Archive of Our Own

Cover Art by Electrikitty

Rouge stumbled down a corridor beneath GUN’s headquarters and shouldered her way into Team Dark’s flat, pulling the door shut behind her with one foot. Her fur was ruffled, her eyeshadow was smudged, and her dress was coming off one shoulder.

‘Shadow?’ She dropped her clutch purse, and the contents scattered across the floor. A metallic lipstick tube rolled past, nearly tripping her as she pried her high heels off. ‘Are you in here?’

He had been here when she’d left. She had offered to take him with her, but he had declined … as usual. She knew that he hated the lights, smoke and jangling pinball machines of Club Rouge, but she always offered. Just in case.

Rouge tossed her shoes aside and limped towards the door of his room. Whenever she returned from her forays into Night Babylon’s nightlife, the two of them would always carry out the same song and dance. She would find him at the workbench in his room, reading firearm manuals or pulling apart his precious guns. She would tease him about his non-existent social life, and he would warn her not to come crying to him when she woke up with a hangover.

She placed one hand on the doorframe, leaning into his room. ‘… Shadow?’

He was sitting on an old military cot, bracing his hands against the threadbare canvas. He was staring at the ground.

‘Having fun, handsome?’ She withdrew a silver flask from her dress and tossed it to him with a grin.

He caught it without thinking. After a few seconds, he lowered his hand, gazing blankly at his reflection in the metal surface.

She held out a hand, expecting him to toss it back like he always did. But he unscrewed the lid and downed the entire flask in one go, gulping as though he were dying of thirst. He shuddered at the taste, then he crushed the steel flask in his fist as though it were a paper cup, tossing it to the floor.

Rouge’s jaw slackened. For a moment, she wondered if she’d had too much to drink. ‘A-Are you all right?’

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and a pained expression flashed across his face. He didn’t answer.

Rouge hesitated. Then she picked her way across the concrete floor of his room and sat beside him. The canvas of the military cot creaked beneath her weight. ‘Hey, uh … If you needed a drink that badly, you should have come with me.’

Again, he didn’t answer. He was picking at the stitching of his gloves, and his knee twitched as he tapped one foot on the floor.

‘Did something happen?’

He didn’t react at first. But then his hands fell still, and his ears slowly flattened.

Rouge considered her options. Then she put an arm around him and brought his head to rest on her shoulder. He stiffened, and she half expected him to break free with a flash of green light and a snarl. But he didn’t move.

‘I’ve got a bottle of vodka somewhere in the kitchen –‘

‘Don’t bother.’ Shadow stared at the crumpled metal flask on the floor. ‘Alcohol doesn’t help. Nothing helps.’ He got up abruptly and leaned over his workbench. A partially disassembled gun lay on the surface, and he picked it up. Then he hurled the pieces across the room, and one of them bounced off a weapons crate with a loud clang. ‘I’ve taken this damn gun apart a hundred times and put it back together just as many. I can’t…’ He stepped backwards and stumbled, plopping onto another weapons crate.

‘M-Maybe you need some new hobbies?’

‘They’re not hobbies. They’re just ways of distracting myself.’ Shadow tensed, digging his fingers into his arms. Then his shoulders slumped, and his hands lay limp.

‘Distracting yourself from what?’

He had gone silent again, and he didn’t answer. Rouge looked around the room. Malfunctioning ceiling panels played flickering footage of distant stars. Every weapons crate and ammo box was covered in a layer of dust. The holes he had punched in the concrete walls were poorly patched up with torn recruitment posters for GUN.

She stared at the taglines on one of the posters. Find your place. Find your purpose.

‘Let’s get you out of here, sweetheart.’

He looked up at her blankly. ‘What?’

‘This place isn’t good for you.’ She got to her feet, and she stepped on a stray bullet, nearly twisting her ankle. Her head was spinning, but she was still standing on her two feet. She could still help him, surely. She walked over to him and held out her hands, giving him a grin. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

Shadow gazed up at her. He looked exhausted. ‘And go where?’

‘I’ll think of something.’ She shook her head to clear it and gestured to him impatiently. ‘Come on.’

