The habit of sleeping in had been long lost on me. Even though I slept the shock and stiffness off for days after leaving the vault, it eventually became habitual for me to wake up early in the morning. For a year, it had often been to the rising sun but in the detective agency it remained an elusive sight. Bricks shuttered the entire bottom floor off from the rest of the world happening around it. Even the top floor had been covered and recovered in various materials over the past decade or more. 

The residing detective's voice rang out as he approached the doorway of his bedroom, "Come on." He was, undoubtedly, anticipating that I was already awake for the day. 

Normally, I was quick to wake up at the sound of his voice. While traveling through a myriad of police stations all over the commonwealth, I had associated hearing his voice while I was sleeping with needing to suddenly be alert. An alarm no different from sirens of days passed. 

I couldn't move. Caught between a rough mattress and a pilled blanket, my body felt like it was both freezing and dripping in sweat. 

"Not like you to sleep in," he approached the side of my fabric prison, his amber eyes boring holes of concern into every inch of exposed skin, "You feeling okay, doll?" He placed his good hand against my forehead, pushing back my bangs to get a good reading. 

I found myself thinking about how receptive his synthetic skin must have been. Was it exactly like that of a human hand? Did it connect to things like thermometers to send the information to his system in order to tell the difference between hot and cold?

"A little warm." He pulled the blanket up to cover the small amount of shoulders that I had exposed. I felt the heft of the blanket against my collarbone. 

The detective stood up and I found myself immediately needing to roll over to reach for the bucket next to the bed. Draining the contents of my stomach into it all at once, I tried to muffle the sound so as not to wake Ellie. 

I then attempted to sit up and instead leaned against the wall with nausea floating in the pit of what was left in my stomach. "Maybe it's radiation sickness."

"Thought I heard one storm pass by last night." Knocking a metallic hand against the heavy bricks, Nick speculated, "These old walls may not have kept all of it out." 

"I don't have any RadAway around," I commented, recalling that the space in the drawer that used to house it was now housing a bag of tools instead. After reading that taking it often could cause hair loss, among other issues, I decided to switch completely over to using Rad-X instead. It was only preventative for a certain amount of time, but if I knew there would be any issues, I could pop one of the pills rather quickly and still keep my auburn locks. 

"Solomon usually keeps a ready supply of it. Why don't I go nab a pack?" In an almost repeating motion, Nick covered my shoulders with the old brown blanket again. I nodded, a chill crawling from the back of my neck only to turn into fire by the time it reached my toes. 

When the door closed, I found myself at the bucket again. I held a messy braid back with one hand and the blanket together with the other. A bead of sweat rolled down the edge of my face as I leaned over. 

Without me, Nick didn't have to worry about losing days of progress due to illness. Growing in a world kinder than this, I found that I was often feeling weak and helpless. A different hopelessness than the abusive home I had escaped only to end up here. Perhaps it was because someone else was being affected this time. It wasn't just me that I felt responsible for in regards to feelings anymore. 

In a moment of respite and feeling sorry for myself, I felt my eyelids drooping and welcoming me to more rest. I leaned against the cool, concrete wall and shut them. 

The door to the agency creaked open. A common sound that tended to make my heart beat a little faster. Something about him coming into that door made me feel less lonely, turning me into a twisted version of Pavlov's Dog. 

His boots played elegant notes across the splintered wooden floor. The synthetic melody played around the corner, accompanied by the RadAway in his hand, and continued to the dresser at the end of the bed. 

Black and gold eyes realized enough space to sit down at the foot of the bed, not too far where I was leaned against the wall. His weight pulled down on the mattress but it was comforting. "I talked to Doc Sun." 

"And?" 

"He thinks it might be food poisoning." Golden rings looked from me and to the bucket, "I'm inclined to believe him." 

It wasn't the first time I had food poisoning and it was true that radiation sickness felt much different than this current hell I was going through. 

The last time I could remember having food poisoning was when I threw up in front of my father just before the school bus was supposed to pick me up. He didn't want any calls from the school asking where I was, presumably because child services might make a visit due to previous issues. Instead he took one pill from every bottle in the medicine cabinet and made me take them all before sending me to school. I spent the entire day not knowing of my own existence. Before going into that state and after coming out of it, I remember being terrified but remembered nothing in between. 

But if I could dissociate that well through the current churning of my stomach, it would be something of a welcomed miracle.

"Said there's been a few cases of it around in the last 24 hours. Should check on Ellie, too, when she wakes up." 

