I simply couldn't believe what I'd just told her. Of all the words for me to conjure up as a last resort, I stoop to lowly flirting.
Her pretty brown eyes shrank a little, surprised, and I turned away, squinting my eyes shut, awaiting the pain such a stupid remark would surely invoke.
Surely she'd hate me now. She was precious to me because for some reason, she didn't before. But now I'd gone and blew it before I even knew what it was like to have a broken heart fixed.
I shivered a little. I got frightened so easily ever since I broke, sprouted a tail, and lost everything I once took for granted. And I could almost hear the goddess of misfortune's mocking laughter as I proved her point in calling me a scaredy-cat time and time again. I shuddered and shook like a leaf on a tree for what seemed like forever before I finally felt it…
The harsh pain of being brutally rejected, the resounding pain of a girl you really like hitting you with a vicious…
…Embrace…?
Now wait just a minute.
This wasn't pain… No, it wasn't pain at all. This was nothing like pain. What was she doing? Why hadn't she slapped me, or spit on me, or choked me to death with my own tail…?
I hesitantly opened my smoky gray eyes to see her with her arms around me, smiling up at me fondly. She… she actually looked genuinely happy.
What just happened? All of the sudden she was praising me for saying something forward, dumb, and utterly….
"That's so sweet of you to say!" She gushed, embracing me with more power than I would have guessed those petite little arms had in them.
Wait a second, what did I do again…? I forgot… Why is she hugging me…? I… I… Ayeyeye.
Did you say something…? Did I say something…? What's going on?
Who is me?
(gulps) Brown eyes…
And just like that, the blast of heat that came flowing into me like some kind of oddly pleasurable electric shock cooled, and she released me, smiling at me like I was a birthday present with her name on it. I finally managed to rip my eyes from hers with much effort, and I cast my wayward, hot-faced glance upon her carpeted floor.
"Heehee." She chirped, "I can't wait to introduce you to some of my friends, Sable."
That made me nervous. If her friends were anything like her family, I'd be put on the spot before I could blink. It probably showed in my features that the aspect of meeting anyone in my current form made me more than a little nervous, because she began to… sort of pet me. Just a little. For a second. Maybe…
Uh… sort of.
"Shh. Don't get upset, I didn't mean right now. It's too soon. I have to break you in, a little, first." She said, through a wry wink. I don't know if I liked the sound of that, either.
I gave her a questioning look, and blinked once or twice, eyes probably more or less blank and clueless. She smiled. She was full of smiles and giggles and hugs and pets and all of that.
"You still don't talk much, and you're still the shyest boy I've ever met. I have to bring you out of your shell a little first, you turtle." She said, shoving me playfully.
I swayed under the push a little, and then reverted back to sitting up somewhat straight, maybe slouching just a little. I looked up innocently into her eyes. She looked at me for a moment, then gave me a little smile.
"…Then again… to be honest, your shyness is kinda what makes you so cute." She told me. I couldn't look at her after she told me something so flattering, so I looked at the most fascinating thing in the room next to her—the invisible particle of dust on the floor. I felt the heat again, my face probably pinkening through it's raven hue.
Another long moment of me not saying anything back because my words weren't good enough for her came and passed. Another moment filled with her, but not me, because I wasn't contributing to the conversation. Another moment I wished with much of my broken being that I could muster something else to say, something else that would be rewarded with a hug and a fond look.
Maybe…
"You know…" I started. She looked surprised that I was speaking. I waited a moment. "You know Sonic…?" I breathed.
She smiled instantaneously, nodding with a childlike vigor.
"Yes! I've known him for a long, long time! How did you…?" She started. I merely pointed to her closet.
"A… photo album." I said, clipping my sentence, for lack of Josh's old silver tongue. She smiled at what seemed to be the very sound of my voice. I liked seeing her smile, especially when it was because of something I did.
