Time passed. According to Wolf, it was approximately one hour until Krystal and Panther's projected time of arrival. A few minutes earlier, Fox had called Falco, who was on some space station refueling. Fox hadn't wanted to speak with anyone except the bird, and he didn't want to reveal his current situation even to him, so he dodged around the question of where he was, asking Falco to tell the others when he would get back.

Now, Fox had his head rested against the armrest of the couch, stretched out with his knees up in the air. On the other side of the couch, Wolf sat, reading something and marking on it with a pen. He had been mostly quiet since reentering the room, other than the occasional sound of him ruffling papers or scribbling something down. Fox didn't mind him, and as time went on, he found himself relaxing more and more. The musky smell that he'd wrinkled his nose at before was turning out not to be all that bad. Comparing it to Krystal's, though, was like comparing the brilliance of the sun to that of a black hole.

During the wait, Fox ran over scripts in his head of how the conversation with Krystal would go, but each seemed more like a juvenile fan novel than reality. He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound absurd, and he couldn't think of any response to his absurdity that would make him thankful for coming. He would think of something great, then forget it as soon as it had jumped into his head. He would think of how Krystal would respond, then mentally shake his head, thinking No, she'd never say that. And everything that seemed like something she would say turned out to be something he would rather not hear.

Maybe he couldn't think of anything worth saying because the whole situation was so overwhelmingly absurd to start with. Relaxing here had become second nature after being here for so long, but when he focused on the feel of the couch, smelled the foreign scents, and looked up to see Wolf O'Donnell—Wolf!—lounging beside him, he began to tense and feel out of place. If he felt out of place, how far out of position would she think he was?

He looked up at Wolf, not taking his eyes off the other until he stopped reading and began staring back, twirling the pen in his hand and barking, "What?"

"I can't do this. It was a stupid idea."

Wolf did a few trunk twists, his spine popping with sickening crunches that made Fox wince. When he finished, he reclined against the armrest of the couch, facing Fox. "Where'd that come from?"

"I can't talk to her now," Fox said, sitting up and leaning over himself. If Peppy were here, he'd jibe that Fox was in toilet-bowl position.

"Why not?"

Fox stared down at the ground for a while. "Well," he said, "she'll just be getting back from a mission. What if she's tired? What if she and Panther got in a fight and now she's pissed?" Or worse, he thought to himself. What if they got together? "She wouldn't want to deal with me tonight."

Wolf shot him a disapproving glare. "Come on, Fox. Be a man about it. She'll respect you more if you just talk to her."

"This was a stupid idea," Fox said, ignoring the other. "I just didn't have anything better to do."

"You can't be serious." Wolf laughed. "Are you scared of her or something?"

"You don't understand," Fox said. "You can't understand. You've never been... like this."

"Never been what?"

Fox couldn't control himself. "You've never been in love! You don't know what it's like."

Fox had expected a laugh, a jeer, a taunt—some kind of aggression or mockery. Instead, Wolf backed away, hints of a smile forming on his muzzle. "You sure you're same Fox McCloud I fought all those times?"

"I don't know." Fox was trembling. The world seemed distant, as if he was watching from afar. Flash of That Day came back to him, the screaming sirens of his ship, the fear on Krystal's face... "I feel older. Like I've aged sixty years instead of ten."

"Yeah, you act like it too." Wolf reclined against the armrest, one arm resting on the back of the couch. "You're letting this get to you too much."

"Easy for you to say." Fox could barely hear himself. He looked at Wolf, the spitting image of relaxation, and frowned. "How do you do it?"

"Huh?"

"I used to be so carefree. I thought I could do anything." He clenched his hands into fists, his claws digging into his skin. "Now I feel worthless."

"And?"

"You look like you haven't aged a day. How?"

Wolf shrugged. "If you think I haven't changed since we first met, you're wrong. It's a lot harder now than it was back then. And contrary to what you think, I have liked someone before before. The thing is," he said, shifting on the couch, "I don't let it get to me."

