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Ice drummed against the windows, driven by winds that howled through empty streets. There was no moon to light the darkness. Too overcast were the heavens, burdened with an angry winter that pounded its fists and wailed.
That darkness, that frigid, impenetrable darkness, covered every space in the city. It blanketed the concrete with its ice, clung to asphalt and rebar and glass, until all the edges were blurred and mixed together, until every room was painted the same black December as that dark and angry snowglobe of a sky.
A frosty draught whipped Amy across the face and blew out the match held tight in her fingers. She hissed as warped shadows disrupted her vision, strange distortions of the brief flame, clouding her view as she fumbled to light a second one. Mercifully, this one stayed lit. She carefully lowered it to the gas burner until blue flames burst forth like a halo in the dark. Amy sighed, letting herself smile for a moment as she put the grate over it, and a kettle of water on top of that.
At least she knew how to work a gas range, even with a power outage.
From the living room, she heard a bang and a curse.
Amy pursed her lips.
What she could not seem to get to work was her radiator.
Amy ran a thumb over her chin, the nail dragging across her lower teeth as they worried her lip. Her eyes darted to the empty doorway. She could see the dregs of light coming from a corner of the room, emanating from the one working flashlight she had in her possession.
Shadow was there, in that room.
He was hunched over her radiator cursing and grinding his teeth. Were it not as cold as it currently was, she was sure he’d be flushed in the face. That always seemed to be the case when faced with a contraption that just would not comply with his demands. As it was, there was none of that, though he was at the point of obsession. Nothing could have swayed him, and she had tried, oh, she had. He was there to stay, in her living room, knees buried in her white fluffy area rug, wasting his time on her when he should be home.
And, here Amy cringed, that was at least partially her fault.
Rouge had been sick. How sick wasn’t entirely made clear. All Amy had gathered from the flurry of texts in the group chat was the traditional prima donna levels of woe Rouge expounded whenever slightly inconvenienced by illness.
There had been snow first when Amy had fired up her stove then. Thick flakes had filled the world outside her windows as Amy worked away in the kitchen cooking up the two home remedies she knew worked best; honey ginger and lemon tea, and chicken vegetable soup with enough garlic and onion to cure death. She had liters of the stuff, all bagged up and ready for Rouge when she called Shadow and asked if he could pick them up.
Then the power went out.
Amy had laughed off the furrow forming deep in Shadow’s brow. What was a true winter without a blackout at some point? She’d gone through them before, she could do it again. Shadow had said nothing. He simply looked at her and then Chaos Controled back to Team Dark’s apartment.
And Amy was alone.
A silence so thick it dampened the sound of the storm outside permeated the space. Everything was reduced to the dark and the cold. Shivering in her apartment, she stared at a blackened window. Her heartbeat had filled her ears, then ringing. The darkness did strange things to the familiar shapes of her furniture. They shifted on the edge of her vision, moving as if alive, waving in a breeze that didn’t exist.
But then, Shadow had come back.
Toolbox in hand and a wrench at the ready, he stood there in her living room.
“You have no heat,” he mumbled as he looked from her to the cold, quiet radiator. Without another word, and ignoring every insistence she gave that she was fine, he had walked over and gone to work.
For some reason, that almost seemed to make things worse.
Heart pounding, teeth on edge, Amy picked up her candle and made her way to the living room. She heard Shadow swear under his breath, and though he tried to keep it to himself, the word curled though the cold air, a single puff of heat in the otherwise frigid apartment.
“How’s it coming?” she mumbled, creeping up from behind. The flame in her hands flickered.
Shadow just growled.
Amy sighed. “You know you can just go-”
He smacked the radiator, hard. Amy jumped back as it rattled for a moment, then fell to silence.
“Stop doing that!” She set the candle down on a nearby end table. “I don’t want to have to argue with my landlord about whose responsibility it is to fix it.”
“This should have been fixed before .”
“Well it wasn’t .”
“ Obviously !” He turned to her then. “You knew this was broken, didn’t you?”
Amy opened her mouth, then shut it, huffing as she turned away. Shadow did nothing but grumble. Amy stood there a while, watching the reflection in the window as he busied himself before trying to twist the valve again. It ground against its own rust in protest, just as it had before.
Amy grabbed his wrist with a shaking hand. “You’re going to break it if you keep doing that!”
“Then what do you propose we do?” he snapped as he whipped his hand out of grip and rounded on her.
“We? No .” Amy shook her head. “I keep telling you, I’m fine. I’ve got the kettle on- A few cups of something warm and I’ll be more than okay.”
