How late was it now? In the dark, with no illuminated clock to tell the passage of time, it could have been almost any point during the night. The only indication of how late it might have gotten was the steady decrease in the frequency the Dorm Mistress patrolled the corridors. Or was that simply another symptom of her disconnect from the passage of time?

Her freshly-introduced younger sister could hardly be held at fault for hinting of the worst of the experiments, but with the party and then helping her move into the dorm—more of a guided tour than anything, it wasn't like she owned much yet—there had been plenty of reminders of Mikoto's failure.

Though, was she the only one? She wasn't the only person in the room that had been exposed to the Level 6 Shift, nor the only one that had trouble sleeping sometimes. The night they spent in the hotel was the most memorable, but she had a suspicion that at least one of the nights since then had been a repeat of the same—only, that time, Kuroko had woken up first and made sure to get away. The misplaced bear had been a giveaway.

Paying more attention to the bed on the other side of the room, she listened for the familiar sounds of a sleeping teleporter—deep breathing or some alarmingly perverse sleep-talk. Instead, the rustling of someone turning around, trying to get comfortable. Maybe not enough to rule out sleep, but…

"Kuroko, are you awake?"

More rustling, the darkened shape on the other bed rolling over. "Onee-sama…? Y-yes, I am."

What now? It was hardly as if there was much to talk about, save for what was keeping them both awake, and that conversation was one that Mikoto wanted to avoid. Particularly late at night when she wanted to get some sleep eventually. Even if the same curiosity that drove her to investigate the experiment to begin with made her want to know exactly what convinced Kuroko to accept that breaking the law was acceptable in this case. Where did the teleporter draw the line?

But if she wanted to focus on something that might help with their insomnia… well, that would help Kuroko, wouldn't it? It wouldn't do anything for her, any more than Kill Bear did, but if her friend could get more sleep…

"Get over here."

"Onee-sama…?" Kuroko, of course, sounded somewhere between amazed and disbelieving. Was it really so far-fetched she'd do something like this? Well, maybe, but it wasn't as if Kuroko herself helped out with her wandering hands, she was asking for reminders…

"If you fall asleep tonight, you'll just end up over here anyway, right?"

"That is… probably true. Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Then just do it now."

She was surprised when Kuroko didn't simply teleport over and copy her sleeping habits exactly. Instead, the smaller girl carefully made her way out of bed, stopping to restore the covers to a semblance of order before navigating carefully around the table in the centre of the room to stand beside her. Maybe she wasn't as confident teleporting around in the dark when trying to sleep? Well, that was part of why Mikoto extended the offer, she was still concerned Kuroko might find her into the ground.

Kuroko had suggested such a thing was impossible: doing the full calculations in her sleep was definitely beyond her abilities, so the action must have been simplified in some fashion. Given some of the more constrained forms of teleportation, it was possible that her unconscious mind was emulating one of those more constrained targets with the safest thing it could find. Mikoto wasn't sure what to think about the idea of being the only thing the teleporter could find in her sleep that way, or what that suggested about her perverted antics.

"I-I'm getting in now," the teleporter announced, with unusual nervousness. She didn't need the notification, there was nothing else to look at, but Mikoto obligingly scooted back to avoid leaving the other girl pushed right to the edge.

Voluntarily letting Kuroko share her bed seemed to leave the girl uncertain about what to do, using the provided space as a buffer that still left her perched on the edge. "You can get closer; I'm not going to bite."

"I know, it just… feels like I just fell asleep and it's about to become a nightmare. Like if I touch you, you might disappear, or turn into the Dorm Mistress, or…"

Mikoto rolled her eyes at the other girl's silly antics, reaching out and pulling her close without resistance. She was glad that Kuroko had avoided any more risqué nightwear and simply gone with her otherwise customary pyjamas, even if those were unreasonably more expensive than anything Mikoto felt that a growing schoolgirl had business wearing.

With some initial hesitancy, Kuroko opted to return the embrace—

"Hands."

"Sorry!" Kuroko's hands obediently moved upwards, away from anything off limits. Apart from that little mistake, her position was actually shockingly innocuous. Mikoto had expected to have to dissuade the other girl from her chest, but instead she had nestled under her chin. If only all her attempted affection was so innocent, maybe… well, Mikoto didn't know what, but it would be more peaceful.

The teleporter's breath soon steadied, enough the electromaster thought she might already have fallen asleep, until "Kuroko really is grateful for this."

"I-It's nothing. I just don't like the idea of you teleporting around in your sleep, that's all, and if you'd do that anyway…"

"Even so… Academy City isn't as safe as I always thought. Any number of things could be happening or targeting us, and when I'm asleep… no matter how dangerous it gets, if I'm awake I can escape," Kuroko said, drowsiness heavy on her voice. "And those delinquents yesterday… even if the Dorm Mistress is much scarier. If I'm asleep, I couldn't teleport anywhere."

"But there's nowhere safer Kuroko could be than next to onee-sama. You're Academy City's rank 3, the Electric Princess… so thank you for being so kind. Kuroko will try to behave…" The rambling trailed off into contented mumbling, and soon nothing more than the deep breaths of sleep.

