He hadn't really slept well. For one, he was trying to accomplish doing so at the kitchen table. There was no couch in the place yet, and he didn't want to sleep beside her. There were too many risks to consider. If it really was all an act, she could subdue and arrest him easily while he was sleeping, and he wouldn't get the chance to react. Plus, the thought of laying beside her was horrifically unappealing. He could tell her how beautiful she was all day long. But appreciating something for its beauty didn't necessarily mean he felt anything more than a superficial admiration. Very few people in his life gave him reason to truly admire them. She, on the other hand, had caused him an untold amount of grief from the first time they'd met. He wasn't about to get in bed and cuddle up with a woman who'd sent him sailing out of a New York City high rise to the unforgiving pavement a dozen or so stories below.

So sleeping in the kitchen was his next best option. A hotel room somewhere in the city was begrudgingly out of the question. Financially, he was nowhere near as well off as before. He'd never had much of an interest in money, and he now realized such an attitude could only come from having always had enough. He would preserve what he had in the event of some emergency or another. If he really did suddenly need to disappear from this place, he wanted to be prepared.

It hadn't been comfortable. Resting his head on his arms was fine for a few minutes, but sleeping that way hadn't worked out well for him. He'd woken up frequently, a combination of the awkward position, the cat jumping onto the table and bumping its head against his, and the unfamiliar noises of the apartment in the night. He couldn't ignore these sounds until he was familiarized with them. When six in the morning finally rolled around, he got up. His back and shoulders were aching and sore, and no amount of coffee seemed to make the headache go away. Thirty minutes later, he heard something. Some obnoxious music from the other room. He realized it was her alarm going off. She shuffled into the kitchen a few minutes later. Every sound annoyed him. Some plastic wrapper crinkling noisily, the sink spewing water into a bowl, the buttons on the microwave trilling loudly.

"Did you not make it to bed?" she asked. Not accusatory, but vaguely concerned. He shrugged. His back was to her, so he couldn't see how she'd responded. He didn't too much care. He winced as the microwave beeped, the noise hitting him like a baseball bat against his skull. He was halfway to finishing the coffee when the sound of slurping reached his ears next. He turned his head, cup still held almost to where his mouth had been. She was eating noodles. He narrowed his eyes as the noise never seemed to stop.

"What are you eating?" he all but growled. She must've chalked it up to him having just woken up, because she didn't seem upset.

"Instant noodles, at least, until we have more groceries so I can make my own again," she responded. "'Oriental' flavor, whatever that's supposed to mean."

"That's disgusting."

"Well, they aren't as good as real noodles, no," she said. "But you can't expect much from instant anything."

"No," he clarified, as she seemed to miss the point. "Noodles are not breakfast."

She laughed. "This again? You can quit critiquing my breakfasts, I'm not changing my menu."

His lips pulled back a bit in disgust. If heavy meals like noodles were supposed to be breakfast to her, he hated to consider what dinner might mean. She slurped her way noisily through the rest of her meal and he stayed there as long as his blood pressure could handle it. That noise would find its way into his dreams, he was sure of it.

She was gone an hour or so later, leaving him alone. He briefly entertained the thought of trying to go to sleep again. The coffee he'd drank told him it wasn't going to work out for him. And he still had so many questions that needed answering. A cursory search of boxes in the bedroom revealed only clothing, towels, extra sheets. Shoes. An ungodly number of shoes. He sighed quietly, and tried the kitchen. The boxes were not helpful, and were starting to annoy him. He found places for the dishes, supposing it would make eating later a little easier if he knew where everything was. It took more time than he thought it would, and he was irritated to find he'd actually done the housework she'd requested. He switched his focus to the boxes in the living room. They were largely useless. More books, random novels, trinkets, blankets. He left them where they were, and headed to that spare room he'd investigated the day before.

He sat on the floor and started digging. Again, more books. Various art supplies. He found what he'd assumed to be just sketchbooks, and most of them were. But some were journals. How fortunate it was that he, someone who couldn't figure out how his life had changed so radically over the space of a single shower, had such records to reflect on.

It made nothing better for him though, only serving to further his confusion. He flipped through one of the journals and found some drawings among the hastily written words. He was certain it was Cammy. "Quién Quién Quién" he'd scribbled beside her steely visage, underlining the last word in frustration. Who, indeed. She seemed to accuse him with her graphite eyes, two thick, quick strokes each with a pair of angrily scrawled circles beneath. Why hadn't he been able to remember her? Where was she now?

