Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shadow didn’t have time for this.

The scenery was fine, he supposed, though nothing to celebrate. A gray sky over a gray sea, with dark waves crashing against darker rocks. Dirt clung to his gloves, and he did his best to regulate his breathing.

He didn’t have time for this.

The Professor would be expecting him back soon. In fact, he was probably expecting him already. To be fair, Shadow hadn’t expected to be attacked by one of those same aliens from earlier, only super-powered enough to turn their fur a different hue. Whatever they were using, it was overcharged with Chaos Energy, enough to make his blood buzz as a fist slammed into him and knocked him hundreds of miles away from London.

A part of Shadow wanted to taunt the alien that was fast approaching on the horizon. It would certainly be a quick way to go. He needed his revenge, though, and he needed to help the Professor get his revenge. Shadow needed to be alive for that, because the Professor needed him alive, and so alive he would stay.

Not if the alien had anything to say about it.

Shadow tried to recall the feeling of the absolute font of Chaos Energy within the other. It had poured off an immense amount of power, nearly taking his breath away when he’d first sensed it, and then definitely taking his breath away when he got punched with it. 

He wasn’t sure if it would work, but the Professor hadn’t trained him to manipulate Chaos Energy for nothing. 

…It sometimes felt like it, though.

It had been his Chaos Energy that had done it, in the end. The soldiers fired the bullets, and there was nothing that could save them from his wrath for that, but it was still the Energy generated by his body that caused the explosion. It was his Chaos Energy that killed her.

Did the Professor blame him for doing nothing to stop it? Shadow might blame himself. What was the point of Shadow learning to manipulate Chaos Energy rather than just produce it if the one time that it mattered, he couldn’t do a thing to stop it?

Maria would say that it wasn’t his fault, because Maria was kind and good, but she was also dead and gone and there wasn’t even a body that was buried, so he supposed that it didn’t matter what Maria would say. Not about this. Not anymore.

The glow on the horizon was close enough now to truly make it out; a bright rosy blur against that dreary gray sky.

The alien, once red and now blinding pink, slammed into the ground in front of him. A crater was left by his fist, a wrist that seemed to be in perfect working order now, even though Shadow had broken it only a day or so ago.

“Hedgehog!” The alien called, voice echoing over the cliffs. “It is a shame that it has to come to this, but this world is under the protection of my tribe! We will not stand idly while you and your allies attempt to destroy it. I am putting a stop to this, starting with you.”

Shadow huffed. Just a bit more. “I’d like to see you try.”

The alien’s eye twitched, and he abandoned any illusions of decorum or professionalism, pushing off of the ground and soaring toward Shadow, that fist that could do so much damage if it only connected outstretched and blazing with power.

Shadow stepped forward to meet him, setting his feet and pushing his palm out, reaching out for the Chaos Energy emanating from the other in its plentifulness. The Energy replied, fleeing the other being, leaving him sprawled out over the ground as a crash sounded and his fur turned from pink back to red.

Seven gemstones, radiating that same power, tumbled in the grass. Shadow met the other alien’s eyes, and moved to grab them. He was faster, even if he was farther away. He could make it.

Instead, though, the other alien let out a roar and punched the ground, red lightning far lighter and more contained than Shadow’s flickering over his fist. 

A shockwave rolled out, and the gemstones quivered before rising slowly into the air. They circled around one another in a steady line, movements growing faster and faster until at once they froze, stood still for a beat, and then shot off in all different directions, leaving only fast-fading streaks of color in their wake.

“What was that?” Shadow asked before he could stop himself.

“The Emeralds have a natural defense mechanism,” the red alien explained, getting to his feet and keeping a careful distance between them. “Whether in their Chaos or Master form. All Echidna warriors are taught how to activate it, should the need ever arise.”

Shadow wasn’t quite sure what half of those words meant, but he could guess well enough. The gemstones must have been ‘the Emeralds,’ which made little sense considering only one of them had looked to be green, but he supposed it didn’t matter much. The ‘defense mechanism,’ then, must have been how they’d scattered. 

“Where do they go?” 

