Hello, everyone! I'm Shadow, and welcome to my newest story, Invisible. As the description has probably told you, this is an AU, and therefore is unconnected to my previous fics. Updates to this, as well as to anything else I post in the next three months, will be rather irregular. I'm about to place my main fic on a three month hiatus, and this is one of the stories I'll be working on during that hiatus.

Chapter One: Loneliness

When you are three, four, five, none of the complicated dealings of adult friendships matter. Children will take any playmate, and whatever they may really be like, you always think your friends are kind, wonderful people.

At that early stage in his life, a boy named Eduard was happy. It was easy enough to play with others on the playground, whether they played rough, running games, or built quiet castles in the sand. No one minded where he played, or if he played with the same person twice in a row or not.

Difficulties in friendships and in play come only with becoming a child of ten or eleven years old. So it was with Eduard. Moving into a new neighborhood, for a boy closer to adolescence than to childhood, was difficult in itself, without the nagging fear of loneliness that Eduard was beginning to develop.

When Eduard left his childhood friends behind, his childishness itself began to slip away.

Raivis watched from his window as the boy named Eduard ran after the neighbor boys, and wondered if Eduard was aware of his existence. He doubted it, unless Eduard, too, was watching from windows, looking in instead of out. Raivis had never seen anyone look in at him.

He had been watching from windows his entire life.

"It's been eight years I've lived inside now. What'd I do to get locked inside?"

There had been many different types of children outside over the eight years Raivis had lived inside and watched the outside from his window, and he had liked some of his neighbors more than others. But he liked Eduard the most out of all those whom he had watched. Eduard did not act as the other children did, loud and brash and full of tricks. Eduard was honest and quiet and Raivis thought that, had he been allowed outside, he might have been friends with Eduard. As things were, this could never be. But he liked Eduard nonetheless.

He opened the window, just a crack, glancing furtively toward the closed door of his bedroom. If his mother were to return and catch him with the window open, he would be in deep trouble.

"Don't open it don't open it… I want to hear Eduard. Eduard would be my friend if he knew I existed. I'm sure of it."

From his window, Raivis Galante listened as Eduard von Bock tried to make friends with their neighbors. He wished that Eduard would make friends with him. But Eduard did not know he existed, and so could not be his friend.

He could never have a friend. Ugly creatures that were locked inside were not allowed to have friends. He liked to imagine having friends, though, and he had been glad when Eduard moved to this neighborhood. It had only been two weeks since Eduard had come. Raivis had watched from the window as Eduard moved in next door, and he had wished even then that the blond boy with the lonely eyes would be his friend.

Eduard ran after the older boys and Raivis suppressed the urge to call out to Eduard, to tell the boy not to waste his time. Fourteen year old boys would not stop for a ten year old. They did not even see him running after them.

He covered his eyes when he saw Eduard start to trip in his haste, but even from his room, he heard the startled cry as the blond fell to the ground. Raivis peeked through the crack in his fingers, seeing Eduard sprawled on the pavement, groping for his glasses.

One of the boys turned, glancing almost nervously at the small blond, worried green eyes pitying Eduard for his clumsiness. Another laughed, not necessarily in a mean way, but in a way that, Raivis supposed, must make Eduard quite embarrassed.

"Where'd you come from, tiny nerd?"

Eduard blinked, finally located his glasses, and proceeded to adjust them onto his face. The gesture was, Raivis thought, quite cute. Not that he knew anything about 'cute'. It did seem to him, however, that if cute was what he thought it was, there were many, many things about Eduard that were cute.

"I c-came from that house."

Raivis could barely make out Eduard's words. It bothered him, not being able to hear the other boy well.

"Eduard is my should-be friend and I want to know how his voice sounds up close. Later, when he's gone home and I'm all alone, I'll go to imaginary-world and pretend he came to play with me inside instead of going home. Yeah. Mommy wouldn't mind it, because in imaginary-world, Mommy lo-"

The door to his room burst open, and he covered his head with both hands, shaking. Faintly, he noticed that the clock on the wall read 4:03.

"I should have been more careful. I should have known Mommy would be in a bad mood. Mommy is always in a bad mood and… She's gonna see the window. Oh, no... I'm always really careful to close the window, but today Eduard went to school and I didn't get to see him as much so I just wanted to listen a little bit longer… I didn't…get to see him as much today. I wanted to see my imaginary-friend. But… Maybe I'll see him again tomorrow."

His mother pulled him up by his hair, impersonally, and Raivis whimpered, not daring to cry because of the open window, because he knew that the older boys were just outside.

"Eduard is a nice quiet calm good wonderful boy like Mommy wants. Eduard would think I'm ugly if he heard me cry. Just like Mommy does."

Eduard heard the other boy's words faintly, distantly, almost as if they were a dream.

"Well, don't run after us, nerd. You're cute and all, but you're too little and we don't have time to wait for you."

The older boys turned away, and Eduard remained, sitting on the pavement, staring after them.

"Don't have time for you… We don't have time for you… No one has time for you…"

He whimpered softly, waiting to see if the older boys would look back, if they would wait for him. They did not turn around, although he thought he saw the Spanish one cast a glance over his shoulder. The Spanish boy with the green eyes had seemed almost as if he would have spoken to him, but then, with the albino's interference, that was suddenly not to be. Eduard decided that the albino boy was not a person whom he liked. The blond was an undecided party, but he had not liked the almost mocking smile he had been given.

Perhaps the Spanish boy might be a friend. Childishly, Eduard remained kneeling on the pavement, waiting.

