In a dream,
Will you give your love to me?
Beg my broken heart to beat,
Save my life, change my mind.

- Cloud Nine - Evanescence -

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Iron nails slid across the surface of the desk. Granite eyes stared blankly at the front of the room, waiting for the permission to move. The assignment was still going on, and the creature who thought herself empty actually was looking forward to the periods she spent working with her fellow outcast. The steely voice gave way, and a scrape of chairs and desks drowned out all other sound for a moment.

A gentle shadow passed over her head, and she smiled into the smoothly moulded face of the boy crafted of paper. He seated himself infront of her with an equal grin, setting his books on the table. In this instant both seemed increadibly real, almost alive, with their smiles and laughter, but it was only temporary. Time passed and words split the air, accompanied with the gentle scrape of their writing. But these periods always seemed to pass too quickly. That short hour of warmth wasnt enough to fully melt either of their frozen hearts, and their cold indifference returned shortly after parting every time.

But for those short moments, they smiled, and nothing mattered.

This girl was amazed, fascinated with this boy. Here was the one with the shadow eyes, and a shell crafted of paper and silk, who stood against the wall silent and ignoring the world around him. Here he sat infront of her with a smile that was almost real, and a laugh that wasnt quite as hollow as it had been once before. He was complex, composed of layers, but at the same time, was so easy for her to understand it was frightening. She came to realize that she enjoyed this feeling, and the time she spent with him, having developed a certain fondness toward him. Now in truth, this did not surprise her as much as she had thought it would. In fact, she found that she rather liked this idea, this growing sense of comfort with the boy enveloped in mystery.

They had begun to converse on occasion outside of this daily punishment in their Hell hole prison, that was flooded to the brim with narrow minded, fake creatures, whose entire world resided in that building and the world it created. Slowly, their trivial conversations gained a deeper level. As time progressed they learned what was beneath the others shell. The boy was broken, the girl, empty. In learning this, the girl felt saddened, a feeling entirely new to her; she thought this boy was far to good to be allowed to fall apart. Perhaps she should try to help repair him? Perhaps try to help him repair himself. He was too beautiful, too rare, to be left to rot away. The Creature of Paper and Silk was far too exquisite to be layed on a shelf and forgotten. Why should something too fragile, or too strong be considered wrong? Was she the only one who could see this? Of course. The others were blind to anything different from themselves. She and the boy of Paper and Silk were no concern of theirs.

And so she opened herself to him, allowing him to fill the empty, gaping hole in her chest. She would allow him to pour himself into her if necessary, to let go all the pains and troubles that made his eyes naught but shadows. But, the girl of Metal was unaware of a something. The object of her ignorace was that in helping others, you may very well help yourself. Never had she expected that this boy might heal her as well.

She invited him to fill her emptiness with his pain. Slowly, at first, as a small trickle, he allowed himself to release the things that gave him his shadow eyes and icey core. Time passed, not in increments of minutes, hours, or days, but counted in the spoken word, and each growing link in the chain of connection. Steadily, the small trickle gained a heavier flow, becoming a deep and full cascade, until finally, with a glorious rush, his mind and his past filled her, flooded her. The Boy of Paper and Silk was growing stronger within his shell. He was not loosing his voice in his own shadows, but instead reaching heights and volumes he hadnt reached before. His companion, the Girl of Metal and Ice, watched him quietly, the steadily flourishing life within him making her smile.

Never had she realized that his own cold fire had begun to melt the icey imprisonment around her heart, but still, slowly, secretively, he had begun to repair the fractured pieces that made up the Girl of Metal and Ice. In his own way, he was working to give her the sort of life that was growing beneath his shell as well. Amazed was she to notice the more prominent pulses of emotion. Her stone heart was fracturing it seemed, her metal shell not quite as sturdy as before. Perhaps change was upon her, and not just in way of caring for her Shadow boy. Perhaps change had manifested itself in her core as well. Her steely eyes fell upon the one who sat with his head bowed beneath silence with sorrow on his shoulders, and a smile split its way across her crafted mask. He was not so weighted any more, and she, not so alone. And thus, a few cracks spread across her stone and metal exterior, while the edges of his paper shell began to tear and fray, peeling back slightly one layer at a time.