"Oh. That old thing? Hehe. I was so little back then… That was forever ago… Back when we were all together… I kind of miss those days." She said, balling herself up in a similar way that I was. She seemed to be smiling in a saddish way that suggested… lament.
She looked at me, and I frowned a little. She scooted a little closer, in a way that only I would notice, since I was always watching her as closely as I could. She looked at the ground.
"Now everyone's all grown up, and doing their own thing. Everyone's drifting apart, slowly but surely… I wish…" She started. She looked at me in a fondish, and yet saddish sort of way. "…I wish people could just stay together forever. But I guess that's too much to ask for, huh…?"
I didn't nod or shake my head or say anything, because I really didn't know how I felt on that subject. I was thinking about her, of course. I wondered if it really was too much to ask that she and I be together just like this for as long as forever.
I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that I was dreaming if I thought she'd be able to hide me for that amount of time. We'd drift apart too, eventually…
That thought made me… really sad. I didn't want to be away from her. I…
I needed her.
"The only friends that live close-by now are Tails and Amy. And Sonic comes by whenever there's trouble, but that's about it…" She said.
Upon hearing the name 'Amy', my ears perked up, but they trailed back down. I knew it couldn't have been my… Josh's Amy. No, Amy was a common name, and it was a big world. I couldn't have been that lucky.
I took a moment to wonder what Amy and Star, my… Josh's two best friends would think of me if they saw me like this. Would they think I was cute, like Cream did? Or would they shriek and kick me because I'm a hideous cat-thing?
With Josh, I realized, died my hopes of ever being with a woman intimately ever again. Sable wasn't as much of a romancer as Josh was, nowhere near it. I was about as romantic as a hairy armpit now.
No more sex for me. Not that lucky.
But…
I let my eyes trail to look at Cream for a split second, but then I looked away, face getting hotter and a certain other region boiling as well. I couldn't believe what I'd just thought. I mean, what were my chances at something like THAT, even if she DID think I was cute?
One in infinity, I thought. It didn't even matter if the probability was above fifty percent, I'd end up with nothing because of my luck issue… And besides… I was broken. I couldn't satisfy such a wonderful girl like Cream in the way she deserved to be.
I was a mess.
And she was all but flawless in my eyes.
"Sable…" she said, voice lower, more velvety and gentle than before. "What are you good at?"
Well that was a random question…
I realized the subject kept changing because I was being stupid and quiet and broken and not leading any of the topics into a conversation. It was my own fault she asked me a question I really, really didn't know how I was going to answer.
She asked me what I was good at. What was I supposed to tell her? I knew what Josh was good at. Josh was good at almost everything. Josh was a god amongst men to me now that I was no longer him. Josh was 50 feet tall and bulletproof now that he was being compared to my pathetic broken self. Josh…
…Enough about him. That's not who I am anymore. What is Sable good at?
Sable was a broken fraidy cat. Sable was good at hiding behind the covers, retreating into his shell whenever something startled him, and causing himself misfortune. The rest was all broken. The heart was mending, but still broken. The spirit was scared to be fixed, and the will was all but irrepairable.
"…Nothing." I replied, sadly. And she… Cream looked almost insulted, and for a second I thought I'd offended her somehow. I wanted to be invisible.
"Hey, don't you ever say that about yourself, you hear? Everybody is good at something…" She said, scolding me for the first time. I flinched at every word just because of the way she was saying them. I honestly didn't think Cream was even capable of getting angry or anything like that up until now…
So now I really had to do something. I had to tell her something I was good at, but I didn't even know if I was still good at anything. Okay… so…
What were my best qualities as Josh? I had a lot of them… they couldn't all be broken, could they?
So I listed them in my head, one by one, crossing out the ones I probably couldn't handle anymore. First thing that came to mind was writing. Totally broken. I was a man of words as Josh, but… when I broke, the words just wouldn't come anymore.