Shadow exhaled. He lifted one hand, as though he was going to accept her offer. Then his hand fell back to his side, resting on the weapons crate. His movements were weak and sluggish.

Rouge hesitated. Then she leaned down and took his hand. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’ She began to pull, and he didn’t resist. She helped him to his feet and tugged on his hand, leading him out of the room. She must have misjudged how close the doorway was, because her shoulder and wings hit the doorframe on the way out.

Shadow normally called her out when she got too carried away. He would lecture her for not being careful with her own safety. When she forgot to tell him where she was going, he would storm off to GUN’s archive department and use one of their printers, greeting her with a sheet of crime statistics for Central City when she deigned to show up the next day. One time, he accidentally printed a screenshot of a computer desktop instead, and it completely derailed a heated argument between them.

He cared. He really did. But this time, he wasn’t saying a word, even though her dress was coming off her shoulder and she reeked of second-hand smoke. She wondered if he would lay into her tomorrow, once both of them were in their right mind again.

She slipped an arm around his waist and steered him into her room. Despite his disinterest, she felt him twitch beneath her hand, and he gave her a wary look. ‘What are we doing?’

Rouge shut the door behind her. There was barely enough space for them to stand, let alone make their way across the small room.

Shadow might have left his room as an unadorned concrete box, but she despised the barebones military aesthetic of GUN’s accommodations. She didn’t live here; she lived at Club Rouge. But it was useful to have a place to lie low – a place with top-level military security, for that matter – after a particularly risky heist. The room was like a magpie’s nest – overflowing with clothes, jewellery, and sparkly things. You couldn’t take a step without tripping over scattered makeup items or accessories. The concrete had been wallpapered over, and the space looked as though the entirety of the Y2K aesthetic had exploded within the room’s four walls.

Even if she wouldn’t admit it, she found herself spending more and more time here. At first, she had wanted to keep an eye on Shadow. Then she had wanted to spend more time with him, even if they were mainly spending their time in their own rooms. She could often hear him tinkering with his guns at his workbench, and the sounds were like a dull windchime. Sometimes she would lean against the doorframe of his room, talking about nothing until he eventually lost his patience and asked her to give him some peace and quiet.

… He was a very patient person, despite how he often acted.

Shadow stood just inside the doorway of her room. His arms hung by his sides, and his shoulders were slumped. He was supposed to be scolding her for living in such a dishevelled state. He was supposed to be looking around like a startled cat. He was supposed to be suspicious, asking her what her intentions were by bringing him in here. But he didn’t speak, and the only move he made was to glance at a piece of jewellery that was reflecting sharp, glittery light into his eyes.

Rouge picked her way over to the bed and sank onto it with a sigh. She patted the little free space that was left beside her – a swathe of quilt not covered in throw pillows and clothes. ‘Come on, sweetheart.’

Shadow walked over. His steps were heavy, as though he were a dead man walking. For a brief moment, a hint of wariness flashed across his face. Then he sank onto the bed as well. He normally had ramrod-straight posture, but this time, his back was curved. Even the lustre of his fur looked dull.

She didn’t think twice. She grasped his shoulders and laid him down, resting his head in her lap. Then she leaned over him, holding him and gently stroking his shoulder. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

Shadow didn’t respond. His behaviour was out of the ordinary, but so was her attempts to comfort him. She wondered if he would question her about it.

He didn’t.

Rouge stifled a sigh. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

For the first time, he reacted. A subtle tremor coursed through his body, and his hands, which lay limply on the bed, began to clench. His claws pressed against the seams of his gloves, digging into his palms.

Rouge swatted his hand, but between her drunken lack of coordination and his physical resilience, it probably felt softer than a kitten’s paw. ‘Don’t do that.’ She reached over and dragged a throw pillow within reach, pressing it into his hands. ‘Use this.’

After a moment, he grasped the edge of it. She saw his claws working beneath his gloves, pressing into the pink velvet. His shoulders tensed, and he exhaled shakily. ‘… There’s nothing to talk about.’

‘How am I supposed to help you if I don’t know what’s wrong?’

‘You can’t help me. No one can.’