Taken out of context, Fox could hardly believe that he was having this conversation with Wolf O'Donnell. The only thing he could think of to say was, "You're lying."

"Oh, I am? Thanks for telling me that. I'm sure you know me better than I know myself."

"Then what's wrong with me? How have I let her do this to me?"

Wolf laughed. He was enjoying this, Fox could tell. "You're asking me a question you don't want to hear the answer to."

"Oh really?" Fox scooted a bit closer to the other, looking him in the eye. "Try me."

"The honest answer: who needs women anyway?" Wolf kept his eyes on Fox as he said this, waiting for some kind of reaction.

"Uh?"

"You heard me. They're too hard to please. All they do is whine. I can deal with them for a night or two, but after that, they just get annoying, and you have your teammates if you ever want a friend."

Fox barely managed to withhold a series of stinging remarks, settling instead for, "You just haven't met the right person yet."

Wolf's ears flicked. "Obviously not. You think I'd be telling you that if I had?"

"You're not making any sense."

Wolf held up a hand. "If you'd let me finish, I might."

"Then finish."

"Alright. You want the real answer? You're trying too hard, pup."

Fox blinked at him. "What?"

Wolf sighed, sitting up and leaning forward. "You kicked her off your team to protect her? You crazy?"

Fox bit his lip, looking around the room. In retrospect, it seemed like a silly idea, but at the time it had seemed so right. If he could do it over again, he would have still done the same thing. Living with the torment of having her death hovering that close would always seem worse than what would come from confronting her about it.

He told that to Wolf, who frowned. "It's not all about you, you know. She wanted to be on the team, so why couldn't you let her?"

Fox couldn't think of any response to that. He bit his lip.

"Krystal hasn't been here for that long, but she's good. Not as good as us, but good. And you know, there won't be anybody else that's as good as us."

Fox could feel his teeth biting into the inside of his gum now. "So then what you suggest, since you're such a ladies' man?"

Wolf smirked, twirling the pen. "Ever taken her on a date?"

It struck Fox like a thunderbolt, and before he could stop himself, he said, "No."

"There you have it. It's no wonder you guys were such a failure."

It was the simplest thing in the world, he realized—so simple that it hurt. But the more Fox thought about it, the more he realized how stupid it would be. Hi, Krystal, wanna go out with me? Oh, yeah, and we're heroes of the Lylat System, but let's just stroll into some three-star restaurant and act like we're teenagers all over again… not that you ever really were. So when he regained the ability to speak, he simply said, "You're crazy. Do you seriously think that would even be possible?"

Wolf just shook his head. Soon the ruffling of papers started back up again—Wolf had bent over them and he was lost in them now. Fox was about to ask how long he had until she got back when the sound of knocking filled the room.

Looking up from his work, Wolf frowned and growled, but he got up and went to the door anyway, tail lashing behind him. Once the door was open, the first thing he said was, "What?"

"Lord O'Donnell," said a mellow tenor, "you have a message."

"From?"

By way of answer, Fox heard a shuffle of paper between them. Fox yawned, stretching himself fully out on the couch. Wolf stepped outside, and Fox had almost fallen asleep when he heard Wolf's heavy footsteps start back towards him, then freeze. He looked up to see Wolf standing over him, arms crossed.

"Huh?"

"There's been a delay," Wolf said. "They won't be back tonight."

Relief surged through Fox. He started to voice it, but before he could form the words, Wolf said, "Maybe you should stay here tonight."

Fox could feel the corners of his mouth tighten. "Why?"

"I just don't think it's a good idea for you to be leaving here tonight." He cleared his throat, and the tone of his voice changed—it was the strong lupine voice of a leader, of Wolf O'Donnell, not of the smirking canine that had lectured him only minutes ago. "Call Falco again, he said, "and tell him that you won't be back until tomorrow, and give me your communicator."

