Authors notes: This newest chapter was a little slow in coming out and I'm so sorry about that. I've had my butt kicked by life lately. Perhaps I was overly optimistic when I said updates would be every two to three weeks. I might move posting days to once a month. I've been ordered by my Beta to take it easy while my health returns so I've not been able to devote as much attention to writing as I would normally.

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John walked softly down the empty halls. His visit down to the labs this time was a far cry from the breakout and near frantic running of several days prior. The only similarities of when he was escorted down with Mr. Boris and now was that it was once again late at night.

John had been tossing and turning in bed thinking on everything that had been told to him earlier that day. He was getting good at reading between the lines with these people. Polite information, delivered factually and compassionately, but John read the truth of what was going on behind their stressed eyes and tight smiles. His Dad had woken up finally, but it hadn't exactly been a peaceful waking.

The teen was ashamed to admit that he hadn't run right down the labs once he had heard the news. Being told that his father had been going in and out of sleep and apparently had trouble recognizing some of his old coworkers had John scared. It had been years since the last time he had seen Dad and he had grown since then. Would John even be recognized now that he was all arms and legs rather than the little kid that trotted behind his father all of the time? He didn't think he could take it if Dad didn't recognize him. He couldn't.

And so John had been fretting and pacing and picking at his food all day while debating on going where he wanted to go the most but was terrified to go. Eventually around one in the morning the teen cracked and pulled on his shoes, grabbed his key card, and was out his door before his nerves had a chance to sink their claws into him again.

The guard sitting by the door looked up from his phone, mildly surprised to see the boy leaving this late at night. John awkwardly mumbled something about going to the labs as he shifted from foot to foot. The guard, thankfully not the one he tricked, slid his phone into his pocket as he stood and nodded for John to lead the way. This was a song and dance they had done several times before whenever John had attempted to visit the labs. The two made their way down the halls and no further words needed to be said.

It was strange, being able to leave his rooms whenever he wished. He was still watched whenever he was out but the guards had this thing about them where they stayed close enough to be ready for trouble but at the same time felt unobtrusive and in the background. John was grateful for the illusion of freedom and the little card dangling from the lanyard that he twisted tightly over his fingers as he walked.

To John's surprise Boris had given him the custom key card the day after he had slipped from his rooms.

"This is gift for apology." Boris had told him as he handed the confused teenager the card with a sticky not attached to it. John had wound the lanyard sporting the Maverick logo around his hand in his nerves and looked up at the older man in question.

"I see now that it was wrong to keep you in the dark. I thought I was doing you a kindness but I was mistaken. This card is special programmed to allow you in four areas only. It is for your rooms to return. It will let you into the gyms on the first floor. I recall your father saying you were rather active and enjoyed swordplay. Ask anyone there if you wish for sparring partner. I am sure they would be honored to assist as your father had saved many of their lives. Next is cafeteria on fourth floor. I have already instructed the head of the facilities to give you whatever you wish, as much as you wish between the meals brought to you. And lastly, the card and code on that note will allow you down to the labs to see your father whenever you should chose to do so. Day or night, does not matter."

John had mumbled out a thanks, cowed slightly under the force of Boris' personality and still being very subdued from the night before. John had not bothered with the gym. He was too disheartened to even think of practicing with someone else with a sword. He did make plenty use of the cafeteria however. The takeout for dinner was starting to get old as was Courtney's weird food. The older lady that brought him food would always light up upon seeing him. If he stayed in this place much longer, John figured that she would have him rolling down the hallways with as much food as she gave him. The labs though…that was something that he had yet to conquer.

The cameras watched him as he padded silently down the halls and to the elevator, guardian trailing behind. John paid the surveillance little mind as he was well used to it at this point. He made his way to the ground floor and the lab elevators like he had done over and over again this past week. Always he would make it to the labs, but never would he be able to go more than several steps into them. He wanted to visit Dad, he truly did, but every time he tried his heart would wrench at the sight of his father all hooked up like that and small and John would chicken out.

'Well not tonight.' He thought gripping his key card tight.

John scanned his card and keyed i and the doors slid obediently open. He hung the lanyard from his neck and ignored the churning of his stomach as he and the silent man at his side descended. The short ride was over all too quickly. John gave a parting nod to his guard who, like the past several times, waited at the elevators but did not venture onward with John to appropriate rooms.

