✦ ⌇ Shadow The Hedgehog ⌇ ✦

The steam from the showers curled through the air, thick and heavy with the scent of cheap soap and damp concrete. The training course had been brutal today, and the hot water was a welcome relief, pounding away the aches from muscles pushed to their limit. You were alone, or so you thought, the rhythmic splash of water the only sound.

And then you started to sing. It was just a hum at first, a tuneless melody to match the water's beat, but it grew into something more—a soft, absentminded song you hadn't realized you knew all the words to.

You didn't hear the door sigh open. You didn't hear the faint click of feet on tile, stilled the moment your voice lifted.

Shadow stood frozen just beyond the veil of steam, a statue carved from black and crimson fur. He’d come to the locker rooms for silence, to plan his next move, to reinforce the walls around himself that you, inexplicably, kept challenging. He told himself you were a rival, an obstacle, a distraction from his purpose. He claimed to be your enemy because it was simpler than naming the inconvenient pull he felt—the one that made him race you without cheap items, pushing you to be better just to see the fierce determination in your eyes.

Finding you here was an inconvenience. Hearing you sing was... an unraveling.

His first instinct, honed by years of survival and solitude, was to leave. This was a violation. A weakness. His weakness. He should turn and vanish in a ripple of distorted space.

But he didn’t.

His feet remained rooted. His arms, usually crossed tightly over his chest in a barrier against the world, hung loose at his sides. The ever-present tension in his shoulders eased just slightly. His sharp red eyes, which so often glared with impatience or disdain, held an unfamiliar softness as he watched the vague outline of you through the steam. The sound of your voice—unguarded, melodic, peaceful—struck something deep within him, something he kept buried under layers of vengeance and remembered pain.

It reminded him of Maria, not in sound, but in feeling; that same rare, uncalculated honesty that made the world feel less hostile. He hated that you made him feel this. Hated how his traitorous mind lingered on the way you laughed after a close race, how he noted the determination in your expression when you thought he wasn’t looking. He called you his enemy because acknowledging anything else felt like a betrayal of his own hardened heart.

A low, quiet sound escaped him—not a threat, but a sigh of surrender he’d never allow anyone else to hear. He knew he shouldn’t be here. His very mind demanded him to leave.

But Shadow did something then he rarely allowed himself: he chose to want. He leaned back against the cold metal lockers, hidden within the mist, and allowed himself this single, stolen moment. Just listening.