He turned back to the front pages. Maybe she'd be mentioned in the pages somewhere. So he read. "It has been requested that I do this every day. So I did. -18/03/09"

The loose page fluttered as he sighed heavily. He was so helpful to himself. He flipped to the back, but the entry was still a few months old. "I had a dream. There was a girl, she looked like this:" Again, there was Cammy's face, but it seemed to him it had been drawn with less certainty. "I've never seen her before, but she seemed important at the time so I don't want to forget her. If I meet her one day I'll let her know about this premonition. She will either find it amusing, or fantastically creepy. -02/08/09"

Still nothing that told him where she was now, but at least he found out where he'd seen her. He passed the first drawing he'd seen of her again, the more accurate one. On the next page, his handwriting looked like it did when he was in a hurry. When his brain was working faster than his hand and he didn't have the patience for neatness. "I don't get it, I keep seeing this girl. But I finally figured her out. I must've seen her in the news about Shadaloo, because she works for them. And that makes me feel strange. It makes me sad. I feel like I'm supposed to help her, but what could I possibly do? I keep telling myself it wouldn't be sensible, but a lot of me doesn't care and just wants her to be safe and happy. I'm trying to ignore it but it's getting ridiculous. -06/01/10"

So Shadaloo was still in the news. Why was Cammy still with them? Why hadn't he helped her? He searched for a more recent journal, and skipped to the latest entry. Just yesterday. It must've been written before he'd gotten in the shower. The brief paragraph looked as though it'd been frantically scribbled, a desperate message. But to who? "Terrible. Terrible. WRONG. Everything is WRONG. I have to find her. Have to fix it, it's WRONG. Between the Shadaloo girl and my parents, it's all too much that's wrong! I can't be here much longer. The errors in reality are blatant and suffocating, how did I ever stand it before? I feel like I can see through everything. It makes me sick. I have to fix it. I have to find her and make things the way they're supposed to be.-08/01/10"

It was just a small glimpse into what he might've been thinking about before getting in the shower that morning. But it didn't really help any. None of the journals did. Every message seemed to be just a few sentences at most, and usually described something boring and trivial he'd done that day. No amount of knowing what he'd eaten for breakfast six months ago was going to get him anywhere. The rest were too vague-after all, why did he need to explain things to himself? The book snapped shut, and he held it tightly for a second before placing it with all of the others.

He laughed suddenly. He drew a hand over his face, letting it rest briefly over his grinning lips. Of course he couldn't remember. Bison didn't want him to. How had it taken him so long to realize he'd been fired? It was the most obvious answer. He must've done something wrong when working with SIN-probably stealing some of that data to keep for himself-and it'd landed him in hot water. So Bison fired him, which for most people would mean death. But he must've done something to warrant keeping alive, and Bison opted to rid him of all Shadaloo related memories instead.

As soon as the surge of hope at having figured it all out came, it left. Even if Bison did that, why did he still remember so much about Shadaloo? And how did Chun-Li play into all of this? She mentioned her father, but he was dead. And she would never in her life settle down with him. He shook his head, annoyed at having come so close to resolving this issue once and for all just so she could remind him of her presence and ruin everything again. He had it figured out in pieces here and there, but none of them fit together to form the whole picture. So he was still left clueless.

He gathered the books together again, setting them beside the box they'd come from. No sense in putting them back in there if the whole point was to unpack everything. What was he thinking? That he was actually going to do what she'd told him and clean for her? No, he didn't care. This wasn't his home, and as soon as he figured out what was going on, this was all gone for good.

He looked in the box and saw one last notebook. It was a sketchbook, but there weren't drawings inside. There were newspaper clippings, some in Spanish, some in English, and they were taped to the pages. They were all articles about Shadaloo, quick notes jotted down beside some of them. He paused to read one. It clinically recounted the assassination of the British Minister of Justice, Albert Sellers, a plot presumed to have been carried out by Shadaloo. He flipped a few more pages. Another article noted the murder of an Indian man named Dhalsim, killed by Shadaloo for unknown reasons. His notes frantically declared-"This isn't RIGHT."

He looked up for a second, eyes narrowing as he thought about it. No, it wasn't right. He'd been sent to intercept Cammy after she failed to kill Dhalsim. He looked back down at the clippings taped to the notebook, skipping a few pages. He stopped when he saw twelve young faces looking back at him. Above each small black-and-white picture taped to the page, he'd written a month of the year. They were all missing persons reports, and he could see pieces of descriptions he'd cut through to isolate the small photos. The dolls. Along the outer side of the page, he'd written updates to himself on them. There were various dates listed, but under each of them, it always said, "Still missing." The latest one was from a month ago. But hadn't Cammy freed them years ago?

The stories only became more bizarre as he read on. There was a hazy photo accompanying a story about Shadaloo's forceful take-over of parts of Thailand. He'd circled one of the people in the picture, which depicted a burned village being monitored by Shadaloo soldiers. He immediately recognized the man who he'd indicated as Charlie Nash. "What?" he muttered out loud. Nash had been terminated by Bison after Guile and Chun-Li found him.

But Chun-Li hadn't joined Interpol, he reminded himself. She must have never helped Guile find Shadaloo and Charlie. He looked at the photo again. Charlie, dressed in the red and black uniform of a Shadaloo commander, held an assault rifle in his hands, and seemed to be watching the photographer. Calculating and cautious. The story went on to say that Thailand lost thirty-six percent of its land to Shadaloo, and was requesting help from other countries. An even more current article a few pages later told him that eventually, Bison had seized control of Thailand in its entirety, installing himself as dictator of the country. Millions fled, sanctions were announced, but no one seemed confident that they could stop him. Reports lamented advanced technology, biological agents, and an army that never slept.