Walking the eerily silent halls of the labs, John finally reached the well familiar door. He reached for the knob, let his hand fall away, and then again after several long heartbeats reached forth with unsteady fingers finally pulled the door open.

The door opened slowly and John timidly poked a head through the gap. The sight before him made him freeze, still hallway in, halfway out of the room. His shock was not from nerves about seeing his father, but by the strange blond girl looking up at him. She seemed just as surprised to see him so late at night as he was to see her.

The girl was sat in a cushy office chair pulled up near where his father was placed. She was in pajamas and had her hair done up in a bun that was well on its way to falling down. She held a tablet which she sat down onto her seat after she had silently slid out of it onto her feet.

John watched as she held up a single finger indicating for him to wait a moment. Moving as to make as little noise as possible she went over to a set of computers and began studying the data displayed there. John shook himself to dislodge the spell he had been put under. It wasn't the girl or the computers that John had come down to the labs for. It was Dad.

The boy tried not to be bitterly disappointed. His Dad looked the same as he had the last few times John had tried to venture down in the labs. The teen tried not to be disheartened but when they had told him that he had woken up John had expected something...better. As it was the only difference he could immediately tell was a laptop beside of him that John was told allowed Dad to see and hear from along with what looked to be yet more extra cords. Hardly what John had been hoping for.

He was pulled from his low thoughts when the girl turned away from the computers and crept her way towards him. John was about to fumble out a greeting when, with a tired smile, she motioned for him to step out into the hallway. He obeyed without question and she stepped out after him. The blond girl seemed to be a little bit older than he was but they were very nearly the same height. She closed the lab doors most of the way before turning to face him properly.

"So hey, you must be John." She held out her hand and gave him what would have been a breathtaking smile if it were not for the dark circles under her eyes and the tension held in her shoulders. Even still he fumbled under the weight of those eyes.

"Uh, yeah. That's John. Me. I'm...hi." He finished lamely and held out his hand. She quietly giggled at his tongue tied response as they shook hands. John wondered if his key card would allow him access to the roof so he could go jump off of it.

"Hi John, I'm Sunny. Sorry for surprising you. We're still waiting on Dr. Voigt to get back." The blond girl, Sunny, smiled at him although it quickly faded. "I...well...this might sound really terrible of me, but can you do me a favor?" She asked him, futilely tucking a lock of hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear.

"Oh, um. What is it?" He had no idea what in the world she could possibly ask of him seeing as how they had just met, but from her hesitancy she seemed really unsure of it.

"You're down here to see your dad, right?" John nodded in agreement. The butterflies from meeting Sunny evaporating in an instant at the reminder. "I know that you want to go see him but could you please wait a little while longer?"

"Huh?" The question seemed to not make sense in his tired and stressed mind. What she was asking hit a split second later. "Why?"

"He just managed to get to sleep again. He always sleeps so badly. It just seems like one nightmare right after another. And whenever he wakes up he gets confused and upset all over again. Honestly it takes forever to bring him back. Like I said, I know its awful of me, but can we please just let him sleep for tonight?" Sunny rambled slightly shifting her weight side to side as she talked, worried that John might take her request the wrong way and become upset.

John was upset, but not not for having to wait.

"Nightmares..." John leaned over and peered into the room through the crack of the door. It was very dim, lit only by the computer monitors and the light shining out from Sunny's tablet "There's no lamp in there." John said bluntly.

"Lamp?"

"Yeah. Dad doesn't like the dark." John knew a little extra light wouldn't help drive away the nightmares of whatever his father had gone through but knowing that he was trying to sleep without the yellow light of the old, now broken, lamp was just wrong.

"Ok." Sunny said softly. "I'll have one brought in immediately." John nodded and the conversation seemed to be over. He stepped back to turn and leave.

"I guess I'll come back later then..." He was stopped before he made more than one step.

"Wait." Sunny's voice was pleading. "You don't have to leave just yet. I know that this isn't the best of times but we've never had a chance to meet each other before. I've meet your mom at my uncles funeral but I've never had a chance to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

"Wait." John was taken aback by this new information. "You know Dad?" Now that he thought about it, it made sense that she did considering that she had been watching over him at night. John didn't even see that German guy doing that. But it was a little weird that she knew him and his parents yet he had no idea who she was.

"Yeah. Me and your Dad go way back." Instead of elaborating, Sunny went to the wall on the opposite side of the hall and sat down in the floor propped against it. From where she sat she had a clear view through the sliver of door open to the room beyond. Sunny nodded to the space beside her in the floor as an invitation to come sit. Sensing a story, John went and sat beside of her pulling up his knees and turned to her expectantly.

