A/N: Hope you're ready for a trip to the Bizarro World . . . This'll be skirting weirder regions for a while.
Guest: Thanks very much for the review! Much appreciated. ^_^
Shadow's entrance had gone unnoticed. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, arms folded, and observed the situation. The fellow who handled the security room was sitting at his desk, dozing in his swivel chair instead of watching the security monitors. Off in the corner, a little video deck was set up for reviewing old security tapes, and in front of it was Rouge.
She was slouched back in another chair, one hand supporting her temple, watching the small monitor with a patently blank shattered expression.
But when Shadow pointedly creaked the hinges of the security booth door, she jumped and snapped the video off. Turning, she saw him and relaxed slightly, even as something in her eyes died even further.
"You lie well," she said, her smile acidic.
Shadow tilted his head slightly, shrugging.
"It's enlightening," continued Rouge, turning back to the screen. "Fun to watch. Should go viral on YouTube."
Shadow stepped into the room and took a seat beside her, but it was against his better judgment. He recognized that bitter self-pitying humor borne of despair . . . and maybe self-loathing. For a while he sat silently, watching as Rouge flicked the video back to the start and slumped back, watching with dead eyes. Eventually the action ended. Shadow's dark form was visible on the left side of the screen, slouched against a wall in the now-empty hallway, unmoving. Rouge didn't turn the video off, but continued to stare through the screen.
"You lied," she said at last. Not accusing. Remarking.
"I thought you would be better off not knowing." Not an excuse. A statement.
"That was thoughtful of you. Thank you."
Such a strange conversation. Soft, flat, listless. Deliberate, each word weighed before it left lips. Each sentence eased in carefully, a hovering pause before the reply. They were walking side by side through a crystal landscape, measuring their steps, paranoid lest anything shatter. Calm, so calm, because letting yourself sink even a little into feeling would suck you under and trap you and drown you.
Rouge was faltering. She drew in a breath slowly, let it out, gave that poisoned smile again.
"I screwed that up, didn't I? I should have kept my damned hands off that security reel."
"Perhaps it was better for you to know, after all."
"Perhaps." Rouge turned to him suddenly. "So now I know. You can tell me everything. So. Who else did I wind up lapping the blood of?"
Shadow blinked. His expression didn't shift, but he blinked, as if the words were dust thrown in his face. Putting it into spoken word suddenly made it seem so much dirtier.
"Nobody," he said honestly. "I swear to you. You attacked Knuckles, but you only scratched him. I was the only one."
Rouge nodded slowly. The silence swelled, grew heavier, like a droplet building on the rim of a faucet.
"I don't mind," said Shadow at last, and the droplet broke free and thudded against the bottom of the sink. "It means nothing, Rouge. The others who transformed tried to kill and lie and poison everyone, and it was not their fault. I don't mind."
"You should mind." Rouge's voice took on the slightest hint of force. "It's disgusting, it's wrong. And you know what really scares me?" Her gaze swung to him again. "I'm not scared."
Shadow raised an eyebrow silently.
"I'm sitting here, watching myself drinking blood, and I'm not scared," said Rouge quietly. "I tell myself I should be disgusted, I tell myself I should be vomiting my guts out. And yet I can't bring myself to even be unnerved."
Against Shadow's will, his fingers strayed to the little flask he still kept.
"That's not a bad thing," he said levelly. "You always hated your fear of blood, right? Probably this was just the kind of shock you needed to get over the fear. You've grown beyond it."
"I don't care," said Rouge, the force creeping into her voice ever faster. "I . . . I can't believe I'm saying this, I want it back. Now that I've finally lost that phobia, I want it back."
"Why?" Shadow shook his head. "It'll solve a lot of problems. It'll make missions easier for you."
"I don't care! I want to be scared again. I want to know I'll never get close to blood again in my life, never do that again. Do you think I'd want any traces of that night left in me?!"
Shadow's fingers clenched tightly around the hidden flask, feeling the gentle slosh of two, three drops of antidote still inside.
"Would it be that bad?" he asked softly. "You were powerful, Rouge. Almost invincible. You could fly better, fight harder, your echolocation improved. Wouldn't you want to keep that?"
"At that kind of cost?" Rouge looked at him like he had just suggested self-immolation. "Are you insane?"
Shadow shifted his gaze away, the not-quite-empty flask throbbing in his hand.
"I understand," his mouth said, while his brain fizzed in annoyance. Hysterics, he thought to himself. She's overreacting. The effects are solely helpful to her. It would be foolish to refuse greater power just because it reminds her of that night.
