Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shadow was sitting at the bar of Club Rouge with his head resting on his arms. He glanced behind him, looking through the slim gap between quills and shoulder. It had been years since Rouge had hauled his injured body behind this bar on one fateful night, but some things remained the same. The tables were still shaped like pinball bumpers. The air still smelled like smoke and alcohol. The city lights still shifted and swirled outside the window, like a lava lamp full of glitter.

His lashes lowered, and he closed his eyes. He usually hated the noise. There was a constant jangle and clatter of pinball machines and ice being shovelled into glasses. The chatter of the patrons – gamblers, drinkers, and revellers – was unending. But tonight, for some reason, it all blurred together into oddly comforting white noise.

He hadn’t wanted to hang around GUN’s headquarters today. Things were tense. Problems were trickling down from the Oval Office and other government branches, and being on the premises felt like being trapped inside a pressure cooker. Combine that with his team’s reluctance to blindly follow orders, and the three of them had gotten into several explosive fights in the span. Commander Tower was probably overjoyed to be rid of them for the day.

His inhibitor ring burned against his temple, and the metal felt unusually hot. His rings usually bore the brunt of it when he lost control. When his temper ran too high or his patience began to fray, frustration and Chaos Energy would bubble up in equal measure, and his body would pay the price. He restlessly tapped one finger on the bar counter. If you were meant to become more levelheaded as you aged, what were you supposed to do if you remained the same age forever?

His ears twitched at the clinking of coins, and he looked up to see someone operating the jukebox. Beyond the garish, ditzy glow of its neon lights, he could see Omega’s hulking figure in the corner. Like Shadow, he’d had no desire to stay at headquarters, but he had the common sense to know when to make his exit.

Shadow grimaced, listening to the jazz swing song that wafted from the speakers. He didn’t have a lot of common sense; he just had sheer stubbornness. He’d left headquarters well after his teammates, nearly breaking the reinforced doors as he skated off into the night.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’

Shadow reluctantly lifted his head, giving Rouge an unimpressed look. She raised her eyebrows in response, shaking a cocktail mixer. She’d had the foresight to bail early and pick up a bartending shift at Club Rouge. She was the owner, and she didn’t have to work the floor. But she was a draw, an attraction, and a selling point. People would come to the bar just to see her if they heard that she was working. She was charismatic, and she could talk for hours… and she had a gift for telling you whatever you wanted to hear.

‘… I don’t want to talk.’

‘Bad day?’

Shadow scoffed weakly and sat upright, resting his head in one hand. ‘We more or less had the same day, if you recall.’

She shrugged and cracked the shaker open, pouring a drink that she slid from one end of the counter to the other. ‘Maybe you’d feel better if you had a drink.’

He looked up at the rows of bottles above her head. They glistened like jewels. Every kind of wine and spirit was on display, in every vintage… but he hated the taste of alcohol. He toyed with an ashtray on the bar counter, running his fingertip around the rim and staining his glove. He just couldn’t win, could he? His immortality and regeneration meant that he could indulge in any vice without consequences, but his biology also meant that those same vices barely had an effect on him. Some of the people who left Club Rouge at closing time looked almost incandescent, but for him, drinking didn’t even elicit a dull pulse of warmth.

Maybe he’d feel better if he were living in a world where it felt like he was actually fighting alongside GUN, rather than fighting against them every other day.

‘Sure,’ Shadow muttered. ‘Pour one out for me, would you?’ Rouge watched him for a moment, and the intensity of her gaze cut through the incessant din. His hackles rose. ‘What?’

She rolled her eyes and turned her back on him, taking a glass from a hanging rack. ‘You’re talking about yourself as though you’ve died.’

The jukebox switched to a classic pop song from the ‘50s, and he stared at the bottom of the ashtray, unable to see his reflection in the metal. Maybe she was right, in a way. Sometimes it felt as though he was drifting through Central City like a ghost. He turned and looked at a nearby table with empty chairs.

He’d liked coffee. She’d liked soda. He remembered the bitter warmth; he remembered the sweet carbonation. He remembered their voices. He remembered sitting with the professor and his granddaughter, having a drink and listening to old vinyl records that had been sent to the Ark on a space shuttle.

It was supposed to have been different. That’s what he always told himself. They were supposed to have lived. In another life, he would have joined the professor for a whisky on the rocks as the man talked about research that, for once, had nothing to do with Shadow himself. He would have met Maria at a bar for drinks, talking about what they were doing now that their lives weren’t so inextricably intertwined. She would have smiled at him and raised her glass to a better future, one where she was still alive –

Damn it –

Shadow took a deep breath and exhaled, blinking rapidly.

Rouge mixed his drink in silence. She knew better than to ask if something had happened. Nothing had happened. Not even GUN’s bureaucratic stupidity was enough to make Shadow act like this. He didn’t even get on that well with their agents at the best of times. No, nothing had “happened”. Sometimes he just felt his chest grow heavier, almost imperceptibly, and he would remember for the thousandth time that things could have – should have – been different.

