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The air above the house lays still, cold and dry, yet on it hangs the faint scent of precipitation. Snow. Hours away, maybe even a day, but it’ll be here. It’ll likely melt quickly. The atmosphere isn’t quite cold enough to keep snow for long yet. Even now, in the dead of night, the temperature sits a few degrees above freezing. It won't warm up again tomorrow, though. Even now, he can see clouds beginning to coat the sky.
He's been out here for hours. He couldn’t sleep. Not with all thoughts of Maria in his head – God, he wishes they would quiet down. It helps to look up at the stars. They’re easier to see, what with the Wachowski’s house tucked in the middle of the woods, away from any light pollution. Yet, in the hours since he’s been out here, they’ve been slowly covered up by the clouds.
The wind gusts again, and the window into the attic squeaks. Shadow tenses. Why he chose to come up to the roof, almost directly above the three little animals that would confront him about being outside, he doesn’t know. He could have run out to the backyard, with several hundred free square feet. He should have. He didn’t. Maybe he wants to be confronted. He wishes it were her sitting out here with him, but maybe other company would work too. Even if only to keep an eye on him. Nobody emerges from the window entrance, though. The three are still asleep in the attic.
His next breath comes out in a puff of steam. The chill has sunk into his bones. It’s probably time to go back inside. He can’t see Orion anymore, anyways.
Carefully, stiffly, he picks himself up off the shingles of the roof. His muscles feel as spongey and solid as concrete, and his joints protest with his movement, pulling back against him. As he stands, he curls his hands into his chest, his fingers jerking with mechanized movement as he closes them against his palms. He turns away from the circular window, creeping quietly to the edge of the roof. It’s not too hard, even if he’s too cold to teleport off.
After lowering his body off the edge of the roof, hanging on by his hands, he lets go, dropping into the grass of the back lawn. There’s a lawn chair pulled up to the edge, the one he used to be able to reach it into climb up in the first place. He puts it back to where it was on the pile in the corner of the back patio, making sure it looks exactly like it did. Then he makes a last round of everything he touched or may have disturbed. Best to make sure no one knows he was out here.
Just as he’s about to turn back inside, he hears a croak from the side of the house.
It gives him pause. For a second, he stands, listening. His rotating ear picks up on the croak a second time, and he turns, looking at one of the window wells on the side of the house.
Another croak.
There shouldn’t be frogs out here. It’s too cold. It’s nearly winter. Snow is coming tomorrow. He’s surprised it’s still alive; Frogs are cold-blooded, according to Maria, and it’s much too cold out here for such an animal. It’s too cold for him out here.
For some reason, he finds himself taking a step towards the window well. This isn’t his problem. He should get back inside, every second he spends out here is a second closer to getting in trouble. A frog can figure itself out. They’ve been doing it for millions of years.
Yet he kneels next to the window well, peering down into it.
Another long croak, deep and wobbling. Shadow’s eyes are well adjusted to the dark, but it still takes a moment to find the creature, well-hidden beneath brown leaves from the last season. It doesn’t move. He can’t tell that it’s breathing, except that it wails again.
It’s going to die out here. Cold. Alone. Screaming for someone to hear when everyone else has already left. He knows the feeling. It’s how he thought he’d die, too.
What can he do with it?
He knows that frogs live near water sources. There’s a small creek not far from the house. That still seems too cold, but he has no idea what frogs do in the winter, where they go. He's never thought about it before.
Shadow glances up at the house. It’s certainly warm inside. But the Wachowskis would not appreciate a small frog loose in their house, no matter how small. Maybe he can contain it somehow, keep it safe and comfortable and warm, until he can figure out where it’s supposed to be.
Still, that opens the risk of one of the Wachowskis finding the frog. He’s spent less than two weeks in their house. He has no idea how far they’re willing to bend on this second chance they’ve given him.
