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They're at another motel that night, somewhere between Michigan and Illinois. They were only able to get two rooms between the five of them, so Silver and Blaze volunteered to take the smaller single-bed room.
Rouge says they'll stop to get some new clothes tomorrow, but for tonight they make do with rinsing their dirty clothes in the motel room's tiny bathtub.
Blaze jumps at the opportunity for a hot shower - it's the first chance she's had in maybe months. Letting the warm water run over her, she takes the dinky bottles of various soaps and scrubs out the layers of soot and dirt and blood and all the other bits of grime she doesn't want to think about. For once, the warmth on her skin is a comfort. This isn't the invasive heat of a dying god desperate for a body, it's the feeling of a normal kid taking a normal fucking shower.
Though she'd love to stay in the relaxation of the water forever, she does eventually get out. Stepping out and wrapping herself in one of the white towels, she takes a moment to really look at herself in the mirror.
Her fingers have pruned up from the time in the water, a luxury she didn't even know she missed. Though the ash is gone, the marks of burns still remain on her skin. On her face, there's a smattering of acne - inevitable when she's spent the past god knows how long without any kind of hygiene.
Six months, Silver had told her. Six months, she'd been missing.
Something about that just can't seem to click. It's not that she doesn't believe him, but she just doesn't remember. Like there's been some kind of void. Something about what they went through that her brain doesn't want to remember, even though her body can't forget. The mirror is saying too much. Her body is holding onto so much. She needs to leave.
She hesitates at the bathroom door, hand hovering above the doorknob for a moment. Silver is on the other side. It's strange having even a door to separate them, after living so long practically joined at the hip. This is the kind of privacy they'd never bothered with before. When they were extensions of one another. Before.
My god, what's happened to us?
(She dons a bathrobe and an extra towel before stepping out.)
They swap places with relative ease. Silver heads for the shower, grabbing the towel she offers. Blaze flops on the bed and takes in the wonder of a proper mattress and sheets. The exchange is wordless - a quick nod, a gesture here and there. It's stilted, but not broken. Ripped apart and stitched back together, the pieces of us just slightly out of place.
They don't talk about it yet. It's still far too raw for that. For now, they huddle close on the creaky motel bed, arms around each other and legs flung over and the blankets tangled around them.
And as the moonlight creeps through the window, she can hear Silver's breathing even out and the telltale whistle that she's always known means he's asleep. The light shines ever so slightly on his face, giving just enough illumination for her to take a moment and look at him. Really look at him.
The warped skin on his left cheek, mottled and dying and hanging on by sheer force of will, probably. It's rough to the touch, like a patchwork of leather scraps haphazardly sewn together. Her other hand rests on his wrist, and she runs her thumb along the line of metal staples sticking out of it. Though she tries not to think about it, she can feel the seam where the skin was torn apart. (It hasn't mended itself very well, but what more can you expect from a body that's as good as dead?)
She doesn't know exactly what happened, but she knows it's fucked and she's far too tired to think any further. They can do that tomorrow.
Tonight, all she can do is sleep with the comfort of knowing they're safe again.