Shadow’s brows furrowed.
“You turn the gas on just a little and then light it with a match, duh.” She rolled her eyes. “What, you’ve never done that?”
Shadow stood, dusting off their knees. “I’ve never wanted to try and blow up my home via any other kitchen appliance other than Omega, so, no.”
She couldn’t help but giggle at that. “Oh shush, you big worrywart. The point is, I’m okay . I appreciate you coming out to try and help but honestly, you can go.”
“No.”
“Shadow-!”
He brushed past her and headed for the kitchen, shoulder knocking into hers. With a grumble, Amy followed, shoving past him with a harumph once he stopped dead in the doorway.
“Tea?” she snapped as she opened a cabinet, “Coco? Coffee?”
“Cast iron.”
Amy’s mouth hung open, brow furrowed as she stared at Shadow. He just huffed and knelt down to rifle through the nearest cabinets.
“Stop.” Amy thrust her leg in front of him, causing Shadow to recoil as she snapped, “You need to talk to me. What do you want it for?”
Shadow shot her a look from under that furrowed brow of theirs. Were this any other time, maybe she would have stopped, but the itching feeling that had consumed her heart the moment he said he wasn’t going home was making her shake in a way the cold never could, and she hated it.
Shadow rolled their eyes. “I’m going to make a fire.”
Amy’s mouth hung open, brow furrowed.“... Where? ”
“In the living room.” He loosely gestured to the doorway. “The cast iron is to contain the fire. You have dead plants all over the place. We can use them as a fuel source.”
Too many thoughts and words tumbling about in her brain. What could she even say at this point?
“My herbs aren’t dead,” Amy finally squeaked.
Shadow stood and crossed their arms as they leveled her with a look.
She stamped her foot. The cups and dishes rattled in the cabinet.“They’re winterized !”
“They’re dead, Amy.”
“No!”
“ Amy. ”
She groaned at that, running her hands down her face as she shook her head.
That’s when she heard it.
Shadow was laughing at her.
She looked at them then, and there it was, that quirk of his brow in tandem with the curl of his lip, just the corner, just a little. It was a low, soft sound. Not his usual wheezing as if an engine wouldn’t turn. No, this was akin to the rasping of a blanket against skin. Soft, warm, like his eyes glowing dimly in the pitch of December. It was something she didn’t get to hear very often, something that usually left her feeling a little odd as she stammered into silence.
This time, it only made the itching worse as her temples started to throb with the onset of a headache.
The groan began to build, and build, until, with a growl, she turned her back to him. Amy ducked down and pulled out a drawer from which she heaved a large Dutch oven onto the stovetop. The clang as metal hit metal rang through the house.
Shadow stopped laughing.
“Why are you angry with me?”
His voice was flat, manufactured in its even-ness, directly in contrast with how tightly he was crossing his arms.
He was trying to maintain a sense of calm, to keep her calm.
Why did that make everything in her want to shrivel up and cry?
The kettle started to whistle as the water inside grew hot.
Amy swallowed, patting the lid of the pot as she turned away. “This is the only cast iron I own. Vanilla gave it to me. If you break it, I’ll never forgive you.”
“...Understood.”
She shut the burner off under the kettle before digging the nail of her index finger into the corner of her thumb. “I don’t want that on the floor when you start the fire. It’ll burn my carpet.”
Shadow reached over and picked a grate from the stove top, holding it out in his hands.
“That’s not enough.” Amy shook her head. “It’s a good idea, but we can’t just use that. I want it higher.”
Shadow grabbed a second grate, setting one on top of the other as they raised a brow. Amy huffed as she picked up the Dutch oven in order to collect a third grate and handed it to him. Shadow nodded. He shuffled everything into one hand as he reached out for the dutch oven to lift it from Amy’s grip.
For a moment, they stared at her, saying nothing. The stillness of the room seemed to come in closer.
Amy didn’t have to meet his gaze to know what his face looked like.
It was only when he still didn’t move that she realized she had not yet let go of the pot. She flinched away as though it had burned her, turning instead to shuffle through a drawer as she pulled out a roll of aluminum foil.
“Put some of this on the ground before you do anything.” She said in a rush. “I don’t want stains on the carpet, either.”
Shadow, still, said nothing, pausing only to look her over before leaving her alone in the kitchen.
Amy let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Shaking hands braced against the counter.
This was why she should be alone.
She grit her teeth as she collected two mugs down from the cabinet above and pulled out the little apple-shaped teapot Vanilla had bought for her when she first moved in.