The box would only be able to hold it for a day or two at most, anyways. He has no idea what taking care of a frog looks like. Does it need to be in water constantly, like a fish? Would it do okay if it were completely dry? What does a frog even eat? He could find out, maybe. Prod one of the others carefully, find out what they know about frogs. Or- Sonic introduced him to the ‘internet’ recently, which is supposedly like having every single book on one flat screen. If he could steal Sonic’s device, his phone, he could look it up. Of course, if he managed that, he could just look up where to put a frog in the wintertime. That also posed much higher risk.
But he can’t just leave it here.
He doesn’t know where he’d be if anyone had just left him. As slowly as he’s coming around to the idea, his most recent example is Sonic pulling him out of Nevada and inviting them into their house, instead. He can maybe admit it's a little better here. And here he is, preparing to ruin that for a small animal.
The frog lets out another lonely cry. Shadow sighs, looking down at it. Then he nods to it, a silent promise to come back, and stands back up.
Quietly, he slides open the door in from the back patio. Almost completely silent, which is much better than he can say for the door to the guest bedroom. If he thought he could get away with oiling it, he would, but that blue hedgehog would notice if he ever caught him up and about without hearing the door. Upon stepping inside, he crouches to take off his shoes; The metal makes for very loud footsteps on the tile of the kitchen. He’s careful to keep his rings on.
After that, he steps off the back patio mat, walking as quickly as he can through the living room while still avoiding the creaky spots under the carpet. He made it his main goal to find them his first night here. Figured that if he was going to get kicked out for sneaking around, he better do it as soon as possible. Nothing had happened.
He's on guard, ears up and listening, for anything to happen. A couple of times, his own breathing has tricked him into thinking he’d been caught. He takes care to not make that mistake again.
So he doesn’t. When he steps into the kitchen and hears a second set of breathing lungs, he pauses, holds his breath, and listens.
That is certainly a different person’s breathing.
Shadow nearly walks out and abandons the whole mission until he notices something. The rhythm of the breathing. Slow and steady. Asleep.
Okay. He’ll just have to be very quiet and very careful. He can do that. It’s just like when Maria had him steal money and keycards off the scientists. He’s done that loads of times. He wishes he’d get the end satisfaction of- of watching newly bought movies with her, playing with dolls and figurines the professor would pretend he bought himself. But maybe now, he can stop this frog from being someone else’s Maria.
Silently, he takes another step into the kitchen. Then another. Another, until he’s confident he can walk without getting caught. He keeps an ear on the other breathing as he walks.
Yet as he comes upon the body collapsed against the table, he freezes once again. It’s Tom. Sonic’s father. The one he hit. The one he nearly killed.
The one that no one will let him alone in a room with.
It happened, once. You’d think it’d be less common, what with a house full of four other people and only so many rooms, but it was barely four days into him staying in the house. He hadn’t even known Tom was in the room. If he had, he wouldn’t have gone in. But he was. And he hadn’t said a word until Knuckles had walked in on them.
Of course, the echidna was predictably quick to action. He’d… almost left that day. But it was too cold outside, and the whole family kept too close an eye on him after that.
Not that they’d ever really stopped looking at him like that.
He doesn’t realize there’s blood rushing loud in his ears until he notices he can’t hear breathing anymore.
His vision focuses back in, but Tom is still slumped over the table. There’s no one awake in the house, either.
He’s fine. Mission’s still on. He just has to make sure no one wakes up, not Tom, not anyone else. And if they do, he can just run. Damn the frog.
He'd rather disappoint the frog than this family, he thinks.
Damn hedgehog.
Quietly, he begins opening cupboards. He doesn’t know which of these has containers in them – an oversight. Or which of them are squeaky, which is an even bigger oversight he realizes when a loud sound of metal against metal rings around the kitchen and all he has to show for it is a bunch of bowls.
He tenses on the counter, ears flickering behind him. Electricity burns underneath his skin, only needing a spark to get him out of there. Yet the breathing doesn’t waver. He slightly lifts the door when he closes it again, and it doesn’t squeak.