‘… That bad, huh?’ Rouge stared up at the ceiling. ‘Try me, then.’ She grimaced and loosened her steel grip on her pride for a moment. ‘Even if I can’t help, maybe you’ll feel better if you talk about it.’

Shadow kneaded the pillow listlessly. ‘Complaining isn’t going to fix anything.’

‘It’s not complaining. But even if it were … I think you’d have a right to complain.’

‘You don’t even know what’s bothering me.’

‘Oh? So there is something bothering you, then?’

Shadow’s claws sank into the pillow, damaging the fingertips of his gloves. His shoulders curved inwards, deepening the curve of his spine. If he retreated much further into himself, he would look like a black cat balled up in her arms.

‘… My memories have been coming back.’

Rouge continued to stroke his shoulder.  ‘Yeah?’

He lowered his gaze to the floor, and his eyelashes swept over the curve of his muzzle. ‘It’s nothing new. But I’ve been having more flashbacks, more often, and I …’

Rouge’s chest tightened, and she held him more closely. His struggles weren’t new to him, and they weren’t new to her either. She’d watched his eyes go blank many times, at the sound of a gunshot or the flash of a red light. You could tell yourself that the nightmare unfolding before your eyes wasn’t real, but that didn’t mean your body would believe it. Even if you realised that you were having a flashback, it didn’t mean that your brain would relent and let you back out into reality.

Shadow toyed with the corner of the pillow she had given him, then let it fall to the floor. His hands fell open, limp and empty. He exhaled and took slow, deep breaths as he spoke.  ‘I don’t know when this is going to stop. I don’t know if it ever will. Even if I regain all of my memories, I have no way of knowing that for certain. I’ll live forever while wondering if this day, this week, this month, this year, this decade, this century, this millennium will be when the next piece falls into place. I don’t even know which of the memories I’m regaining are real.’

Rouge’s hand finally fell still.

Shadow cleared his throat and said, ‘… I’m tired.’

‘Yeah.’ Rouge rested a hand on his head, stroking his ear with her thumb. ‘… Yeah.’

He turned slightly, resting his head in her lap and baring the scars on his back to the light. ‘I can’t be alone with my own thoughts for long enough to fall asleep,’ he murmured. ‘My rings only do so much to ease the strain on my body, and everything hurts a little, all the time. And if I go to doctors or psychiatrists for help, because then they might tell me that there’s nothing they can do … and I don’t know how to live with that, let alone live with it forever.‘ As though using his last bit of strength, he rolled onto his back and looked up at her with exhausted eyes. ‘… I’m so tired, Rouge.’

Rouge began to feel dizzy, and she realised that she had stopped breathing some time ago.

She didn’t know what to say. What on earth was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do? She was frozen in place, as though they were playing the world’s worst game of musical chairs. How was she supposed to respond to the things he was saying? She felt like she needed medication after listening to him, and she wasn’t even the one with PTSD.

Nervous voices began to clamour in her head – the ones that said she was failing him, the ones that said, the ones that said she wasn’t good enough. She felt the familiar urge to pour herself another shot, and she grimaced. She steeled herself. Then she cradled him in her arms and pressed a kiss to his forehead. It was soft, but long, and he blinked several times.

He needed help – real help. Right now, she wasn’t at his worst … but he needed her at her best. At the very least, he needed a version of her that had a clear head.

She eased his head from her lap, placing a pillow beneath it instead. ‘I-I need to sober up. Don’t go anywhere, okay?’ She got to her feet and forced a smile. ‘I’ll beat your ass if you’re not here when I come back.’

Shadow stared blankly into the middle distance. Then he nodded once and closed his eyes.

Rouge rushed into the tiny adjoining bathroom and turned the shower on, making it as cold as it would go, and peeled her cocktail dress off with clumsy fingers. She had to get it together. She had to get it together. She had to get it together –

She stepped into the shower, and the icy water hit her full blast in the face. She yelped and nearly scrambled out, but she stood beneath the flow, fur bristling and teeth chattering. She couldn’t run away. Not now.

Her makeup began to run down her neck and chest, and she started scrubbing it off with a cleanser. The frigid water cascaded over her, and she could feel her faculties beginning to return. She rested one hand on the tap, turning it a fraction at a time.