Next thing I thought of was… Well, that. Well, Josh always liked to think he was good at that. I mean, everyone he did it with seemed more or less satisfied… wait a second, why was I thinking about telling Cream I was good at something like that? No, no, I… relied on my spirit for that anyway. My spirit was broken, and broken again.
Josh was good at other, simpler things, like knowing just the right thing to say. Josh was perceptive, clever, and crafty in his own right…
But I lost the foundations for all of those things when I broke. They were all gone.
Come on… what skills did Josh have that couldn't be broken by something like a bad turn of luck…?
I thought about it for a long, long moment, and the way Cream was frowning, she looked as if she didn't expect an answer any time soon. Every time she frowned because of something I said, or rather something I didn't say, it felt like some kind of physical blow inside of me.
I finally thought of something that I could tell her. I had paws now… but… well, maybe I was still good at that. I hoped I was.
"I can draw… a little." I muttered almost inaudibly. Of course, if anyone could hear it, Cream could, assuming those ears of hers weren't just to make her look even cuter than she already was. The way her face just… lit up like a floodlight straight out of heaven then… it made me feel like, for a split second, I wasn't broken anymore. No, it made me feel like being broken wasn't so bad after all. Not if I can make her smile like that.
But that moment of happiness was short-lived indeed, because the next thing she did was hop up and dart over to her nightstand, opening a drawer filled with all kinds of color pencils and pens and crayons and paper.
She brought all of the stuff over to her bed, and sort of just let it dump out of her arms, piling up in a most unfashionable sort of way. She looked at me with huge, wide, very brown eyes. Some part of that girl was still just a child, I realized, just by looking at how excitable she was.
"Show me." She demanded, knowing I couldn't turn her down.
I glanced at the stuff she'd handed me. Not a single mechanical pencil. I didn't do colors, and I couldn't draw anything unless I had a mechanical. And I especially couldn't do it while somebody was watching me.
Please, somebody just shoot me now. I wanted to be invisible, I wanted to be in the closet or under the comforter or in my turtle shell.
Now, I honestly didn't think having paws with a few less fingers than any human had would make much of a difference, seeing as drawing wasn't as much about technique as it was knowing what you were doing. And I remembered how to make lines and I could put a picture that was forming in my head down on paper easily enough… but…
While she was watching me…? Waiting for the greatest picture ever to be produced by poor, broken lil' old me?
Play dead, Sable, just roll over and play dead. Maybe she'll look away long enough for you to hide.
But, looking into those eyes, I realized that not in a million years, no matter what she was asking me to do, could I ever even think about saying no to a face like that. It just wasn't in me, and I don't think it would've even been in Josh, God rest his now broken soul.
So, feeling like an awkward idiot, I slowly, hesitantly, nervously used my preferred left ha… paw to spread the materials out, so that I could locate something I was at least vaguely familiar with using.
I found a pencil that had a very good eraser, and a sharp point, but I still didn't want to use it. It wasn't mechanical. Those things, sharp or not… the lines were too thick. They didn't have grips. They needed constant sharpening. I hated those things.
Holding the thing, I awkwardly adjusted it to where it wouldn't slip out of my paw, finding that one less finger than normal made it a bit harder with these things. But…
What was cool was it didn't slip. I finally realized something I really should have realized before—My paws had these… pad thingies on them. They served as grips, better grips than anything I'd ever had on even the best mechanicals. It really helped.
Maybe being a hideous cat-thing wasn't so bad after all?
She watched me almost feverishly, much the same way I watched her, but not quite so inconspicuous. No, I had a hard time looking at her when she was looking back, but she just kept on looking, whether I was meeting the gaze or not. I let out a wavery, nervous sigh as I grabbed the entire pile of paper. The bed wouldn't serve as a very good surface to draw on, but the stack of paper was so thick that I could draw on it without messing up too horribly bad.
Putting the tip of the pencil to the paper, making a tiny dot, I finally realized that all that mental preparation was for nothing, seeing as I had no earthly idea what to draw for her.
