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‘Do you really need to be doing all that?’
Rouge exhaled and gave Shadow a pointed look in her dressing table mirror. ‘Yes. Now be quiet.’
He began to pace, but her room in GUN’s headquarters was so cluttered that he had to give up and curl up in a chair in the corner. ‘… What are you even doing?’
Rouge fought the urge to throw her curling irons at him. They were right there, cooling down, but she resisted. She waved an eyeshadow palette in his direction and said. ‘Quit complaining. We need a distraction when we go to the target location, which means I need to turn every head in the room.’
‘We could trip the fire alarm. It would be less work.’
‘If everyone has to leave, then it means we can’t stay there. Good grief! I’ll be done in a few minutes.’
‘You’ve been saying you’ll be done in a few minutes for an hour and a half.’ Shadow fell silent, and when she glanced at him in the mirror, she saw that he was watching her, resting his head in one hand.
‘What?’
‘Nothing?’
‘It’s clearly not nothing.’
Shadow shifted in his chair. Unlike her, he’d done nothing to make himself presentable, and he didn’t need to. His regenerative abilities meant that he had no choice but to look all right, even when he didn’t. Even so, his body couldn’t hide everything. He still got faint shadows under his eyes when he was tired, and his fur lost a little of its lustre whenever he attempted to work himself into an early grave.
‘… Why are you doing this?’
She tapped a brush against the palette, shaking off loose powder, and gave him a sceptical look. ‘Do you have short-term memory loss on top of your amnesia now? I just said it was for the mission.’
No,’ he said, and his ears twitched with frustration. ‘You do this kind of thing all the time, even when it’s not for a mission. The…’ He gestured vaguely, and his hand fell limp. ‘The fur. The makeup. The stuff that looks like makeup, but it isn’t.’
Rouge turned toward him, crossing one leg over the other. She didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. ‘Skincare.’
‘Yes. That.’ He waited for her answer, and she realised that he wasn’t going to change the subject.
‘Because I like it. Do I really need a reason?’
His eyes flickered, and he said, ‘You’re only going to live for so long. Do you really want to spend so many hours of your life on all of this?’
Rouge stiffened. ‘Unlike you, some of us prefer to fill our days with things we enjoy rather than sulking and moping around.’
There was a long silence, followed by both of them forcing out a ‘sorry’ at the same time, as though they would have an allergic reaction if they left the word sitting on their tongues for too long.
Shadow shifted his weight in his chair, and when he spoke again, there was something different about his voice. It was softer. It sounded like he was in pain. ‘Maria liked this kind of thing. I think. I don’t remember my time aboard the Ark very well.’ He hesitated, and she kept applying her eyeshadow, not wanting to scare him off by making it obvious that she was hanging on his every word.
‘She liked to look nice,’ he said. ‘She liked dresses and bows and shoes and all that.’ He grimaced, half-hiding his face in one hand. ‘She dressed me up sometimes. There weren’t any other children on the Ark… other than Abraham.’
‘I know Abe loved her, but I hardly think that he would have worn a pinafore for her sake.’
Shadow scoffed. ‘No, definitely not. He had his limits.’ His gaze unfocused. ‘She was young, but… She still liked makeup. It helped her feel better when she got really sick. She said it made her look as if she weren’t wasting away. She wore rouge sometimes. The makeup, that is,’ he clarified when her ears perked up at the sound of her name. ‘She wore gloss. She curled her hair sometimes, and it made her look like a Hollywood starlet. She’d pretend that she was in one of those old films that we would watch together, talk about wanting to be an actress, talk about wanting to be so many things, because we all thought that she’d get a chance at it one day –‘ He abruptly cut himself off, and she saw his fingers clench on the armrest of his chair.
She said nothing, and she cracked open a blush compact. Rouge. Some things never changed. He didn’t like it when she tried to make him feel better after he opened up. If he had torn himself open, then he didn’t want her contaminating the wound.
It was only when she leaned forward and began to apply her mascara that he spoke again. ‘I wanted her to be able to live on earth. I wanted her to grow up and do everything she ever wanted.’ His voice tightened, rough around the edges. ‘But I see the way that men look at you. The way that they talk to you. And…’ He took a deep breath, and it sounded as though he was confessing a sin. ‘And sometimes I wonder if it’s for the best that she never got the chance to find out what living in this world would be like.’
Rouge set the mascara wand down and sat back in her chair. Well, this was different. He seemed to want her to say something, but she had no idea what. She turned, folding her arms over the backrest. He looked lost.
But before she could gather her thoughts, he beat her to it. ‘Maybe I want to believe that she wouldn’t have had a good life, so that it makes her death feel less unfair.’ His ears drooped. ‘Is that wrong?’