She still felt warm – too warm. At least her senses felt sharper. But her wings began to droop, and she huddled beneath the warming water. Who was she kidding? Did she really think that the answers to his problems would magically appear in front of her eyes?

She sighed and shut the water off before trudging out and towelling herself dry. She yanked an unwashed set of cotton pjs – t-shirt and shorts – out of the laundry basket and pulled them on, looking at her bare face with a grimace.

She was already cringing at the idea of him seeing her like this, but he needed her more than she needed to be perfectly made up. She opened the bathroom door a crack and peeked through.

Shadow was sitting on the bed, and he looked listless. He was slumped over, and he was clearing the bed one item at a time. He was only using one arm, and sometimes several seconds would pass between each movement.

Rouge opened the door and slipped out, pulling it shut again. She padded over as fast as her slightly unsteady legs would allow her, hoping that she could sit beside him again before he looked up at her. But the swiftness of her movements startled him, and his head snapped up as though someone had yanked his puppet strings.

He stared at her, holding a fluffy keychain in his fingers. His eyes flickered. ‘You look nice.’

Rouge wanted to fall through the floor. She buried her face in her hands and looked through the cracks in her fingers, wondering if his sarcasm had improved to the point where he was no longer able to detect it. ‘… Excuse me?’

His expression didn’t change, and her arm slackened. Her hand fell back to her side.

He had never commented on her appearance. And why would he? He didn’t care about frivolous or trivial things. They weren’t a couple, either. He was under no obligation to stroke her ego.

A faint hint of colour lit his cheeks, and he averted his eyes.

She leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees, and stared at him. ‘You wanna run that one by me again?’

Shadow cleared his throat. ‘I’d rather not.’

Rouge plopped down beside him and stared at the floor. ‘… I hate you.’

‘What did I do?’ His voice was missing its usual rasp and sharpness, and his protest sounded weak. But at least he was talking.

‘You’ve never said a word about how I look or what I wear … And this is the time when you decide to say that I look “nice”?!’ She drew her legs up and folded her arms over her knees, huddling in place.  ‘… Are you serious?’

‘Why are you so upset?’

‘I’m not wearing makeup! I’ve had these pjs since high school!’ She reached out without looking and thumped one fist against his shoulder. ‘My fur is still wet from the shower!’

Shadow was silent for a moment. Then he leaned down, picking something up. A moment later, she felt a towel tousling the curls of fur gathered around her neck.

Rouge groaned, and she heard a hint of his usual sharpness in his voice when he chided her. ‘You’re the one who never does your laundry, by the looks of it. Don’t fuss.’

She flailed one hand and slumped forward again. ‘It’ll all sort itself out eventually. Ow, easy on the ears.’

He chuckled, and Rouge almost dared to get her hopes up, thinking that he was coming round the bend of whatever dark road he was on. But then the sound abruptly cut out, as though a needle had been snapped clean off of a record player.

She glanced up at him. He was holding the towel in his hands, and his eyes were clouded with pain.

He’d tried to explain it to her before – how it felt to live in such a state that the mere act of being happy reminds you that you’re deviating from your norm of being unhappy. She’d struggled to understand the depth of what he was saying, and he had never tried to explain it to her again.

‘Sweetheart?’

When he looked up again, his gaze was blank once more. His shoulders fell, like two halves of a slowly collapsing bridge. ‘I forgot. For a moment.’

She promptly put her injured vanity aside and shifted closer. Taking him in her arms. He was so stiff. His muscles were probably aching with unreleased tension.

Rouge rubbed his back in soothing circles, and she hesitated. ‘Maybe you’d feel better if you let yourself cry.’

‘No.’ His voice had lost every characteristic that had made it recognisable. It had neither the harshness she’d come to know nor the lilt she had noticed when they’d first met. All that was left was a hollow vessel, empty of itself and everything else, save but for the wishes of others. ‘It runs deeper than that.’ Her face was reflected in his eyes, and there was nothing behind them. ‘I don’t even think I could cry if I wanted to.’

‘… I see.’ She traced the scar tissue on his back and began to smooth down his fur.