Eventually, he finds the cabinet with the tupperware. He picks one out of the bottom, one that doesn’t get used, and takes the most worn lid he can find. Tall enough for the little frog, enough space to keep it in until morning. Until he can figure out a way to steal Sonic’s phone from him.
Before he leaves the kitchen, he casts a last studying glance at the man slumped against the table. Tom has his arms crossed under his head, laying sideways; He’s definitely asleep, his eyes clearly closed in the white light brushing his face from the open screen in front of him. What was he doing, to fall asleep in the middle of the kitchen?
Curiosity gets the better of him. Silently, holding his breath, he creeps towards the table to look at the stuff strewn around him.
There’s a notebook open next to him, spiraled but still split down the middle. Shadow furrows his eyebrows, tipping his head to read it; Even in the dim light, he can see a bunch of math, several different separated sections with addresses heading them. Big numbers, beginning with dollar signs. Budgeting. Budgeting what, he doesn’t know, but something big. Curiously, he turns his attention to the device open in front of him; The screen is a bunch of bullet points under the label ‘Facts & Features’, and the banner at the top reads ‘Zillow’.
He loses interest in the contents of the screen the second he realizes that he no longer needs to risk himself by trying to steal Sonic’s device. He has this one right in front of him. It'll be easier on him, anyway; Sonic used the fox’s laptop to show him a website he called ‘Cool Math Games’. He already knows how to use the computer. He's even more familiar with them, though the ones he used to see the scientists use were not nearly so thin or compact. Nor did they have whatever the 'internet' is, which he still doesn't quite understand - but that's not new for him.
Still keeping a careful eye on Tom, Shadow creeps to the edge of the table and reaches for the computer. He does his best to keep his heart rate in check, though he can't do much about how loud it gets. Slowly, he grasps the edges and pulls it towards him.
He lets out a silent breath when the computer sits in front of him and Tom, barely two feet away, stays asleep.
The keyboard is blessedly silent. He hits the plus sign like Sonic showed him to, typing in his question at the top bar and hitting enter.
Where do frogs go in the winter?
After a second, a new screen loads. Frogs hibernate in the winter and will find someplace to stay. Often, they stay in the water, or they find an animal burrow on land or a compost pile. This keeps them warm and from losing too much water.
Okay. That’s good, it means he can take it to the river tomorrow. It’ll figure itself out from there.
How to take care of a frog?
Leave a small dish of clean, non-chlorinated water in the enclosure. Change water regularly. Adolescent frogs should be fed an appropriate proportion of food, such as mealworms, once every 2-3 days, and adult frogs 2-3 times a week.
The frog can probably survive until he can move it tomorrow. He can manage the water otherwise. Still, he’d like to make sure there are no other factors to consider. He reads on.
If only Sonic had told him how easy it was to get lost in it.
“Hey, bud. What are you doing?”
Shadow startles, and he’s suddenly on the other side of the room, fizzling electricity cooling down under his skin. Tom is sitting up in his chair at the table, completely awake and looking at him. He tenses, ready to bolt.
“You’re okay, you’re not in trouble,” Tom says quickly, holding up a hand. “Relax.”
Shadow narrows his eyes.
“Please,” the man adds. “I can see you bristling.”
Shadow forces himself to relax, flattening his fur and loosening his posture. He waits, waits for Tom to tell him to go back up to his room, to detail exactly what he did wrong tonight; Yet Tom just smiles at him, gesturing him over. He even pulls a chair up next to him and pats the seat. What does that mean?
A few seconds, and the man doesn’t back down, so Shadow very carefully creeps up to his side. This doesn’t make any sense. Tom avoids him. Shadow almost killed him – why is he acting like being alone with him in the middle of the night is perfectly normal? It’s not. Maybe he’s waiting for one of his sons to come down. Maybe he’s already alerted them. But he has his instructions. He pulls himself up on the chair, watching Tom cautiously.