The red alien snorted. “Wherever they please, though I wouldn’t tell you if I knew. They may not be sapient, but that does not mean that they do not think. They will find places across this world where they feel they will be safe, and they will wait. None will be alike, and it would be foolish to presume that you could find them.”

“I don’t plan on looking for them,” Shadow replied coolly. “I don’t need them. It is good to know that you can’t find them either, though.”

The alien— Red, he could be called—frowned, and then tightened his fists. His glare was hot. “You want to destroy the Earth. For what? What could possibly justify such loss of life?”

“The lives here don’t matter,” Shadow said. His throat ached. “Not to me. Not without her.”

Red leaned back a bit, observing him sharply. The eyes stayed narrowed. “You lost someone,” he said. It was not a question.

“She was stolen from me,” Shadow corrected. “She had her life stolen from her. G.U.N. didn’t care, the world didn’t care.”

Red grunted. He held out one of his fists, the one that Shadow had injured at their first meeting, staring down at it as if it held answers. The wrist turned easily. Red set his jaw.

“I have lost someone, too,” he finally said. “Recently. Only months ago.”

Shadow remembered, even if it wasn’t information of great importance to him. “Your brother.”

Red inclined his head. He didn’t look too surprised that Shadow knew, but he supposed it was mentioned that night in Tokyo. “He is like you. In appearance, I mean, though he is blue instead of black-and-red. I suppose you are more impressive in a variety of ways as well, but I would take him over you any day.”

Flattering. Shadow resisted the urge to tap his foot. He didn’t have time for this.

“Your brother is still alive,” he said harshly. “You haven’t lost him, merely misplaced him. You do not know loss like me.”

Red’s face screwed up in anger. “How dare you presume that I do not know what loss is! Do you even—”

Shadow flashed to him before he could finish talking, throwing a kick to the sternum that threw Red back, off of the grass patch that they were on and onto the gravel.

Red spat out dirt and glowered. “My brother may still be alive, that is true. We will have no chance of finding him if this planet is destroyed. I cannot allow that to happen. I was not there once, and I will not make that same mistake again.”

Shadow hummed. “You were gone when he went missing?” It wasn’t a question that demanded an answer. It didn’t even want one. “And here I thought you cared, and yet all you are doing is trying to assuage your own guilt—”

He barely had enough time to dodge. It was a good thing that Red’s heightened Chaos Energy seemed to go to his strength rather than his speed. Shadow slid out of the way of the punch, and backed away farther as Red growled at him.

His chest hurt. His head was pounding. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in the blanket fort with Maria, but Maria wasn’t here—

He side-stepped again.

“If you will not fight, then at least die with honor!” Red exclaimed.

Shadow couldn’t help his derisive laugh. Honor? There was no honor in this world. He was sure of that.

He flashed behind Red again and sent him crashing into the dirt again. “I don’t have time for this,” Shadow muttered. He had no idea how long had passed, but the Professor was surely getting antsy. They likely needed him for the weapon. He had to get back.

Red was on his knees as Shadow walked by. He did not attack again. It was as if the fight had been drained from him.

“What happened to that honor of yours?” He couldn’t help but ask, because any imaginings he had of honor and goodness had been left in the facility with Maria, and burned right alongside her.

Red sighed, shoulders heaving with his breath. He wasn’t looking at Shadow when his gaze flicked up, but rather out at the sea. “I miss my brother,” he said quietly, eyes closing for just a moment. “More than I can say. I want him to know that. I… hope that he knows that.”

Abruptly, Shadow felt distinctly uncomfortable. His stomach churned. He bit back any scathing remarks, because for a few seconds he thought he could feel Maria, hovering over his shoulder and whispering for him to be a better person.

Shadow wasn’t a good person. He was out of time to be a better person. This, though—leaving Red to his guilt and his grief—he could do. Despite his air shoes, the stones dug into his feet, and despite the clouds, the sun burned his eyes.

He made it back to London not too long after, following along the coastline until he found that long river, and then following that until recognizable buildings came into view.

The Professor was waiting where he’d said he would—the hidden entrance to his ultimate weapon. His masterpiece, he’d called it.

“Shadow.” His voice was low. There was disappointment in his tone, and Shadow did his best not to hunch his shoulders.

