Archive of Our Own

Omega carried the wooden tray up to their second floor, carefully on the stairs. His feet - not so mighty as they were in metal, true - were just a little longer than the steps, ending in pointy, ungul-ish toes. Bodies were weird, and it seemed everyone fit oddly in this world made for people as small as a beetle and as large as an elephant.

She heard him coming:

"I'm up, I'm up..." She groaned. He tapped on the door anyway and waited enough seconds for Rouge to make herself decent. She didn't use that time, and he found her on the bed wriggling her pyjama bottoms on as he entered. With a sarcastic gasp, she threw a slipper at him, and he lurched the tea and toast out of the way.

"Rude! Who raised you?"

"... If progenitors are to blame, I am entitled to be ruder."

She snickered appreciatively, and took the tea while still sitting on her blanket, half in pyjamas. This was play, Omega was much more sure of that than he was as a robot: Rouge had stopped caring about what state Omega saw her in when she realised that as a machine he usually saw her through heat sensors anyway, and that level of comfort had been transferred to the new Omega too. He opened her windows wide to let the evening breeze in.

"How are you feeling today?" He asked curtly.

"Hm. Fine ."

Fine was another joke, one he was in on now in a way he wasn't once. 'Fine' could mean anything from 'I have amazing news' to 'I am on the verge of a Shadow-level breakdown', and all flavours of reasons for either. All it consistently meant was that the 'fine' person wasn't going to tell you any more just yet. And you never could tell - they really might be just fine. That's what Omega meant, usually - if he was only mildly uncomfortable and had his usual level of bitter, fermenting rage: that was his 'fine'.

"I am fine as well."

"You're still down to come with me to the Fox' Clinic? I know it's a long way, I get it if you're busy..."

"I will be there. Shadow will also be there, already. He is donating stem cells."

"I didn't forget. We'll pick up what's left of him, then."

She chewed her toast slowly. Omega didn't need to be here anymore - he didn't really still need to bring her meals in bed, or help her down the stairs. But it was their custom: he sat with her, in the chair next to the bed while she ate. He had learned from Rouge to find the joyous thing about eating: it was at its best a self-care, and preparing food was a care of others - both things he had always been capable of, but could now feel the effects of physically. He was almost proud to care for her, except he wouldn't let himself take pride in the healing of an injury he had caused. So instead, he was honoured; taking care of them both was his duty now after they had taken care of him for so long.

She sighed softly, and he realised time had passed disproportionately in the real world to in his mind. It seemed she was in the same timezone as he was, though: she held the cup of tea to her face but didn't drink it, watching the sun rise in the reflection on the surface.

Rouge wore her long coat, and affixed her fake wing on one shoulderblade - she never let him help her. She always wore sunglasses and a hat, never her old worksuits.

"She doesn't want to be recognised." , Shadow had explained. Omega wondered if they were even still famous, or if they just felt like everyone had their eyes on them because that was what they expected. Either way, they set off at a jog.

All these months on from her loss of her wing, Rouge was more used to being on the ground for long periods of time , but the months she'd spent unable to walk had weakened the muscles in her legs too, so Omega had to keep looking over his shoulder to make sure she wasn't dropping back. She started to flag as they reached the forest.

"Assistance?"

She bore her teeth and leant her hands on her knees, face flushed and muscles trembling. She looked nauseous with herself as she finally sighed:

"Yes, fine, I suppose so. Put me down if you see anyone."

So he carried her delicately through the thick woodlands, on his back. Nobody was allowed to touch her back unless it was medically necessary, so a carry in the arms was never an option. That suited him fine - he could barely feel her weight on his shoulders. She kicked him to be let down as the trees thinned before they reached the frosty civilization of Tails' polar base.

Cold was highly valuable to anyone working in medicine these days - the tundra provided safe storage of many sterile tools, medicine, and even organs, and most bacteria did not live long in these unheated halls. A surgeon's hospital sprawled out across a lot of this former ski-resort . Tails' main research lab was tacked onto the side of the ward. Omega felt a strange twinge in his chest - he didn't remember it properly, but this was where they remade him. Where he was born? No, that didn't sound right.

Rouge unlocked the door with four different heavy keys, and let Omega shove the hunk of recycled metal. The corridor had a room for all the different projects Prower labs was pioneering : A large, rebuilt computer reliant on water flowing to power it - it was as sophisticated as the ones they'd once had , but with no access to a global network it was only used for calculations. It was surrounded by thick cloth on every wall, hopefully keeping its existence a secret.

Nextdoor was the cyber-virus cracking room. A ticket-printer , a tamagotchao , and a coffee grinder - all infected, but unthreatening - were given low amounts of charge to keep them alive enough to study. The power was rationed, and came from a prized solar-charged battery that was currently on the white mountains around them gaining power - somebody would bring it back soon to transfer to their buried-secret generator beneath their feet. Computing engineers whittered between these two rooms with lists of things to test, chattering while their teeth chattered in the frosty building, and avoiding Rouge and Omega.