"In any case, he said we should treat you for that first before dosing you with the RadAway." 

I sighed, "Today of all days, Nick. I'm so sorry." 

He shook his head, the gray hat cropping his face with shadows from the dim lighting, "Better it happened in here than out there.' The detective stood up and pointed at the head of the barren bed, "Just try to get some rest. We can leave after you're better." 

Though I still felt bad about hindering his work, despite his words, I laid down again on the mattress. Auburn hair obscured my vision, the braid became uncomfortable beneath my weight even with the bed below. I pulled the stretched hair tie apart from a sea of red and gently parted the waves until it flooded the surface below.

When he brought a bowl of soup in the afternoon, I realized that he really wasn't as concerned with the new case as he was with my health. By then, my stomach couldn't possibly have had anything else inside. I was happy to finally taste something that wasn't my own vomit. 

"Is Ellie okay?" I asked the detective between sips. 

"She's fine. Maybe that helps narrow down the culprit." The culprit, this time, was whatever food had caused the city to get sick. 

"Maybe that meat I added to the mac and cheese."

"Maybe." He concurred before joining me in sitting on the bed again. "Should talk to Doc Sun and see if he can't get whatever it was off the market before it kills someone."

I nodded, taking another spoonful of the hot broth. "So, Nick? Your last case, the Eddie one... Is that the only thing you had planned for the rest of your life or is there something else?" 

"What do you mean?"

I crossed my legs and cupped the warm bowl in my lap, "Your hopes, aspirations... a bucket list maybe? Going places or achieving something." 

Thinking about it, I was probably asking because I didn't see any for myself. After all, I was never meant to be here, to be alive at this point in time. Most of my life, since I was left alone with my father, was focused solely on surviving. I was reliant on the here and now with no chance to look forward more than 'I want a better life'. Sometimes, even before the bombs, life didn't feel like it was always guaranteed to continue the next day. 

My stomach churned again but it was a less physical feeling than what I was experiencing before. 

"Well." Nick paused and adjusted his weight against the bed. "The old nick wanted to see the city from the top of Bunker Hill. As much as I want to live my own life, I can't seem to shake the feeling that I'd like to go up there, myself." 

Failing to stifle a laugh, I thought about the fact that we had already been in the area. 

"Don't laugh," He scolded, as if he thought I was laughing at the simplicity of his dreams.

"No, no. I was just thinking about how we had the opportunity when we stayed the night there." The beginning of that journey felt as if it was years ago. I remembered my apprehension in trusting the synth detective. The first person to truly reach out to me and I was keen to push him away for so long.

And with my feelings towards him now, all of it felt a little silly and nostalgic. 

His eyes focused directly on mine as he tried to explain himself. "Look, I didn't want to overwhelm you."

"Let's do it together one day." I interrupted before he could print out another excuse. Maybe he really didn't want to overwhelm me but I personally thought it might have been his dedication to one task at a time. He was so focused on the case that he didn't take much time to do anything else unless I was dragging him into it. If I had known he wanted to go to the top of the monument, though, would I have offered at the time? 

"Sounds good." Seeing the smile lingering just beneath his serious stature felt like an achievement. "What about you, doll?" 

"Nuka World." Pulling the bowl back up from my lap, I took another spoonful of the cooling soup after an unexpected yawn. 

"Probably not functional right now. Why Nuka World?" I could practically see the gears turning in his head. 

"Everything in the commonwealth is in disrepair and honestly, it's beautiful." Buildings where the sunlight crept in had sunflowers reaching towards those rays. Highways creating works of art in the directions they bent and fell, as if they had simply begun melting into the earth one commonwealth summer. Forest lined sidewalks with billboards at the heads of their trunks. The way grass even grew in police stations torn open by a landslide. "I wanted to see a place I could only dream of as a kid become a work of art restored by nature." 

"Fair enough. Most people these days wouldn't have had the experiences we've had, save for a few ghouls I suppose." His hat bobbed slightly as he nodded. 

Setting the bowl aside and melting into the blanket and rough mattress, I continued my interrogation with the detective, "You're lucky."

"How so?" 

"You never had to see the bombs fall."

"Maybe I am." 

I still saw and felt the force of it in my dreams. The debris kicking up as the elevator to the vault descended. The alien wind blowing across the top as if it was a bottle to play a tune on. 

A frozen atmosphere in an unfamiliar place where my father and I were ushered to change into vault suits in front of everyone else. Neighbors sighing in relief as if the rest of the world hadn't just died in that same moment. 