I just looked up at her in a pleading sort of big-eyed way, wondering if I could find what she expected by looking at her face. I couldn't. Josh could have, I bet, but Sable couldn't.
But she smiled at me in a way that suggested genuine admiration, even though there wasn't really anything in the room worth admiring except her…
Except her…
That's it. I'd draw her. I wondered… Could I handle drawing something as pretty as she was? If I made her look ugly because of a lack of confidence or because I was rusty or because I didn't have a mechanical pencil, would she get mad at me?
No, I told myself.
Cream wouldn't get mad about something like that. No, she'd laugh if I messed it up. She was too good to get mad for any reason except protecting her friends, or me…
Was she my friend? Was I hers?
I would have liked to think so. Sable didn't have any friends. Sable needed a good friend more than he needed to be fixed. He needed her.
So I looked up at Cream's face, that still excited face, and tried to figure out where to start. It didn't take long. My favorite thing about her were her eyes. They were the only part of her I simply couldn't stop looking at. I'd draw those.
I used the pencil, hindered by my paw's consistent shaking and the fact that the huge sleeves of the sweater kept falling down over it. I tried to pretend she wasn't watching me. I was afraid I'd mess up, but I reminded myself that the pencil has an eraser. I focused with all my broken might, making an ovular shape on the paper, and another. I erased the bottom parts of the ovals, but on purpose, drawing a curved line below them. I don't know why I decided to draw her looking down, but that was what I wanted to do.
Wait… I did know why.
It was because I liked looking at Cream even more when she… wasn't looking back. That was when I felt safe from her judgement. Her judgment could be trusted, I knew that, but for some reason I always expected the worst, even from somebody so gold-hearted as her.
I looked up at her, and then back to the paper, trailing the curvy line down to connect the ends as smoothly as I could, making a curvy blob shape. I didn't fill it in… that part of her face was blanker than the whites of her eyes.
She looked down at my paper confusedly, obviously trying to figure out what it was I was drawing. And I got nervous. Nervous because she was watching every line. I made an error because my paw was shaking, and I erased it, feeling stupid. I tried again, and made the exact same error, for the same reason. I erased it, and did the same thing a third time.
I was beginning to get exceedingly upset because I was messing up, making a big, dumb-looking smudge. My paw shook and shook, because it was just so hard at the thought of her eyes.
At the very top of Sable's long, long list of fears was stage fright, I discovered.
And just when I thought it would shake so violently it might fall off, I felt a warmth wrap itself around it. I gasped a little, frightened at the sudden touch, seeing her snowy glove wrapped around my jittering sooty paw. And the shaking stopped, as the warmth from that simple little touch trailed slowly up my arm, down my spine, coursing through my veins like blood cells made radioactive.
She went and did it again, she had to go and glue another little piece of my broken heart together, another little piece that now belonged to her. Why did she waste her time on me…?
I gulped a little, feeling like my face was a match, and her touch had ignited it. I felt like that every time she touched me, and she touched me every time I shivered.
I chanced looking up into the beauty that, a moment ago, I was trying to draw. Almost every time I looked up into those eyes, they were always just a little closer to me than I expected. She blinked precisely 3 times before she smiled. Her eyes were the easiest part of her to read, and they told me that she'd just figured something out.
"You use mechanical pencils, don't you?" She said.
I looked at her blankly, vaguely astonished that she'd deducted something like that. I didn't remember saying anything… I just told her that I could draw. And I'd yet to prove that I was even in the foggiest sense 'good' at it. Her hand was still wrapped gently, so… impossibly gentle around mine, and the pencil.
And I can easily admit that there was no warmth like Cream's warmth. None.
And I don't mean that in a sense to say that her touch was hotter than something like boiling water or the sun, but as a way to say that it was… the perfect temperature.
I don't say perfect lightly, either. It was the kind of warmth that you'd do anything to achieve, even if it was just for a second. The kind of warmth that makes a person feel like they belong… surrounded by it.