“What were you doing?” he repeats, nodding at the computer.
Shadow picks up on the safest answer. “I shouldn't have touched it.”
“No, you’re good. I'm not mad, just curious.”
Liar.
He considers his options. How much to tell him, how much he’ll find out anyway, what he can lie his way out of. Eventually, he settles on, “I was reading.”
“Oh?” Tom prompts, humming. “What about?”
Even though he already asked the question, he still reaches for the computer, pulling it back to face him. He still seems to wait for an answer, though, so he says, “Frogs.”
“Frogs, huh?” Tom scrolls for a minute. “How to take care of frogs? What for?”
He doesn’t answer.
Tom glances up at him, raising an eyebrow. Shadow knows he’s been caught, yet the man’s expression is easy, light. “There’s not a frog in my house, is there?”
Shadow stiffens. “No.”
Tom nods. “Ah. Still outside, then. Is that what you were gonna put it in?” He gestures at the tupperware Shadow left on the table next to him. Another oversight. He nods slowly. “Maddie will kill me if I let you do that, but we have some other containers you can use. Where’d you find the frog?”
Still, he doesn't yell or lecture or tell Shadow he was wrong to go outside, that he should still be in bed in the guest room where they know where he is. It’s confusing. With furrowed brows, Shadow responds, “In a window well. Outside. It’s stuck. It’ll freeze in the cold.”
“So you were going to bring it in here,” Tom finishes. “Did you have a plan after that?”
Shadow glances at the laptop. “I was going to bring it to the creek tomorrow.”
The man nods, letting silence stretch for a few moments as he clicks around the laptop. Then he’s closing it, standing and taking the tupperware from the table.
He's going to have to think of a new plan for the frog. Or that’s what he thinks, before Tom pulls out a different container from a different cupboard, an emptied cottage cheese. He offers it out to Shadow.
Shadow looks up at him, then slowly takes the container. Tom says, “Alright. Where is it?”
Shadow hesitates for a few seconds. It’s highly likely he’s misconstruing social cues – is Tom actually offering to help him with the frog? Or is he taking it over for himself? Either way, he’s already in trouble, and the frog will get the help. He just hopes the man doesn’t want to hurt the creature. He turns for the back door.
While Shadow puts his shoes back on, Tom goes to grab his own pair. It's still cold out, maybe colder. He leads around the house to the window well. After stopping in front of it, before he can say anything, the frog exclaims, loud and long.
“It doesn't sound very happy,” Tom comments.
“No, it doesn’t.”
Shadow kneels next to the window well, cracking open the container. He studies the frog and its surroundings, marking escape points and places he can corner him; He can't imagine the frog will be very happy to be helped. He certainly wasn't. Then, carefully, he leans over the side of the well and starts trying to scoop the frog into the container.
It shifts a little bit, reeling away as the container descends on it, but Shadow lifts the container with the frog in it out of the window well.
Before he can put the lid on, the frog hops right back out, startling Shadow back. He sits, braced in the grass, as the frog settles on the ground next to him.
Tom snickers to himself, crouching where he stands. “Slippery,” he comments, grinning wryly.
Shadow resituates himself, setting the container in the grass. Then he shifts closer to the frog until he can pick it up in his hand. The creature wriggles and writhes within the confines of his fingers, and he struggles to keep a good grip on it without hurting it. It struggles free again before he can put it in the container, letting out another distressed croak.
“Can I help?” Tom asks him, tipping his head at the little animal sitting again in the grass.
Shadow nods, and the man shifts on his legs. “Okay. You grab the bucket and the lid, I’ll keep it in place and scoop him in.”
As he grabs the container, Tom cups his hands and places them over the creature. This keeps it in place as Shadow moves the container to just in front of his hands, lid at the ready. Tom picks the frog up, struggling to keep it in his fingers. As he hovers just over the container, the frog almost wiggles out of his grip; It half-falls, but Tom scoops it out of the air and deposits it into the container. Quickly, Shadow seals the lid shut on top of its wails.
