~Videl~

Videl was suddenly terrified by the idea of telling Kane her weird secret. She hadn't even told Sienna. It was embarrassing - it was creepy. She was overwhelmed with the possibly irrational fear that Kane would stop liking her if she told him.

"V, come on," Kane pulled the box out of her hands, placing it in her cart. "It can't be that bad."

The concern in his eyes when he lifted her face in his hands to make her look at him, made her even more scared.

"Please, don't make me say it," Videl pleaded, her voice cracking slightly.

His hands dropped from her face to grasp her by the waist and pull her body toward him.

"You can tell me anything," Kane murmured intimately. "Don't you trust me?"

Videl's lower lip trembled. "I do, I - " She cut herself off and took a deep breath. "I'll tell you, if you promise you won't stop liking me."

"Baby, I promise - just tell me." Kane's voice was tinged with desperation.

The butterflies that she felt from him calling her "baby" mingled with her bubbles of anxiety.

"Belle is my roommate," Videl confessed, squeezing her eyes shut against the fear of judgement.

"But I thought you . . . didn't have a roommate?" Kane asked tentatively.

"When I first got out of Cryo," Videl explained with her eyes still closed tightly. "I was so lonely." She swallowed the lump in her throat and continued,

 "I was trying to stay in my quarters. I wanted to give Sienna . . . " Videl winced, admitting the second part, "And you . . . some space."

Videl's face started burning with embarrassment as she got to the hardest part to say, "There was this . . . cleaning module . . . that I programmed to respond to voice commands. I started to see it as, um.. as a friend. I talk to it . . . a lot." Videl was mortified to admit it out loud. The next words she spoke came out blended together, she said them so fast. "InamedherBelle,andshe'smyroommate!There,Isaidit!"

Videl couldn't bear to open her eyes and risk seeing him looking at her like she was insane, so she kept them squeezed shut. She held her breath, trying to brace herself for his reaction.

"V," Kane said softly. "Look at me."

Videl shook her head, feeling like she might cry.

"You really won't look at me?" Kane sounded hurt, and his words cracked her heart a little bit. It was enough to make her force her eyes open.

"I don't think you're crazy," he told her, shaking his head. "I hate that you were so lonely, but I understand that you needed something - someone to keep you company. Honestly, I think it's kind of . . . cute."

"Cute?" Videl whimpered with an incredulous tone.

"Well, people are capable of far worse when they're really lonely. You lost your memory, you were by yourself, and you were scared. Talking to your appliance is fairly harmless - pretending she's your roommate who wants popsicles?" Kane sighed. "You know what's really crazy?"

"What?" Videl mumbled meekly.

"That you thought I wouldn't like you anymore. Because of Belle."

Videl immediately felt guilty that she had worried him so much, that she  had worried so much about something that seemed beyond ridiculous now. "I'm sorry, I - " Videl's eyes teared up as she gazed at his handsome face. "I really like you, and I want you to like me. I don't want you to stop."

"I won't stop, princess," Kane said, gently kissing her forehead, her cheeks, and finally her lips, until she was smiling again. "Does Belle like me as much as you do?" He asked, eyebrows raised.

Videl giggled and nodded. "She kept me up all night talking, when I told her you were taking me to the Cotillion," Videl told him shyly.

"You know, if she doesn't have a date yet," Kane started, a mischievous smirk on his lips. "I have this portable, automatic wine-opener - he's the silent type, but he's very suave."

Videl scoffed and stamped her foot in surprise. "Kane!" She couldn't help but grin, though. He was teasing her playfully, now, and she was more relieved than annoyed at his joke. He had accepted her weird secret, and he still liked her. They resumed their task and left the self-checkout with their arms filled with Videl's groceries. As they exited the elevator on her Level, Kane had been telling her the harrowing tale of how he and Dare had gotten trapped while moving his bed to Kane's quarters.

"I'm fully expecting Dare to wake me up with night terrors," Kane joked, as they neared Videl's door. "I swear - if I find him in my bed in the morning, he's getting kicked out."

"Oh, please," Videl smiled, shifting the bags in her arms, so she could swipe her wristband across the sensor. "Just give him a glass of warm milk and send him back to his room. There's no such thing as elevators, you know."

The door slid open and Videl screamed, dropping one of her grocery bags so abruptly that the contents clattered and rolled across the floor. There was a woman that she didn't know standing in her private quarters staring at them, with a hand clutched to her chest like Videl's blood-curdling scream had nearly given her a heart attack.

"How did you get in here? Who are you!?" Videl cried out, vaguely aware of Kane tensing behind her, ready to accost whoever this person was who had intruded her home.

~Kane~

The woman who had invaded V's private quarters while they had been in Grocery stood in the middle of her living room. She was an older woman with pale skin, slanted brown eyes and black hair swept into a tight, no-nonsense bun. There were streaks of grey strands at her temples which was the only thing that denoted her age, and she was wearing a mauve pantsuit that emphasized a slender frame. She reached her arms out for a millisecond, like she wanted to hug V, before clasping her hands together in front of her.