And yes, I mean that in a way to suggest that I wanted desperately, every time I felt it, to simply press my body against hers, to blanket myself with that same fantastic sensation.
It was fear that stopped me from acting on these feelings. I was scared of the touch, because it was her touch. I was only allowed to have as much as she willingly gave me, that and no more. I held this girl in higher respects than I held queens, presidents, or even gods, because she was all that separated me from absolute and complete misery.
She was just that…
…She was that important to me. I wish I could make it sound rational, that I'd have these feelings so shortly after meeting her, but I simply can't.
Except to say… At that moment, she was everything. No, she's still everything.
I didn't know what everything was until I met her.
She was my only friend. I needed her. And I didn't want her to judge me. I was afraid of her judgment, because it was so powerful. Her judgement could have killed me again and again. It could have broken certain parts of me worse than ever. Particularly… my heart.
I didn't know what she wanted, and even if I did, I wasn't sure about it. Sable's very nature was unsure, about almost everything. I wasn't sure, and the fact that I could be wrong about things scared me out of making those decisions. I wasn't sure about anything. Not her, not this feeling, but most of all, I wasn't sure of myself.
After relishing her hand's warmth for as much time as I could steal without getting caught, I looked up into her eyes, and she looked into mine. Sable communicated mainly through his eyes.
I nodded to her, but I didn't ask her how she'd figured it out, even though I wanted to know. She told me anyway.
"Hee… I doodle a little too… I can tell because of the way you draw with the tip straight down instead of slanted to the side." She said.
Now that was something that interested me. Anything I could learn about her interested me, because, like I said, she was everything. She was all I had, and I was beginning to think she was all I needed. If I could trust anyone, it would be her. Down to the core I could see how trustworthy she was. It was written plainly in her rich, earthy eyes.
So she could draw. I wondered how good she was… I wondered which hand she drew with, what kind of things she drew, everything. I wanted to know everything about it.
I looked up into her eyes with the fascination of a kid about to hear an exciting story. And she looked happy that I was interested, but that was no surprise. She was a happy girl. And… she made me feel that way too. She made me feel things I'd never thought possible for broken things to feel.
"Hee hee. I don't have any mechanical, sorry… I bear down too hard, rip the paper with those. But I can show you how a normal pencil can be better." She offered, taking my paw in her left again.
She tossed the piece of paper I'd messed up aside, and ever so gently altered her paw's position over mine, molding my left hand into an entirely different position, but a position that sort of… felt like something clicking into place. Then holding that pencil actually felt right. She moved her arm a little, and, feeling much less nervous, much warmer and safer than before, I followed, making a curved, perfect, diagonal line.
"There you go! Just like that, lefty." She teased. I glanced at the single line, then looked up at her.
"What is it…?" I asked. She always sort of perked up at the sound of my voice, like she didn't expect it, but welcomed it nonetheless. She smiled gently, and carefully took the paper and pencil from me.
And she… she was good. She was really good. I watched as she quickly and effortlessly made perfect, smooth, evenly proportioned lines on the paper with her right hand. Then she switched hands, and started again, just as perfectly, just as neatly, and within about 5 minutes I saw a picture of a… wait, was that me?
She hadn't bothered to shade it, but it… That picture was absolutely fantastic. It amazed me how good she was. And to be able to do something like that so quickly, she…
She didn't even look like she was trying. I now realized she was 100 to a million times better than me, or Josh, or both of us put together.
"It's a turtle." She answered, grinning cutely. Not only did she give me a name, but now I had a nickname as well. I almost felt like laughing, but I just smiled silently.
What I had just seen made me want to stick my head out of my shell for a minute, because I was just so fascinated, so enthralled that she could do something like that. I felt like, for once, I could actually speak openly to her about something.
"…That's amazing." I told her, looking at the picture fondly, admiring the quality. I wondered if that was really what I looked like… even for a cat-thing, it wasn't really so bad. She even said I was cute.