The biggest project was of course the XII tornado: a masterful clockwork aeroplane that was kept wound by a perpetual spinner. Because, of course, a dedicated fox could figure out a perpetual motion machine as a side project on the way to restoring his favourite plane. And of course, as with everything else, the answer was Chaos Emeralds: specifically two of them orbiting each other in the closest thing to a vacuum he could make. Soon, Rouge muttered to Omega as they paused to spy, they'd be swapping to two fake emeralds: once they could balance those it free'd up all of the five on earth for their all-important final siege.

Today, engineers attended the XII, but made no changes Omega observed - they were just cleaning and preening. Perhaps nobody else had the authority to make alterations to it.

They crossed the hall and passed more rooms of records and calculations, then opened another heavy door to the medical technology wing. The doors to the rooms in this corridor were bolted shut with no windows, but had names written atop them. Omega slowed down at his own. The inside of this room must be the one he found himself paralysed in in Nightmares. Rouge shivered too in the chilly corridor but kept walking.

"Wonder why he hasn't repurposed these? Surely you don't need a shrine..."

"I... am very important ."

"Sure, you're just as important as... Orbot and Cubot? Separately? They each had their own rooms."

"Insult acknowledged and ignored."

They found Tails with cotton gloves up to his elbows and a thick bleached jacket, mouth covered with a mask - he tended a complicated blood separation contraption, while a mousey nurse monitored Shadow. All three of them were behind a glass pane from Rouge and Omega, who were first met with a handwashing station of coarse lye soap and icy water.

The process of extracting blood plasma was much less efficient without electricity, so Omega presumed - having never considered it before. Shadow had a blanket over his lap and looked like he'd been there all night in the same position with his teeth gritted; his muzzle was grey, his head moved like he was at sea where he sat, and a bucket sat beside him. Omega reflected that Gerald had been cruel to give him pain receptors since body-part donation was always an intention for Shadow.

"How are you getting on?" Rouge called over the sickly bubbling sound and clicking crank. Tails and the Mouse jumped; Shadow hissed through his teeth and gave something short of a smile.

"Just. Fine ."

"Who says I meant you?" She said, tongue out. Tails nodded grimly as he looked up at Rouge and Omega:

"Oh, you're there - we did say we'd stop there."

"I can keep going-"

The nurse cut Shadow off by switching a valve to slowly cycle the blood back to him on his other side. Tails unclicked an opaque tank and carried it out of the room wordlessly.

"Observation: Fox is not in the best mood." Omega offered, but Rouge nudged him and shook her head. The mouse glanced up at him and raised her eyebrows, then looked away and busied herself. She unclamped something from his head, causing Shadow to hiss on instinct before he cleared his throat and preened his quills as nonchalantly as he could.

"I'm not replenishing my body as quickly as I did when we first started. I don't think they took enough to meet the demand this time."

Rouge tutted, pouring him a glass of water from the jug on the counter and averting her eyes as the big needles were removed.

"Proposal: Shadow has exceeded biological generosity limit."

"This is what I'm made for. I should be able to fully replace anything essential in at most a few weeks . I've had months. That's not good."

"Well, you can't really blame yourself. It's not intentional."

"Hmph. This is not an emotional observation. I just need to figure out why, and solve that. Lives are at stake here."

"Replenishing you will become a priority: you could eat dinner with us." Omega offered.

"Good luck getting him to eat real food," Rouge rolled her eyes, but Shadow peered up at Omega thoughtfully.

They reconvened with Tails a building away in the prosthetics laboratory - a far less bloody affair; silicones and plastics from across the world had been donated by the public to be repurposed for essential use in medical research, and it seemed Tails had first dibs. Legs, hands, and even parts of faces were being crafted by artists here, and Tails was spreading out a large bat wing on the cold metal desk by the time Shadow was up and un-wobbly.

"You've turned this around quick since we measured up, kid. Have you slept?" Rouge asked, and Tails' ears flicked. He would always be a kid to them, even now he was nearly finished growing and had the eye-bags and a tufty stress-coat of fur to prove it. He glanced at her with a wan, lopsided smile.

"Yeah, enough. I'm fine."

Omega snorted: Tails played the 'fine' game worse than Rouge, since he looked ragged as he did it.

"Well, you've certainly got enough hands to help you out here, at least?" Rouge gestured around to the artists and spoke quietly so Tails' ears spun back to face her.

" Oh sure... Not sure I'm the managing type, though. I don't get as much time to do the inventing with everybody asking for advice." He hummed back.

"That's flattering."

"Mmhmm, maddening..."

"You chose to be a hero, can't blame them for looking up to you. " Rouge said with a smile that didn't spread to her tone of voice. Something was bothering her about Tails, the lab, or the wing set before her: she hadn't really looked at it, just barely glancing down, and she kept a foot between her and it.

"Is the wing not right?" Omega prompted, before he made a curious observation: Rouge and Tails both gave him a 'Look'. What for, he couldn't tell. Shadow leant on the workbench and shrugged, gesturing to the wing.

"It's good. Does it fit?"

