#thinking about them again...

It’s a process. It’s work. It’s something Shadow accepted, when he first welcomed Metal into his life, and it’s something he accepts, now, as they stumble through it. He’s had worse, he tells Metal in the quiet moments, when Metal lets him close enough, when he lets himself be close enough.

When Shadow told Sonic- or when Sonic figured it out, and appeared at his apartment like a ghost, eyes like a blaze- Sonic called him crazy. Metal had not then, and has not now, changed sides. There is days where Metal appears in Shadow’s apartment, Sonic-sized marks in its body, and a fury in its eyes like a hunger, and every time, Shadow puts down the gun and touches Metal, tender.

Shadow understands. 

He understands in ways that no one else can; he understands family, and he understands obligation, and he understands being made, and he cannot fault Metal for any of it. Not even the days where it’s Shadow putting dents in Metal’s body, not even the days when it’s Metal’s claws in his skin, purposeful. 

Metal is trying. Metal is learning, in fits, in bursts, a thing it is not made to learn, and Shadow can take the bruises, the moments where Metal’s closes its hand too tight, because there is more than that.