Once I’ve fully dried off from my shower, I change into my prepared loungewear and go to the kitchen, relying on my memory to navigate the place with my eyes and mind closed.

  Everything hurts, ?but I want to at least do something for Amelia before I curl up in bed and try to sleep the pain away.

  Though my limit of how much I’m willing to do is hot chocolate.

  It takes me a moment to find the peppermint shavings, whipped cream, and mini marshmallows, but the beverage is prepared by the time Amelia shuffles into view in a matching set of hoodie and sweats, visibly trembling with cold.

  “Hot chocolate?” I offer, holding the mug out to her.

  Once she’s taken it, I lean against my kitchen counter, letting my eyes drift shut to rest them again.

  “This is delicious.” Amelia hums. “Next time we do a crusade, I’m going to stop after twenty-four hours of being a badass superhero. After that point, I’m entitled to proper rest.”

  “I can see the appeal of such a deal,” I say.

  The two of us exist in silence for a long while before the sound of the mug hitting my counter brings me to lift my eyelids to see Amelia is done with her drink.

  “Do you want me to make you another one?” I offer grabbing the mug and getting halfway through the turn to my fridge before deciding it’s too much effort.

  “No, but could I ask you an awkward question?” Amelia asks.

  I flick my eyes back towards her as I set the mug down before giving a slow nod. Whatever the question is, it can’t be that bad, so we might as well get over it.

  “Jason, I need you to sleep with me,” Amelia says, either crossing her arms in defiance or ?crossing her arms to warm up, one of the two.

  I blink at her slowly as I try to wrap my idled mind around her statement, but I’m coming up blank on just what she’s implying here.

  “Don’t give me that I don’t know what you’re talking about Amelia, look. You know exactly what I’m talking about!” She says, glaring.

  “Then please explain,” I say, letting my eyes stay closed. If only I didn’t need the lights on in the kitchen to cook at the moment, I could be in blissful darkness without my eyes.

  “I’m wearing like two and a half layers and I’m still freezing. And you have full body aches because of the abyss mode, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “That you were going to ice or try to cool off so that it hurts less, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, who do you think is a better full-body ice pack, me or the fridge?”

  “And I would be there as a human-shaped heated stuffed animal or something?” I ask finally figuring out where she’s going with this line of conversation.

  “Exactly so, will you do it?” Amelia asks, and I can imagine her batting her eyes at me innocently easily enough.

  I don’t know, though.

  “Jason, I need you to stop being a ding-dang prude and just spend the night cuddling me already!” Amelia wails as I wince at the volume.

  Before I can respond, a pair of arms wrap around me, pulling me close, and I will be the first to admit even through the layers of clothes I can feel the cold radiating off of her. And I can’t imagine a more comforting temperature as I sink into the embrace, habitually hugging her back.

  “So are you done arguing against me now?”

  “I wasn’t arguing in the first place,” I point out, an arm still wrapped around her. I still begin walking toward the master bedroom.

  If Amelia is cold, the master bedroom has more blankets both in quantity and in size.

  When we reach the room, I let my eyes drift open to try and see if I can find the extra blankets easily, only to find them all on top of the bed already. Along with the blankets from my bed in the other room.

  “Did you move all of my blankets before coming to ask me?” I accuse as I clamber into the bed. It feels good to be back in my actual bedroom, even if it’s just for a night.

  “Yes,” Amelia answers instantly as she climbs under the blankets, almost immediately gravitating and latching onto me. It is almost impressive how much she has encircled me.

  “And what was I supposed to do if I said no?”

  “There are still the front room blankets you could grab?” She offers as she moves my hands so that I’m hugging her properly.

  “How kind of you.” I mumble, resting my head against her. I would be lying if I said the cold wasn’t helping soothe my aching body and mind. And being next to the person I trust most in this world is more than soothing for my spirit.

  “I know I’m the nicest.” Amelia agrees, running a hand through my hair as she thinks about who knows what. “As long as I keep my phone directed at the back of your head, do you mind if I read for a bit as I wind down?” She asks quietly.

  At this point, my eyes are already shut, and my battle with falling asleep is quickly losing. Though the aching pain definitely helps me stay up. “Mhmm. You can read.”

  “Thanks, Jason.” Amelia says, rustling around a bit to presumably grab her phone. “I’m moving you slightly.” She says before changing our position slightly so her chin is resting against my head. While I’m sure it’s so that she can read on her phone easier without my head getting in the way, I don’t care. More cold is nice.

  Even though I want nothing more than to go to sleep, I mentally run through the past few days.

  It’s habit at this point that before I go to sleep to run through the waking hours to see if there’s anything I missed.

  Even if this time there’s a lot more that went on and it hurts to think for too long.

  Besides the fact that I’m really glad we could help that kid, and I really don’t want to do any more of the fear-mongering routine, I don’t know what I want to say.

