Chapter Text
The sun has just begun to rise over the horizon when you first meet him. He's beautiful, framed by the gentle sunlight, but he looks worried, eyes scanning the hillside anxiously, searching for something.
You would go out there to talk to him if you could, but the sun's coming up, and you don't want to burn. You're a zombie, after all, and the sunlight can only ever bring you harm, no matter how beautiful it looks from afar.
Then his eyes lock onto yours. The sheer intensity of the blackness that makes up most of his eyes stops your figurative heart in your chest, taking your no-longer-existent breath away, and you're reminded painfully of when you had been human, once, a long, long time ago.
Then the figure heads towards you, the sunlight flashing off his quiver of arrows as he stumbles on some long grass, and you realise with horror that he's burning up, too. You watch him struggle to move, and you want to help him, but you know that you couldn't save him even if you tried, and trying to protect him would only result in both of you dying.
Somehow, though, the boy makes it into the cave you are in, and you breathe a sigh of relief, quickly guiding him towards a pool of water you had found within the dark, safe, cave. The white and black-cloaked boy says nothing as he sinks gratefully into the cool water, and you think his expression seems to warm up to you a bit more when he lets slip a mildly thankful smile, watching you kick at the water.
At this moment, you learn, not for the first time in your long undead life, to be grateful for your apparent lack of blood, because you're pretty sure that if you were still alive, your face would be hotter than fire with embarrassment. The boy is taking off his jacket, and underneath the fabric, which you now notice has small slits cut into it which creepily resemble a skeleton, he's wearing a tight-fitting black half-sleeved shirt that reveals way too much for your level of comfort. You'd never really talked to anybody before, which most people would scoff at given your status as undead, or immortal, but any human you tried to talk to ran when they saw you, and for some reason people you touched would die, or become the undead like you. (you supposed you had become a zombie the same way they had, but your memories as a human are fuzzy and less like memories than fragments of forgotten puzzle pieces you never knew about)
"Thank you." A quiet voice echoes through the cave, raspy with neglect, and glance around in surprise at the unfamiliar intrusion.
"You're a zombie, right? Thanks for saving me." Blinking, you glanced at the boy in the pool, and his shirt is gone, now, revealing a well-built, muscular torso, and though you were pretty sure you had never been a believer, you thank god anyways, for letting you meet him only after dying. (and rising from the grave... unless you had been directly transformed???)
You cough, trying to get the cogs out of your voice before speaking, and you're embarrassed when your voice comes as a low growl anyways, hating the sound which had always made people run from you. "No..." you cough again, wishing you could speak normally for once, you hated god now, "No problem."
"I'm a skeleton, by the way." The skeleton boy raises himself from the pool, and rivulets of water runs down his body, glistening slightly in the light of the sun that had begun to shine into your hideout.
You coughed. "I see..."
"You alright? We should move further into the cave before the sun really starts shining in, or were' going to burn again." He seems to think about his statement for a moment, then shakes his head decisively. "Actually, no, it was only me burning."
You detect a hint of bitterness in his voice, and wonder if he's mad at you for leaving him out there without calling out to him when the sun had began to rise.
However, you don't voice your worries, instead nodding and following the (still shirtless) figure in front of you deeper into the cave, gradually leaving the sunlight behind.