“Okay, got ‘em,” Tom says, clapping his hands together. He stands. “What say we go drop off the little guy right now?”
Now? In the middle of the night? Shadow looks up at him with furrowed brows.
“Well, I don’t have anything better to do,” Tom says. “Unless you were planning on going back up to sleep.”
Shadow shakes his head. It wouldn’t work; He knows from experience.
“Okay, then. Let’s go inside, I’ll grab my keys and a coat,” Tom says quietly.
So Shadow picks up the container with the frog and hesitantly follows him back inside.
Stepping back into the house causes him a wave of uncertainty. Trailing behind the man that he nearly killed as he heads into the kitchen, Shadow says quietly, “I can take it to the creek.”
Tom waves him off easily; Too easily. Does he have an ulterior motive? Or is he really just this stupid? Shadow can’t imagine him running off to the middle of the woods alone with the alien who tried to kill him, without telling anybody else where they’re going, unless he has something planned. Something he wants.
“It’s cold outside. I can drive you. There’s a pulloff into the creek, so you don’t have to trek through the woods to get to it.” Tom sends him a smile. “It won’t take too long. Then you don’t have to worry about doing it tomorrow, either.”
Still, Shadow doesn’t like the idea. He doesn’t know what his sons would think about them being alone – and he doesn’t want to find out what they’d do.
“It’s not smart to be alone with me,” he says quietly, following him to the front door.
Tom pulls open the closet next to the door. “Why not?” he asks. “I trust you.”
“Your family doesn’t.”
“Is there a good reason?” he hums neutrally, pulling an adult winter coat from the closet.
“I tried to kill you,” Shadow reminds, frustrated that he has to spell it out. What’s the point of pretending like he doesn't know what he’s talking about?
Tom just pulls another coat out. A red one. He suspects it's Sonic’s; It’s the exact shade of his shoes. Shadow pauses for a second; Was he wrong? Is Tom going to bring Sonic with them? Not that he’d necessarily mind that. As annoying as the blue hedgehog is, he'd prefer someone went with them over someone finding out they were alone later.
“I think that if you were going to try again, you would have done it a lot earlier than this,” Tom says lightly.
“I know that. But your sons don’t.”
A ridiculously loud sound takes their attention. Footsteps stumbling down the stairs. It takes a few long seconds for the body to get all the way down and make its way towards them. Shadow puts a few feet of distance between himself and Tom as a precaution, earning a strange look for it.
Eventually, a blue body peers into the room with tired eyes, almost tipping over entirely. Sonic’s gaze sharpens as it lands on him, and he has an urge to move even further away.
“Whatcha guys doin’?” Sonic asks, like he’s still half asleep. “It’s like… four in the morning.”
“We’re gonna take a frog down to the creek so it can hibernate properly,” Tom responds, gesturing at the container Shadow still holds.
Sonic stares at him. “…It’s four in the morning.”
The man laughs quietly. “Yeah, bud, I know. Neither of us were sleeping, though, and I was bored.”
For a second, the hedgehog glances between them. “Can I come with you?”
Finally. He’d feel much more comfortable if he did. Yet Tom – Tom shakes his head. “No, bud, you should go back to sleep. Sorry, we didn’t mean to wake you up. We won’t be gone long, twenty minutes tops.”
It seems to take a second for that to register in his head. “Oh,” Sonic says, nodding. “Yeah, okay. Don't get eaten by any bears, okay?” He throws up a lazy finger gun and turns around to drag himself back up the stairs.
Shadow looks up at Tom, eyebrows raised. He just let him go? Just like that? He’s not bringing him along. He’s not bringing anyone along. He’s surprised Sonic agreed to it, too. If it had been either of the other two, Shadow’s sure he'd be sent upstairs and his frog would be taken care of without him.
“Well, should we go?” Tom says, smiling. He pulls open the door and nods outside.