“Sorry, Professor,” he said. “The threat was more difficult to… put down than I expected.”

“Well, as long as the job is finished,” Gerald said. His words were a bit more soothing, and Shadow appreciated the small bit of praise for what it was. “Now, come along, Shadow. There is little time to waste. G.U.N. is surely right on our tail.”

The inside of the Eclipse Cannon was sleek, even more so than the facility had been. Shadow supposed that fifty years had passed. Still, it was strange. It also looked oddly lived in .

“How long have you been here, Professor?” Shadow asked, eyeing the many papers littering a desk.

“It was a good base of operations, once I was released from prison,” the Professor replied. “And gave me easy access in case anything was out of place. Thankfully, G.U.N. was not daft enough to doubt the capabilities of my mind and think themselves more superior in any area. She was built to my exact specifications. I couldn't launch it without the keys, but there was nothing stopping me from entering. An oversight, but a helpful one to be sure.”

The Professor’s grandson, Ivo, lounged in a chair across the walkway. He perked up as they approached, only to slouch when he spotted Shadow. “And here I hoped we’d be rid of any extraterrestrial-tagalongs.”

“Now, now, Ivo,” Gerald said easily, “Shadow is a part of our family. He shares the same goals we do. Real family doesn’t leave each other behind.”

Ivo huffed. “I suppose. Now, are we going to get this show on the road? Stone’s just had to flee the crab, so the moment that they realize we’re not in there, they’ll be on us in seconds.”

“Of course.” Gerald glided over to the main control panel. Ivo skipped behind him, and Shadow trailed at the back. “Now watch, my boys, and marvel at the true power of a Robotnik!”

He pressed one of the buttons, and the lights lining the room burst forth in a wave of brightness, overpowering the low ones that had granted just enough glow for visibility earlier. There was a steady whirring beneath them, and then the Cannon came to life, systems switching on that had been dormant before, engines rumbling to a start deep in the bowels of the Professor’s masterpiece.

The doors above the Cannon’s storage facility opened, and sunlight gleamed off of metal as they slowly rose to meet it.

Shadow crossed his arms, standing in front of one of the windows and watching as the city of London came to a screeching halt, all to watch as a super-weapon broke out of their river and ascended steadily toward the clouds.

Somewhere in the world below, whether dozens or thousands of miles away, there was a broken family. There were two brothers when there were supposed to be three, and they might never get the chance to become whole again.

The thought sent a pang through his heart, even as he knew there was nothing to be done. This was what he had to do. Even if this might not have been what Maria would have wanted—because Maria was gentle, and she was kind and she was good—it was the justice that she deserved. 

The whole world for Maria?

Shadow would take that deal every time.

He never could, though. Instead, she was gone and he was still here, and the world had forgotten her as if she was nothing.

So. 

This was what he had to do.

“Wonderful, isn’t it Shadow?” The Professor asked. Shadow hadn’t noticed him approaching, and tried to make his quills rest. This wasn’t a threat. “Fifty years of work, finally coming to fruition.”

Shadow nodded. “It is, Professor.” He resisted the urge to drum his fingers of one hand over the other elbow. “Do you know how long it will be?”

The Professor hummed, discontent. “Far longer than I wish, my boy, but that is no matter. It takes time for something of this magnitude, and the result will be more than worth the wait. The few weeks we have up here while it charges will be nothing compared to what will be wrought.”

It was longer than Shadow was expecting, but he supposed that this was all his life was for now, anyway. 

A few weeks…

That wasn’t much, in the end. That wasn’t much at all. It wasn’t long enough to live a life, or mourn a loss, or find the thing that made a family whole…

The Eclipse Cannon ascended, and Shadow watched the Earth get farther and farther away, leaving behind the red and yellow aliens with the teary eyes and missing brother. It didn’t matter how their desperation made his throat ache and his chest hurt. Soon enough, nothing would matter at all.

He bit down on his tongue to hold in the cough, and wished that he could dig his nails into his flesh through the gloves.