  This day wasn’t exactly perfect, but we did the best we could. Though to cut the tree at its roots maybe we should talk to Travis to see if he has anyone who would help either watch the town during that raid or help us make it go faster.

  Such mental gymnastics are beyond what I can focus on at the moment, and I begin drifting to sleep fast.

  That is until a loud ad blares from behind my head, and I spasm as Amelia lets out a slew of curse words as she tries to mute her phone and keep our tentative balance in place.

  “Sorry, didn’t realize my volume was on.” She coos, running a comforting hand through my hair. “You can go back to sleep.”

  “Don’t stay up too late.” I mumble, trying to find the zen of sleep once more.

  “Nope, I’m going to stay up late till I feel warm and cozy and then I’m going to fall asleep and you’ll wake up before me and have to just exist in my arms as my pillow till I get up and it’ll all be perfect!”

  “It sounds like a plan.” I chuckle.

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  Unlike last time, where it felt like I was crashing into the land of slumber, this feels closer to a slow transition.

  My body grows more distant, the aches and pains that were plaguing me beginning to get farther and farther away, letting me transition to sleep faster.

  The only sensation that remains is the cold that wraps around me, comforting me and soothing my existence.

  “Jason?” Amelia asks, rousing me from my light dozing almost immediately. “Are you awake?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Can I ask you a ridiculous question or at least I hope it’s a ridiculous question because if it’s a serious question with a sad answer, I’m going to be heartbroken,” she asks quietly.

  “Yeah, feel free.”

  “Great, so now that I have you in my arms and hopefully emotionally vulnerable, it's time to ask a question that’ll get real awkward depending on the answer,” she says with false enthusiasm.

  “That’s not worrying at all.” I say dryly.

  “Do you like me because of who I am now, even after all of this stuff? Or do you just care for me because of who I used to be? And you want that Amelia back?” She asks, her voice muffled and choked with fear.

  “You have been my best friend for over half the life I can remember. You piss me off royally, and I love you in far grander scales. I don’t know the Amelia of tomorrow. Just like you don’t know who I will be tomorrow. And yet I want to meet her so that I can learn about you all over again.”

  “So you’ll fall in love with me again? Over and over again?” She asks quietly.

  “Over and over again.” I promise.

  Amelia stills for a moment before hugging me tighter in which I respond with much the same. “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  “No too?”

  “There’s no too attached. Even if you hated me, it wouldn’t change my feelings.”

  “Okay, enough emotionally sappy stuff that’ll make me cry. Can you imagine that my tears would do to my face and your hair as they froze? Nightmare material,” she laughs.

  “That sounds good to me.” I agree.

  “Sleepy time!”

  “Goodnight, Amelia.”

  “Goodnight, Jason.”

  While I can’t speak for Amelia, I drifted off nigh immediately and slept comfortably through the night, not waking until who knows when.

  I know I feel entirely rested, ?so I bet it was significantly longer than just a small smattering of hours.

  Trying to stretch around reveals that I’m more or less still trapped in Amelia’s vice-like embrace, though it makes me smile that she’s both breathing evenly and feels to what my best guess is normal cold right now.

  The current problem is that I don’t want to wake her nor deprive her of the pillow I more or less agreed to be till she wakes up but I would want to do something and despite how useful the mind map is I sincerely doubt that it would be enough for me to play on a phone without seeing it.

  It doesn’t escape my attention that the only phone within reach I could use at the moment is Amelia’s, though that’s not a huge concern. I know for a fact that she has way more games installed on her phone than I do.

  With a little bit of shifting around I change our positions on the bed so that Amelia is on top of me still asleep and I have my hands ostensibly free though I make sure to hold Amelia still and pull the blankets back up that I had moved around in my quest for vision of something other than her hoodie.

  Her phone in hand, I unlock it and browse through the apps trying to decide what to do to occupy my time and attention while I wait for her to wake up.

  After several moments of consideration, I read one of the web serials she said that I should read because if I didn’t it meant I was a fake friend who didn’t encourage her hobbies.

  That I promised to read like a year ago at this point, I believe.

  Thankfully, as soon as I promised to eventually read one when I had time, she stopped pushing me to read, constantly happy to wait for me to read eventually.

  Guess all it took was for me to feel bored to finally put my money where my mouth was.

  Somewhere around two dozen chapters later and around two hours, Amelia stirs, curling on top of me before looking up at me, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as she stares at me.

  Amelia gives me a lopsided grin as she giggles before burying her face in my chest.

  “And what exactly about my face is so funny?”

  “Nothing like that. I just woke up with someone next to me in bed, so I almost went on full autopilot and started kissing you,” she laughs.

  “It’s not the first time we’ve kissed.” I shrug.

  “Definitely won’t be the last one if we continue our track record for Christmas mistletoe incidents.”

