Modo switched places with Throttle at about two in the morning when he got a little tired of reading and asked if it would be okay if he laid down next to Shay for a little while. Throttle didn't see a problem with the older male taking his place since Shay seemed to be sleeping rather soundly at the moment. Besides, someone had to keep an eye out for Vinny since he'd been gone for hours now and they were starting to worry.
It wasn't like Vinny to stay out so late without one or the both of them being with him. And the fact that he had yet to return was telling in itself. There was no doubt that what he had learned of Shay's past was probably something so bad that he felt he needed to clear his head before he even tried to come home.
Otherwise he'd probably have a breakdown himself.
Modo lay stretched out on his side, with his head resting on one arm, his eye closed, his breathing deep when Shay first started to twitch. It twitching was the right way to define what she was doing. Modo opened his eye as his tail came up and did this odd flicking motion, drawing Throttle's attention to them as Shay tried to burrow herself deeper into the pillow, her body was starting to shake and her expression (or at least what they could see of it) looked pained.
"Is she-"
"Yeah. She's having a nightmare." Modo said in a hushed tone as he slowly pushed himself up onto his elbow and used his metal hand to pull the covers up over her shoulder when she started shaking a little more violently.
"Should we wake her?"
"No. She has to wake up herself. If we woke her now, the nightmare would just resume the second she managed to drift back to sleep. It has to run it's course so that the chance of it resuming will lessen. It will also make it a little bit easier to sooth her."
"And how do we sooth her?" Throttle asked curiously.
"You talk to her-" Both Throttle and Modo jumped a little bit and looked towards the door when they heard Vinny's voice. "Tell her something to take her mind off of the horror. Something amusing to occupy her mind and chase the dark dreams away. Another way to sooth her is to sing a lullaby, something that Charlie likely sang to her as a child. And just tell her that she's safe. Say it as many times as you have too even if your voice goes out."
"When did you get back?" Modo asked the white mouse as he stepped quietly into the room, his red eyes never once looking away from Shay as he held the copied files that he had made up, then put them down on the dresser.
"Just now. I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to come directly back after what I found out so I rode around to try and clear my head." Vinny said as he walked over to the bed and just stared down at Shay for a second with an unreadable expression on his face.
He felt torn, seeing her up close after seeing her files. If the circumstances had been normal...he would have just brushed her hair back and kissed her cheek or something, but now-
Now doing even that felt like a violation to him. It just felt wrong on so many levels that he wondered how she had managed to put up with it before. "Vinny how bad is the information that you got from Joey?"
"You can judge for yourself since everything is in those files-" Vinny said as he glanced over his shoulder and pointed to the dresser. Throttle and Modo both moved to get up and paused half way across the room to ask Vinny how bad what was contained in the files was again, but stopped when they turned around to see Vinny sitting on the bed in the same exact spot that both of them had been in before.
His hand was poised over Shays dark hair for a second before he pulled it back and laid down and curled his body around Shay's, getting as close as he could without touching and closed his eyes.
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A short time later both Throttle and Modo were sitting at the dining room table looking through the files and gnashing their teeth in anger. Modo's one eye was glowing a vivid crimson, his expression murderous, the fingers of his metal hand were tapping out a quick paced and violent rhythm on the table.
Throttle wasn't holding out much better.
Every time he started to look over the police report and the statement that Shay had given about the attack on her, his stomach would cramp and he would feel nauseous. And he would feel a peculiar sharp pain in his chest.
He closed his eyes and laid the file aside and rubbed his face with his hands. "Switch with me." He said in a rough sounding tone, causing Modo to look up from the file in his hand and glance at him.
"I'm not sure that you need to see these pictures."
"Just give them here."
"I'd rather we burn them." Modo said in a dark tone.
"And I'd rather that we had a time machine so that we could go back and prevent this event from happening period. But we don't always get what we want, now hand it over." Throttle said in an impatient tone. Modo made a low growling sound in the back of his throat and closed the file and pretended that he was going to hand it over and then used one of the mini lasers built into the finger tips of his mechanical hand to burn the file.
It was a stupid and childish thing to do-
At least from Throttle's point of view. But Modo didn't his opinion, Throttle shouldn't see the pictures. They'd give him nightmares and possible make it so that he wouldn't be able to look at Shay without seeing those images in his head.
And that would be cruel. So he did the only thing that he could, he destroyed them. Then he sat there for an hour and listened to Throttle's bitching because he felt he wouldn't be able to understand Shay's suffering completely now that he had no idea how badly she had been hurt.
Modo pointed out that the file remaining told how badly she had been hurt and was a little surprised by the pained expression on Throttles face when he said that he needed to understand more so that he wouldn't make a mistake.
He was afraid that unless he saw the pictures that he would forget and fuck something up. Modo didn't say anything after that for a long time. He just sat there thinking that seeing the pictures shouldn't matter.
Yet for some odd reason it mattered a hell of a lot to Throttle.