Once upon a time... there was a shade.

(Gabriel/Aldren)

A shade of himself was all he had to hold on to. The rest had been killed and drowned. He was locked behind bars, and inside he wept. There was a Father who didn't speak to him, there was a Mother who was dead - whose body he would not see. There was a love he couldn't love. There was a city where he would never be.

"Just give me the blood..." the words echoed throughout the cell. They crawled and slithered.

"That's one... two... four names... be back..."

He hadn't returned, and now the shade was frantic. There was a woman he tried to think about, but he couldn't remember her name, or if she had ever given it. There was something he kept trying to hum, a tune lost in the back of his mind... but his lips would not form it. Always and constantly there was a pulsing in his head and a pulling in his stomach. His skin crawled, his eyes burned, and his throat cried. For the first time in over sixty years the shade was actually breathing out of necessity, for if he didn't he felt he might implode.

The torch light flickered through from outside. Shadows danced on the walls, and where usually their edges would be followed by the shade, he was naught but unmoving. Unfeeling. Silent, and uncaring. Yet, his thoughts were a sea. A crimson sea.

'He knows... he knows... he knows the names were false.'
'How could he? How?'
'He's a Dryth! Could you not feel it? And you stupid, stupid - oh He would be disappointed.'
'I can't keep anything straight! I can't resist... I can't stop... my thoughts are like a mortals. They race, and, oh Lord help me! Lord help me!'
'What will--'
'No, no...'
'Tell him! Take revenge! The ones who put you in here, the ones who will take this city in their hands and crush it, waste it.'
'No! I must get out. I can use them, use them all! If I can get out, they'll find the ones who can be converted, and I'll teach them...'
'You won't get out - just tell him. Take your revenge on those souls who would kill with only the purpose to kill.'

'I remember something... a vision long ago... there was a sad man, and I felt him through every bone of my body. He echoed inside of me, and me inside of Him. To me He showed a vision of a garden in night, with beauty on the air, upon my nose, and in my eyes. Speckled in starlight every flower opened and closed, with each softly taken breath of the night...'

Now the flowers bleed red, and the shade might reach for them... but they crumble.