“‘When in doubt, tea does help,’” she mumbled, forcing a chuckle as the woman’s words rang through her head while she busied herself with putting honey and ginger into the bottom of the pot before adding the hot water.
But the thought was there now, trapped like a fly in the confines of her brain. It was familiar, it came from somewhere, but like all flies, they’re not noticed until they make a nuisance of themselves. Now, it buzzed in her ear, licking its chops at the messy tangle of her emotions.
She should just be alone.
For a person who wanted to be included and loved so badly, she did have a fantastic habit of scaring people, didn’t she? Being too angry. Being too demanding and loud and heavy-handed. That was why people left her behind, after all. This innate thing that was just… her .
Amy’s heart felt like it was shriveling in her chest until it was nothing but a hard and painful knot. She ran a hand across her mouth, then dug her nails into her quills, down her neck, across her shoulder as she tried to calm herself, but it didn’t work. It only made her aware of how cold and stiff her fingers had become.
And the one person who had made a point to make sure she was okay was in the other room, trying to get her warm… and they thought she was angry with them.
Amy narrowed her eyes against the pricking of their corners as her brow furrowed. Maybe she was too much, fine. Maybe she was a lot to handle. Surely though, she shouldn’t think so lowly of her friends. They cared. At least a little. Right?
Amy dug her phone out from her pocket and checked her cell signal.
Nothing.
No phone connection, no data signal, no anything. Even if anyone even wanted to check on her, they couldn’t.
She pursed her lips, turning away to pluck some bags of green tea from the daisy canister tucked into the corner of the counter and threw them into the teapot to steep.
It felt as though the darkness pressed against the walls of her apartment, the glass of the icy globe she found herself trapped in grew tighter around her.
Stuck here in her own home, in the snow, in the dark.
With Shadow.
Amy dropped her phone as she slapped her hands to her cheeks, shaking her head. No. No no. No no no.
Bad Amy.
It was terrible that she was keeping them from their friends back at Team Dark’s apartment. And Rouge was sick! He shouldn’t be here! She was being selfish!
That was it. That was why she was so upset. She was being selfish and she knew it. How could she? Even if Rouge was just being melodramatic about some sniffles, it wasn’t fair that Amy was keeping one of her closest friends away from her. Yes, she had Omega, and no doubt he was good company, but it still wasn’t right. She had trapped Shadow here… somehow. With the broken radiator. Made him feel like it was his responsibility to fix. Yes, that’s what she did.
It was her fault.
She should be alone.
She could handle it, anyway, being alone. It would be fine. She’d done this on her own for years.
What was a true winter without a blackout at some point?
There was another curse from the living room, followed closely by a crackle. Amy turned her head just as a small but deep, warm glow pulsed to life just outside of view from the doorway. Amy stood there for a moment as it slowly grew. It almost reminded her of a cold morning sunrise, how the warm colours would blend and blow back the frigid blues and blacks of a winter night.
Amy swallowed, closing her eyes as she swayed on the spot. She wrapped her arms around herself. Numb fingers drummed against her bicep. With a blink, she shook her head again and put one of the mugs sporting a swarm of butterflies away, retrieving a different one from the cabinet.
It was in the shape of a chao’s head. Shadow always did seem to prefer that one to the others.
With a sigh, she picked up everything she needed and forced herself into the living room.
Shadow sat in front of the fire. Their plan had worked, she had to grant them that. Aluminum foil had been spread diligently over her fluffy white area rug to protect it from the cooking grease on the stovetop grates. They stood stacked three high, supporting the dutch oven on top. The lid had been taken off, set carefully on another piece of aluminum foil, while within the pot, Amy could see the remains of what she assumed was her rosemary bush burning brightly.
She watched as Shadow proceeded to slowly shred the twigs of her sage plant.
“It’s not your radiator.” His voice came in a rumble, his back to her as he fed the kindling to the flame. “It’s the boiler. That’s why neither you nor your neighbors have heat.”
“You figured it out?” Amy walked to the fire and sat down as she placed the mugs and tea between the two of them.
“I’m making an educated guess. This apartment’s gone far too cold for it to just be a problem concerning you. It’s something that’s affecting the entire building. A broken boiler is the only thing I can think of that would be the cause.”
Amy hummed. “Don’t suppose you know how to fix one of those, do you?”
Shadow shot her a look. Then, with a huff, they turned his attention back to the flickering flames.
Amy swallowed, nodding as she let her attention drift to the floor.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, “for everything.”
The wind picked up outside. A pattering of ice smacked the window, accompanying the snaps of the sage bush in Shadow’s hands. Amy rubbed her arms as she chewed her lip.