A little unbalanced, Shadow creeps outside. Tom takes the head and walks to his truck, climbing inside. After a long, uncertain moment of standing at the boundary of the house, Shadow circles the truck and gets into the passenger seat.
He realizes, a little distantly, that he’s never actually been inside a vehicle before. He’s seen them in movies, but he’s never been in one. And this one is certainly more futuristic and unfamiliar than what he’s used to.
As the truck rumbles underneath them, Shadow carefully sets the container in his lap. Tom holds up the red coat; “If you get cold, I want you to wear this. Okay?” Then he turns, setting it in the back seat. “And put your seatbelt on. It's behind you, the buckle’s down there.”
After glancing at Tom’s seatbelt, Shadow copies its position, pulling it from behind him and pushing it into the buckle until it clicks. Then the truck is moving, an unnatural feeling of traveling without effort. He turns his attention to the window, watching the trees blur by.
Less than four minutes later, the truck pulls off the road and turns off. Shadow gets out and follows Tom down a clear path in the woods that leads directly to an area next to the creek.
It’s still cold out. The woods are nearly quiet, the loudest sound being their footsteps in the dirt and the faint sound of slowly running water. Shadow does his best to keep within Tom’s view, but the man doesn't pay much attention to him, instead absentmindedly casting his gaze to his surroundings.
The creek is small. It's expected, in the winter. Shadow holds the container carefully, kneeling at the water’s edge, likely getting dirt in his fur. He lowers the container to the floor, tipping it on its side. He makes sure the lip is touching the dirt before carefully prying the lid off. He slowly tips the container up, giving the frog time to get out by itself. It does, hopping out into the dirt.
He watches it sit there for a few seconds. Then it takes off for the water, hopping into the edge and settling down. Its back creates a divot on the surface of the stream, a little bump where the creek still runs over it. He drops his weight onto his legs, sitting on them instead of kneeling. His hands fold between his knees, body falling lax.
The water is beautiful. The woods are lit by the moon still peeking around the clouds and the truck’s headlights, and it shines off the surface of the creek in a mix of white and yellow light. Even so thin, there’s enough running water to be a couple inches deep. There’s no other living things than the frog, but there is moss and underwater plants that shift with the peaceful flow of the water. With it, something settles in his chest.
Footsteps make his ears twitch. He nearly forgot Tom was still there with him. “The little guy was probably thirsty,” he comments, standing next to him. “It’s hard for them to get out of our window wells, even when it’s still warm. Maddie usually props up little boards to help them crawl out, but she put them all away because we thought they’d all be gone by now.”
Shadow’s prepared to be told to get up, so they can go back to the house, but instead Tom bends to settle in the dead grass and the dirt right there next to him. He doesn’t say anything else, either, sitting quietly with his attention similarly on the water and the frog.
Eventually, Shadow can’t handle it anymore.
“You don’t feel the slightest bit uneasy?” Shadow asks quietly, keeping his eyes on the river. “Being out here with me.”
Tom hums. “You want the truth?” he asks, eyes flickering over the surface of the creek.
Shadow gives him a single small nod.
“No. I don’t.” He quirks a smile. “Isn’t that interesting? But I’m not scared of you. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. And I genuinely can’t believe that you’d do it again.”
“But I’m…” He curls his fist, a small spark of red flickering over his fur. “Dangerous.” He looks up at him. “What if I do it on accident?”
“Then it would be an accident,” Tom responds quietly. “You’re a kid. It’s not your fault. I’m not going to avoid you just because you might do something on accident. Besides, I trust you to keep it under control – or at least warn me if you think something might happen.”
“Your family doesn’t think so,” Shadow mutters. “They watch me like a hawk. For good reason.”
Tom looks at him for a minute. Just- examines him, something undiscernible in his expression. “Why are we talking about this?” he eventually asks, gentle.
Shadow glances up at him, eyes just a little too wide. “I don’t think I deserve your trust,” he says. “Your wife. She said the same thing to me. I am… struggling to understand.”