"The super quick version of it is my Mom was in something like special forces and she was being blackmailed into doing whatever a powerful organization wanted. They had taken me, you see, and if she didn't listen, I died." She worried at the buttons of her pajama shirt while looking in occasionally at the room to see if all was still well with his father.

"That...sucks." John said rather ineloquently.

"Yeah. My mother and your dad ended up on a mission together and she told him about me. She...never made it out of that mission." Sunny looked away him as she revealed this part of her story. "Your dad eventually tracked down where I was being held and rescued me. He managed to get me to some people that kept me safe and hidden until that organization fell. I would still be locked up in that awful place if it wasn't for him. I owe your dad everything John, that's why I'm here. He helped me and now I want to do everything in my power to help him."

She turned to look at him and gave him a bright smile that did not quite dispel the sadness in her eyes. John did not know how to reply to her immediately for lack of any idea of how to answer her life's story. How was anyone suppose to react to a story like that?

"He's never mentioned you." John abruptly blurted out without thinking. As soon as it left his mouth the teen realized exactly how rude that sounded. "Not that your story...I didn't mean!" He buried his face in his hands at embarrassing himself in front of her and most likely offending her beyond any chance of friendship. Apparently the stars were aligned for John this night because once again Sunny laughed and found his fumbling amusing more than anything.

"Well I did have to be kept secret for so long and your father did have to pull some major illegal stuff to set me free. I doubt it's something he would want to advertise just in case someone might be listening." Sunny pulled her knees into her chest to a position that mirrored John's.

"Sounds really hush hush."

"Kinda yeah. Now that I think about it, I would bet you that it was because of my uncles. Always so secretive and paranoid those two. One of them must have asked your dad to not to mention me." Sunny trailed off seemingly getting lost in her own thoughts. John stepped in to rescue the conversation.

"Well the cat's out of the bag now. No point in being secretive anymore. I'll just have to grill Dad all about it when he wakes up. And I'll have to see what else hes been keeping secret from me." John tried for a lighthearted laugh, missing the troubled look that passed over his company's face. "We missed out on being friends as kids. My family's moved around a lot, but it would have been nice to have somebody to text while moving from place to place."

"I think we would have been best friends too. We'll just have to be extra friends to make up for lost time then." Sunny joked, pushing lightly at his shoulder. "Whats your number...oh wait, you're not exactly allowed a phone right now for security reasons. Once this is all over, give me your number and we can text."

Beeping from inside the room cut off any further words.

"Not again..." Sunny sighed heavily as she got to her feet. She made it several steps and was in mid reach for the door when she paused. After an internal debate she turned to John. "He's not awake, that's just a warning program I wrote whenever the computer detected stressful REM patterns. I can try to wake him up and see if he remembers where he is so you two can talk or I can try to calm him down and try to get him to sleep properly again. It's your call John."

John was wholly unprepared to have the decision fall to him. On one hand he very dearly wanted to see and speak to his father again. But on the other hand, if Dad was still recovering and struggling then how selfish would John have to be to wake him up just to chat?

"I think…I think it would be better if I waited until he's awake awake to try and talk to him. If Dad gets confused when he wakes up from nightmares then it's better for him to rest, right?" John looked up at her from where he remained sitting, silently pleading with her to know if he was making the right decision.

"I think so too." The smile Sunny sent him made him feel light with relief. Apparently she thought it was for the best too and was happy that John was of the same mind. She silently slipped inside the room, leaving the door partially open.

John quietly got to his feet and crept over. He peered ever so slightly past the doorway and watched her work. Sunny went to the computers first, silencing the warning beeping. She then turned to check his father. John was ashamed of himself that he turned away.

It just hurt too much to look at Dad like that. It was wrong. Everything about this whole situation was wrong. John wanted his Dad to be all better. He wanted Mom back. Was she ok or even still alive? Had she been caught just like Dad had been? John wanted his family back together. He wanted to go home.

The teenager was distracted from his downward spiraling thoughts by the sound of Sunny's voice. He scrubbed at his eyes to erase any hint of tears before she saw, but it was not him that she was talking to. She had sat back down in the oversized chair, tablet in hand, and had begun to softly read aloud.