He blinked, and his lashes brushed against her shoulder. ‘I know that I did this to myself. I tamped everything down, thinking that’s what it would take to move on. But now I can’t feel anything at all,’ he said quietly.

His hands clasped her waist. He had never been one for showing physical affection, and she knew that wasn’t what this was. He needed something to hold onto.

She tilted her head, attempting to meet his gaze. ‘Hey. Want to do something that will take your mind off things?’

He blinked several times. Then he slowly lifted his eyes to hers, and she realised that he was waiting for her to speak. He looked almost … hopeful.

She froze. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to read between the lines and realise what she was suggesting. He was supposed to give her a flat-out no, and she was supposed to take it in stride, as always.

‘I-I thought we could watch a movie,’ she stammered.

‘I don’t watch movies.’ The brief glimpse of light in his eyes swiftly faded, and her ears drooped. He silently removed her arms from his waist. ‘That’s not what you were originally going to say, was it?’

Rouge cringed, and her wings twitched erratically.

Shadow pressed his lips together, and his claws dug into the mattress. He actually looked disappointed.

Rouge wanted to reach into the past and slap her past self. She’d gotten his hopes up, all for nothing. ‘I … We can …’ She could feel panic beginning to set in.

She had nothing. She didn’t know how to distract him. He barely knew how to distract himself. He would read firearms at his workbench instead of sleeping in his bed, and he spent more time at GUN’s shooting ranges and training grounds than the people whose jobs it was to manage those facilities. If he were capable of dying, then he would have already worked himself to death. He had a higher number of completed missions than some of GUN’s veterans, and he had only been with the organisation for a few years.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice cracked, and she said, ‘I don’t know how to help. I don’t even know what to say.’

Shadow’s eyes widened slightly. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. She didn’t know whether it was intentional or if he was merely too tired to sit up straight. ‘It’s not your responsibility to help me.’

‘But I want to.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Damn it, I really want to.’

He sat back slightly, and the movement caused more clothes to tumble off the bed. ‘Rouge –’

A blue silk dress spread across the floor like a puddle, and he glanced at it. He froze. His gaze went blank, and his breathing became shallow. Rouge abruptly leaned down and kicked the dress beneath the bed, then turned back to him. ‘Sweetheart? Can you hear me?’

His ears twitched, but he didn’t look at her. It was as though he had been locked in place. If she hadn’t noticed the flashback starting, she might have assumed that he simply hadn’t heard her. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him until it was over, but she knew that was the worst possible thing she could do. It could make him panic. So she kept talking instead.

‘It’s me, Rouge,’ she said gently. ‘You’re having a flashback.’ His ears twitched again, and she took a deep breath. ‘You’re in my room. You’re safe. You’re with me.’

Shadow blinked several times. He looked around, and his gaze darted from object to object.

‘Breathe, sweetheart.’

He startled at the sound of her voice and pivoted to face her. His chest was heaving, but he was still silent. He stared, as though he didn’t recognise her. ‘R-Rouge?’

‘I’m here.’ She held out her hands. ‘It’s okay.’

He gazed at her hands. He might not be speaking, but he was still a bundle of nervous tells. His ears were twitching, his muscles were tense, and tremors ran up and down his arms.

Maybe he didn’t want to be touched. Maybe she truly had no idea how to help him, and every attempt was either too much or not enough. But even so…

She slowly reached out, keeping her hands in view, and brought her palms up. His fingertips came to rest on her hands. He didn’t move, and she shifted forward, carefully taking him in her arms and bringing his head to rest against her shoulder.

He squeezed his eyes shut and let out the breath that he had been holding, shuddering on the exhale. His lashes brushed against her skin as he buried his face in her neck. He was more slender than she had remembered, and his bones felt more fragile. Despite his immortality and the number of years that had passed … it occurred to her that he was still too young to suffer like this.

She caught a glimpse of velvet, and she noticed that her dressing gown was falling down the crack in the wall. She hesitated. Then she reached out and drew it over, draping it over Shadow’s shoulders and helping him put his arms into the sleeves.

He was too tired and disoriented to resist, but he did give her a confused look.

‘I don’t have a weighted blanket for you,’ Rouge said. ‘This is the next best thing.’