Tom nods thoughtfully. “That's alright,” he says. “You can take your time. My opinion isn't going to be changing.”
“Why?” he whispers.
“You’re a kid,” Tom says simply. “Shadow, as long as you're in my house, you're my kid. You deserve to feel safe. I’ll talk to the boys, okay?”
“You don't have to,” he says quietly.
Tom smiles at him. “I know.”
Shadow turns back to the river. He feels ill. He still hasn’t figured out what Tom wants. Why he’s out here in the middle of the night with an alien he has no real responsibility for, to help him return a frog he has no reason to care about. He doesn’t get it.
They sit there for a few more minutes. The frog doesn’t move, but it sits there, breathing, still. As does Shadow. The night is peaceful. The water flows quietly. Cold sinks into his bones.
Eventually, Tom shifts. “We better go back. It’s pretty cold out here.” He stands, looking down like he’s going to offer Shadow a hand, then thinking better of it. “Come on.”
Shadow keeps his eye on the frog as long as he can, until the truck pulls back out onto the road.
He almost expects someone to be waiting for them back at the house. A scowling red echidna, a protective little fox. Anger in the eyes of a woman who has been so needlessly kind to him as of yet. But the house stays quiet, and only two souls are awake within it.
At the hallway, Shadow pauses, hesitating. The frog has been returned; He has no real reason to still be about the house, instead of in the guest room like he’s expected to be. Especially since Tom is already out here, residing in the kitchen. He should really just go back to the room. But he knows he’s not going to be able to sleep, and he can’t fathom sitting in the room for another few hours with no company but his own head. He can feel it – waiting, hungry, ready to tear into him again. Desperate as he is to tread carefully in this house, he finds he wants to face that even less.
Tom catches his hesitation. He tips his head, waving him in behind him. Asking Shadow to join him.
Instinctively, he pauses. He considers what the other three would think. Yet Maddie knows he hadn't hurt any of them even though he's had the chance. Sonic let them go to the forest by themselves, not worried enough to accompany them. Tom himself said he trusts him not to hurt him even accidentally. That’s majority, right?
He follows Tom back to the table.
The man pulls out the chair he was sitting in, nodding at the seat next to him. As Shadow sits, though, Tom pauses. “Huh,” he says. “I guess I’m hungry. What about you? Do you want anything?”
Shadow considers. He… doesn’t know. The numbness hasn’t quite worn off yet. Eventually, he settles on a shrug.
“Alright, tell you what,” Tom says, patting the back of his chair. “The boys have a certain snack they really like. I’ll make it, and you can tell me what you think. Is that good?”
Shadow nods. So Tom sets to work, and Shadow waits for him; He folds his arms on the table and sets his chin on them, trying to keep track of the man behind him using his hearing. He hears him taking something from one side of the counter. Something else from a drawer. Metal scraping against itself from another drawer. Something from the pantry. Then he settles in one place for a bit, the rustle of plastic and the dull sound of something being cut.
“You can use that if you want to,” Tom says out of the blue. Shadow almost sits up, trying to figure out what he’s talking about – and it’s only then he realizes he’s been looking at the laptop on the table with his attention behind him.
“Really?” he asks.
“Sure. I don’t mind,” Tom says, a smile in his voice. “The only one not allowed to use it is Sonic. I had to replace my computer a few months ago because he somehow managed to download thirteen different viruses in the seven minutes he had it.”
Shadow didn’t know a computer could get viruses, but he’s not going to ask about it. Slowly, he reaches for the laptop – but Tom doesn’t take it back and he doesn’t pull the rug under him. He settles it in front of him, then nearly immediately gets pulled back into the information on frogs.
As he reads about a frog’s life cycle, he loses track of both time and Tom until a pale hand sets a plate in front of him. Shadow raises his head and blinks, the light of the screen temporarily blinding him to the dark of the rest of the kitchen. His eyes adjust to Tom sitting back down next to him, smirking.
