Shego jolted awake with a gasp. There was a loud clap of thunder outside, and lightning flickered around the edges of the window. Not like her bedroom, where heavy blackout curtains blocked out the light, even on nights like this. Maybe she should’ve risked driving home in the storm, just to sleep in a dark room, but no, the idea of going outside right now made her stomach churn.
If she’d been at home, she would’ve had a drink to cope. She would’ve grabbed some headphones and blasted music loud enough to wreck her hearing, but it would’ve been enough to drown out the rain. Mostly.
She wasn’t sure how to handle it here, at Kim’s house, when she wasn’t alone in bed. Another rumble of thunder, a little more light bleeding into the room, and Shego had to get out of here. She couldn’t stay in this bed, couldn’t risk falling asleep again; she’d had her fill of nightmares for the night. Hell, she’d had her fill for the week.
She climbed out of bed, careful not to wake Kim, and wandered through the house aimlessly, leaving the lights off. Even though the shadows were becoming familiar, this wasn’t her home; she wasn’t safe here. With the storm outside, she wasn’t sure if she was really safe anywhere.
She didn’t have her headphones, but Kim wouldn’t mind if she had a drink, she decided. It was a lie; Kim would definitely care that Shego was searching for alcohol in the middle of the night. Well, maybe not the middle of the night — the clock above the stove said 11:43. She hadn’t even slept til midnight.
This was going to be a long night.
Unfortunately, Kim still had a college kid’s taste in alcohol, just some beer shoved in a drawer in the fridge. It was a shame, really. Shego had a nice bottle of tequila sitting in her kitchen. Some really great whiskey too. She sorted through the beer and came up with a can of hard seltzer. Not any stronger than the beer and probably just as cheap, but it didn’t taste like it came from a frat party. So that was something.
She pulled a chair next to a window and watched the rain pound against the glass. By the third bolt of lightning, she’d finished her drink and she wanted another. Something stronger.
At home, she would’ve sat in an alcove next to a window on the second floor of her house, with a glass of whiskey right beside her. She would’ve drunk it slowly, one sip at a time. It would have been warm and soothing, softening the lights that fractured the sky. The seltzer was gone too fast and tasted cold, and the bubbles stung her mouth. Nothing soft or soothing about it.
“Why’d you get out of bed?”
Fuck. She’d really hoped that Kim would sleep through this. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Did the thunder wake you?” Kim sounded so sincere. Shego wanted to punch her. This was what she hated most about dating, the whole ‘getting to know you’ thing. The thing where she was supposed to be open and vulnerable and talk about her fucking feelings.
“I can’t sleep when there’s lightning,” she admitted. She didn’t take her eyes off the window.
“If you come back to bed, you won’t be able to see it,” Kim reasoned. Shego ignored her. She wanted her damn whiskey. “Does watching make it easier?” Shego hesitated, then decided that, fuck it, she could be honest here, and shook her head. Watching made it much, much worse, because when she saw this lightning, she sometimes saw the other lightning. The lightning that came with memories.
Metal crushed against her back, rain on her face, screaming as static surged through her body. Metal gloves alive with electricity, hot on her hands. Lightning in front of her, around her, racing across her skin, taking over everything she knew. Burning bright white through her body until there was only lightning and darkness and raw nerve endings, and she was howling with Pain. Pain. Pain.
All her breath escaped in a strangled gasp. When the fuck had she closed her eyes?
Blinking away the memories, she realized she couldn’t see the lightning anymore. The real lightning, the lightning that was still here. Kim must have closed the curtains while she’d been stuck in the— fuck, don’t think about it. Thinking made it worse, because thinking was a straight path to remembering, which led to reliving, and reliving hurt. She would never say it out loud, but reliving scared her. It was why she was watching a storm instead of risking the nightmares.
Her hands were still fucking tingling from those gloves.
Even with the curtain in the way, Shego could hear rain drumming against the window. The next bolt of lightning lit up the edges of the fabric, spilling over the wall around it, and she pulled her arms in tight so they didn’t shake. She could normally hold herself together, but the flashback was still fresh in her mind, and she needed to be alone so she could scream. Or cry. Or do anything other than fucking sit here.
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Kim asked quietly. “Because of the tower?” Shego gave a jerky nod and hoped to god that Kim kept her mouth shut. “I shouldn’t have done that.” “Do you know what really I hate?” “That your date melted?” “Nah. You.” Shego suppressed the shudder than threatened to take over her body. “I mean, if you’d been anyone else–” Shego could already hear the sirens, and Kim needed to stop fucking talking “–you would have die—”
Pain. Metal collapsing over her chest and rain beating against her skin, pounding through her raw-nerve body. Echoing on the concrete, bouncing off the steel of the tower. So much noise, sirens and voices yelling and the rain and her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Thunder cut through all of it, so loud that she couldn’t hear her own heartbeat. Then the thunder ended, and her heartbeat didn’t come back. Lightning split open the sky.
It wasn’t a slow fade. No hazy in-and-out memories, just heartbeat and thunder and lightning, then nothing. Death.
The faces of the EMTs and their fucking AED hovered over her. She could still feel the pads on her chest, and everything was so, so cold. She closed her eyes, just for a second, and tried to shake off the oxygen mask. “Kim. Stop talking.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.” For what? Shego wondered. For kicking her off that building? For trying to talk about it now? She wondered if Kim even knew the answer to that one.
“Thanks.”
Kim went quiet for a long time. “Is there anything I can do to help?” Of course Kim wanted to help, because she never shut off the part of her brain that made her a goddam hero. Shego wanted to hate her. So, so badly.
“Just…go back to bed, Kim.”
“Does it help to have someone with you?”
Shego didn’t have an answer. Relationships were complicated, and she came with a lot of baggage. Including these flashbacks and the letters P-T-S-D, thrown at her by some prison shrink who’d been paid enough to diagnose her but not enough to actually fucking care.
Her and Kim hadn’t put a label on this yet, but it was as close to a relationship as she’d been. Close enough that she couldn’t pretend the baggage didn’t matter.
Why the fuck was she still staring at a closed curtain?
When Shego didn’t say anything, Kim didn’t press for an answer. She just pulled up another chair and said, “Let me know if you want me to leave.”
Thunder snapped through the air, and Shego knew Kim was watching her, but she was only half there. The other half could taste copper in her mouth and feel the rain turning her skin to ice and hear the empty place where her heartbeat was supposed to be. The part that was still here shifted its hands slightly, fingers tightening around a wrist, and her heartbeat pulsed against her fingertips.
Everything shifted into focus.
Shego glanced at Kim, and saw the concern written over every inch of her face. She realized how she was sitting, hunched over and staring at a piece of fabric in front of a window, trying to keep her shoulders from shaking, gripping her wrist to make sure she wasn’t dead. She probably looked half-crazy, but Kim was looking at her like she cared. Like she would stay here all night and listen to Shego talk about rain and lightning. Like she would stay here all night and stare at a curtain and listen to the rain, even if Shego didn’t say a word.
This fucking woman. Kicked her into a radio tower and gave her a lifetime’s worth of trauma in one night, and had the nerve to sit here a decade later and care about the damage. Shego was maybe a tiny bit in love with her.
Wordlessly, she reached out and took Kim’s hand, then turned back to the curtain. The next time the edges flared with light, Kim’s fingers tightened around hers, tethering her to now.
For a moment, it was enough.