"I'm so sorry I gave you a fright," the woman apologized with a regretful tone. She smiled kindly, as if to display that she wasn't a threat. "My name is Risa Lang."

V stiffened in front of Kane, and if his arms weren't full of grocery bags, he would have reached out to hold her. V whispered something so quietly that he couldn't hear what she said, but it seemed like she might have recognized the name somehow.

"I came as soon as I found out what happened to you in Cryo," Risa explained, a flash of irritation wrinkling her otherwise smooth forehead. "Those idiots  in Med-Bay didn't think to notify me. I only figured it out when I went for my monthly visit to your pod, and the damn thing was being taken apart for repair."

When V said nothing, still frozen in shock and confusion, Risa continued.

"I was appointed as your live-in guardian after your parents died," Risa told her, her gaze momentarily flitting to Kane before returning her sympathetic eyes to study V's reaction. "You were only 10 years old when it happened and I took care of you until you were 18, when it was legal for you to live on your own." Risa paused, seeming unsure if she should wait for her words to sink in, or say more. She pursed her lips, waiting for V to respond. Kane knew that her parents had died, but he didn't realize that she was so young when it happened. He felt even sorrier for the old  Videl, for how mean he had been to her in School. If he could go back in time, he would have been a little nicer, knowing how tough that must have been for her.

V numbly took a few steps into her quarters, her movements slow and robotic. She walked in just far enough for Kane to enter, and the door to close and lock behind them. Kane put the grocery bags that he had been carrying down on the floor by the threshold to free his arms, and carefully took V's bags to free hers as she stared at Risa, almost dazedly. Kane rubbed her arms affectionately, seeing the red marks imprinted on them where the handles of the plastic bags had dug into her skin from holding them so long. Then he busied himself by picking up the groceries that had scattered across the floor.

Risa nodded to herself, most likely accepting that V didn't know what to say, or that she couldn't bring herself to reply. 

"I know you don't remember me, Viddy, but you were like a daughter to me . . . "

The loving nickname seemed to warm V's frozen demeanor by a small degree. Kane noticed her shoulders relax as if the moniker called to some lost part of her soul that she couldn't remember, yet the feeling behind it remained somewhere in her heart.

"I was only just certified as a social worker not long before they assigned me to live with you, and I didn't know the first thing about raising children." Risa's voice was gentle as she spoke the words, like V was a wounded animal that needed care. "To be honest, I think I learned more from you than you learned from me," Risa confessed with a smile. "And though it wasn't the norm for guardians to keep in touch after the cases were closed, you allowed me to continue to check on you every now and then."

With the groceries finally gathered from the floor and back into the bag they had spilled from, Kane stood. V's expression was hard to read, but Kane was pleasantly surprised when she hesitantly approached Risa and hugged her. The relief on the older woman's face as she held V was heartwarming.

"I'm sorry I don't remember you," V's words were muffled against Risa's pantsuit.

"Oh, Viddy!" Risa squeezed her tightly. "It's those Cryo-technicians who should be sorry. We can sue the lab-coats off of them if you like?"

V pulled back and laughed with Risa, though Kane could tell that Risa wasn't joking in the slightest. Thankfully, she didn't press the issue. Together, the three of them began to put away V's groceries. And unfortunately for Belle, the blue popsicles had almost completely melted and were leaking through the box, leaving a small blue puddle on the tile. At some point, Risa's eyes were probing Kane as he reached up to place a bag of flour in V's pantry.

"Would I be mistaken by assuming this is your boyfriend?"

V's cheeks went rosy as she looked from Risa to Kane and back, shaking her head bashfully.

"He is," V smiled at him, her honey-colored eyes filled with warmth.

"I'm Kane," he said, introducing himself properly and offering Risa a hand to shake.

Risa shook his hand, her slanted eyes crinkling as she nodded her approval. "It's lovely to meet you, Kane." Risa told him, before turning to look at V. "You must be quite taken with him, for you to break your vow to never have a boyfriend."

V covered her face with her hands, and Kane chuckled. After they had everything put away, V asked them both if they wanted to stay for dinner, to which they had readily agreed. Even if they had wanted to refuse, V's confession that she had desperately wanted to prepare a meal for someone other than herself would've changed their minds. Kane knew that she'd had enough of the lonely nights experimenting with recipes, only to eat them alone, the week that she had spent confining herself to her private quarters.

Risa was clearly delighted by the unexpected invitation, in more ways than one. Risa had obviously missed her terribly those six months V spent in cryo-sleep, if she had been making monthly visits - just to see her in her pod - all that time. And she voiced how proud she was that V had become so interested in learning how to cook when she said, "All the times I scolded you for living off of Cafeteria meals and vending machine food, after I moved out." Risa reminisced with a shake of her head. "I'm just so proud of you for taking the initiative to learn."

V seemed to puff up when she heard the words "I'm so proud of you," like the praise had made her heart soar. Kane made a mental note of it, seeing how much it meant to her. He could tell by her reaction that she was dying for approval in any capacity, that something inside her ached with a feeling of inferiority, and she desperately wanted to be worthy of praise. Kane wanted to soothe that ache for her until it burdened her no longer.

Dare was right. He was  thoroughly fucked.