It took John far longer than he would care to admit to figure out what she was saying. Some of those words did not even sound real. After a while he was able to roughly guess that she was reading to his father about...theoretical physics? John knew his Dad had a rather eclectic pool of knowledge but from what John knew of him this wasn't exactly his thing. To read about physics as a soothing story...Sunny was odd, in a hot nerdy girl kind of way.

John continued lurking in the doorway as Sunny read. He let the complicated jargon wash over him as science was never his favorite class. Not for the first time he wondered what his school and classmates thought of his disappearance. John decided that he didn't care either way. As long as he had his family back then the rest of that awful school and the rest of New Zealand could go to hell for all he cared.

The teen snapped back to the here and now as the soft cadence of Sunny's reading trailed off into silence. He watched as she observed both the monitor and his father closely before rising to her feet. Like earlier, she placed the tablet on the chair and crept back over to him. John moved back into the hall to allow her space to leave the room.

"Crisis averted." She staged whispered and gave him a double thumbs up. "Got lucky this time that it eased off so quickly. I have a feeling that he'll sleep good now. For a while at least."

"I hope so." John said feeling awkward, the easy flow of their previous conversation having been disrupted. "Isn't there any, I dunno, sleeping meds to give him?"

"Dr. Voigt is uncomfortable with giving him anything right now. He's a bit sensitive to medication with the treatment plans we have him on and with surgery and attachment coming up soon the Doktor wants a clean slate."

"That's good. The attachment I mean." John amended. "It will be nice to have Dad back and be able to talk to him again, you know? Its been so long." Sunny paused as a thought came to her.

"Why not now? Quietly, of course. Even if the two of you can't talk properly right now, I think deep down he'll know it's you and it will help him sleep better. I know he's missed you."

John cast his eyes to the floor at Sunny's statement. He wasn't entirely sure that he could do it. Dad shouldn't be like that. It...hurt...to see him like that. Not to mention the guilt that had been plaguing John ever since he had learned that his 'abandonment' had not been of his fathers will at all. What John wanted to do the most was apologize for all the horrid thoughts and feelings that he let fester in his head, but Dad needed to be awake for that.

"I don't want to accidentally wake him up. He needs to sleep." It was a limp excuse and John knew it. Instead of calling him out for his cowardice, Sunny put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"I know what it's like to see someone you love, someone that you thought was invincible brought down to a state where they are hooked up to machines just to stay alive. To see them so small and weak looking when before you believed that they could hold the weight of the world on their shoulders."

John finally looked up from the floor to meet Sunny's eyes. They were watery with old, but still painful memories unfolding behind them. John wondered which loved one she had to watch completely helpless in the face of their own physical state.

"This is the time that they need someone the most. When they can't hold the world up anymore, can't hold up themselves anymore, that's when they need you to hold them up. Even if it's just with words. You don't have to wake him up, just talk to him. That's why I've been reading to him. Hes been alone for so long he needs to know that someone is there. He loves you John."

"I don't really know what to say to him." John confessed voice tight with tears that he fought against and lost to. He scrubbed off his face and refused to meet Sunny's eyes. To his surprise, the girl suddenly pulled him into a tight hug.

"Say anything. Say everything. They're your words and if I know your father, he won't care what you say as long as you're the one saying them." She released him and stepped back. "I'm going to go look for that lamp now. Your dad doesn't like the dark, then no dark. Whatever helps him recover we'll do it, right? I'll come back if he has another nightmare, I've synced up my phone to monitor so I'll know. If you run out of things to say left my tablet on to read from, ok?"

John nodded, not trusting himself to speak with his tight throat. Sunny gave him one last smile before heading down the hallway and disappearing around a corner. John wiped his eyes dry and took several fortifying deep breaths just like Mom had taught him to do. Courage bolstered by Sunny's kind words, John steeled himself and stepped through the doorway as silently as a ghost.

The light was much dimmer here than in the hallways. The bright light from Sunny's tablet beckoned him like a moth to the flame. As he approached the chair John looked all around the room. The strange equipment here, there, and everywhere. The computers displaying their data that he could only guess at the meaning of. The chair itself, with its cracked and peeling leather around the armrests from being so well used.

He looked everywhere and at everything except for at Dad.

Moving the tablet aside, John sat rather stiffly on the office chair. With a herculean effort he pulled his gaze up from his shoes to look at his father. It was so much worse close up than it was looking in from outside of the labs. The wires, the tubes, and bandages. John didn't have the strength to see the man like that and he lowed his eyes back down to the floor. The image refused to leave his mind no matter how hard he squeezed his eyes shut and John knew that it would haunt his dreams for a long time.