Before long, I was waking up again. 

Warmth. 

As I rubbed my blurry eyes, I spotted the detective resting in the bed beside me. He often told me that he didn't need sleep but encouraged me to at least, which is why it was always surprising to find instances in which he chose to. The only difference this time is that he had decided to share the bed with me. 

Almost everything in this empty world was ready to be picked up and given a new life after centuries of waiting. Soul mates in the form of human and material called out to one another without regards to the lives both of them had lived before each other.

If I wanted something material, it was easy to just find it in rubble of the world with only former owners to speak of. It was an odd, freeing feeling to be able to shop for clothes without a budget or price hanging over my head and I did so before I ever entered Diamond City. Most of them disappeared after, leaving only the ones I wore most often.

My backpack was filled with such material things but I quickly had to learn to only take what I could carry. If it was important to me, it was housed in a nostalgic Silver Shroud backpack. Sometimes it was things like medicine and food; other times it was comic books and broken electronics.

In this case, it was a ruby red coat. Lined with fur and flared at the waist, it was a much different look from the style I normally donned. However, it was also a coat that I remembered admiring in the window of Fallon's on a trip to the city before the bombs fell. To get my hands on it was something of a personal success for me but it kind of felt like cheating when money was no longer a barrier.

Worn leather gloves and a boiler suit beneath almost looked elegant when paired with the dusty ruby. A fine enough look when it came to commonwealth chic. Perhaps a little too unlike me, but something I wanted to grow into.

"Ready to hit the road?" The detective asked his question just after discarding something behind him. A cigarette if I had to guess.

Around Diamond City, I had always noticed him with a burning stick in his hand. I think after we started, he decided to try and quit. A difficult, task, probably. I felt torn because it made me a little happy to see him without it, though.

I gave the coat a little spin, holding onto the straps of my backpack as I did, "How do I look?"

He entertained my question after watching my display of good spirits with an almost stoic face, "Like a doll."

It was an answer that was very much like him but it still caught me off guard.

"Doll's a new one..." After a moment I nodded to myself, deciding that "doll" was something I rather liked being compared to.

"So where are we off to today, Nick?" I straightened myself out and met his amber rings with a more serious approach.

"I'll give you three guesses." The detective began walking in the direction of the rising morning sun. His own tattered coat and hat hid most of his features from the rising sun but seemed to just be for show rather than for warmth. Did he find the clothes himself or did they find him, I wondered.

I followed him, only a step or two behind. Walking beside him felt as though I was putting us on equal ground. Maybe it was because he was leading this expedition or perhaps it was because I saw him as being infinitely wiser in this world than I was.

And how much trust could I show him? How much could I open up to the synth detective?

Air as crisp as fresh apples pooled in my lungs, sending shivers down my neck and into my warm attire. The morning sky cast down shy hues of pinks and blues, which caught in my breath as I returned a single guess, "Another police station, right?"

Evening fog beat against weathered and beaten panes, attempting to buff out the memories etched within. The light glimmer of a freshly fueled lantern illuminated the ghosts that fog couldn't reach.

One bed, filled with excitement and terrors of the day passed. They desperately reached for the ghosts, the fog, anywhere that wouldn't hold them for any longer than they needed to be.

The smell of the island had crept into our clothes, our skin, our entire beings. A smell that, coupled with those desperate, reaching thoughts, was too much for either of us to let go.

I didn't know if I should hold his hand. Did he need time? Would he rather have the warmth?

At the bar, I could hear a crowd dispersing. Hotel's voice was the last I heard before it became eerily quiet. How many hours had passed in this bed where sleep became further and further away?

I thought about it again. Was everything about to change?

My fingers wrapped around the blanket, cracking through the icy illusion of the crypt-like atmosphere. Metallic fingers pulled them gently open and pressed between each individual digit, bringing the puzzle to completion.

"What do we do from here?" The ceiling pooled around my vision, sometimes crisp and other times hazy. I couldn't ask again if he was okay.

"Well, I suppose we'll just keep doing what we're doing" He sounded so confident and yet I still felt fear between the ghosts and the fog.

A warm kiss fell to the top of my head, just above my brows, in what felt like slow motion.

"The two of us will get on that boat and go back to the agency. Keep getting in trouble together and solve another case."

Together.

Together...

It dawned on me, after all of the other thoughts floated a little further out to sea, that this was our last night alone on this case. Tomorrow, we would be back home with Ellie at the agency. My thoughts wandered to places they had never voluntarily been before.

