I found him.
After weeks of searching I had finally found him.
And all I could do was stand there.
Neither of us spoke, just watched, and waited, to see who would be the first to back down, who would be the first to turn away. But we knew, because we were who we were -- each other -- we would never be the first to break.
The realization came when we first acknowledged the other before us, but never truly registered until our mind, one that spanned the open space between two bodies, gave us the will to give in.
In the same mirrored instant our heads were redirected a degree and our eyes closed in hidden smirks that could not survive passed the shadow of our minds.
And so the first battle ended. Stalemate.
How many would have to be fought until we realized who dominated whom?
"I've finally found you."
I built up and he reclined his head slightly, acknowledging the statement for what it was beneath.
"It would have taken anyone else months to track me, even when I wish to be found."
"I have an advantage over the others."
"So you do."
The invitation to a challenge. The slap to challenge without the contact nor the sting.
He was the first to be created. And I... I was copied from his prints, given all the information and skill gathered from others' encounters with him. No more original than I was human.
But receiving no sting is just the same as not getting hit.
And so I plowed on, nudging him to give inclination of our differences.
"So I am."
"Most others would deny the fact of being a substitute."
"But you wouldn't if you were in my position. But you don't relish the idea of being substituted so closely."
"You don't like the idea either. And so we remain even."
The challenge had been issued.
The Original not cherishing the idea of being copied. The Copy despising the thought of not being original. And so Original and Copy come together in an inevitable battle to prove which is Superior. Experience or Technology. Skill or Style. Which generation is the one to survive.
At once our armors were recalled in wine burgundy and midnight blue to the confines of the Flash Case and left him in shades of red, of warmth, and I in blue, in darkness.
Wiry and long we stood in contrasting mirrors. Dark brown hair against dark blue, long kidskin trench coat against short, pleather shone black, yellow-orange scarf against rich blue, reflective tinted shades against metallic headband, sword mounted on his hip against the one resting over my shoulder. And, at that moment our differences ended as did our immobility.
As we threw ourselves at each other, smooth, sharp curves of our blades rushing to sing the aria of malevolence as they fought for individuality, everything became the same shade of gray in the eyes of fire red and ice violet.
Smooth motion clashed upon smooth motion, blades arching in the same pattern of swift, angled cuts that were actually parries and blocks that hid the intent of thrusts.
Our senses heightened, trying to find anything in ourselves to exploit, to damage and weaken. But all we knew were the weaknesses of our own because they were shared, and they were protected thusly to keep them from being exploited against ourselves.
But as the battle wore on, something had changed in the way we moved, the way I saw him and he the fight against me.
A sort of gleefulness entered his hidden eyes, pulling his lips passed the exertion of snarling into a twisted grin. And something fluttered within me, gracing my insides with the wing of a butterfly and my skin tingled.
It was almost a feeling to laugh at, a battle for dominance, for survival, and we were strangely elated. Because the battles before were never so hard, never so well fought. And the challenge was a welcomed change.
The blades came together in a rudimentary 'x', throwing a darkened cross over our battling figures, a beacon of command, fading from mind as it was ignored, as we continued our sin. Iron fingers melding painfully onto the wrist opposite as we pushed forward, glaring in morbid humor into each other's face, brought within an inch's space. We panted, pressing onward, faces in a glistening flush, overlay by a sheen of adrenaline. The air here was sweeter, filled with pine and musk and spice and our bodies reacted, pulses quickening half a beat in its song, skin burning us alive with its need to touch, to feel.
It was almost too much.
We broke apart, infinitely more wary, ignoring the almost overwhelming plea to give in to what would end up being as inevitable as this fight. The feeling couldn't be acknowledged, not by us. Something so powerful, so gripping would ruin our balance. It would be too dangerous for both of us to give into the useless urge of touch.
He leaped ahead, sword poised as I stood waiting for him to come.
Because I am him. And he is me.
He shot into the air, the bleeding sun and I crouched, waiting for his descent.
Because I am the Shadow.
The fearfully strong emotion before was lost in the anticipation of fight. Losing oneself in the motions was what we did best.
And what I do best...
Is hide.
And for a moment, swirling in the feeling of being, of losing who I was being, I saw someone else falling towards at me, someone else with a wider, playful smirk, someone else with unkempt hair of auburn and eyes of gleaming pyrite. Someone who brought out these same emotions before, someone who made me feel... alivest.
And that falter gave him all the time to breach the defenses that was his own. My sword was slammed out of my hand and both blades shattered upon contact. A fact neither of us had expected, but allowed me a fraction of a blink to tear the hilt from his person with my heel.
And so we stood opposite the looking glass, bare handed, with the flames burning black what was beneath our skin and demanding action, sacrifice, whatever it took to feed it and squelch its endless hunger. And so we partook in the only option left to us. We grappled; feeling erupting and spilling from our bodies in waves of molten sensation that grew as we touched, as we danced, as we caressed.
Neither of us could ever admit to giving in to temptation, to letting that maddening sweetness of our suddenly overly sensitive skin taking our actions out of our conscious hands and pressing our lips and tongues into the numbingly refreshing kiss that led to another. And another. And to our hands wandering, skimming the flesh of our tattered clothes and soft surface of our artificial bodies.
We tumbled to the ground, unable to stop fighting, but finding a more interesting, intimate purpose for domination to struggle for. I held him in a grip that pained the joints in my arms, not wanting to let him go if not for the mere shivers that ran across my spine as he moved so sensually against my body, not entirely trying to escape his prison.
He clawed at me, nearly tearing the belts from my hips as the remains of his jacket was pushed hastily from his shoulders and arms. Deft fingers felled the scarf around my neck and plucked at ever sensitive point upon my torso, grinding his hips against mine, against the knee placed achingly close to what he wanted touched most. From me was pulled every moan and whimpered he couldn't utter, and his mouth formed every possessive word I was too frightened to say to another.
Bereft of shirt, jacket, scarf, uncovering every inch of skin, broken only by the seamless welds of flexible plating, he moved downward, awakening every exposed area with a touch, a kiss, a breath. And I was so caught up in the emotions that I barely realize the face I saw before me was the one that wasn't with me, the one that wasn't licking my abdomen with such familiarity, such right.
He didn't argue as I moved from him, protesting silently. He knew I wouldn't part until the battle was finished, though perhaps the reason he thought I wouldn't allow him to continue unabated was for a reason other than what sparked in his mind.
I tugged, I pulled, moving the two of us in opposite rotations until we once against pressed against the same body tight; aggressively I nuzzled against his inner thigh, nipping the flesh for warning, for a message.
If I could not have him ...
Then he could not have me.
I knew he understood though he made no move to prove it. But I knew and that was enough; because I know what he knows, and only that because at that moment, I did not exist outside of him. And at that moment, I cared not. He wrapped a parody of my lips over me as a copy of his tongue descended at the tip, the base of himself at the same moment. The same motions, the same sensations passed through us and knowing that we felt the same, that we were giving the same, that we were still equal, heightened our competition, our emotions until the world spun and it no longer mattered which direction had changed and what hadn't, because for a moment, as the liquid heat that pooled within us, fueling us passed any point of passion had before, exploded out of our bodies at the same moment, returning from whence it came... at that moment, we were truly connected. I knew then what it was like to be full, and I wished to never be un-full again.
We broke apart, still close enough to rest cheek upon thigh, to trace from knee to hip in a clouded moment that would never be forgotten but never remembered, we knew the same thing and the same thing for every loveless encounter to be fought and never won.
Infinite battles. Infinite stalemates.
So we laid, dark upon dark, never to know which was the true shadow of the shadow.
And at that moment...
I did not care.