The heavy, quilted fabric settled on his shoulders. She turned and began to shovel some more debris off the bed, taking care not to startle him with sudden movements. Then she dimmed the lights, piled up the pillows, pulled back the covers, and patted the bedsheets. ‘Come on.’

Shadow sat back, and he looked alarmed. ‘What?’

‘You said that you can’t be alone with your own thoughts for long enough to fall asleep. You don’t have to be alone. You can stay with me.’

‘… Why are you doing this?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is this just another attempt to get me into your bed?’

Rouge stiffened, and it took everything she had not to snap at him. ‘I might be selfish, but I’m not that selfish. I’m trying to help you. It’s not my fault that I have no idea how to do that.’ She slipped beneath the covers, crossed her arms behind her head, and fell back onto the pillows. She stared at the ceiling. ‘Besides. If I wanted to make a move on you, I’d take you to a hotel. I wouldn’t invite you in here.’

Shadow said nothing. Then she heard the clunk of his shoes and wrist guards falling to the floor. He cautiously eased himself in beside her, and she pulled the covers up before he could change his mind. She sighed and turned over, nestling into her pillow, only to feel something hard beneath her. She fished around and pulled out an old, battered portable DVD player. The flip stand was damaged.

‘… Do you really not watch movies?’

Shadow’s eyes flickered, and he turned onto his side to face her. ‘Just because I don’t bother getting up and leaving when you put a film on in our shared living quarters doesn’t mean I’m watching it.’

‘Hm.’ Rouge ran a claw around the edge of the LCD screen. ‘Some people listen to music or podcasts to fall asleep. It gives you something else to think about.’

Shadow settled into his pillow. ‘Podcasts?’

‘You really are bad with technology, aren’t you?’ Rouge glanced up, but she’d forgotten how close together they were. His eyes were like liquid rubies, and for a moment, she became lost in them.

‘Rouge?’

‘Sorry.’ She lifted her hand, keeping it in view, and rested it on his head. She gently rubbed the base of his ear with her thumb. He was stiff, at first, and he held his breath. But then he gave in and rested his head against her hand. ‘Podcasts are like … pre-recorded radio.’

‘Radio?’

Rouge’s mouth fell open. Then she sighed and ruffled his fur, messing it up. ‘Come on. You might be old, but you’re not that old.’

He half-smiled. It was quick and weak, but it was a start.

She pulled the DVD player from beneath the covers and let it slide onto a pile of clothes with a dull thud. ‘You said that your memories have been coming back,’ Rouge said quietly. ‘Have you tried focusing on the good ones?’

‘What’s the point?’ Shadow’s face was half hidden by his pillow, and he lowered his eyes. ‘I don’t know if they’re real.’

‘I’m not talking about your memories of the distant past. I’m talking about your memories from the past few years. The ones you’ve made since you’ve started making a new life for yourself.’

Shadow’s eyes flickered. He blinked several times. ‘Like what?’

‘Really? You don’t remember anything from the time that we’ve known each other?’

‘I do, I just … It’s hard for me to recall things.’

Rouge eyed him. ‘I guess that’s not surprising. Trauma causes memory loss, and so does suppressing your emotions.’

His claws protracted, sinking into his pillow. Then he took the pillow, hugging it to his chest. His brow creased. ‘I know that. I didn’t want to remember my past, so I didn’t care.’ His gaze tightened. ‘But I don’t want to lose the memories I’ve made since then.’

‘Then you might have to risk letting yourself feel things every now and then.’

‘I would if I could,’ he murmured. ‘Right now, I can barely feel anything at all.’

She rested a hand on his shoulder, feeling his warmth and the softness of the dressing gown beneath her fingertips. ‘So … what good memories do you remember?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I remember when you freed me from that capsule.’ His lashes lowered. Maybe he was starting to get physically tired, or maybe he just wasn’t comfortable looking her directly in the eyes when they were so close together. ‘I remember crossing paths with you in Digital Circuit. I remember when you rescued me and brought me to Club Rouge. I remember freeing you from that card you were trapped in.’ There were long pauses between his sentences, as though he was delving into the depths of his own mind to find each one.

Rouge chuckled. ‘Is there anything other than me in that head of yours?’