It was all giving him a headache. How had Shadaloo become so powerful? It'd been ascending rapidly just before Cammy freed the dolls. Bison's body was destroyed soon after, and he hadn't been as strong ever since. Shadaloo suffered as well, forced to recoup its losses. He remembered being terrified of Bison's imminent return. He'd saved Cammy from the wreckage of Shadaloo, making it twice he'd saved her when he was meant to kill her. He thought Bison would be furious with him for this, but he hadn't commented on it. So when Shadaloo was ready again, Vega went back to work. All of these reports seemed to indicate the opposite. Were they all true? It couldn't be that hard to fake a news article. But if they weren't real, what was the point of making them to begin with? It was layer after layer of questions and he couldn't find any answers.

He closed the book, placing it with the rest. He left the room, still mostly unpacked and empty. She could deal with it if she wanted it done so badly. Putting up with her was enough work from him, he decided. For the most part, she was gone during the day. She had a job, apparently, teaching martial arts to people. Adults had classes during the day, children later in the evening. He'd deduced this when she went on and on about her day after coming home, as though he cared. So she still knew how to handle herself in a fight, but he wondered if she was really as skilled as she was before. Or could he even call it 'before'? The year was still the same, time hadn't suddenly skipped around. It was all just different in various ways.

He still hadn't figured out why he was living here instead of Spain. He didn't suppose it was to follow Chun-Li's illustrious career as a martial arts teacher. It was hard to ask her about himself, because it made him look out of touch. Which, of course, was something he didn't need. It was already hard enough pretending to not hate her, much less to tolerate her presence, but he had to remember that she thought he was mentally ill. Who knew where he'd end up if he started asking her who he was and why he was here? He'd gathered he wasn't a matador anymore. There weren't exactly a lot of corridas going on in Chicago. He wondered if he even still knew how to fight like he had before, bulls or otherwise. He was still fit, but somewhat less muscular. He just hoped he wouldn't find out the hard way whether or not he could still hold his own.

The place was quiet, and he'd grown bored. So he did what many a bored individual has done and search for himself online. There were much fewer results than he was used to. The first hit was intriguing to him in that it listed him among the graduates from a Spanish university. He'd never made it that far with his schooling, having dropped out of school after his mother died. He'd been quite successful without a degree anyway. A different university in France had him listed as a former graduate student, and that interested him. He'd intended to investigate that further, but the next result down the line had been much too distracting.

It was an obituary for his father. His biological father, whom he'd never really known. The man had abandoned him and his mother before he'd even turned five years old, and that was all he knew about him. The article was several years old. There was no photograph or anything. It was just a site for records. He'd gotten into a wreck with a drunk driver and had been survived by his son and wife. Wife. He found himself momentarily unable to swallow. Was his mother, like Chun-Li's father, still alive somehow? Abandoning his search of himself, he looked for her instead.

And there it was. Mireia Sofia Navarro, dead after months of battling cancer, just two years ago. He let out a short, ironic laugh. Of course she was dead. Of course Chun-Li still had her beloved father in her life while he was once again resigned to watch his mother die. He closed the laptop, rolling over onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. He covered his head with his arms. It never got any easier, thinking about what had happened to his mother. Here, at the very least, she hadn't been murdered. But that was only so much of a comfort. Death was death, and it seemed no matter how changed everyone else's lives were, the universe felt it should keep torturing him.

He again debated with himself whether or not he should leave. It felt like too much effort to keep pretending he understood what was going on. But what was he, if not a great pretender? Even if he was back home in Spain, in the real, normal world, he would still be pretending. So why not keep playing at normalcy in this situation, as he had with all others?

This thought process lead him in circles. He argued with himself for what felt like hours over how he should be responding. He told himself to run, to get out of here because this wasn't who he was. He was not domesticated, not anybody's boyfriend or lover, and he wasn't just another no one meandering through a plain, milquetoast life. But then the rest of him asked, run where? Who was he to go to in this bizarre, confusing world? And further still, he grew angry at himself for asking. Why did he need someone to go to at all? The answer he didn't want to give himself whispered among his other tumultuous thoughts, hiding in plain sight but for his refusal to see it-he was completely alone and out of his element here, and it scared him.

The ruminations slowly became more disjointed and less fervent as he came closer to falling asleep. He wasn't sure how much time had passed. In the hazy and orange late-afternoon glow of the dim bedroom, he felt a weight beside him. Gentle fingers brushed his hair away from his eyes, and his mind, still clinging to sleep, thought of his mother. It wasn't her, he knew, but for a moment, there was a comfort in the feeling of being cared for again. Of someone else's reassuring, loving touch, something he never admitted to himself that he missed. He never thought of himself as lonely. Being an aristocrat didn't allow for one to spend too much time alone. There were parties to go to, gallery opening, pat-yourself-on-the-back fundraisers, plenty of places to drown in a crowd of people. But being spoken to was not the same as being cared about. Her fingers raked through his hair a few more times before he felt warm lips briefly on his cheek and she left. He didn't bother reminding himself that he hated her. At least not for now.