"You really expect me to stay here? With you?"

"I'm not expecting you to do anything." Wolf took a step toward him, and his voice dropped down to a growl. "I'm telling you to do it."

"Are you trying to say that you're kidnapping me?"

Wolf paused for a second, eyes cast pensively upward. "Yes. I am"

"So that's how it is, then." Fighting the brute would be impossible, so Fox decided to go along with his demands. Fox could feel his features sagging, ears canting towards his skull. He'd been afraid something like this would happen, but he'd never actually thought it would. Now that he thought about it, though, this wasn't exactly how he'd thought a kidnapping would go…

Frowning, he pressed the buttons on his communicator that would call Falco. At Wolf's command, he turned off the mechanism that would display a holographic projection of himself to Falco, and when the bird answered, a holographic bust of him projected upwards from the communicator.

Fox told the bird that he wouldn't be getting back until the next day, ignoring the odd look he got and skirting around any questions. The conversation didn't last very long, but right before he cut the call off, he looked into Falco's eyes—a wasted gesture, he knew—and said, his voice viciously casual and impassive, "Make sure Slippy doesn't forget to update ROB."

Falco's image cast a knowing look into the nothingness, and he said, "It's alright. He'll take care of it."

With that, he cut off the call and detached his communicator from his arm, locking it and handing it to the older canine.

As he was led to his room and shut in it long before his usual bedtime, his thoughts turned to the message. Long hours passed, and the more his consciousness began to ebb, the more he began to recall the full experience of the day, from which he gathered that solely the message was to blame for his confinement.

A series of knocks roused him, reverberating throughout the room like thunder. Still groggy, he dragged himself out of the bed and made his way to the door.

As soon as he got there, he realized that he didn't have a way to open it from the inside. A prison cell, he thought, and then the door opened before him, and he saw Wolf standing in front of him, carrying a tray.

"Breakfast," he said.

Fox stared at the tray, unmoving.

"Well? You gonna take it?" He shoved the tray in Fox's direction, and the younger canine accepted it, but gripped it as if it were a foreign object.

"Are they back yet?"

"No." The answer was snappy, almost as if premeditated. "Look, just go back into your room and I'll call you when they get back. You're making this much more difficult than it has to be."

Fox's curiosity piqued, but he grimaced nonetheless. "Fine." He turned his back on Wolf and stepped back inside, and wasn't surprised when he heard the door close behind him.

When the smell of fairly-fresh bread hit his nostrils, he realized that he was holding a tray of food. Until then, he hadn't realized how hungry he had been, but he only ate about half of the meal before shoving the rest into the garbage. There had been a strange, unfamiliar scent lingering over the food, and he didn't trust himself to eat it all.

He wasn't sure why he did it later, but he brought up the tray to his nose and inhaled deeply. The strongest was the scent of the food, then the musky stench of Wolf... underneath it, the stink of apes. Now he could smell it: underneath all that, there lingered a dank, unpleasant scent—tinged with an edge of familiarity—that he couldn't quite place at first. But as he searched his memory, he realized that it was the scent of a feline, and he could smell no fox.

Walking over to his bed, Fox set the tray down on it slowly, his pulse quickening. After sitting on his bed for a few minutes, he couldn't stand dawdling anymore, so he tried as many combinations as he could on the door before the keypad froze, displaying a bright Locked for one minute.

He paced the room for what felt like hours before lying back down on the bed, closing his eyes and trying to will himself to sleep, unable to stop haunting images from intruding on his sleep. His mind kept trying to tell him that there was a connection somewhere that he was missing, some great cause for all of this, but his hindbrain wouldn't listen, and he couldn't shake a growing feeling—resulting maybe from the drastic shift in Wolf's mood, the way he was withholding information, the coincidence of this all happened at the same time—that not everything was quite as it seemed, and that only time and patience and abstinence of thought would bring him answers.