Asexual

"Honey, you're always saying you love a boy after spending just a week with them. Before you say you love someone, would you consider something? Just for your Momma? Think about it this way, baby girl, would you still love that person if you were both paralyzed from the neck down and you couldn't touch each other, not even hold hands? Would your love stay in your heart if all you could do was talk? I think you love someone if the answer's yes, baby girl."

Momma's words resounded in her head, over and over. It was like all the other thoughts were removed, or set face down like painful photographic memories, by the ghostly fingertips of her late mother, and all these thoughts were systematically replaced with a memory of driving in the car with Momma, when she was just fourteen herself, and her mother was talking about love.

Rouge was notorious then for falling in 'love' and her mother had beared with her, but never really believed her daughter's heart was true. Now Momma was gone. Now Rouge had no one to turn to for advice on this. Now she was stuck, alone, sitting out on the roof of Club Rouge - a club her father named after her before disappearing five years ago - and she was sitting there, stuck, and thinking a lot about riding in Momma's passenger seat.

"Am I really so superficial?"

This couldn't be his fault. But somehow it was. It just had to be, but it couldn't be, could it? It was all so incredibly confusing, and yet clear as day. He hated feeling contradicted by himself. It was admitting he didn't understand something so trivial as emotions. He was smarter than any handful of people combined. He spoke at length with Robotnik about technology and philosophy and he could always keep up, why couldn't he solve the paradoxes of how he FELT?

Why was he such a failure in this way? Why had he been given a personality, of all goddam useless things, and emotions? What use were they to him? So Gerald's precious granddaughter had a friend, up there in space where she spent her time reading or stargazing or studying? He used to love Maria. She was his sister, if only in heart. But she was gone. And he only knew of her through recycled memories that were still only returning to him now.

It was hard to love her anymore. It was hard to love anyone, period. And then when he thought he'd faced his fears and put aside his insecurities to unlock a dusty, ticking heart...it'd all been thrown in his face. Because he was a failure, because Gerald hadn't thought of everything. But he'd thoughts of emotions!

Because he had fucking EMOTIONS, he was in love. Because he was only a machine, no matter how realistic a machine, he could never fulfill the woman he loved the way she apparently needed to be fulfilled. He could never be her match in every way.

What would Gerald think of this? He wondered vaguely. What would the brilliant creator of artificial life think, to see his planet-devastating machination brought to tears because he'd had his heart stomped on? It was all so fucking ridiculous. Hell, what would Sonic think? Would he be cruel and taunt viciously? Or would he shake his head and remark that the situation blows?

Friends were hard to predict, and he wasn't even sure Sonic qualified for that title. Rouge had, Rouge had qualified for that and more. And look where that had lead him, look at how he'd miscalculated her reactions...

What had she been expecting from Shadow anyway? He was the Ultimate Lifeform. A weapon, a cure for Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and an amazing kisser. An amazing dancer, when taught.

But that didn't make him more than a machine. He looked real and felt real and loved her, she was so sure, for real. But he would never be - COULD never be - the same as her. And she now couldn't love him, anyway? She brought her knees to her chest, temporarily vulnerable with no one watching, and touched her forehead to her quivering knees. She cried.

He'd called her so many cruel things. A whore. And he was right, wasn't he?

"Asexual." He said the word out loud. He stared up at the ceiling, still in the spot Rouge had left him. Her bed. He was laying there, just staring up at the white nothing. His eyes refilled with tears, an endless supply it seemed. He laughed ruefully, voice trembling. "I can't believe she doesn't fucking love me anymore. I fucking hate her."

Still though, still, she loved him.

But not in the same way.