  “But no kisses this morning. I only deal with the bad breath from kisses. If we're dating, you would have to go and brush your teeth.”

  “I can’t if you’re on top of me.”

  “Guess I want to cuddle you more than let you escape cause we both know you aren’t coming back for a kiss if I let you go.”

  “True.”

  “One day there’ll be someone who truly steals your heart, and you’d do anything and everything for them.”

  “And what would you do to them?”

  “Tell them that you’re mine because I was here first, but I’m willing to make a time-share arrangement.”

  The worst part about that is I’m not sure if Amelia is serious or not.

  Odds are she’s actually serious about that statement, which is the most worrying part.

  “How did you sleep?” I ask, changing the subject away from her future torment to whatever poor person I decide to date long term.

  “It was good I had the weirdest dream though.” Amelia admits.

  “You’re going to tell me what the dream was about regardless of what I say, right?” I ask as she nods. “Let’s just do this. What was the dream?”

  “I was held captive by a bunch of Cthulhu tentacle monsters, except I wasn’t captive. I think it was just my home. And they communicate by wrapping tentacles around you and yeah.”

  I stare at Amelia.

  She stares back at me. “You know the Cthulhu tentacle monsters had a similar color to your eyes.”

  That gets me to jerk my eyes away immediately.

  “Hey it’s not you; it’s me. I just happen to have a thing for creepy, void-abyssal black stuff, I guess. Though I’m a bit too pastel to be goth. I could be a pastel punk though that could be fun!”

  “Sometimes I wonder what it’s like in your head.”

  “Well, currently I’m trying to decide which is the greatest of my three needs. Everything else is just fluff.”

  After another ten minutes, the two of us finally leave the bed, and I can finally retreat to my room to grab a change of clothes only to have Amelia following me.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s tradition to wear your clothes after something like that.”

  “You do realize that the other bedroom still has my closet and the majority of my clothes in it, right?”

  Amelia snaps her fingers. “Drats, no show for me.”

  “Once I’m dressed, I’ll cook breakfast, and we can pick up Bianca from Cass,” I say, pushing Amelia out of the room despite her protests.

  Once I’m dressed, I elect to not do the sunglasses today. I don’t need to. This is a day for home and family; everything else can fade away.

  “Anything in particular you want?” I call as I make my way to the kitchen.

  “Doughnuts!”

  “We’ll pick those up on the way home.”

  Amelia comes out clad in a hoodie that I don’t remember being mine, but I know it has been in my closet at one point, and leggings.

  “Have you tried using your powers yet since everything?”

  “No, I wasn’t planning on using them today anyway.”

  “Poo, I was wondering if you were feeling it all be easier cause I definitely am.”

  “I’ll make sure to figure it out later. Come on, it's breakfast, and then we gotta get Bianca.”

  “Spoil Bianca too.” Amelia says between bites of eggs. “She has been without us the whole time we were heroes, so yeah.”

  I mentally inspect myself, trying to figure out if I can manage doing that today, before realizing I don’t care. For Bianca and Amelia, I’ll manage the world collapsing around me.

  Once breakfast done and a short drive later, our family is reunited completely.

  “Thank you so much for watching her Cass,” Amelia says, hugging the other woman. “Though I didn’t know you moved here.”

  I scoop Bianca up so she’s at eye level with everyone else, resting my head against her, hopefully transmitting my relief at seeing her better than words could ever do.

  “Sasha asked me where I wanted to move, and here is the only place I know any other supers besides her.” Cass laughs, fiddling with their smouldering hair.

  “We should have a girls' night you, me and Reyna at some point so I can get away from my sidekick over here.” Amelia says, bumping her hip against mine.

  Two can play at that game.

  “Say Bianca while Mommy is talking to her friend, do you want to go get doughnuts as a reunion treat?” I ask, nuzzling my nose against Bianca.

  Bianca looks at Amelia’s crestfallen face, then to Cass’s giggling form before back to me and nodding innocently.

  “Betrayed by my own flesh and blood!” Amelia cries, dropping to her knees, hand clutching her chest.

  “Anything we can do for you, Cass?” I ask before setting Bianca in Amelia’s lap for damage control.

  “Could you two start helping me train? I don’t know what I want to do with powers, but. I don’t want to stand by helpless if something happens.”

  I glance at Amelia before shrugging, hoping that she’ll take care of it.

  “We’ll get matching superhero training hoodies!”

  Not how I would have handled it.

  My fault for that one.

  “So, Bianca want to go to the park I froze over, and play in the snow today?” Amelia asks as soon as we’ve extricated ourselves from Cass’s place.

  Bianca lets out a silent cheer, which is all the answer I need as I change lanes heading towards the winter wonderland, hoping to blow the whole day with activities like this.

  If I’m going to bear the weight of that darkness, I want more time in the light of my world.

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