“How’s that for an old man, huh?” he says, weirdly proud. There’s another plate in front of him.
After receiving a strange look, he elaborates, “The boys think I do it wrong. They always ask Maddie to do it over me. I’m not sure what their issue is, though. Something about the way I cut it, but it looks just fine to me.”
Shadow inspects the plate curiously. “What is it?” he asks.
Tom shrugs. “It’s just peanut butter on apple slices. It’s the easiest thing in the world, but the boys treat it like crack, I swear.”
He doesn’t know what crack is, either, but he supposes it’s worth a shot. Everything he’s eaten in this house has been completely worth it. After Tom picks up one of the slices and bites it in half, Shadow copies his technique. The apple is immediately uncomfortably sticky on the skin of his finger pads. Yet when he takes a bite, the natural sweetness of the apple and the nuttiness of the peanut butter mixes on his tongue.
Damn. Loathe is he to admit it, that blue hedgehog may have good taste.
“What do you think?” Tom asks him knowingly after he’s popped the rest in his mouth.
“Good,” he says without hesitation, nodding. A grin grows on the man’s face, a fist pumping at his side. Childish. No wonder Sonic loves him so much.
As Shadow works through the pile of slices in front of him and scrolls absently on the computer, Tom pulls his notebook closer to him and flips to a different page. After picking up his pen, the sound of strokes against the paper joins the silence of the house.
The very last slice on his plate gives him pause. He stops, looking at it, the imprint of the light on the screen over his vision. Suddenly, he feels heavy, long tendrils of guilt squeezing his lungs and crushing his heart.
He didn’t know he could ever regret so heavily a decision he had been so confident making. His deep need to punish the man who ordered him in stasis for so long only led to the near death of a man who has still treated him so kindly. He thought killing Walters was necessary, that he needed it in order to have peace of mind; Yet all he has now is another weight to carry.
The same weight compels him to turn, looking at Tom until he catches his attention. “I am sorry,” he says, gaze flickering down. Fighting his own physical reaction doesn’t entirely stop his ears from depressing into his head. “For hurting you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
In his peripherals, an inexplicable smile grows over Tom’s face. “Thank you,” he says warmly. “I forgive you, Shadow.”
The claws around his lungs release so quickly it shocks a shaky inhale into him. He can suddenly breathe.
Tom only smiles a little softer at him, then turns back to the notebook. Like it’s that simple.
Maybe it is that simple.
The night stretches on, and the air between himself and Tom is surprisingly light. He wonders if it was only him producing the tension he felt before, of which he didn’t even notice until it was already gone. Maybe this family just really is that quick to forgive. The notion pushes against his suspicious nature, and while he refuses to fully believe it, the thought will not leave his mind.
He reads on about frogs. Then toads. Then he discovers something called a salamander, and at that point, his head is sunk deep into his arms, two fingers lazily scrolling through pages for half-lidded eyes. He doesn’t recognize his exhaustion before it’s already taken him over, and he drifts off into that state of unconsciousness that still hangs on by enough of a thread for him to believe he’s awake.
Despite this, he doesn’t react when the light of the laptop in front of him disappears. Nor when the chair next to him scrapes away from the table, when hands gently tuck under his legs and behind his back.
In the deep thralls of his mind, the arms that pick him up from the chair as carefully as possible are hers. Some part of him knows this is impossible; Her smiling face, her soft sweater, her long hair, is all gently replaced with the image of Tom in his thoughts. He acknowledges that it’s Tom who’s picked him up into his arms, that it’s Tom’s chest his head loosely falls against. It doesn’t unbalance him enough to require any action.
The steady motion of the man walking sways him comfortably further into sleep. He barely registers a mattress beneath him, arms gingerly pulling out from under him, blankets tucking over his body.
The bed pulls the rest of him under. For the remaining long hours of the night, he sleeps dreamlessly.