And when Rouge thanked him and made some shame-faced joking apology about "going all dramatic on him," his conscience didn't twinge him at all.
And yet, it somehow stuck with him. When Omega asked later if he'd succeeded in deleting the security footage, Shadow told him. He pulled out the not-quite-empty flask and held it up, showing him the three drops of antidote inside.
"You withheld the full dose of antidote from her?" asked Omega slowly, his red eyes casting a cherry glow on the slick plastic surface. "Without her knowledge or consent?"
"She wasn't exactly in condition to give informed consent," said Shadow, feeling oddly defensive. "But yes."
"And knowing what the transformation did to her?" persisted Omega.
"Believe me, I am the best equipped person to understand the transformation's effects," snapped Shadow, trying hard to ignore the sudden prickling sensation in his forehead. "But I considered it from a logical standpoint. It's useful. Leaving the cure incomplete left only slight effects, not enough to make her dangerous, but enough to improve her flight, combat, and echolocation."
Red should be a warm color, but Omega's glance was unmistakably cold.
"I believe that is what you organics refer to as 'screwing someone over'," he said flatly, and walked away. Shadow was left standing in the hallway, seething at the world's general idiocy.
Eventually the nagging uneasiness wore him down. Omega's silent accusatory stare, the brief haunted flashes he caught in Rouge's eyes when she thought no one was looking—to hell with it all, he decided. If Rouge wanted to be an idiot and give up this once-in-a-lifetime chance at greater power, fine.
They ate breakfast in the HQ mess hall that morning. While Rouge teased a fellow-agent seated down the table, Shadow quietly tipped the last few drops of antidote into her orange juice.
Then the waiting game began. Shadow proceeded quietly through his breakfast, but from the corner of his eye he watched Rouge, waiting for her to drink the juice.
She didn't.
She simply wasn't interested in orange juice this morning. Not a drop passed her lips, and when she got up to put all her dishes in the dish return, Shadow realized the situation was becoming perilous.
"Going to waste that juice?" he remarked casually.
"Why do you ask?" Rouge gave him a quizzical look. "I'm not big on the kind with pulp. You want it?"
"Nnno . . . " Shadow scrabbled for an idea. How to get her to drink it without giving the situation away? "I was just wondering. Thought you liked orange juice."
"It depends," shrugged Rouge. "Some people like theirs without pulp. I like mine without arsenic."
Shadow stared at her wordlessly.
"Dear God, Rouge," he said at last.
"You lie well," said Rouge, with that same acidic smile. "You had me completely fooled. For a while I actually believed you didn't mind about that night."
Shadow was overwhelmed by a deep sensation of the entire world being an idiotic and wildly unreasonable place. Apparently Rouge had noticed him slipping the antidote into her drink. And apparently she assumed he was so disgusted by the thought of his blood on her tongue that he was trying to poison her.
"It is not poison, Rouge," he said as levelly as he could manage. The crowded mess hall was no place for a scene.
"Of course, it's my daily vitamin," said Rouge bitterly.
"It's the antidote," gritted Shadow. "What was left of your dose."
The mess hall's glasses were shatterproof, but the orange juice still splashed all over the floor.
"Left . . . of . . . " whispered Rouge, frozen. Suddenly her hands flew to her mouth, felt at her canines, yanked open one of her wings, ran along the lower edge, tugged at her hair. Shadow had seen a fellow-agent lose one of his legs in an explosion once; the wild horror in his eyes after he woke up in the hospital had been painfully similar.
As abruptly as it started Rouge's frantic examination of her own body halted, and she grew deathly calm. Gradually her breathing returned to normal, and her gaze slid back to Shadow.
"That explains a lot," she said quietly.
Shadow sat motionless.
"I thought it was my own weak-mindedness," continued Rouge, serene. "I thought I was being a pathetic little fool, looking in the mirror and having delusions that I still looked like a vampire. And all along, I was right."
Shadow shrugged. His expression didn't waver in the slightest, and he met Rouge's eyes without shame. Meanwhile she shook her head, strangely calm. It was in her nature to get violently angry at fairly slight provocations, but now she had apparently been shocked into complete lack of reaction. She looked more dazed than furious.
"Damn it. Now I understand what all that talk in the security room was about, the whole 'wouldn't you like to be powerful' spiel. Why didn't I put two and two together then? I should have known!"
"Either way it's true," said Shadow quietly. "The lingering effects do improve your powers."