‘No.’ Shadow closed his eyes for a moment. ‘You don’t remind me of my past. All my good memories are of you. You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me.’

She swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘That’s … sweet. But for your sake, I wish it weren’t true.’

He didn’t answer, and his breathing began to slow and deepen. His grip on his pillow loosened. He didn’t answer.

Rouge held her breath and carefully reached out to pull the covers up further, but his eyes flickered open, and he looked confused. ‘What happened?’

‘You fell asleep.’

Shadow stared at her. He glanced around, taking in the dim outlines of her messy room, then his gaze came to land on her face once again. ‘I-I did?’

Her heart began to ache. ‘Yeah, sweetheart. You did.’

He blinked. Once, twice. Then several times. He took a shaky breath. ‘… I haven’t been able to fall asleep in months.’ His voice cracked on the final word, and he buried his face in his pillow. Rouge put an arm around him, holding him close and rubbing his back in soothing circles.

Her room might be a chaotic mess, but at least the bed was cosy. It felt like a world of their own beneath the covers.

She wanted to tell him so many things. She wanted to tell him that she could kiss it better. She wanted to tell him that he would have an even easier time falling asleep if they both “exhausted” themselves first. She wanted to tell him that, despite his fears, there would be people out there who could help him.

But she didn’t say any of that. She just kissed him on the forehead and held him in her arms as his burning-hot tears soaked into his pillow. ‘You’re going to be okay, love. The worst of it’s already behind you. I promise.’

It was a bold claim, and she wondered if he would call her out on it. But he didn’t. Maybe it rang true, or maybe her tone was convincing. Maybe he had merely decided that he wanted to believe her.

He lay in silence. He wasn’t crying. Not really. His pain was seeping out of him as he lay in her arms, in shallow breaths and involuntary tears dripping down his cheeks. She began to talk, speaking in a low, soothing murmur. She said whatever came to mind – gentle teases about his idiosyncrasies, callbacks to the missions they had done together, and reluctant mentions of what she had gotten up to in her high school days.

He sometimes said that her talkativeness was like white noise. His tone was sharp and caustic when he said it, but she thought that there was something underlying it – some truth he didn’t want to admit.

He was afraid to admit that he wanted comfort. He was afraid to rely on emotional crutches to get by. He was afraid to show weakness. That wasn’t what he had been created for, after all. His viability as a weapon was the sole pillar propping up his self-esteem – and weapons didn’t need soft beds or shoulders to cry on.

‘Oh, baby.’ Rouge ceased her incessant, whispered chatter and held him close. He was half-asleep, too drowsy to resist her embrace. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘… You don’t need to be.’

She knew that he was talking about her self-confessed inability to help him, and her heart warmed at the idea that he thought her efforts might be enough for him. But she cleared her throat and said, ‘I’m sorry that all of this happened to you.’

He was quiet for a moment. Maybe he was already too far gone. Maybe he was already asleep. But then she felt a subtle twitch in his hand, and he placed one arm around her waist and rested his forehead against her chest. He murmured something that she couldn’t quite hear. Then his breathing deepened again, and she felt him slump into her arms.

… She almost felt like she should be offended. A lot of men would kill to be where he was now, yet aside from his initial wariness, he had said or done nothing to acknowledge the intimate situation they found themselves in.

Then again, maybe she should take his unguardedness as a compliment. He trusted her. Despite all of her flirting and teasing and advances, he still trusted that she wouldn’t try to further her own goals and make advances toward him while he was at his lowest point.

Maybe that was the secret. The less she pushed, the more willing he was to open up and be intimate with her. She knew that her motivations were selfish, but she was also looking out for his best interests. She could make him happy. She was certain of it.

She opened her eyes, and Shadow was gone. Her flip phone was buzzing. It was already midmorning. He had left before she had woken up. She sat up, stretched, and sighed. Their encounter had had all of the characteristics of a one-night stand … bar one. Still, the fact that he had left and gone about his business was a good sign. At least he wasn’t lying face down in her bed as though he had drowned in his own sadness.

