AN: After Midnight is by Mercedes Lackey and can be found in the appendix of Arrow's Fall.

In the dead, dark hours after midnight
When the world seems to stop in its place
You can see a little more clearly
You can look your life in the face
You can see the things that you have to—
Speak the words too true for the day
In the dead, dark hours after midnight
Little friend, will you listen—and stay?

TK, soon we will have to part. I watch you lying there, sleeping so peacefully, and I cannot believe that you and I will soon be separarted. Little brother of mine, you sleep quietly, unaware that soon the trolley will stop, and that soon we will once again go our separate ways. So now I must tell you this, that I love you, little bro. I haven't told you before; it was locked too deep in my heart. And even now, I daren't say it while you're awake. But somehow I know you heard me, even asleep.

In the time when I never knew you
I could veiw the world as my own—
I was God's own gift to his creatures
And I wore an armor of stone.
I was wise and faithful and noble—
I was pompous, pious and cold.
I was cruel when I never meant it—
Far to cool to touch or to hold.

TK, you were too young when our parents divorced; you don't know, don't remember what it was like. But I do. Then I started to believe that there was no such thing as friendship, that the world was a place of survival of the fittest—meanest. So I armored myself against ever being hurt that way again. I refused to ever be close to anyone.

It was you who broke through my armor;
It was you who broke through my wall,
In your pain and your desperation—
How could I not answer your call?
How could I have guessed you would touch me,
And in ways I could not control?
How could I have known that I'd need you—
Or have guessed that you'd see to my soul?

But all this time in the Digiworld I've been fighting within myself over that armor. One side of me persists in saying that if I love I'm bound to be hurt. But little bro, you offer your love so freely that I know I will not be hurt in returning it. Really, TK, it was you who found that one chink in my armor, my wall. And when you broke through it, the rest came tumbling down.

For as I taught you, so you taught me
Taught me how to love and to care—
For your own love melted my armor,
Taught me how to feel and to dare.
When I looked tonight I discovered
I could not again stand apart—
In the dead, dark hours after midnight,
I discovered I owe you my heart.

You might not realize this, TK, but in trying to protect you and save you the one helped was me. Before I came to the Digiworld, before I saw you again after so long, I was cold and hard. But you were there, a constant reminder that maybe innocent loving naïvete didn't necessarily lead to heartache. A constant reminder that I could no longer think only of myself. TK, whenever my crest of Friendship glowed it was no my doing. It was yours.