I looked at her when she didn't respond, and she was pink with modesty, even though she had enough skill to justly brag to the world that her artwork was God's gift to Earth, without anyone disagreeing. Who would?
"You really think so, Sable?" She asked me through a smile. I only looked at her for a minute, studying her. I nodded.
"You…" I started. There I go again, starting a sentence before I knew how to finish it. I breathed out, trying to calm my shy nerves. "You use both hands…?" I asked.
She smiled at me, and nodded like it wasn't worth complimenting. "Yup. I've been drawing since I was really little… So… well, I sort of taught myself to use both of them. It's easy if you practice a lot." She told me. I watched her as she glanced pensively at the drawing I held.
"Look," She said, holding her hands out to the picture she'd created. I handed it to her, and she took the pencil in her right hand, making sure to adjust it so I could see. She traced over the ear on the left-most side of the drawing, "Right hand draws smoother lines on the left side…" She put the pencil in the other hand, and traced over my other ear, "And left makes better curves on the right." She explained.
It made sense to me, because I, despite how ridiculously she outranked me in it, drew things too, and knew that my left-handedness drew much better curves when they were on the right half of the paper.
"…I can't use my right at all." I said, just randomly. She looked up at me, and set the stuff down. She took both of my paws in her hands, and smiled like it was no big deal.
She was a very, very physical person. She was the kind that greets total strangers with a hug rather than a bow or a handshake. I'm not complaining, either, but… she just got me so flustered when she up and did something I deemed so… outgoing.
…But then again, everything was outgoing to the shyest boy Cream had ever met, huh?
"Want me to teach you?" she offered. Why, I ask, why does she do these things for me? I simply don't understand how she can be so pure as to be that nice to me.
I couldn't possibly say no when she was so happily awaiting for her offer to be accepted, so I just stared into those eyes, for a single, fleeting moment of pure adoration, before I nodded to her. She looked just as happy as I knew she would, that child-like energy, that liveliness, that unbelievable spirit, all of it shining through as well.
I realized that Cream had to be the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me, and then I started to think… maybe she was lucky. Maybe even lucky enough to counter-act my misfortune.
With that, my broken hope was partially mended, and I felt glad at the thought that maybe Lady Luck didn't have as tight of a hold on my fate as she thought she did.
-----+
The rest of the day went by faster than I possibly could have imagined, and I eventually found myself in the closet again, this time hiding from Cream's mother, Vanilla.
Vanilla was almost as sweet and caring as her daughter, and I almost felt like thanking her for bringing her up the way she did, because it was exceedingly obvious that the seasoned woman had a huge influence on the girl.
The only difference I could see in the two's actual personalities was that Vanilla was just a tad more courteous and formal, and I imagined that, though Cream still had quite impeccable manners, the formality was probably something she grew out of when she matured into a teenager.
(deep breath) What else…?
Oh yeah… even though Cream was using the utmost caution when it came to keeping me hidden, we almost got busted when she tried to get a double helping of lunch so that she could bring me some of it.
I mean… even I would have gotten suspicious if she'd done something like that… I mean, look at her. She's about as trim as they come.
I also learned that she was a vegetarian. Well, I guess that came with the rabbit thing… but anyway, she brought me some kind of casserole later on, even though I told her not to go to so much trouble. I wasn't really hungry at all, even though I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten.
I found out that, in a contest of determination, I didn't stand a chance against her. And, for the second time since I'd met her, Cream looked at me in a way that suggested… well, that I did not want to find out what she'd do to me if I didn't eat that food, so I nipped at it until it was mostly gone.
It tasted good for something I had to force down. I remember she'd told me that she was the one who'd cooked it. I subconsciously added cooking to Cream's list of a million talents.
But after the food ordeal, the girl was even more careful not to do anything that might give away my presence, these including the fact that she left me all alone for what felt like hours so she could go spend what she called 'the average amount' of time with her mother. I didn't want her to go, but she told me Vanilla would get suspicious if she didn't.