"He's right: enough chitchat, down to business." Tails' voice crackled as he tried to raise it cheerfully. Rouge slowly took her coat off, and allowed him to hold it up to her shoulder blades.

"Look in the mirror for me? Just to check the symmetry."

"Didn't you measure it?"

"Yeah, I meant for looks purposes..."

Rouge's eyes were glazed as she looked at herself. Shadow shuffled around the table to stand at the side of the large mirror, and Omega followed suit, sizing her up. It was remarkably close; less translucent than the natural wing, and standing up straighter than her droopy single one did - but otherwise a near perfect match in shape and colour.

"That looks very convincing," Shadow said firmly, and Omega nodded enthusiastically. She grimace-grinned.

"Sure does. Beautiful handiwork, Tails."

"Ah, thanks, I didn't get to do the details though. Somebody who used to do plastic surgery came to make it look nice."

"Huh. I guess this is a kind of cosmetic..." Rouge sneered at herself. Tails hummed, then without warning fixed it to the remaining stub of her old wing. She tensed all over, instantly furious in the eyes, but he wasn't even looking, just assessing the fit.

"Not cosmetic, it should be functional, but if you're going to make a wing you might as well have it look right." He mumbled. Omega looked at Shadow for instruction, but he was barely keeping his eyes open at this point and he was pale under his fur. Omega gently tipped him back to lean on the wall, then positioned himself in Rouge's eyeline.

' What's wrong? ' He beamed into her mind as hard as he could stare; ' What do you need from me? '

She met his eyes with a pained and guarded expression but allowed Tails to fit the controls to her wrist and demonstrate the mechanism. With the flexing of her fingers on that side, the puppet wing could do the same as her natural wing could , even rotate in its socket to almost all angles the real one could. She couldn't do them in sync, but the doctors working in the lab all gasped and clapped quietly with awe as she managed to swoop it as though to take flight, stumbling at the lopsided force. Tails grimaced, his eyes keenly trained to finding faults in his work.

"Like I said, I tried to make it intuitive, but it's-"

"It's amazing ." She said through gritted teeth; "It's clearly amazing. I know it doesn't mean I'll fly again, but you've clearly worked very hard. Thank you ."

She didn't sound to Omega like she meant it, but Tails took it at face value and smiled broadly.

"Well, thanks, but just see how you do. It... it'll probably be about as hard as learning to walk. But for the first time, and in your twenties. So, just so you know, it's just... for you. Nobody's expecting you to be out, or fighting on it, or anything."

"Oh, I know. That's been made quite clear." She said sharply.

Rouge was quiet on their way home. She hadn't taken off the wing, but she had covered it in her coat that she wore like a large cape. She jogged to the side of them, fake wing facing away so they couldn't ogle it if they ever would.

Shadow was quiet on their way home. He staggered every so often, but whenever he'd waver where he walked he quickly sped up and jumped over something, as though that disguised his unsteadiness.

Omega was quiet on their way home, but his mind was a noisy and worried place , and he immediately caught Shadow when he tipped on his feet. Shadow grunted to himself in Omega's arms and shook his head, trying to get up.

"You are not well. I will carry you." He declared, and picked Shadow up delicately in his arms.

"Ridiculous... I should be able to do this..." He mumbled into Omega's chest, his eyes fluttering as he tried to open them. Rouge patted Omega's arm once he had Shadow settled.

"You want a lift too? Climb on. You are together still not heavy."

"No. I want you to get him home quick, without me. I want to walk."

"It is a long way, your body can't-"

"It can , and if it can't I'll sit down and have a rest. Seriously, Omega I..." She swallowed; she'd been talking to his chest, not looking at his eyes, but she glanced briefly at them to insist: "I want to be alone, for a bit. I want to think."

Omega shuffled Shadow into one hand then the other so he could shirk off his big coat that she caught;

"If you are not back tomorrow I will search for you on this path, so do not go from it."

"Understood, big guy, now go get sleeping beauty to bed."

Reluctantly, he sped ahead of her with Ultimate Life Form speed to tend to Shadow. Once they were home, Shadow kept sleep-stumbling his way out of bed, so Omega ended up covering him in three weighted blankets and standing at the door until he was finally properly still. Then, he waited up all night for her to come home. She arrived with the sunrise; bedraggled and exhausted, she just nodded to him, and sealed herself in her room.

Omega found Shadow boiling bones on the fire outside their home when he returned from errands that day.

"Pig." He said flatly, as Omega eyed them. It wasn't logical, but Omega the Bull found himself disturbed by the eating of beef . He hadn't said they couldn't, but he did ask that they lie when they did to spare his feelings.

"Why just bones?" Omega leaned over the pot and grimaced. Shadow pulled out an old book of homecooking - the plain cover indicated that it was printed before ultra-processed food or electric beaters, which was much more useful a book these days.

"I'm taking your advice: I clearly need to eat something to regenerate. Bone broth is a good source of collagen, and linked to immune system recovery... also, bones are also easier to get than most meat everyone else wants."

"Acknowledged: I hope skeleton soup is nourishing. Since you are eating: I have potatoes today and I intend to season them."