“I’m not angry with you,” she finally muttered.
Shadow’s hands stopped moving.
“I just-” Amy fumbled. She clicked her tongue, turning her face away as she rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “I feel… wrong … keeping you here. I feel bad .”
She caught a corner of dead skin on her lip and tore it with her teeth. Shaking her head, Amy busied herself with pulling the bags from the teapot and tossed them onto the aluminum. “I know you don’t want to be trapped in here with me when you’ve got more important things to worry about.” Amy poured the tea and placed the chao head mug near Shadow without looking up. “Rouge is sick, and I’m sure the power’s out back at your own apartment, too. That means she and Omega are just sitting there in the dark. Besides, I’m sure you’d rather be in the comfort of your own space doing literally anything else other than-.”
There was a woosh of heat. Amy looked up to see Shadow had fed the rest of her long-dead sage in one fell swoop. Their little fire swelled, clicking and popping happily in the cast iron dutch oven. It danced in Shadows eyes as well, catching the golden flecks buried in the halo of red and brown.
It also highlighted the depths of their scowl.
Amy stammered into silence. Her head snapped down, eyes fixed on the mug in her hands as it trembled. She stared at the rings of vibration on the murky surface of the tea even as she felt Shadow’s gaze burn into the side of her head.
Amy could hear their shuffling as they stood. Then, Shadow left the living room.
Amy looked up just to catch the edge of his quills disappearing down the hall, opposite the doorway to the kitchen. The thought to call out crossed her mind, but even as her mouth opened to do so, any desire to do anything seemed to vanish from her.
She shut her eyes, swallowing against the sourness in her throat, then took a sip of tea.
There was a thump from down the hall. With that, Shadow came back into the room, carrying a spare comforter she knew came from the old cedar chest at the foot of her bed. Silent as his namesake, Shadow unfolded the blanket and swept it around Amy’s shoulders. Then, they sat back down where they had been before and stared at the fire.
Amy’s heart beat loudly in her ears. The thrum of it drowned out the sounds of the fire, muzzled the hiss of the ice and snow as she brought her hands up to grab the edge of the comforter and draw it closer around her.
“Shadow-.” Her voice fizzed out and slipped into a whisper. She blinked against the pricking, threatening resurgence of tears.
She should be alone. The thought buzzed about her brain and chewed Amy from the inside out. She should be left here in this cold, dark apartment. She’d done this before, she could do it again. It was just another winter. It was just another power outage. It was just another night by herself. What was one more on the pile? She should be alone.
Shadow coughed. Amy looked at him as he pulled the mug back from his mouth, nose twitching as he licked his lips. Their face twitched into some sort of expression she couldn’t put a name to.
“Oh.” Amy giggled, using the moment as an excuse to wipe her eyes with the blanket. “Is it still too sweet for you?”
Shadow did nothing but huff, rolling his eyes as he shook his head. However, Amy noticed how the furrow of his brow softened.
She giggled again, “It’s the same thing I made for Rouge. Ginger, lemon, honey… maybe I went overboard on the honey.”
They nodded and cleared their throat. “It’s good.”
“Don’t lie to me, Shadow the Hedgehog.” Amy’s laughter turned brittle. “It’s still too much .”
Her voice broke. She covered it by lifting the comforter to cover her mouth as she coughed. Shadow’s eyes found hers, and for a moment, they just stared at one another.
Slowly, Shadow brought the mug back to his mouth without breaking eye contact.
“If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t drink it.” Shadow’s voice was as quiet, even as snowfall and just as soft. “And if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t stay.”
Shadow turned back to the fire, and there, Amy watched as he downed his tea in one fell swoop.
Her thoughts crashed into one another, an elaborate train wreck as her brain scrambled to figure out what was happening. That was too hot. She knew it was too hot. So quiet was the space, she could hear his hard swallow, the sound of it strange to her ears. The hand gripping the mug held on with an unneeded amount of force, as though he were fighting with the chao whose ceramic grin glinted mischievously around his fingers.
They sat the mug back down onto the carpet when they were done.
The carefully constructed dam to hold back her emotions broke, and she thanked her lucky stars it came out in a flood of laughter.
“I guess you mean it then,” she managed at last, shoulder shaking as she looked at him again.
Shadow stretched, sighing with content as they leaned back onto their hands. She gave another breathless little laugh. When he turned to face her, she bowed her head, fussing with the teapot as she poured him another mug full.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
Shadow said nothing.
Winter continued to billow outside, its fury and anguish forgotten.