Shadow

Shadow lay on his back on the roof, staring up at the stars. Disappointing, as always. He still remembered the sky he'd looked up at as a child—the brilliance of it, countless tiny points of light thick enough to blur together at the edges. There were just too many other lights competing for that glory here.

When he'd first said as much to Luther, Luther had driven him out far from the city and they'd looked up together. The stars had been more visible. It still hadn’t been the same. Perhaps the real difference was in knowing they had once been the only light there was most of the time. As just one of far too many sources of light, they were less impressive.

He got about an hour of quiet roof time in before Finch came outside, obviously looking for him. Shadow considered pushing attention away from himself, or, hell, just shutting his eyes. He was pretty sure Finch could hardly see him up here beyond their reflective glow. Sometimes he forgot how completely blind most people were in darkness.

When Finch turned to look up at the roof, though, he let himself be seen. He could live in this house for weeks without any of them realising he was still there if he really wanted to. But. Well. He didn't want to.

Finch looked like someone who'd decided a long time ago not to bother with things that didn't need bothering with—the way he held himself, the slight looseness in his shoulders, like tension was something he'd consciously set down somewhere and hadn't picked back up. A breeze moved through the dark waves of his hair. His brown eyes, when they found him, didn't make him feel caught. Shadow had watched him with Luther and seen how fast that ease could go—a small shift of his brows and his face went somewhere else entirely—but right now it was open. Relaxed.

“Ah, there you are.” Finch approached the side of the house and Shadow climbed down to the edge of the roof to meet him. “Dinner’s just about ready. You can creep in and grab leftovers later if you want, but it’s burgers, so. Considerably better fresh.”

Shadow nodded.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Acknowledgement.”

Finch considered him for a moment. "I think it'd be good if you came in and sat down with everyone just for a bit, but I also fucking hate it when people think they know what's best for me and I hardly know you. I'm going to go back in now, and I hope you come with me, but I'm not going to come out here and nag you if you don't."

Shadow nodded again.

"Acknowledgement. Right." Finch turned. "I'm gonna go eat some burgers now."

He watched as Finch headed back inside.

The urge to disappear off into the night sat in his chest like something physical. That was what felt safe when nothing else did. If you denned up when predators were about, they'd find you. You had to keep moving.

He'd learned young that it didn't work like that here. He didn't know how to scavenge in this world, and the sun spent half its time being out. There weren't as many immediate threats, but there didn't need to be to make it completely unviable.

Besides, what if Luther called again? What if he'd found some solution and wanted to come get him? What if he hadn't, and he wanted to say goodbye? Leaving wasn't an option, no matter how natural it felt.

He'd forgotten how out of his element this world made him feel without the casual comforts Luther and their home had provided. It had been easy when the lights were dim and the windows covered, when conversation could take place in the lowest of voices. Luther hadn't been a perfect father but, in many ways, he'd been more perfect for Shadow than a perfect father could have been.

These people weren’t so bad, though. They were already picking up on his needs and trying to accommodate him. No, they weren’t bad at all. Just… different. Everything was.

And he wouldn’t get used to it hiding up here. Shadow climbed down from the roof and went inside.

He'd seen through the glow of the windows that Adin had turned the lights back on to cook, but they were dim again now—ceiling lights off, just a lamp on a desk in the corner and a few battery-powered lanterns on the kitchen table and counters, the kind kept on hand for power outages.

Of all of the people here, Shadow had been most unsure about Adin, but the smile he gave when Shadow let him notice his entrance looked genuine. "Ah, Shadow! I'm glad you decided to join us. I made burgers. Or, well—things to put in burgers. Vegetable and beef patties, cheese, tomato, lettuce, onions, pickles. Anything you could want. I wasn't sure what you liked or if you had any dietary restrictions, but I know you'll eat bread and cheese if nothing else."

Shadow gave a nod of thanks, accepted a plate, and started putting together a burger.

When Shadow had first encountered Adin, he had thought his heart didn’t beat, but he was so used to that from Luther that it had barely registered. It was the first time Adin's heart did beat that had caught his attention. It only did it a couple of times a minute, interrupting the rhythm of the rest of the room like a wrong note.

And that wasn't even the greatest of the chaos. Everyone was moving around, making constant conversation, and the whole time their attention clung to him like a wet shirt.

He wasn't incapable of handling this many people. He'd spent the first nine or so years of his life in a group far larger than this. He was just out of practice, too unfamiliar with these particular people to mentally filter out the unimportant parts. He didn't know their patterns yet.

He could feel himself slipping—attention fragmenting, responses a beat too slow. He hated that everyone around him could see it. Hated how Malyn's voice dropped after Shadow's eyes cut to him a fraction too sharp. Hated how Adin checked on him when he got distracted from his food. Hated the way Finch looked at him like maybe pushing him to come in for dinner had been a mistake.