Love, but in a different form.

"Got something on your mind, doll?"

Pale, freckled cheeks grew warmer, reminding me of the fever I had felt only some time ago. I closed my eyes, hiding my shame from Nick and the fog and the ghosts and the ceiling alike.

He moved, not too unlike his human counterpart, when he chuckled.

I knew it was embarrassing for me to say, but his laugh only convinced me to do the opposite of what I normally would in an act of rebellion.

"Do... Do you ever think.. about, like, that kind of stuff?"

Embarrassment filled phrasing only caught another chuckle from the detective.

"Physically, I can't say I have the drive for it."

It was a joke.

"If you don't mind my saying, it isn't like I haven't ever thought about it."

"Still, it isn't like I've thought about it for long."

Because he thought of me as a child. I wasn't a child anymore.

"Doesn't keep me from wondering what you look like beneath it all."

I didn't know if I regretted asking. The moment felt intoxicating, as if I should just go with the flow.

Sitting up, I stared down at the detective, whose amber eyes fell beneath furrowed but bare brows. Small fingers, their nails sullied by the earth, started unbuttoning the boiler suit top.

He sat up and pressed his left hand against mine, a light touch to tell me everything I needed to know about him in a single moment.

"You don't have to do this."

I continued to peel away at the green buttons holding my self worth together until it slid down just past my waist. My own two hands pulled away the Nuka Cola shirt hiding everything I wanted to keep hidden.

And I sat before him, a child-like body only cared for by malnourishment. Nothing but skin and bones, as it had always been. A body that could have become something different with a single change in the life spent before the bombs. Adorned by scars that echoed the gold-filled ones inside. For him I shared my story, one that I had tried to keep hidden from anyone else.

It was a painting of the shame I held and the control I had rewritten it into.

"This is... This is me." Sat before him, I said this, covered only by a tattered bra and well-worn underwear.

His eyes didn't deviate. I could see the mechanisms working inside of his head, playing out the possible stories any action would become. Metal and plastic worked together to remove his own buttons and suspenders, eventually laying bare his battered chest and arms. It wasn't as if I hadn't seen them before, but in this unique situation, it felt as if it was the first time I had really seen them for what they were.

We both struggled with our bodies. We both wanted to trust the other to understand.

I felt the ridges where the panels came together beneath my fingers. Bullet holes that had missed vital places. Fraying edges from the plush plastic peeling away felt foreign and yet so familiar to the tips of my fingers.

He reached forward and brushed the autumn braid from the font of my shoulders.

Golden eyes flitted back and forth in the darkness, occasionally looking down to find mine. The dark gray ceiling matched the weather outside. Wind brushed past broken glass, bringing a welcome breeze into the stuffy summer-heated Red Rocket. There was nothing to be done in this weather, so the two of us had made a pit-stop to wait it out.

Not quite dark enough to light our diminishing candles; the constant flashes of light from the sky reminded me of sitting in front of a film at the drive-in. These days I found myself wanting to venture out to places like that. Nothing more than curiosity that could only be answered with fleeting nostalgia.

I tugged at the sleeves of my boiler suit tied at my waist, as if pulling them tighter would make them more comfortable to lay down in. Maybe it was boredom.

Nick was busy pouring over the last pages of the book he had been carrying in his trench pocket all this time. The cover and lettering were faded enough that I never really found out what he was reading by the title. I envied him for being able to read in lighting like this. Another thing to look up to him for.

I knew I could never be like him, no matter how much I tried. His wisdom had many more years on it than mine. His body would last longer and could take even more than mine. Even his senses seemed a lot more fine tuned than mine.

I wondered if there was a breaking point to Nick Valentine.

There was a lingering thought that he was immortal but thinking about it, maybe that wasn't quite right.

"Hey Nick?" I pulled my head from the ground and laid it against his thigh. A damp coat bunched up behind my neck but knowing it was his somehow made it more enjoyable.

"Yeah, doll?" His eyes landed on mine for longer than usual, offering his attention to my sound. There was that feeling again. There was validation in him noticing me. It excited me.

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

The second question demanded enough attention that he placed his book to his other side. "Sure."

"I still don't know how..." A brief pause. The idea that I shouldn't ask such questions ran though my head. If I asked him if his mind would still be able to work even if his body died, would he think that I was treating him less like someone and more like something?