The Cannon thrummed underfoot, and Shadow couldn’t help but wonder; where was the Professor getting the energy from? He presumed that it would be himself, running along the track overhead until his Chaos Energy was coursing through the circuitry like it belonged there. That was what it always was. That was what he was for. That must be it.

“Do you need any assistance, Professor?” He asked.

To his surprise, the Professor simply shook his head, smiling genially at him. “Oh, no, Shadow, don’t worry about that. In our time apart, I’ve managed to procure a new energy source. Go ahead and relax. You’ve earned it.”

He flicked a switch and the tubes along the walls lit up. Chaos Energy flowed freely through them, power raw and untapped, and glowing a shockingly bright shade of blue.

Chapter Text

Shadow didn’t have a life before Maria.

He was alive, of course. He sometimes felt more alive than anyone had any right to. He knew the exact shades his organs glistened under pale lights as the scientists cut him open to see how they worked. He knew what it felt like for his lungs to fill with water instead of oxygen, and the ache in his throat when Chaos Energy surged through his body to expel it. He knew what a section of his skull looked like, gleaming on a tray in front of him while the scientists poked around his brain.

He was alive, because he knew that he was. There was no other thing G.U.N. would let him be.

He wasn’t living, though. There was no way that he was. The world was dark and bland, a marble swirl of pain and reprieve and nothing else.

Then, there was Maria.

And all of a sudden, there was color. It was bright and bold, and feeling bled into his existence. He was allowed to speak. The scientists started using painkillers. He learned how to smile.

He was living.

“We’ll leave one day,” Maria said as they sat beneath the stars on just one of many nights. “You and me. Once they’ve— Once Grandfather is sure that they’ve— Once they’re done. We’ll be free to go wherever you want to go.”

Shadow didn’t think so, but it was a nice dream. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” he said. “I just want to be with you.”

She smiled at him, but waved him off. “Well, of course you'll be with me, but come on, Shadow. This isn’t a life. You’ve never even been on a roller coaster! Or to the beach! Or—Or on a hike! There’s so many things to do, so many places to see and people to meet.”

Maria didn’t understand completely. How could she? She knew about the tube, and the running, and how tired he was sometimes, but the Professor and the scientists had been careful to keep other things hidden from her. Blood was cleaned up and screams were silenced and any scars were carefully covered. She knew that they hadn’t realized that he was sapient until she got there to show them, but she didn’t quite understand what that had meant for him.

That was okay. Shadow didn’t want her to know just as much as the Professor didn’t. There was nothing to be done about it now. It would only serve to upset her, and the last thing that Shadow wanted to do was upset Maria.

And so, when she rambled to her grandfather about the movie that they watched, and the Professor brushed his fingers where once he had cut into Shadow’s head, he kept his mouth carefully shut.

Things were better. There was no reason to remember the past, because things were better.

The Professor clearly thought the same. 

“You haven’t told Maria about the time… before she came to the facility, have you?” Gerald asked one evening. Maria was catching up on homework in her room, though she had only been convinced with the promise that Shadow would be delivered as soon as the Professor was done with his check-up.

“No,” Shadow replied. “Should I? I thought that it would make her… unhappy.”

“It would,” Gerald said, a bit of relief in his tone. “That’s good, then. I worry, you know.” A pause. “About you and her.”

“I know,” Shadow said. He held back a wince as a needle was pressed into his arm and taped down, nutrients pumping directly into his body. “I have been careful.”

“Of course you have been, Shadow,” the Professor hummed. “That is not what I’m talking about. I care about the Project, yes, but I also care about you.” He pressed on his glasses, pushing them farther up his nose. “You know that we—I—would not have done those procedures without painkillers had we known that you could feel them.”

Shadow remembered the first such procedure, when he’d whimpered as the scalpel pressed into his flesh, until one of the scientists had hissed, “Quiet!” He hadn’t made a sound after that, until he met Maria and she prompted him to. The Professor had been there, that first time, when those sounds of pain had fallen from his lips until he was sharply told to keep them closed. Perhaps he didn’t remember, though. Yes. That must be it.

“I know,” Shadow murmured. 

“You should have told us, though,” Gerald mused. “If we had known that you could speak—could understand us and our language—well, it would have made some things go quite a bit faster. It doesn’t do to waste time, you know.”