She got dressed and went about her business – strategy meetings, IT consulting, and extra work with GUN’s cryptanalysis department. Her mind was elsewhere for the entire day. She had better things to think about than her work. Like … The warmth and weight of Shadow in her arms. The way his ruby eyes flickered with bittersweet warmth when she was able to make him smile. The way his chest rose and fell while he was sleeping peacefully. He way his knee had brushed against her leg –

‘Agent Rouge?’

Rouge abruptly stopped spinning her pen in her fingers and blurted out the first coding term that came to mind. ‘Daisy chain.’

Abraham gave her an unimpressed look from the far end of one of GUN’s conference room tables. ‘We can only use the same method so many times before we get hacked, Rouge.’

She put her feet up on the table and said, ‘Do you know when Shadow’s coming back from his latest mission?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Come on, Abe, give me something to work with.’

‘You’re able to keep better tabs on him than we are. He went of the grid to look into something on his own. We have no ETA for his return.’

Rouge groaned and ran her fingers through her fur. She’d much rather be running her fingers through the soft white fur on Shadow’s chest, but no – she’d decided to become a spy for the government, and now she had to untangle their badly written lines of code.

Abraham got up and walked behind her chair, giving it a sharp rap on the armrest as he went. ‘If you have other codes to crack, you can do it when you’re not on the clock.’

Rouge sighed, sat forward and got back to work. By the time she was done, the sun had set, and the lines of code were blurring before her eyes. She left GUN’s headquarters, wrung a free dinner out of an unsuspecting soul who had been asking to take her on a date, and hit the bars in Night Babylon before flying back to Team Dark’s flat as midnight rolled around.

She’d tried to be back sooner this time. Tried not to get carried away. Even though he had gone about his own business before she had even woken up, he might still need her help again. The filtered air in the maze of concrete corridors still felt cool on her warm, flushed skin.

She stumbled through the door of the flat and made her way to Shadow’s room. ‘Shadow…? You in here?’

His room was empty.

Rouge’s wings drooped. Then she turned and walked into her own room.

‘Where have you been?’

She nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘Hell, Shadow, don’t do that!’

He glared at her, sitting on the edge of her bed. She wouldn’t quite tell, but the bed looked cleaner, as though someone had shovelled more mess onto the floor. ‘Answer my question.’

Rouge blinked. ‘… I was just having a few drinks.’

‘You told me that you’d always be back by 11.’

‘Oh, come on –’

‘No, you come on.’ Shadow gave a curt nod in the direction of her bathroom. ‘And you’ve kept me waiting. Hurry up.’

In a daze, she slipped inside, showered, and changed into a fresh set of pjs. When she came back, she didn’t even have the time to ask him what was going on before he took her arm and yanked her beneath the covers.

‘Shadow!’

He glared at her, but it wasn’t as intimidating as he probably hoped it was. Not here. Not beneath these dim lights, on these soft pillows, and under these bedcovers. ‘What?’

She stammered for a good ten seconds. Then she gave up and turned the tables on him, taking him in his arms. ‘You’re insufferable. Back for more, are you?’

Shadow stiffened. ‘I want to get a decent night’s sleep. I’d rather endure this arrangement than endure more sleepless tossing and turning on that damn military cot.’

‘Yes, yes.’ She wanted to needle him further about how he didn’t actually need to rest, but she knew how deeply his inability to fall asleep had been bothering him. She wasn’t that cruel. So she simply purred with satisfaction and caressed his shoulders. ‘You tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself, sweetheart.’

She expected him to retort. To counter her insinuations. To deny what she was hinting at.

But he didn’t.

He merely lay on his front, closed his eyes and buried his face in his pillow.

She froze. She was almost tempted to hold her breath, as though doing or saying anything would break a spell. Then she lay beside him and rested a hand on his back, smoothing his fur with gentle strokes.

‘Good night, sweetheart.’

His lashes fluttered, and she caught a glimpse of bittersweet pain before he closed his eyes again. ‘… I haven’t had a “good” night for as long as I can remember.’

“Then let’s change that.”

He exhaled, and she felt the tension beginning to leave his shoulders. ‘Yeah.’ His voice had a warmth to it … something tender and kind and sweet, despite the pain that it belied. ‘… Yeah. Let’s.’

The End