Nowhere safer, huh? Even after all of the fights she had taken part in, including fighting the Strongest that Mikoto couldn't defeat, it was… nice to know that the smaller girl still had that much faith in her, so much trust that it offset everything else.

But that alone wasn't helping the Railgun sleep. Even when the blush on her face went down, she still felt acutely aware of everything that was going on around her, everything that she could feel. Counting sheep, listening to Kuroko's breathing… neither was lulling her to sleep.

As much as her presence had helped the teleporter sleep, having the girl in her arms was just unfamiliar enough to be distracting, even if it wasn't altogether… unpleasant.

Compared with Kill Bear, there was what felt like nothing to hold. It was hard to imagine that the small, slender girl was so dangerous in a fistfight when, hugging her like this, Mikoto felt like even she might easily snap Kuroko in half. She wasn't much taller than the teleporter, but it still felt like there was so much… less of her. Yet she didn't feel bony at all, muscle relaxed in her sleep, the same pyjamas she had criticised as unreasonably expensive adding a pleasantly smooth layer over the top. Altogether… not an awful replacement, simply unfamiliar.

The curly hair occasionally tickling at her nostrils was similarly distracting, if slightly more annoying in and of itself. The amount of effort the girl put into keeping the curls impeccable and tied nicely despite all the other demands on her time, and her own active lifestyle, was something that she hadn't really appreciated until being asked to help out a little. It made her even more familiar with the faint floral scent from Kuroko's shampoo, the pleasant scent balancing out the distracting tickle.

With Kuroko this close, Mikoto found herself steadily focusing on the girl's heartbeat, the beats as calm and steady as any other athlete's at rest. Despite all the shocks she had been administered over time, despite her unforgivable lapse of control a few nights ago… it kept going as regularly as ever. More entrancing than the heartbeat itself, her focus narrowed in on the electrical impulse behind it. Just under once a second, a single nearly imperceptible pulse, spreading through the rest of the heart…

Pulse, beat… pulse, beat…

Entirely without noticing it, Misaka Mikoto found something to use as a lullaby.

Waking up, the morning sunlight steadily penetrating through the curtains, Mikoto was puzzled by the unique floral scent. Did I go to sleep with a bundle of flowers? The baffled thought lingered for a second before the night came back to her, the source immediately obvious: Kuroko, still nestled happily against her neck.

Her first instinct was to let out a shock, rejecting any supposedly uninvited invasion of her space. But… Kuroko's hands hadn't wandered any further, nor had any of the electromaster's clothes "inexplicably" gotten removed during the night. There was no reason to lash out, aside from reflexive concern, even if Kuroko's heartbeat was faster than when she was asleep…

"You're awake, Kuroko?"

"Yes. I could let go…?" the girl asked, hope in her voice. Did she want Kuroko to let go…? It was still the summer, there was nothing to do early in the day. It was comfortable, she had slept well… much better than Mikoto expected, in fact. Better than any other time since the start of the experiment…

"It's fine," she decided, "Just keep those hands from wandering."

It was a few minutes before Kuroko was the one to break the silence, "Not that I would be one to complain, onee-sama, but… do you really not mind?"

Mind what? Letting Kuroko sleep in her bed? Well… if Kuroko fell back into bad habits when given half the opportunity, maybe she would regret it then. Getting so close like this? It was half her idea to begin with, this time, and without the perverted overtones… "It's fine. It might even…"

"Hmm?"

"We can't talk to anyone about what happened, can we?"

Kuroko pried herself out of the loose grip, looking up towards her. "Of course not. To do so would be to reveal everything to the public at best and to make an enemy of the shady side of the city at worst. If they were to even believe us without evidence about talk of thousands of clones."

And if they were to provide evidence, it would be by throwing one of her sisters into a meatgrinder of experimentation and testing, if it wasn't dismissed out of hand as a malicious plot against her "less important" twin sister or whatever else they might come up with. Everything they had done to stop the Level 6 Shift happened out of the law, and all of the usual resources that might be available—including Judgment's insistence on psychological treatment for death or other disasters—were out of reach.

"So, we're going to keep having trouble sleeping, aren't we?" It would hopefully happen less over time, the project and its experiments passing further into memory, less of a visceral reminder, even left to their own devices.

Kuroko tilted her head thoughtfully, curly hair messily framing her face. "That is almost certain. The specific stimuli will be different, but one doesn't simply move on so easily from trauma." And they both already showed a tendency to lose sleep when that happened.

"W-Well, why don't we just sleep like this normally, then?" It was comfortable, aside from the unfamiliarity, it worked… Kuroko was a more reassuringly alive alternative to a stuffed bear. Maybe one step down from a Gekota, but she had made that a gift. It was a completely practical consideration.

"Of course, onee-sama!" Kuroko exclaimed, figuratively leaping to the occasion. Physically, she was burrowing down, getting uncomfortably close to…

"That doesn't mean you can do what you want!"

Even if she was getting exactly what she wanted, it seemed there was no taming Kuroko.

AN: This might have been able to go at the end of the previous chapter if I'd decided I wanted to do it now, but it is what it is. Three Stories is still otherwise next.

I have a lot of Symphogear on the brain at times. That particularly comes up in these situations.