Breath still poured from his mouth when he talked though, and every time he breathed out it smelled like the plastic and metal of an old terminal. He could not only touch things but feel them as well. His eyes, though stronger than mine, could still only see the same rainbow. If Nick was shot, he would feel pain and he'd need to get help afterwards.  

It mattered to me to know that he could live forever. I wanted him to live forever, even if I didn't. In my very selfish world, it mattered if Nick could carry on.

But I didn't want him to worry that I had stopped, even for a moment, seeing him as someone.

"...Why. I don't know why you quit smoking."

"I wanted you to enjoy breathing as much as I do." Nick adjusted the sleeve on his coat. "You think I didn't notice that coughing on the bridge?" He moved his hand towards my hair but stopped himself, moving it to a pocket instead. "Whatever it is I call lungs now, well, I like using them. Reminds me of being human."

I scrunched up my brow as I tried to catch his fleeing eyes, "I think you're amazing as you are now, Nick." They found me again. "I'm sorry, that wasn't really the question I wanted to ask you, but that's not important because I think you should hear why I didn't ask it."

My fingers trembled as they met each other, a habit I imitated from the synth both above and below me. "You're someone, Nick, not something. Maybe you realize that but I don't know if you do all the time."

Lightning flashed outside and brought a burst of thunder with it this time. For a moment the light I could see in him flashed across his entire being.

"You don't have to pretend you're person because you are one. I just want you to see the you that I see."

Was he shaking, too, or was it just how hard I was shaking? "And what do you see?"

"You're someone I look up to, Nick. I only wish I could be like you..." I watched my fingertips. "...or be with you."

I needed some air.

Everything felt stifling. Everything felt as if it was too much.

Outside of the city was blanketed with snow, just as the inside, but felt much more empty. The monochrome palette of navy lingered in my thoughts and crawled under my skin. Flurries drifted down lazily and in a haze, glimmering in the faint light of the city and not in a hurry to meet with the cold ground.

This world happened too quickly for me. I wasn't over it; no, I often found myself dreaming of the past. Never wishing I was back in it but lamenting the things I had forgotten to appreciate.

Yes, these streets were empty. The howl of the wind reminded me each time it picked up. Shattered windows let homes and businesses fill with darkness and drifting snow. It was Christmas Eve and even though I wasn’t religous, I thought I remembered what they could have looked like-- what they should have looked like. 

I shoved my gloved hands into the opposite sleeves of the last layer on my body, feeling the numbness creep into my mind and into my skin.

Because after a while of this kind of thinking, that's all it was.

I pressed myself for my thoughts but maybe I was better off not thinking about it. I was better off not imagining the feasts that should have been, the children who should have been staying up out of excitement rather than hunger. Even though my own Christmases hadn't been so lucky as the ones I imagined, I had never lost the feeling of a time when they were.

Even if I had expected it, the shape of his figure emerging from the city gates surprised me, pulling me, for a moment, out of a cycle of bittersweet thinking.

"You alright, doll?" Even when I expected those exact words they didn't surprise me but instead comforted.

I bit my frozen lip and nodded. "I just needed to be out here."

"What for?"

"I'm not sure."

He wrapped his coat around me; another layer to fend off the numbness.

"Maybe it's all to much for me."

"I'm here if you need to talk." He situated himself beside me, looking down occasionally as if his gaze might somehow crush the part left of me standing.

Hair frozen in place remained stiff as I shook my head. "I don't know. I don't know if I can."

The click of a pen echoed off the walls of the dim, empty house. It was as if I expected thoughts would spill out and form words if the pen hit the page enough times. Even as I stared into the doorway I was actually searching through my mind like a messy room to find out what was in the way. 

 "Writer's block?" The words came from the other side of the room; a chair that housed Nick looked as though it belonged to a museum instead of the wasteland.

I nodded, burgandy waves falling on either side of my neck. "I think so." The pen fell to the page after it's exhausting war. "It shouldn't be, though. I'm just writing about life and though everything is there, none of the words are coming together."

He closed a book, its pages the only thing in the room that told the real story of what life outside was like. "You know, when I'm stumped on a particularly difficult case, I'd go outside for a breather." Nick stood up, his eyes focused on me and then on the doorway. "So what do you say, want to head out?"

I stood up and gently placed the journal and pen on the bed. Maybe they needed the rest, too. "Yeah, sure."

When we left through the front door, the warm air pressed firmly against my skin. My green boiler suit was tied around my waist and the faded nuka-cola shirt fit loosely around my chest. Despite that, I wished that there was something even lighter to wear in weather like this.