"Hmph, calories isn't what I need, I've not been doing much exercise."

Omega rolled his eyes. Shadow had always been lax about nutrition, which was mostly optional for him, but since that doctor's appointment, he had sought out a dietician's handbook and begun trying odd things. Omega considered his approach admirable, but it didn't serve the other function of food for him: to spend time with Rouge.

Inside, Omega started preparing their dinner. Rouge was in her room, where she always was these days , while Shadow and Omega went out to solve any crises they heard about and destroy all robots that dared venture to land. They had handed over the newspaper gig once she was able to do anything but sit in her chair, but she still spent a lot of time pouring over reports from here, there and everywhere.

One of her recent fields of interest was meteorology: it had been her idea to plan their attacks on Eggman's fleet during any electrical storms that came over; they tended to cause his ships to drift awry and lose connection to the mothership. But trying to predict one was not easy with no imaging data from satellites. Their current home was prone to low-category storms that formed near the tropics and made their way north, so she had been reading and observing all that she could.

He thought he'd find her pawing over maps when dinner was ready, but instead she was in bed, lying on her front with eyes closed. She looked dishevelled and dirty, like she'd been trekking for miles not tangled in her blankets.

"Did you get out of bed?"

"Mm."

"Are you okay ."

"Mm. Fine ."

"... do you want potatoes with cheese and spices?"

"Mmm... fine."

She ate sleepily with Omega while Shadow chewed bones outside. He watched her use her wrong hand with the spoon imperfectly, and narrowed his eyes.

"Is your hand hurt?"

"No, just slept on it weirdly."

"Oh. I feared the wing controls Tails' made were faulty."

"Could be. I haven't tried."

He put his spoon down, suddenly not hungry.

"Why?"

"Why would I? Don't need wings right now."

"Why not learn to use them."

"Don't feel like it."

"Illogical!" He snapped, and she blinked up at him; "Flight is exceedingly useful! Control of this wing could be critical to- "

"Critical to who? Not like I'm going on any of your big missions. I'm doing fine, thanks: it's my choice if I want to use it." She snapped, and that was the end of that.

Omega returned, bedraggled, from hurricane relief duty after some weeks. Shadow was out on the garden on top of their house with a shaved arm picking gooseberries.

"What have you done?" He asked flatly, gesturing to the arm. Shadow shrugged, a slightly mad look in his eyes:

"It occurred to me that my coat reflects most sunlight. This will increase vitamin D absorption. And these are high in nutrients while being unappealing to most birds. Ideal for the roof."

He'd taken to just mixing everything - boiled bones and teeth, beneficial tree bark, unrefined wheat and seeds, and apparently now the sour prickly berries with their leaves still attached - into a bowl, mashing them with a mortar and pestle, and scranning that at pace first thing in the morning when supposedly metabolism was best. Omega grimaced as he thought of it.

"... I learned how to make pasta. Would you like some?"

"What are the macros?"

"Nevermind. Where is Rouge? Have you taken care of her. "

"She is... I don't know. She's probably fine."

Omega sighed heavily. He found her passed out asleep in her bed, on her front, groaning as she tried to get up. Once again her fur was matted and dirty.

"Have you made progress with your flight yet?" He asked her over dinner. She filled her mouth with tagliatelle and shrugged.

"Yes or no: it is a binary question." He pushed, and she glared at him.

"No, it isn't. I've thought about it, put it on a few times and stuff . Just not gotten around to the whole mechanics of it yet."

"What is delaying your progress?"

"Just, y'know, other things. Not been my top priority."

"How can I help?"

"I don't need help. You've done enough." She said quickly, then immediately chewed her lip as she realised what she said; "I didn't mean -I meant, you're getting all the stuff for us, doing all of our work for us, that sort of thing. Not, not like - not like it sounds."

"Worry is unnecessary. You didn't remind me that this is my fault. I was very aware."

They stared at their bowls in suddenly un-hungry silence. Rouge stood up suddenly, dinner in hand.

"This is really good. I'm going to see if I can tempt him upstairs to have some. What did you say you made it with?"

Omega's focus was soft as that horrid guilt coiled around his throat again. He vaguely made out the shape of her in the doorway.

"Garlic," he choked; "I traded a book for some garlic."

"Amazing. We'll have to plant some... I hate gardening but Shadow's gotten into this whole homestead thing. Thanks, Omega , really ."

She left him in the silence of the kitchen. His face fell as he stopped trying to animate it to communicate with anyone in the room. As he let it slip down to a natural frown, he felt his eyes sting. Rubbing them firmly didn't help, it just made his face hot.

Omega lay awake that night, listening to the storm. He thought he had gotten better at sleeping - he'd gotten better at everything, to be clear. But the thing with sleeping was he didn't know how he did it: some nights it just happened naturally before he even noticed. Others, like tonight, he tried counting, recounting, focusing on the imperfections on the ceiling and the pounding of the storm on the roof behind it, and meditating. But nothing was working, so the next thing to try was reading, which he was quite slow at given he'd had to relearn how to do it the natural way . Begrudgingly, he selected one of his books off the shelf; it was aimed at teenagers, something about a boy learning to become one with dragons. It was a drag for him, but he was told reading got better and easier the more you did it, and there wasn't much else you were allowed to do in your designated resting hours. He padded downstairs to look for a candle and a match, and found a strange sight:

A star of quills was under a blanket at the table, with light emanating from beneath it. He was humming a tune that repeated every eight bars, so after just a minute of watching absolutely dumbfounded Omega also felt insane.