"Yes, of course," said Rouge, sarcasm slurring in every syllable. "Win-win! Maybe now and then I get an urge to eat a raw squirrel, but that's a small price to pay, yeah? Bigger wings! Sure I kinda develop a weird compulsion to look at gory pictures, maybe get a little thirsty every time I look at you, but hey, no big, right? Of course I'd rather keep the murderous animalistic tendencies!"
One corner of Shadow's mouth twisted in wry disillusionment. He hadn't known Rouge was experiencing symptoms quite that macabre; mostly though, he assumed she was just calculating her speech to shake him.
"That's your choice," he said calmly. "If you want, you can take more antidote and throw away this, your only chance at greater power. Once you remove the transformation all the way, it's gone for good, unless you feel like asking Fiolet to bite you again. Your choice."
"Oh, so now it's my choice, is it?" growled Rouge. Still, there was no anger in her eyes, only something else—Shadow convinced himself it wasn't pleading.
"So is it just that I'm not good enough?" she said, suddenly quiet. "Is that what it is?"
Shadow made no answer.
"The only mortal in Team Dark," continued Rouge bleakly. "The only one who can't smite down a squadron just by pointing at it. The only one who can't stroll through Hell and come out unscathed, the only one compromised with something like emotion. Am I a burden?"
The tones were empty but free of self-pity, innocent of fishing for reassurance. She wanted an honest answer.
"Not a burden," said Shadow, after a long silence. "But still the weakest. I saw nothing wrong with bringing you closer to the level at which Omega and I perform."
"Nothing wrong?" Rouge looked at him coldly. "Then why did you take so much trouble to hide it?"
He couldn't answer.
Rouge sat a moment, tousling her ears and staring off into space. All around them, agents continued with their breakfasts, oblivious; from the outside Shadow and Rouge's conversation looked like two teammates angsting over a mutual friend's illness or lamenting the busy week ahead of them.
"I should just take off," said Rouge at last, still surveying the far corner of the room. "I should punch your lights out and request permanent transfer to Spagonia."
Shadow waited impassively for the conditional. And it came.
"But of course, I had to make that idiotic promise," continued Rouge bitterly. "Got caught right up in the sappy little moment, pledged to be loyal forever, stick with you even if the whole world turned against you. And if I back out of that now, you'll be able to tell everyone I'm the one who screwed you over."
"Absolutely not," said Shadow sharply. "The promise means nothing, and I never assumed it did; I know the stupid things people say in the heat of emotion. Leave, if that's what you want."
Rouge regarded him, nodding slowly.
"Didn't know it meant so little," she remarked, but smirked as if not surprised. "I'll probably take you up on that. But for now—I'm in no condition to think straight and-or make serious decisions. Later, I'll probably make ground meat out of you. For now, just give me that med."
Wordlessly Shadow handed over his own flask of antidote, which he'd just now started wearing studiously, too late. Rouge shook it to test if it was full, then got to her feet.
"Guess I'm taking the day off," she said drily. "Remember in the security room, I told you the thought of drinking blood didn't make me sick? Well, now we know why . . . And the reason's about to go away."
Shadow watched impassively as Rouge wove her way through the mess hall and out the door. Some part of his mind remarked that he should feel utterly ashamed. The rest of his mind blandly noted this opinion as a fascinating anomaly.
Shadow wasn't stupid. No matter what his personal opinions, he knew he could expect the others to be pretty ticked when the word got out—and since he hadn't bound Rouge to any sort of confidence, the word would definitely get out. Somewhere in the near future he foresaw a furious and probably violent encounter with an echidna.
For tonight though, it was deathly, stiflingly calm. Rouge was still at home, probably sick, and Omega still wasn't cleared for active duty after his repairs. Shadow reported alone.
He wasn't bound to the "non-lethal operations only" designation that covered Team Dark as a whole, so the night was long and dangerous. It was almost four AM by the time he signed off duty, cleaned and put away his automatic, and went for something to eat. Deciding it was pointless heading to bed, he set out for a quick skate through the countryside, letting the ruddy glow from his jet-skates splash across the navy-blue of the night.
At last he stopped for a rest, perching on a boulder and gnawing an apple he'd brought along. Briefly he considered stopping over to check on Rouge, but the thought was gone almost before he realized he'd had it.
"Pssst," whispered a voice. Shadow's ears pricked up sharply, but only his eyes moved as he scanned for the intruder.
"Psst," came the voice again. "I'm here. Down here."
Shadow glanced to the ground at his right and started subconsciously. Slithering up the rock beside him was a shimmering purple serpent.