“So,” Malyn said around a mouthful of burger. “I heard you kicked Finch’s ass.”

“I tripped him,” Shadow clarified.

“That’s a clever strategy, actually,” Tyla said. “Unless you’re very strong, hitting him wouldn’t have done much. Tripping him was probably the only way for you to truly win.”

“Maybe I could have braced myself better, but he was behind me before I even realised what was happening,” Finch said. “Bet there are some things I could learn from you, Shadow.”

"I don't know how much I could teach you." It was still strange, hearing his own voice come out so loud. It felt wrong—the way a normal person might feel if they suddenly had to shout everything they said to someone who was almost deaf.

Finch waved a hand. “I don’t expect you to teach me how to flip all over the place or anything. It’s just hard for me to get any good training in without someone who’s a real challenge to practise against, you know? Don’t get me wrong, these guys are great at what they do, but I can’t spar against an arrow to the face.”

Shadow nodded.

"Only if you want to, of course. Not that I think I could make you do anything you didn't want to, but—well, I try to have manners."

"I taught him his pleases and thank yous," Adin said as he finally sat down at the table next to Shadow. Finch was on Shadow's other side; Tyla and Malyn across from them. "Never managed to get him to stop swearing, though."

Finch shrugged. “Never gave me a good reason not to.”

He carried with him a tired kind of calm. His heartbeat was steady and predictable—even when Luther had been explaining the situation to him, springing all of it on him at once, his pulse hadn't spiked. Shadow had noticed that about him immediately.

“We can spar,” Shadow said.

Finch smiled. “Great.”

"So, Shadow." Malyn leaned forward a little. "Did you go to school? Like, how did that work with the vampire thing and whatever you have going on?"

“Tutor,” Shadow said.

He and Luther had shared one. Luther had already been passably fluent by the time Shadow had first encountered him, but that hadn’t been enough for him. He’d wanted to be able to read, write, and speak the language perfectly. You had to truly think long term when you were immortal, Luther had always said. There was no putting things off until you inevitably died, never having truly addressed them. He could have spent a hundred years struggling over things a tutor had set him right on in a few.

“Ohh,” Malyn said. “I had tutors for the catch up program. Didn’t do me much good.”

“That’s because you skipped out on them to come hang out with me,” Finch pointed out.

“Well, it was more educational!” Malyn insisted. “I just can’t learn in a classroom. People talk and talk, and by the time I realise I’ve stopped listening, I have no idea what they’re saying.”

Finch and Adin were like islands, disconnected from everyone else, but Malyn and Tyla were the opposite—two planets locked in orbit. Shadow doubted anyone else noticed it, maybe not even themselves. When Malyn got up to get another burger, Tyla leaned on the table in the direction he'd gone, then kept following his movement, ending up tilted forward over the table. To anyone else, it might have looked like he was just listening to Finch, who was seated in front of him, but Shadow had watched the entire motion and it had been perfectly synchronised with Malyn's.

It was hard to track all of these subtleties and still follow the conversation, but he reminded himself that was just the adjustment process. Once he understood each dynamic in play, he wouldn't need to give attention to all of them at once. For now, he just had to tolerate feeling distracted and overwhelmed.

“Shadow,” Adin said. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Shadow had never understood the point of asking if you could ask something. It almost always depended on what you wanted to ask, and there was no revealing that without essentially just asking. He nodded.

“You’ve slipped away right under our noses a couple of times now, and you managed to hide from a vampire. I’m sure the size of Luther’s house helped with that, but even so, I doubt most people could have managed it so easily. Do you have some sort of special ability involving that?"

Shadow nodded. He saw no reason to lie.

“Interesting. I can think of a number of ways that could be achieved. Teleportation. Invisibility. Something to do with altering perception.”

“The last one,” Shadow said.

“Ah. That makes sense. Can you do it now?”

Shadow shook his head. “Doesn’t work when you’re paying attention.”

Conscious awareness of the push tended to make people uncomfortable. It became a fight against the compulsion, and that apparently wasn't a pleasant feeling. It worked better when they didn't know to resist.

He'd only finished half his burger when a moment arrived where everyone's attention shifted away at the same time, focussed on Malyn as he launched into a dramatic tale of the job he’d gone on with Tyla earlier in the evening. He deepened it, extended it, and slipped out the back door with the rest of his food in hand.

They probably thought he didn't like them, but that wasn't it. He just perceived more of the world than most people were built to process, and sometimes the volume of it was simply too much. Even Luther, whose senses matched Shadow's and exceeded them in some ways, had never fully understood that part. Luther noticed threats. He didn't notice, or particularly care about, the emotional undercurrent of a room.

Shadow could still hear the conversation inside if he chose to pay attention. It let him start building his understanding of these people without needing to be in the middle of it all. 

He'd fully expected them to talk shit about him the moment he was gone. Instead, when they realised he'd disappeared again, they just sounded worried.

Yeah, these people weren’t so bad.