He stomped over and shook Shadow's shoulders roughly, and he gasped as the blanket was ripped off him, and put his arms around eight eggs.

"Not cow!"

"I know that. What are you doing?" Omega said quickly, but Shadow shushed him, and pinched the blanket back . The glowing was a tealight under a slotted bowl so nothing could touch it and burn itself, and around it Shadow carefully nestled the eggs.

"This is an inefficient method of cooking." Omega pointed, and Shadow rolled his eyes.

"I need a better source of protein to replenish blood cells. The mother of these fertile eggs was eaten by a fox, so they were going free. They will produce eggs daily, and this will solve my issue."

"You intend to raise and protect chickens? Who will watch them when you go away? What about when our house is attacked again? How does this plan make sense?"

"... I'm getting desperate."

Omega nodded, and sat in the chair opposite him. Surreptitiously, Shadow started humming again, but when he caught Omega's eye he let the note die in his throat.

"Old wives tale. It's meant to encourage them to grow..."

"That is the same thing you said for your plants."

"... then that doesn't make sense, does it?" Shadow finished his thought for him.

Omega watched him frown in the dim light of his candle setup, as he turned over in his mind how they'd got here.

"Was your latest appointment with Prower helpful?"

" Fine ," Shadow scowled at him: "I'm sitting here singing at eggs because everything is going according to plan."

"They could stop taking from you to give to every sick person in the world."

"Nobody else has self-preserving blood. Nobody else has un-rejectable kidneys that grow back. Nobody else is immune to sepsis. This is exactly what I'm made for, and if I can't figure out how to make my body do what it was designed to do," he stopped, snarling at himself.

"People will die." Omega finished for him.

"Yes, they will. And it will be my fault. So, eggs. Maybe the glass tube they made me in was full of pure protein, and that'll solve the problem."

"Do you know," Omega began slowly, chewing his thoughts aloud with his mouth open; "That you alone were meant to be a medical tool for multiple people?"

"I am meant to be a lot of things. Why?"

"To make all of us, you gave pieces of your organs. For every one of us with a new body, not just giving to one patient with one condition. And now you hope to supply the whole world. Perhaps this is beyond the limit of Gerald's intentions for you as a medical device."

"There shouldn't be a limit. I'm the cure, unkillable and always repairing. I just have to... do that, somehow."

They fell quiet again, hearing wind batter their little house, rattling the windows and pelting them with rainy bullets.

"Thank you, Shadow. " Omega said quietly. Shadow just stared at him, like he didn't know what to do with that, and the unexpected turn had him shortcircuiting.

"I'm never hungry." He said suddenly. Omega raised an eyebrow at him; "You are made from me, and you don't get hungry, do you? So, you understand what I'm doing here - maximum efficiency food, because I don't need to eat."

"Food is... complicated. I have learned to pick up on some cues linked to hunger. I eat, I know that it benefits me. I don't enjoy it alone,"

Shadow nodded, satisfied, but Omega continued;

"I eat with Rouge because I want to see her. I did not see her for months, and now she is here. She likes to have company to eat, so it is mutually beneficial."

"She's not been eating with you lately, though. I saw her take her plate to her room."

Omega swallowed a tickle in his throat, and nodded.

"She leaves when I ask her about flying."

"That's why I don't ask."

Omega shook his head and glared at Shadow, red eyes to red eyes.

"Ridiculous. A year ago I looked to the two of you in hope that I might be able to navigate the world as you do. Why now do I find that you are impatient to the point of insanity, and she is avoidant to the extent of deterioration? Do I negatively affect you both?"

Shadow raised an eyebrow like Omega was joking, but he answered truthfully:

"No. None of this is your fault. We're as we always were."

"I see. Then all this time of you keeping strict regiment to care for me was dishonest. You should have let me eat bark and never sleep as you apparently do."

"... we had to take good care of you. You were brand new. It was round-the-clock sometimes, you were like a baby."

"Disgusting. Never speak of it like that again."

Shadow snorted. The rain hardened as thunder rumbled around them. He blinked, and eyed Omega thoughtfully:

"You're very good at being a person. Better than we ever imagined you'd be. Those donor gametes must have been from a very well-adjusted person, because you don't get it from me or Rouge."

"I said; don't speak like you are my parents. It is logical: I am functional because I have retained my mechanical way of thinking. I take in information and apply it rationally for best course of action."

"Everybody thinks they do that. You'll be wrong sometimes."

"Inconceivable. It simply took an artificial intelligence to perfect the art of being a person." He said with a yawn. Shadow chuckled softly.

"Did I wake you?"