Rouge slid his drink towards him with a fingertip, and he came back to his senses. Then he did a double-take. ‘What is this?’

‘It’s drinkable,’ she deadpanned, repeating his reluctant praise for half-way decent coffee. ‘Don’t fall over yourself to thank me.’

‘Hmph.’ Shadow stared at the drink as though it were a snake rearing up to bite him. The golden-brown liquid was in a martini glass, and the rim was encrusted with sugar. It smelled of coffee and sweetness. ‘Really, though. What is this?’

‘An espresso martini.’

He took a cautious sip and sat in silence. Rouge leaned past him, over the counter, snapping her fingers to get Omega’s attention. ‘What can I get for you, big boy?’ she joked. ‘Motor oil?’

‘Vodka,’ Omega blared.

Shadow nearly spat his drink all over Rouge’s apron, and her eyebrows shot up. ‘Come again?!’

‘I wish to make Molotovs. I am bored.’

‘No!’ Rouge protested. ‘Put a different song on the jukebox or something! You’re sitting right next to it!’

‘Negative. You prohibited this action after I previouslyconnected to it and played audio recordings of artillery fire.’

‘That’s not music!’

‘Artillery fire has a rhythm –’

Rouge groaned, all but slamming her head down on the bar counter. ‘I’m not dealing with this. Go and help the bouncers deal with some drunkards or something.’ She turned back to Shadow, and asked, ‘Well?’

‘It’s… nice.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But why can’t I taste the alcohol?’

‘Because there isn’t any. You’ve said that it doesn’t do anything for you, remember? I figured I’d make you something you’d actually enjoy.’

‘Oh?’ Shadow forced a smile and said, ‘But you know I don’t like sugar.’

‘So you say, but…’ She leaned forward and whispered, ‘You can’t metabolise Chaos Energy from thin air –‘

‘I can, actually –’

Rouge waved her hand dismissively and said, ‘That’s not the point. I see you eating sweet things often enough. You’re not slick, sweetheart.’

‘That doesn’t mean I like sweets!’

‘Are you just trying to be difficult?!’

‘No, I…’ He trailed off, and that familiar, heavy weight settled in his chest again. ‘I just don’t think I like anything.’

Rouge’s hand wandered behind the counter, and he could tell that she was tempted to pour herself a shot. He knew Abraham sometimes poured himself a whiskey they had a lengthy argument in his office. It was bitterly ironic that it was the people in his life – not him – who drank to deal with his problems.

‘Well, that’s not true,’ Rouge said, with the swiftness of an exhausted parent. ‘You like your guns, you like your bike, and you like haunting this corner of my bar.’

‘It’s a better alternative.’ It was better than loitering at headquarters, or tossing and turning on his military cot in their shared flat below the building, or wasting gas riding around the backstreets of Central City. She was here. Omega was here. It was more bearable here.

He poked his glass, nudging it towards her. ‘Can I have another?’

‘I don’t know. Can you?’ Rouge quipped. But she poured syrups and mixers into a shaker and frothed it up, spinning another glass in a bed of sugar with her other hand. ‘I’ll have to start a tab for you at this rate.’

‘What, it’s not on the house?’

‘I’m running a business here –‘

‘I know. I was joking. Shocking concept, I know.’ He reached into the depths of one of his wrist guards and pulled out two 20-dollar bills. She’d told him to always keep a bit of cash on him. ‘You never know when you might need it,’ or something like that. He did it because it was easier than arguing. He did a lot of things because of her.

He took his second drink and pressed the bills into her hand. ‘Here.’

‘Do you know how much mocktails cost? Spoiler alert, it’s not this much.’

‘I’m not stupid. It’s a tip.’

‘You’re tipping more than the drinks –’

Shadow groaned and said, ‘It’s a little extra for listening to me whine. Just take it.’

‘It’s not a little…’ His words slowly sank in, and her ears drooped, along with her wings. ‘I don’t mind listening to you.’

‘I know.’ He looked away, sipping his drink so he didn’t have to look her in the eye. ‘But you listen to me a lot… even though I don’t talk very much.’

She finally fell silent, and she was soon distracted by one of the musicians calling to her from the sound stage. ‘I have to go. Behave yourself.’ But she gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze before she darted out from behind the bar.

‘“Behave myself,”’ Shadow muttered, watching her shed her apron and flit onto the stage, grabbing the bedazzled microphone stand as though it had been made just for her. ‘What, does she think I’m going to start a bar fight?’

‘Not a statistical improbability.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

The music from the jukebox died, and live jazz music wove through the air, followed by the velvety, crooning notes of Rouge’s voice. If you owned the biggest club in Central City, then why wouldn’t you give yourself the limelight every now and then?

Shadow sat in silence, sipping his drink occasionally and ignoring the other staff and patrons as he listened to Rouge’s voice. It was sweet… but he liked it anyway. He liked listening to her voice. He liked knowing that he could come here when he didn’t know where else to go. He liked knowing that she and Omega would be there for him. It was bittersweet, just like the drink in his hands.