Chiaroscuro

quattro

At the stroke of midnight, Aldrich took the chance to meet his mysterious guardian red-handed, once and for all.

For the past few weeks now, he'd been pretending to be asleep, only to actually fall asleep as time trickled by. Such were the downfalls of being a heavy sleeper.

This time, however, he managed to stay awake while his eyes were still closed. He also took slow breaths, ensuring that his breathing was measured.

Be natural. All natural.

Once he heard movement stir in his general direction, he waited a few seconds more. Just for a few more seconds, right before jolting up from his makeshift sleeping spot against a slab of rocky candy he found earlier. His eyes snapped open with focus, his tanned hand shooting out to reach for his mysterious guardian.

This wasn't the best way to go about things, but there was no time for decorum when they needed to rely on each other. Now more than ever, Aldrich needed to find out who his new ally was and why they've been helping him.

Startled by the sudden jumpscare, Lenore flinched before tearing his arm away from Aldrich's touch.

Immediately, he dropped the fragments of a candy cane branch he'd been holding onto with his claws.

For once, for the first time since he'd known him, Lenore's face showed a sliver of emotion.

Fear.

In the meanwhile, Aldrich stopped functioning, his eyes practically bulging out from the sockets as he stared up at the Umbra before him.

Lenore flickered in and out of view now, preparing to teleport himself behind the shadow of a random candy cane tree. Further away from here, anywhere away from here.

However, just before he could fade out of existence entirely, Aldrich lurched forward and made a hasty grab for his shoulder, completely disrupting his magic with an instinctive flash of sunlight.

"Wait!" he shouted.

Pain flashed in Lenore's eyes as he tried to slap him away with one of his sentient shadows. It shot out from his backside before frantically shoving his hand off, snuffing out the light with its chilling darkness.

The imprint of a radiant burn mark still smoked his shoulder, all from Aldrich's doing.

No. No, no, no. He didn't mean to. For once, he didn't mean to.

"Wait!" he called out again, more frantic this time. "Stay!"

At that, Lenore froze. A clawed hand was still clutching his burning shoulder, but for a moment's hesitation, he didn't move. He just stared back at Aldrich in mute bewilderment.

As the tensions between them slowly but surely fizzled out into a void of thick silence, Aldrich inched closer. One step forward. He surrendered his hands up before Lenore could stir to action, exposing his bare fingers for his eyes to catch.

No more sunlight. No more hurting.

"I'm a prince," Aldrich said, repeating his words from the other day. "I keep my promises. And I promise to never hurt an ally."

Lenore stared down at him, baffled. "I'm an Umbra. Not–"

"And I'm a Soleil," Aldrich countered. "So tell me: why have you been helping me?"

Lenore didn't speak at first. But Aldrich continued to gaze up at him, waiting.

"You were going to die," the Umbra finally admitted. "You let me live, but you were going to die. I saw the way those bunnies chased after you–"

"You were watching that?" Aldrich scoffed. "Unbelievable–"

"–and I was going to leave it all up to fate," Lenore continued, unperturbed by the comment. "I originally intended to leave you behind. Not much else could be done without giving myself away. But–"

"But what? I let you live before, so now you let me live? Is that how this is supposed to work?"

"Not exactly," Lenore replied. "I just thought it would be wrong for your death to be so anticlimactic. Is that not why you spared me? Because it wouldn't feel worth it?"

Well, he wasn't wrong.

"You're also not that good at survival," Lenore added. "You kept getting lost, passing by the same landmarks over and over. It's honestly a miracle that you're still alive."

Okay, he wasn't wrong about that either, but Aldrich grew offended anyway.

Exasperated, he threw his hands up. "If I'm that much of a hassle, then you should've left me to my fate after all."

"I thought you wanted me to stay."

That was still true. Aldrich's brief silence was a reluctant acknowledgement to that.

"Even if it would've been anticlimactic, you didn't kill me." Lenore spared him a curious glance. "I even let you and you still didn't. Anyone else in your position would've already done it. Because I'm an Umbra. And you're the Prince of Soleil, the same one sent to destroy me no matter the cost."

Aldrich sighed. "We both know that none of that matters. Not here, not anymore."

Lenore hummed in agreement, a low and gentle noise. It almost surprised him how low and gentle he could sound. Every word that he rasped out was deep in pitch yet soft-spoke in tone.

"You're my ally," Aldrich reminded him. "Whether you like it or not, you are. And I never hurt my allies. Not intentionally."

Though he wouldn't say it, one meaningful glimpse over Lenore's shoulder indicated an unspoken apology. A truce between an Umbra and a Soleil, one which broke the flow of history between their kind.

And even though Lenore didn't say anything either, they both knew that this was the start to a newfound partnership.

They would find a way back home.

⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆♱⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺

"Just to be clear, we're not friends," Aldrich said, in the morning after their truce.

Lenore blinked. "Okay."

"We're not friends," he continued, completely unprompted. "We're just friendly for the sake of a temporary goal: to find a portal that can get us back home. Friendly, not friends. There's a difference."

"Understood."

"And I would never willingly be friends with an Umbra. Even if that doesn't matter here, it still matters to me."

"Yes."

Lenore kept a straight face while listening to Aldrich. He remained by Aldrich's side now, visibly present, as they traversed the rest of Candy Land's sickly sweet terrain together.