"Negative, unit couldn't sleep." He grumbled, eyes bleary; "Your waking was the same?"

Shadow smiled as his old habits snuck through when he wasn't concentrating, and spoke in a softer voice:

"I never used to need sleep, why would I be doing so now? Don't let that stop you, though."

"Supposedly this body doesn't need to truly 'sleep' either, yet it benefits from it. Perhaps rest will make you recover faster."

"Well... that's another way in which you are a better person than me: I never learned to sleep properly unless I literally pass out."

"Strange. You were inactive in a stasis pod without complaint when we met."

"Not too many of those around now. Maybe it would help. At least I can force myself to eat easier than sleep."

"We should both learn from Rouge. I only find her asleep these days."

"She always preferred to be awake at night," Shadow said quietly; "I wouldn't be surprised if she's reverted to her old schedule since she's not doing as much these days."

"Then, perhaps she is awake with us, too? It would be fitting that if we all can't sleep, we be awake together."

"Is that fitting, or do you just miss her company?" Shadow asked with a tone that sounded like mocking. Omega put his head in his hands and growled.

"She finds E-123 Omega unbearable now. I hoped if you were here with us, you would help. But you are always brewing bones or stripping aspen. And nobody is helping her with her wing..."

Shadow hummed the same eight bars again, shuffling the eggs around the tealight as he thought. Omega's shoulders rose and fell as he sighed and pulled his face up, now emotionless in the low light. Shadow recognised that it wasn't that he felt any less: he, like Shadow, put effort into communicating with his face, and when he was truly overwhelmed he found he couldn't. Shadow put down his expressions too, and they let themselves be blank and interior while they listened to the rain.

"Are you prepared for the possibility," Shadow began, and Omega looked straight at him so he averted his eyes; "that she won't ever fly again?"

Omega grunted, but Shadow waited for him to find words.

"That is a possibility."

"A likely one."

"One of many."

"The most likely-"

"Unconfirmed!" Omega barked, his face still flat. Shadow waited for a cooldown time to pass. The wind outside battered their windows and caught Omega's attention, he could tell by the flick of his ear.

"Life will go on if she never learns. It isn't the end. It doesn't mean anything bad."

"She isn't. Even. Trying."

"Her choice. The wing was to give her the choice."

"She needs encouragement. Help. She will make the right choice."

"Leave. It." Shadow growled this slightly, and after minutes passed he peered into his nesting den again, as though they might all have hatched in the fifteen minutes or so since he stopped humming to them. Omega watched him, and looked at the eggs. Inside, flightless birds were hopefully dreaming themselves into life. Did they know the full motion of wings that their ancestors had was stripped away from them by humans and their breeding? Was that true, or had Omega just imagined another sin of humanity? Without information at his fingertips, and sometimes, without his cannons, he felt like a flightless bird: he could imagine what it felt like to be perfect, to be able to do what he was truly for, but he physically could not do it no matter how he tried. He didn't possess the muscle to be the robot he was meant to be.

"She has the opportunity to restore to her full self. She cannot reject it." He said flatly. Thoughts of that clicking weight at his wrists and a clear mind that worked how it was supposed to caused a fire to rise in his throat and the smoke threatened to choke him. She needed to be whole. Someone needed to be whole. And she needed to stop avoiding him, so some semblance of their unit could be whole. He rose from the table suddenly, walking as if programmed by rage to her room.

"That's a bad idea," Shadow said feebly as Omega stormed up the stairs.

He knocked, paused, then entered as always.

"Rouge. If you are not awake now, then when-"

He stopped, processed, recalculated his actions, and headed to the window when he saw she was not in her bed; it was now acting as an anchor for a rope, that extended out into the blustering storm - out, and up.

Leaning through her open window, Omega squinted up into the dark to see a shape swooping in the heavy wind, blown as though she were a wayward kite with a warrior's spirit against the storm. Lightning crashed around her as she tumbled, and finally as the air turned she fell to the ground. He shouted out to her but she didn't hear; she had the rope tied around her middle in her hand as she ran against into the wind and stepped into the air, tugging with her operating hand: the prosthetic wing stuck straight out like a sail while her other had to flap to find their balance, but for a moment she held it there, before she was lifted high by a tough gust and flipped.

In emergency without a directive, Omega grabbed the rope and yanked it, causing her to tumble and retract her wing for a moment before she caught it again and screeched something at him.

"Rouge!" He roared into the dark. The storm around them rumbled back like static between them, and she or the storm pulled on the rope against him, but he was stronger than this, or any, storm. He yanked the rope again, and seeing what he was doing she could only try to balance her wings.

As he tugged her the last few metres, his ears were ringing with the pressure of the wind, tricking him to almost think she was laughing. He pulled her in with one arm, while the other held her tether. Her muscles shook in his grip and she was soaked to the bone, her breath heaving. He stared at her, too many feeling to communicate any one through his face. She tried to stand, wriggled the loop around her loose, and swallowed:

"Did - did you - need me?" She said between heavy breaths.

Omega's eyes were crazed to her, and from the doorway she saw Shadow, and watched him take in the rope, the window, and Omega's stiff frame.