I still didn't want her to leave me, but I understood. If there was anything I knew, it was that mothers have a way of… surprising you with how easily they can figure out what your secrets are. I knew it from experience… Well, from Josh's experience.
And now that I was all alone in a dark, lonely closet with nothing but my broken mind to keep me company, it was only a matter of time before I'd find something to be miserable about. Vanilla was nothing at all like my… erh, Josh's mom, but she still reminded me intensely of her.
I tried not to think about mom, but…
Trying not to think about my old lady… made me think about her of course. My… Josh's mom always knew everything. Every time I had a question, I'd ask her. She always knew. I wish I could ask her what she'd do now, were she in my situation. I felt guilty about some of the things I'd said when I was lucky, when I was still Josh.
I always shunned mom's advice as meaningless lectures, and tried to talk my way around them, but now that I knew I'd probably never see her again… I frowned.
Now I wished more than ever that I could get mom's advice just one more time.
I never realized how much luck I really had until I had to live without it…
Mom…
Apart from saying some of the wisest, most intellectual things since Confucius, she also said some really old fashioned, cliché things.
I imagined mom's voice with my broken imagination: "You don't know what you've got til' it's gone." She said.
Cliché. Yeah, really cliché. But I found now that the most cliché of things… those are usually the things that hold the most truth. I think mom was trying to show me… trying to make Josh see that. Now… here I was, begging for something that before I'd begged only to be rid of.
The tragic irony was too much weight for a broken heart to bare, and… for the first time since I woke up next to Cream, I…
…I cried. There was no getting away from how much I missed my friends and family. The thought of never seeing them again made me feel like I'd puke my broken heart out.
…I tried not to make any noise, and I didn't. Well, maybe just a little noise. Barely audible.
I wondered what everyone would think happened to Joshua Duncan once he didn't come back from his trip to the woods. Would they form a search party? Would they put my picture on the side of a milk carton? Make a memorial?
Would they… even notice?
A part of my heart that Cream had restored wiggled, and chipped off.
I didn't notice when the closet door slid open, as my face was buried in… what's his name… Vector's old sweater. The only noise that escaped was my wavery, irregular breathing.
…Okay, so maybe I was sobbing just a little.
Still, I had underestimated Cream's remarkable sense of hearing.
"Oh gooodness, Sable, are you alright?" Came her voice, startling me.
I was shaking. I was shaking again because I was afraid to let her see me cry. She'd see me cry, and she'd ask me why I was crying. What was I supposed to tell her? I would tell her the truth. But who in their right mind would believe such a thing? I couldn't tell her that I missed my previous life as a human; she'd think I was nuts!
I felt her as she wrapped her arms around me, stilling me. She did it every time I shivered, or shook, or moved irregularly. She succeeded every time because her touch—the feel of her warmth was…
It was worth stopping for.
I didn't look at her. I had tears in my eyes. I didn't want her to see me like this. But she did something against which there was no defense, especially none that broken old Sable could muster…
She gently placed her gloved paw on my chin, and my body followed her touch inevitably, until I was looking right at her, teary-eyed.
"…What's wrong…?" She asked me. I knew she'd ask me that, I knew it. I was afraid of it, so I just knew it would happen. It almost always did.
Damn my rotten luck.
So now I needed something to tell her that would bring logical reason to why Sable, a broken nobody and stranger with no past would be crying to himself in her closet, while she was supposedly downstairs watching a movie with her mother.
I had to make up something fast, because if I didn't act soon, I'd see those truth-demanding eyes, and I'd tell it to her. The truth, the ridiculous truth.
Well, now or never, I told myself, opening my big, stupid, broken mouth….
Sable really had a thing for saying the dumbest thing possible at the most inopportune moments, I found.
"I… missed… you." I sniffled, feeling like an idiot.
End ChapterExtremely small A/N: Is this not the FLUFFIEST story I've ever written? You gotta love it.
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