Fingers sharp as needles were on a side of Shadow's face. Cold, like the dead. Burned like ice as it enacted a lover's caress, leaving behind a thin trail of red as it danced lightly along the line of his jaw. His lips formed into a tight line of disgust as it continued down to his collarbone. He heard something clinking softly like little bells as the creature moved – felt both deceptively feeble hands tenderly cupped his face.
"Why do you exist?" purred the creature. Shadow winced as clawed fingers pricked into his skin. He shuddered at its dark, deranged chuckle just as much from the chilly aura that effused from the other, blanketing him in an invisible snow. He felt movement, the creature leaning closer, the slightest hint of hesitation did not go unnoticed by the restrained hedgehog and their chests would brush if Shadow had breathed a little deeper. His head was jerked forward, felt their foreheads touched as it hissed: "Why must you exist?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he spat, and found that it was an action unwise as his head was slammed back against the ragged wall. He gritted his teeth, eyes stayed tightly shut. He refused to look at this thing; this twisted mockery of his image in chains and wicked crystals.
"I hate you," it said, applying pressure on his temples, voice dangerously low, "I hate you. I don't belong here, I don't belong to you!" Shadow struggled as much as his restrained limbs allowed him in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure around his temples; he was sure the creature could rip his face clean off. "If it weren't for you," its tone took a sudden misty turn, strangely soft and wistful. The pressure was gone, but its hand never left his face. "If it weren't for you... we would have been together in death." It laughed; a small, pitiful sound. "Oh, how cruel fate can be..."
Its words rang bells in his flawed memory, but its chimes were too distant to bring him out of his absorption to be free of the tangible wisps on his wrists and ankles. Of this nightmare that steadily became more of a reality, of the deathly cold body pressing against his own and of the hand that slid down to where his heart drummed frantically within. Shadow knew what was going to happen next.
He writhed, screamed, cursed, the hand knuckle-deep into his chest and going deeper still, slow and savouring. Soft sounds of sobs and choked laughter in between failed to reach his ears. "So warm, like he was. Iblis..."
Shadow opened his eyes. Poisonous green eyes looked back at him. "Brother..." it murmured. A smile played on imaginary lips and it laughed again, a hard laugh that had him doubling over onto its stunned vessel as realisation dawned. It could never bring itself to kill its brother's murderer no matter how much it wanted to, not when the fire it had yearned and missed burned so enticingly hot right here.
Mistress Fate had a hilariously cruel sense of humour.
Beta'd by Ivy the Wombat 333
Shadow, Mephiles, Iblis (c) SEGA/Sonic Team