'Say anything. Say everything.' Sunny had told him. Feeling like an awkward little kid all over again meeting him for the first time, John cleared his throat nervously and quietly began to speak.

"Hi...Dad."

There was no response. Just the various beeping and whirring of all the equipment in the lab. The teen continued on.

"It's been a while. Too long. Way too long. I know that three years is a really long time, but it feels so much longer than that. It feels like you've been gone forever and that you were never coming back. But here you are." The words were spoken so softly they might as well have been a whisper. The silence stretched long and somehow more potent in the darkened room.

Fragile hope rising that somehow he had been heard, John forced himself to look back up at his father. Despite his disquiet at seeing someone he thought was invincible reduced to such a state, the boy forced himself to look closely. John watched for any twitch, any movement that indicated that Dad even knew that John was there and talking to him. His heart and gaze fell when there was still nothing.

"I'm sorry that I didn't come by when they first told me you woke up." The teen whispered, blankly staring at his fingers. "I guess I still have a lot to work on when it comes to being brave like how you taught me to be...Sunny says that you'll be getting a body soon. How come you never told me about her? Feels like there's a lot of things you haven't told me. Like some guys that know you said something about Area 51? That' so cool."

John had nearly forgotten that snipped of eavesdropped conversation. That was definitely on the list of things to ask about when all this was over with and they went home. But was it even possible to go back home? Would they even be all together again? There was still no word about where his mother was at.

'Does Dad even know she's missing? And what about all that other stuff going on with Mom?' John let his head drop into his hands. 'Why did this have to happen, why did he have to leave?' The boy longed for the days when he would eagerly mark off the weeks on his calendar until his Dad got leave time for his job over in Africa. Then it was a month of fun, adventure, and family. Why did that have to end? Why did this have to happen?

All the thoughts and turmoil whirling about in his mind managed to slip out in a strained whisper.

"Where have you been all of this time Dad? I know it was because someone bad had caught you...but why did you have to leave in the first place?" John glanced up at the man in question looking for an answer. Rest be damned, the teen wanted to wake him and demand to know why he had been gone. Then he immediately felt like shit for the thought. It wasn't as if Dad had wanted...this.

John fought a sniffle and tried to stay calm and focus on safer topics.

"I kept up with my running even though I really wanted to quit. I did it so I could keep up better with you. So that if...when you came home, I wouldn't be left behind…When do you think we can go running again Dad?"

Despite fighting so hard to stay calm John finally cracked. He ground the heels of his palms into his eyes to try to stem the tears that would not be held back any longer. Just like the tears, all the words and emotions that had been building up broke free and came out before he could pull them back and bury them once more.

"I tried so hard to hate you, you know. I thought if I hated you then it wouldn't hurt so bad that you were gone. If I hated you then it wouldn't bother me so much that Mom started to stay 'late' at the office and would always get call-ins in the middle of the night. I wouldn't care if she had found someone else and our family was over if I could only hate you. But I couldn't. I couldn't..."

John tried to get the rest of the words out but they refused to be dislodged from his throat. He wiped away the tears only for them to be replaced by more. He wanted to leave. To get up and run back to his room and away from these horrible labs and away at what the man in his memories had become. He wanted to apologize for all his horrible thoughts and the things he had said. But most of all, John wanted his father to wake up and tell him that everything was going to be alright.

John wanted a lot of things that he knew that he wasn't going to get.

Kicking his shoes off, John put his feet up into the seat and wrapped his arms around his legs and cry quietly into his knees. Crying silently enough to where his Mom would not notice was something he had perfected over these past three years. The tears kept coming, waxing and waning in intensity until they finally ran their course leaving the boy wrung out and hollow feeling.

Head aching and with sore eyes John glanced up at his father who was still oblivious to his presence. 'At least he's sleeping ok.' John thought with bittersweet gratitude. Perhaps Sunny was right that talking helped. The problem was John didn't think that he had any more words left in him. Couldn't talk even if it were to read. A glance over at Sunny's tablet sparked an idea.

It took a bit of hunting seeing as Sunny had none of the normal people apps or websites saved (just a bunch of science stuffs), but eventually John found a website that wasn't too sketchy and pulled up a movie. The soft melody of the opening credits felt wrong in the lab environment, but then again did anything here feel right? It was an older movie, back when his Dad was still a kid, but it was one they had watched many times together.