‘I don’t know if it’s right or wrong.’ Rouge padded into the bathroom and pulled the door shut, leaving a crack so he could still hear her. She pulled off the body suit that she usually wore and slipped on an evening dress. ‘But I can’t blame you for looking for ways to make her loss more bearable.’
She heard him stand up abruptly, and she sighed. Whenever she got too frank with him about Maria, he would usually shut down and leave. But then the door slid open, and he said, ‘I don’t want to believe that the world she loved is a terrible place… But I keep finding new reasons to believe just that. What am I supposed to do?’
‘Even if it is, you can still make it a better place. For your sake, not just for hers.’ She arched one eyebrow at him. ‘And a word of advice. Don’t barge in when a girl’s getting changed.’
‘You’re already dressed,’ he deadpanned.
She turned her back to him and jerked one thumb over her shoulder, towards the countless button clasps on the back of her dress. ‘Not quite. You’re already here, so help me with this, would you?’
He grumbled under his breath, but his shoes clicked on the tiles, and he stood behind her, fastening the buttons with gloved fingers. She caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror, and she could see a rare sadness in his eyes.
‘…Maria used to ask me to help her with things like this. She couldn’t reach some buttons and zippers. And even if she could, sometimes her fingers didn’t work well. She always looked beautiful. She rarely “looked” sick, and sometimes people wouldn’t believe her illness was real –‘
She inhaled sharply as she felt his claws through his gloves, against her bare back, and he flinched.
‘…Sorry.’
‘It’s fine. I just know you can get distracted.’ He fastened the final button, and she turned to face him. ‘Beauty hurts. It is what it is.’
Her words had a certain subtext to them, but she knew that he would hear a different meaning. Maria had been beautiful, not just in how she looked, but also in the way that she had carried herself in spite of her illness. Of course it hurt. Of course her loss hurt him. She wouldn’t have expected any less.
Shadow gave her a once-over, as though assessing a weapon on the workbench in his room. Then he sighed and turned away. ‘How many people am I going to have to kill tonight?’
Rouge laughed, partly masking it with one hand. ‘I’m supposed to attract attention. That’s the whole point. If I don’t turn heads, you and Omega can’t do your job behind the scenes.’
‘I’ll need to bring a gun,’ Shadow muttered, and she burst out laughing.
‘What, so you can shoot the catcallers from a distance?’
He cracked a smile and said, ‘Something like that.’
It reminded her of countless adages that he would have no doubt heard while growing up on the Ark. ‘Hide your daughters’ and ‘I’m going to need a shotgun.’ They were jokes, but they were also bitter reflections of a reality that she had no choice but to participate in, and a thought struck her out of the blue.
‘You would have been able to keep her safe,’ Rouge said quietly, resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘In the same way that you’ve watched out for me over the years. The world may be a terrible place, but living here wouldn’t have destroyed her dreams. You may not want to hear it, but it’s true.’
His expression was bittersweet, and he said, ‘I know—’
A metal fist slammed against her bedroom door, and they both jumped. ‘Bat? Hedgehog? Your time allotment for beautification has expired. Present yourselves.’
‘Just a few more minutes!’ Rouge teased, and she heard an angry revving in response. She turned back to Shadow and said, ‘You ought to let me pretty you up for these missions every now and then.’
‘I think not,’ Shadow said, glaring at her.
‘Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that you didn’t enjoy it when Maria put you in cute dresses.’
‘If you tell anyone about that, I’ll go off the grid and never help you with another mission as long as you live.’
‘Ooh, you’re so tough,’ Rouge said, rolling her eyes. As they walked through her bedroom, she stopped him beside her dressing table and dotted concealer under his eyes, despite his protestations. ‘Hush. If you didn’t run yourself ragged instead of dealing with your problems, I wouldn’t have to do this.’
He growled, but he didn’t pull away, and he only shrugged her off when she was done. ‘Come on. Before Omega beats down the door.’
The two of them left her bedroom, and Omega was waiting for them in their shared living quarters. He scanned them and whirred disapprovingly. ‘Your routine took 20 minutes longer than average. We cannot afford for either of you to get distracted during mission preparation.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Rouge said, flitting out the door of their shared flat with a wink. ‘Did you get detailing done when you got serviced, Omega? It looks good on you.’
‘Irrelevant,’ Omega said, but his lenses brightened slightly.
‘All right, boys, let’s go.’ The three of them left the flat behind, and she grinned at them, saying, ‘Time to use my scary dog privilege. Try to look intimidating.’
Shadow scoffed, and the force at which Omega’s cooling fans accelerated resembled a sigh. ‘Good luck trying to put us on leashes.’
‘Do not give her ideas.’
Rouge laughed, and she took Shadow’s arm in hers and held one of Omega’s clawed fingers in her free hand. ‘All right, let’s try to wrap this one up before dawn. This dress looks better during the nighttime, after all.’