"E-everybody be calm... it's not how it looks..." She said quietly. They both glared at her. Omega closed the window firmly, and the room fell quiet. With one wing stuck stiffly out, and the real one closed, she shivered with the rest of her body.

"What did you do?" Shadow whispered. She cringed, but smiled reassuringly, frantically.

"Nothing, not what you think, I was - I was trying to- "

"You could have killed yourself in that storm. " Omega said plainly. Shadow and Rouge both flinched, and then she scowled at him.

"I had it under control, I was just making the most of the weather!" She snapped. The force of her words was diminished by her shivering. Omega couldn't take his eyes from her in a silent rage, but from behind Shadow slowly took a towel that was hanging on a chair and draped it over her where she shook. She started as his hand brushed her shoulder and rolled it with a wince, but took the towel to her hair.

"I have asked you every day about your flying. You could have chosen any of those times, safe times, with either of us, to try to fly. Why have you done this to me?"

He surprised himself when the last words formed in his mouth and fell out before he could chew them. She dried her ears vigorously, and huffed, sitting down on her bed.

"Doesn't matter, I'm in now."

"Why were you out?"

"You saw what you saw."

"She was flying?" Shadow asked quietly at Omega's shoulder. Omega tilted his head slightly and nodded, eyes still on Rouge.

"... Well done."

"It is not well done! It is dangerously and recklessly done!"

Rouge leant her body back on the wall next to her bed and narrowed her eyes at him, almost laughing.

"Sure, isn't that your M.O.? You're not excited?"

"Not to spend your body, no it is not excitement!" He said fiercely. She blinked, unconcerned, and started inspecting the corners of the room, which enraged him so much he had to pace to keep control.

"You- you could have damaged yourself beyond repair" he muttered, twisting his wrists.

"I was fine. I had the rope, I knew I could claw back."

"But why the storm? Days prior weather was plain and warm, illogical - no, counter-logical! Choice specifically defies what is logical choice, Rouge is choosing action of most likely harm for none benefit-"

"So you can take off?" Shadow interrupted Omega's declining speech-patterns , watching leaves blow in the dim light outside. Something had shaken him about the rope, the only thing Omega wasn't worried about, as he was twisting it and thumbing it feverishly as he stared intently out the window. Rouge scoffed.

"Don't make me say it. You already know I can't."

"Why are you trying to fly before you can take off?" He asked. Omega let him drive, and continued stomping, but the lack of righteous rage was ticking him off further. Now they both looked up at the cloud-covered moon, like they were seeing the same thing in the sky.

"I... I need to build the strength in my back somehow. I need those muscles back. But, I gained them by flying when I was small. How do you train those muscles without being in the air?"

Shadow didn't have an answer. He just worried the rope, fraying the end. Rouge sighed dramatically;

"Seriously, I know it was a lifetime ago, but don't you remember throwing me at things? Trusting that I would catch a walking arsenal mid-air with no notice? Raining explosives around me and banking on me dodging? What happened here - just when did I become a china doll to you?"

She asked the last sarcastically, and it stung Omega. He turned on his heel and the pacing lines became a circle.

"You aren't a china doll. We know you're getting stronger." Shadow said to the rope fibres coming off in his hands.

"Oh, I could believe you know that."

They were looking at Omega expectantly. He couldn't believe they didn't understand.

"I owe you two my life. " Omega said suddenly, face plain and voice stranged. They were looking at him, and he couldn't take that now; "I owe you two my life, and I have taken life away from you both. Your bodies would be better without the making of mine, this is indisputable. All I can do to repay that damage is to protect you. You will not let me protect you. You will not let me help you to be restored. It is the only way that I might be your equal again. Why am I not allowed?"

He finally looked between them to find them confused and uncertain, looking to each other for guidance. It infuriated him, but the white-hot feeling of rage didn't feel comfortable in his skin like it did his metal: it was so intertwined with guilt, shame and fear of what might come he spent his days now trying to dispel it, or hold it, in the hopes that someday it would find its home in the destruction of every last piece of shrapnel in the sky surrounding his creator. But it had no place in this home striving for peace.

"I will leave-"

"Please don't. I'd rather you were angry with me than act like this. You think you're the only one who wants to be treated like an actual person here?" Rouge said sharply. His ears drooped.

"How am I treating you?"

"Like I said. Like a doll. Like we're flowers. Like we're flimsy just because we're not... necessarily fighting fit." She gestured to Shadow, who snorted.

"Don't speak for me. Omega has done nothing but offer me a thousand carbohydrates and tell me to sleep. It's... probably not bad advice."

"Well..." She trailed off, breathed out with a groan and shrugged.

"What am I not understanding?"

"Not understanding?"

"I am not understanding something. This is familiar territory for us. You have explained many feelings to me before. I am missing something." He gestured to both of them. The storm outside knocked on the windows again as Shadow leant his head on the glass and thought, yawning behind his mouth then snarling at his own reflection.

"Shouldn't be so tired..."

"Fatigue is logical: you are growing plasma and bone marrow tissue."