Perhaps if he closed his eyes and listened to the familiar music and dialog John could pretend that they were back home. The office chair with the peeling leather would instead be their soft cushy couch that John could stretch out on. Instead of tied up in tubes and wires, Dad would be over on his far sturdier chair dying to tell John little facts about the movie but unwilling to speak over the film. The light coming in from the hallway would be Mom in the sitting room getting way too invested in figuring out her mystery book before the author did the big reveal and getting pissed if she got it wrong.

Yeah. John could pretend everything was alright. At least for a little while anyway. What else could he do?

-0-0-0-

Sunny slowly peered into the darkened labs. She had procrastinated greatly in returning for fear of interrupting anything private John had to say. There had been no warnings of nightmares or any change of his readings. While she wanted the man to rest properly, a small part of her had hopefully entertained the possibility that Raiden had woken peacefully on his own and he and John had been making up for lost time.

As she had wandered aimlessly with a lamp tucked under one arm, her own exhaustion began to wear at her. Sunny longed for the office chair (oh but if only Raiden would sleep peacefully) or the recovery room beds if John was going to keep vigil this night. It was this desperate need to rest that prompted her to risk interrupting and check in. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light of the room after being in the better lit hallways.

'John was right, it is dark in here.'

She tucked the little desk lamp with the green cover more securely under her arm and stepped inside slowly. There was no conversation going on, no John quietly talking or reading to his father, but there was little snippets of music playing. On the little desk that the laptop sat on was her tablet playing some video or another.

There was no John to be seen and Sunny worried that he had lost his nerve or had left upset. She wondered if it had been the best choice to give him privacy when he was so unsure and distressed. Alone time was what she had wished for after all back when...well back then. Perhaps it was the wrong choice for the other teen.

Approaching more closely revealed that the boy was not gone, but was in fact fast asleep. Curled in the oversized office chair, exactly as she had done in between nightmares, was John.

He had pulled the chair up to where his father was placed as close as possible without the wheels being a hazard to the wires and cords on the floor. John snored softly, oblivious to her existence. He would have looked quite cute there, sleeping on the chair curled up like a kitten if it were not for the dried remnants of tears on his face. Her heart ached for him.

Sunny took a glance at her tablet, curious as to what John had put on for him and his father to sleep to. It was not a movie she was familiar with, but that was not saying much as she never really had the time to sit and watch tv. She made a note to ask John about it later. It might help as a conversation starter as she truly did want to get to know the other teenager better.

Finally she turned her attention towards Raiden. He seemed to be sleeping if not peacefully, calmly. No furrowed brows. No beginnings a snarl that indicated distress. The computer that served as his connection to the outside world was functioning correctly. Visual feed was shut off from his end for sleep but audio was still active. A glance at the computers showed that he truly was well at rest.

Sunny gave a small smile at the sight of the both of them before the smile wilted. The sight was pulling up memories of her sleeping in chairs at her uncles bedside after he had become too weak to rise from it.

Watching over Raiden had been bringing up many memories of those last few weeks but she didn't regret it in the slightest. It would not be an easy path, but Sunny had all the faith in the world that there would be a happier ending for these two than she had experienced. She would help any way she could every step of the way, and she wasn't alone.

The Doktor was due back any time now with all the parts to get Raiden back on his feet. Boris had his team hard at work finding the perpetrator, and they would be receiving help soon from Uncle Hal. He had promised her as well as Boris that he would lend his expertise in hunting down information as soon as he could.

Sunny sat the little lamp down on a clear surface nearby and plugged it up to the nearest outlet. The comforting glow of the lamp dispelled the enveloping darkness of the labs. The green tented shade gave the soft light a glow like sunlight shining through thick leaves of a forest canopy. Sunny preferred dark rooms for sleep but she could see where someone would prefer this unobtrusive light. Especially if they had spent enough time in the darkness.

She smiled and begin a quiet retreat. It was a sweet scene, the two of them sleeping by one another. Or it would have been if not for the sad circumstances that had lead up to this moment. But better things were on the horizon now though, she just knew it. Getting Raiden back into a body soon was the next big hurdle. One step at a time on the path upward to recovery.

"Sleep good you two." Sunny whispered as she slid the lab doors close behind her gently. They both would need it. The next few days were going to be busy for everyone.

.

Notes: The movie was The Princess Bride just in case anyone was wondering.