The sky was lit up with millions of stars and the Milky Way became a diamond belt that streaked across them. How many times had I seen this sky by now? It was one of the beautiful things that those tragic atomic bombs had left for us so it was difficult not to appreciate it every time I saw it.

But tonight it was Nick who wanted to show me this sky. He leaned against the rough exterior of the house. Lights were few and far between and the minutemen had began to shut the lamps off during the middle of the night so they wouldn't draw attention. The colors of space rained down on the detective and his eyes echoed the stars.

And this night was more beautiful than the other times I had witnessed it.

After a long silence his voice broke through the humid air, "You ever write about me in there?"

I wrote about him in nearly every entry. "Yeah...yeah." My cheeks felt warmer and I became grateful for the cover the darkness provided.

"Mind if I have a look sometime?"

The nervous laughter escaped all on its own, "Maybe one day." Feelings that were better left in the book had made their home there. It would have been something more than embarassing for him to read them.

"Not writing me into smut are you?" He joked; his laugh made me turn my head away from his eyes.

"N-no, of course not!" Though the thought had never crossed my mind, it began to wander through it.

I slid down the wall and tried to focus on the sky again. I could feel my eyes wandering back to him, though. It was in that moment that I realized what kind of feeling I was getting from looking at him.

Nick was the type of person I wanted to be. I aspired to be reliable like him, to be a person that got things done but never lost his passion and compassion.

"I remember coming out of the agency and having smoke one long night. A lot of cases involve missing persons and this one was harder than the usual runaway or kidnapped kid. While watching people pass by I let myself get lost in what kind of people lived in this world. It wasn't good for me but it helped me progress the case."

"What happened?"

"Still not sure exactly. The trail I picked up fell through again not too long after."

There was no need to press it any further so I changed the subject. "Do you regret giving up smoking?"

"To make my partner comfortable? No. Not a single bit." A wind blew through the street. A robotic hand held onto the hat on his head. "Maybe we should call it a night."

He held out a hand to help me up. After my palm touched his, he lifted me to my feet."Did it help?

Gulls called out in the early morning sky, reminding Boston of how close it was to the sea. Goodneighbor had been "a sight for sore eyes", as Nick had put it, upon our return. A barely warm room in Hotel Rexford helped me to relax and process a bit more of what had happened. 

"Please don't leave me again," I whispered like a proverb to keep myself from crying.

Fear coursed through my being like rocks weighing down my veins. I had found my place between the bed and the wall, but could no longer move. From this vantage I could peer into the distant life of the detective working on something across the room. A pen moved effortlessly over the yellow, aged paper.

There was nothing to do but rest. It had taken us some time to come back to the hotel but the last few hours had been spent in an attempt to sleep before giving up. The case was closed, apparently. Despite it being a missing person's case, we weren't coming back with a person or a body or even a keepsake. I didn't understand.

A messy burgandy braid fell across my shoulder and over my legs and I laid my head onto my curled knees. Was that blood on his coat? What happened in that vault?

I wondered if he ever got hurt, would I be able to notice it like I would someone who was flesh and blood? What color was the coolant running through his kind heart?

Anger replaced fear; his kindness had considered my well-being over my happiness. An obvious choice from him, maybe from any kind-hearted being, but it still didn't sit well with me.

I just didn't want to lose anyone else. I didn't want to be alone again.

"Doll?" His voice was like a whisper. Afternoon light streamed in, warming my toes and the blanket that had slid off of my legs. Nick's face was closer than it was when I last saw it; I realized I must have fallen asleep in the middle of my thoughts but I couldn't remember what they had been.

He took a seat next to me and looked down at my darkened, bruised wrist.

"From the handcuffs." I reminded him before hiding it away underneath the blanket. Though I was resentful in looking at the painful bruise where the handcuff bit into my skin, I didn’t hide it away because of it. There was still a part of me that didn’t want to see him worry because even if I was angry I still loved him.

He sighed, "Sorry about that." Golden rings faced away from the sunlight after reading the anger on my face.

"I don't want to feel this way." The warm light bathing me felt like a truth serum. "I don't want to be angry, but I am."

"I-" The detective began his sentence before I accidently cut him off.

"It's heavy, I know it is... But if you leave me alone in this world I won't know what to do with myself." I sighed as well. "Maybe everyone's right. In this world maybe I am just a kid." The warmth on my face felt like the opposite of sunshine. Using my sleeve, I wiped that warmth away as quickly as I could.