"And like I keep saying, it shouldn't be hard. This... I am not as impressive as I should be." He muttered with a bite in his tone. Rouge sniffed in agreement.

"At least yours will grow back eventually."

She finally reached behind her and removed the prosthetic wing with a small hiss as she wriggled it free, and took the control from her hand.

"These years have been humbling, haven't they?"

Shadow was speaking to himself, or the moon, or the storm. But it was Omega who sat himself in the chair opposite the bed to consider this.

Humbling was the word. Omega's ego had been slowly dying since his body first started to betray him, and had found itself on life support while he was a flailing, uncoordinated boar that needed to be washed, fed and moved by others. And then he'd broken her. And since then, he'd never been proud.

But they? They had every reason to be proud. They had been generous, heroic, ingenius and indomitable. They had endured the complete execution of their old way of life, turned Omega into something functional, and worked tirelessly through injury and tragedy. How could they not be proud of themselves?

His eyes were rested on the wing in her hand, before they made their way to her disgusted face as she fiddled with the silicone.

"Query: do you want to fly again?"

"Yes and no," She hummed; "I already... grieved it. I learned to see myself without my wings. I thought about getting the other removed too, so it'd feel final, y'know?"

Her remaining wing flitted limply like it heard and feared for its life, before it settled back around her side in a self-hug.

"And no?" Shadow prompted; subtly he tried to retwine the rope he had begun to disassemble when he met her eyes guiltily with a handful of fibres. She half smiled, and shrugged;

"But also... how can I ever let go of that? It's who I am, or who I was."

"This is understood. I do not know what course of action I would take if my body could be restored to me." Omega said aloud the guilty question he tried to ignore.

She smiled sadly at him, and nodded; "Yeah, except this isn't even... I only want it if I know I can be good at it. The best. Anything less than perfect flight is not worth having."

"Because you'll fall?"

"No! Not like that! I mean... it's something I've always been good at. I've always been good at everything, obviously , but this is something I was really good at, even for my age, even in my family. I'm fast, I'm strong, my wings are strong. That's who I am. So, having to learn how to fly again, like some kind of messy toddler? No. I'd rather people think I simply chose to never fly again than see me as I am now."

She waved an arm over herself, brushing a scuff she'd gained from her fall. Omega turned the idea of being humbled, and shame, and tried to turn them from internal feelings to something he imagined his mightiest friends could feel. Shadow wound his cord and met Omega's eyes briefly as he turned his body on the window to face her.

"Nobody would think less of you. But... you feel like they wouldn't be impressed by you. I understand that, believe me. We'll keep your secret."

"Agreed. Never speak of potential exploitations to outsiders." Omega nodded, and she laughed slightly at this not-joke, but he pressed on; "This feeling is understood. Maintaining image of infallibility; if I had this I would aim for this too. What is not understood is effort to maintain image with us. Can we not trust eachother with these exploitable points?"

"We can. But it's vulnerable; an unnatural state for arrogant beasts." Shadow said flatly, and Rouge laughed again. She'd tucked herself into the towel, and although she wasn't shivering her muscles still twitched from the effort they'd been under.

"That, and I thought I could get you to stop fretting about me. I thought I could pretend I wasn't trying, then turn around one day and just - show you I could do it . Like I wasn't really even having to try. Like I'm just that good. And then maybe you'd see me like I want to be seen again, and not like some sopping sad thing you have to spend all your waking hours worrying about me."

Omega squinted at her, while she shrunk into her shoulders and sort-of smiled cheekily.

"How long am I expected to live?"

"Geez, what? Why'd you ask?"

"I have forgotten if we discussed this."

"If you're like me, anywhere between the normal 80 years, and infinite."

Omega nodded thanks to Shadow, then turned to Rouge:

"I predict I am going to worry about you for at minimum 80 years. I suspect I am going to worry about Shadow for some time between 80 and infinite years. I have observed that the nature of being a person is worrying about what is essential; it is odd and dull and I hate it. I cannot change it."

She cackled softly, snort-laughing. Omega had learned he had a skill for making her laugh by pausing in the rhythm of his old mechanical voice box, and it comforted them all. Shadow finally coiled the poorly repaired rope and smiled at her.

"I think I can make the same promise, so it stands to reason you shouldn't bother trying to save our nerves again. Especially in a way that involves throwing yourself out the window. That's not comforting."

"Noted. C an't promise it won't happen again. But as Omega will tell you, I was doing s o-o - o-o good, right Omega? I'm just such a quick learner, so clever, so impressive." She snickered. Unbidden the image of her being battered by the winds returned and he shivered.

"It was impressive. I don't know how to fly. Was it going well?"

"Not really, but that one bit when you were holding the rope tight, and the wind caught the fake one just right - I almost felt like I was flying again..." she trailed off, eyes on the dark sky and wistful, and she yawned.

"When you are rested, we can do that. If you miss being thrown at enemies in battle, I could also try throwing you into the air to get started."

"That sounds really embarrassing."

"This is fine: there will be nobody to be embarrassed in front of. We are impressed by you."