"They'll turn around, right? They'll hold out their hands and say I can come with them, won't they? Please let me come. I'm lonely in the house alone. School is too loud for making friends; my only hope is to make friends in the neighborhood. So please…"

They did not turn around. They sprinted off down the street, and he was left kneeling there on the cold concrete and wondering why he was not allowed to go with them. He could have kept up, surely he could have. He tried to force himself to stand, only to fall uselessly onto the ground again. His tiny legs had been skinned in his fall, and he whimpered, suddenly aware of his pain.

From above him, in the house he knelt in front of, he heard a child scream. He wondered if the other child was lonely, too. Maybe that child would be his friend.

He glanced up at the grim, forbidding house, and saw no child. All he saw was the front window of the house's upper story slamming shut.

Raivis shrieked as the window slammed shut on his fingers. He could not move, not without ripping his fingers off, and he stayed immobile, whimpering, waiting.

"Raivis, look at me."

He did not want to look. She would hurt him if he looked.

If he did not look, he would be hurt even more. Either option involved pain, and he must take the option that would win him the lesser agony.

He looked unwillingly up at his mother, and, as he had expected, she struck him in the face. Raivis's head snapped back in the direction of the window, and through teary violet eyes, he saw Eduard kneeling on the pavement, staring up at his house. He wondered if Eduard could see him, but dismissed such an idea as utterly preposterous. Eduard could not see him. And even if he could see, Eduard would hate him, for no one had any reason to love him. He did not legally exist in this world, his mother had told him. He was not a child, not a human. He was a toy, perhaps, or a possession.

He did not exist. And if he did exist, then it was only to serve as an outlet for his mother's anger.

He wondered why parents did these things. He wondered if Eduard's parents did those kinds of things, and, looking in Eduard's lonely, hopeful eyes, he thought that they probably did not. Eduard was allowed outside, because he was a child. Children were allowed outside, but broken, ugly things called Raivis were not.

"Raivis, listen to me."

His mother's voice was angry, menacing, and very quiet. Raivis nodded, still staring desperately out at Eduard.

"Are you a real child? Are real children happy? Is your life a nice one, Eduard? W-would you be my friend? Or would you think I'm ugly, too?"

"You are not allowed to open that window ever again," his mother said. "You are not allowed to be in the front room anymore. You know where your room is. You're to stay in there from now on."

"C-can I come down to eat, Mommy?" Raivis asked.

"What did I say?" his mother asked. "You'll stay in your room, you little brat. There's a bathroom leading off of your room, so that won't be any problem. No, you won't come down for meals. You'll stay in your room, and if you're good, I'll feed you. Understand?"

"Y-yes, Mommy," Raivis said. Then, softly, he added, "Why do I have to stay inside all the time? Why aren't I allowed to go out?"

"I've told you, Raivis."

His mother's hands were cold and soft on his face, but he knew very well how cruel and hard those hands could be. He knew that she might strike him in a moment, although she was stroking his face now.

"You're not like them."

The woman's gaze drifted to Eduard, still kneeling on the pavement.

"You're not like those children. You're not a child, Raivis. You don't exist, remember? Ugly things aren't allowed to exist in this world, so you mustn't ever let anyone know you exist. Maybe when you're a grownup, you'll be beautiful."

She laughed softly.

"I doubt it, though. I doubt that something like you will ever be beautiful. Beauty… Is something you are born with. And you were not born beautiful, Raivis. You were born ugly. So you have to stay inside. Invisible. Nonexistent. That's how it is. Understand, sweetie? You can't go outside, because if you went outside, everyone else would think you were ugly too. They would punish you even more than I do. You wouldn't want any more punishment for this, for something you can't help, right?"

"R-right, Mommy," Raivis murmured. He looked down at his throbbing fingers, saw them beginning to swell up, red, and closed his eyes tight, hating what he saw when he looked down at his own small body.

"Every time I look in the mirror, I remember why I can't go out. Mommy says I'm ugly. I am ugly, if Mommy says I am. Mommy is…the only human being that I know. She's a real human, a real person, so what Mommy says must be true. If she says I'm ugly, then I am. Tiny little things with messed-up, too-long hair and big strange eyes must be ugly. I am ugly. So I can't go outside. Outside, they would hurt me even more than Mommy does. Mommy said that, so it must be true. Everything Mommy says is true. Everything said by real humans is true. So… I must be ugly."

He glanced sadly down at Eduard, who was standing now, blue eyes full of loneliness that Raivis felt, but that he was sure Eduard would not feel for long.

"Real humans don't have to suffer like ugly things. Real humans get better. All I can do is be punished and be hated and know how ugly I am. Mommy says I'm ugly. If Eduard met me, he would think I'm ugly, too."

Well, then. I'm not exactly sure what I ought to say here, except that I am not one hundred percent certain that my portrayal of eight and ten year old kids is accurate. I have siblings around that age, and I think I got close to a correct portrayal, although I'm not completely certain.

A note on Raivis: I see his mother as the kind of woman who conducts all her social engagements outside her home, and who would have little problem hiding the fact that she has a child. (Her pregnancy would have been the tricky part, but she could have come up with some excuse.) The actual logistics of Raivis's literal 'nonexistence' are a bit tricky, but I am fairly certain that it is possible. The internet is not helping me to prove this theory. However, for the purpose of this story, Raivis' existence is unknown by everyone except his mother and possibly his biological father (who is not in the picture), although I find it unlikely that the father knew/knows.

As for Eduard, this is his story more than Raivis' (although Raivis plays a large role), so more about him will be revealed in future chapters.

I think that's about it, so, um... Yeah. This is a story. I hope you like it, but even if you hate it, leave me a review and tell me why, okay? (Or don't. I'll probably never know.)

~Shadow