers.
Her locker was empty. They hacked into her file on the computer, to discover only one file, containing one word: Gotcha.
The three suited men who had come for her prowled the corridors, glaring suspiciously at the students as if they were hiding the fugitive under their coats. Allan kept his eyes down and his opinions to himself. His opinion was of course that they were wasting their time. They wouldn't find her. She was long gone.
She had left something behind, though. On the back of the report card, scored with the big red 'A', she had written something. The truth – the most obvious thing in the world – is the thing that people will go to any lengths to hide from, because they are happier in the lie.
He wondered vaguely when she had written it. He hadn't seen her do so during class, but when he picked it up after she jumped out the window, there it was. It was signed, not Cassie, but Shadow.
Shadow. The name seemed to echo in his head, filling his thoughts. Hadn't he always seen her that way? Just a shadow, just something dark and inconsequential flickering on the edge of vision. Something that could be anywhere, that could be ignored. Just a fact of life.
He could barely even remember what she looked like. Unremarkable. Small. Pale. But her features? Nothing.
Allan sighed, sitting back from his computer. He couldn't remember what she looked like. He didn't know her real name, where she was from, where she was now. She was probably a dangerous criminal, possibly a terrorist. But he was obsessed with her. He wanted to find her and ask her what all those cryptic comments about the truth and reality meant. He wanted to know how she had jumped out a window three floors up and been unharmed enough to take off with a government car without so much as changing her stoic expression. He wanted to know what she hid under that black coat, behind that blank face.
His bedroom was dark at this hour, only the light from the computer screen illuminating the blackness of three AM. He wasn't doing anything in particular, just surfing the net. Looking for her, if only he'd admit it to himself, though why he thought he'd find her in cyberspace, he wasn't sure.
Suddenly, the screen went blank as the computer died. He sat there, the darkness shockingly thick, almost tangible, like being dropped in ink. He realized he was shaking.
Footsteps on the stairs, soft and light, but he could hear them, familiar as he was with the nuances of this house. One set of footsteps, moving steadily, not noisily, but not trying to be quiet either. Measured.
The footsteps stopped outside his bedroom door. He sat, frozen in the thick, inky darkness, and tried not to breathe, straining to listen, to hear. The handle turned, and the door swung slowly open. The shaking stopped and suddenly he was very calm, very still.
Click, and the light was on. The brightness stung his eyes and made him blink, squinting stupidly at the doorway. For a moment all he could see was a dark figure closing the door quietly, then his vision cleared and he saw her.
"Shadow," he gasped, and she smiled. The blank mask was gone. Her face was intense, strong.
"Good," she said. "You remembered." She gestured at the still-blank computer screen. "You've been looking."
"Yes," he replied hesitantly. He suddenly realized it was not just her face that was unmasked. The coat was open, revealing black leather – real leather, not plastic faux-leather – that followed the curves of her body in a way that could not even really be called clinging. It was rather more like a second skin.
With difficulty he dragged his eyes back to her face, to find her smiling dangerously. "What are you looking for?"
"You," he blurted. Then, realizing how inane that sounded, he stammered, "I mean, all those things you said, about reality – and Christ, you jumped off a building, and all the cops were looking for you…" He trailed off. She was nodding, looking almost amused at his rambling. Or maybe it was the thought of all those cops searching for her when they had no chance of ever finding her. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"I'm Shadow," she replied, in a spooky voice. "They can hunt me forever, those little tin gods, and they'll never find me. Once you know the truth you're beyond their reach."
"Sounds like fun," said Allan wistfully.
Her face clouded. "Not really." She paused. "There are worse things out there."
He looked at her for a long moment. "What do you want?"
"I want to tell you the truth. I want to take you to where I am." She leaned back against the door and looked at him, her eyes narrowed. "But it's your choice."
He stared at her. Of course he wanted to know the truth. It was driving him crazy. "Why wouldn't I want to know?"
She looked away, studying the posters on the walls. He followed her line of vision and blushed. Half-naked women… not really the classiest thing in the world. "The truth is hard to accept. Some people can't. A lot go mad." His gaze snapped back to her, but her eyes were still distantly studying his walls. "But the thing is, once you know the truth, once you've chosen your path… you can't go back. You have to go away. You'll never see any of them again… your friends, your family. You'll just disappear."
He looked at her, cold. She was serious. "Is it worth it?" His voice sounded strange, scratchy.
She lowered her head, and her hair fell in her eyes. It was loosely tied back, loose enough that it had some wave, and enough slack to fall over her face. "Depends. It's a damned hard life. Cold. Bleak. Dangerous. There's a war on… everything's dark. They hunt us." She paused, the muscles in her jaw twitching. "But I think it's worth it. Because of what we're fighting for."
"Do I have to choose now?" Even to him, his voice sounded young, uncertain, vulnerable. She smiled gently.
"I'm afraid so. If I leave now, I'm never coming back."
"And if I go with you, neither am I."
"Exactly."
He stood, pacing around his room, absently stepping over piles of discarded clothes and other assorted junk on the floor. He wheeled around to face her. "You're asking me to give up everything I've ever known and wanted, and I don't know what for."
She said nothing, only looked at him, her face once more blank.
"Say something, damnit!"
Her voice was low, mocking. "The path is now before you, stranger, make the choice and face the danger. Or wonder, till it drives you mad, what would have happened if you had."
He froze, staring at her, and she spoke again, looking at him intently. "I can't make the choice for you. I only offer the options."
His head was filled with images – his family, his friends, his life. Everything he had ever known. It was like his life was flashing before his eyes, and he suddenly saw how empty and stupid it was, how inane and superficial. He saw the young woman standing before him. She was only young, he realized, only seventeen or so. She spoke with such deadly calm and assurance that she seemed older. Something lurked in the corner of those blue eyes, behind that mask. Something sad, but frightening. Purpose. Purpose that came with a loss of innocence and gained her only cruelty.
He made his choice.
"Let's go."