A measure of shame snaked around his heart. He hadn’t thought of that. When he’d stayed quiet, he had been so preoccupied with following the command and hoping that it would alleviate some of the pain, it hadn’t even occurred to him what trouble it might be bringing on the project.

“I’m sorry, Professor,” Shadow said. “I didn’t— I never thought of that.”

Gerald sighed, running a hand over Shadow’s head. His fingers always managed to find the incision scars, and it never even seemed like he noticed. It was like it was second nature.

“You’re a marvel, Shadow,” the Professor said softly. He plucked a quill from Shadow’s head, gracefully ignoring the flinch that came with it. His eyes traced little sparks of red lightning that zipped along it. “You’ll bring about humanity’s golden age. You, and the Chaos Energy that dwells within your body.”

It sounded nice. It sounded like being needed. Still—

“Will I still have time for Maria?” The Professor glanced down at him, eyebrow raised, and Shadow’s face warmed but he continued, “She—She likes spending time with me. I— Once you figure out precisely how to—to harness my Chaos Energy, will there— will I still have time to spend with her?”

The Professor stared at him for a moment that stretched into an eternity. It took every bit of strength Shadow had not to squirm under the gaze as it took him apart and built him back differently.

“Maria won’t be young forever, Shadow,” Gerald finally said. His voice was gentle, wistful. Shadow’s tongue was as heavy as lead, and his mouth was dry. He stayed quiet. “One day she will grow older, and she will leave this place. Perhaps she’ll travel the world, or she’ll go to college, or do any of the infinite number of things she can if she sets her mind to it. One day, though, she will go out into the world. Don’t you want that world to be a good one?”

Shadow hadn’t thought of that. Maria leaving had always felt like an impossibility. Shadow knew that there was no chance that he would ever leave, but he had always thought that she would be there waiting for him at the end of the day. 

But the Professor was right. Maria would get older, because of course she would. Time would pass, because of course it would. She had gone from algebra to geometry. She had started reading Shakespeare. She was getting taller.

“Of course,” Shadow said. “Anything for her.”

Gerald nodded, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

That night, when Shadow made it to Maria’s room and she pulled him into the blanket fort with her to watch one of the movies from the new selection Captain Walters had brought in for them, he reveled in the feeling of her arm draped over his shoulders, her fingers running through his quills, and tried not to wonder how much longer he would truly have it for.

From that moment, it was four months, sixteen days, and thirty-two minutes. There was no trip-around-the-world or college scholarship that separated them, though. Rather, it was a blaring alarm, a bullet breaking glass, and the searing heat of his own Chaos Energy exploding around them. Shadow blinked ash from his eyes and stumbled to Maria’s side, only to find that her last breath was already taken, sent up into the smoke-filled air along with the rest of the life that he had once lived.

Waking from the cryostasis pod had been strange. On one hand, he had been trapped in a nightmare with no end, where Maria died over and over and over again, all while he was helpless to stop it.

On the other hand, no time had passed at all. Shadow had glared into Captain Walters’s sad eyes, doing his best to commit the man’s face to memory, and then he had woken, Maria’s song in his ear and glass shattering beneath his fist.

The lights had been overwhelming, but Shadow had never been to a city. Maria had said that they were loud and bright, and Tokyo certainly fit the description. It wasn’t until he saw the screen proclaiming it as ‘2024’ that it fully set in just how long he had been locked away—trapped in an eternal agony.

Maria was gone. Maria was long gone. Everyone and everything that Shadow had ever known was gone, and when G.U.N. surrounded him, it was easy to be fueled by his rage.

The anger only subsided to give way to a brief moment of confusion when two eye-catching blurs fell from the sky and landed in the destroyed square.

“You’re a colorful pair,” he said. They were aliens, not quite like him but far closer than anything else ever had been. Betrayal stung in his heart, even though it had no right to. How could they be anything other than human and yet be working with G.U.N.? He supposed it didn’t matter. They were with the enemy. They were enemies.

“We’re—We’re not here to fight you,” the smaller one—the yellow alien—said. “We—We just wanna talk.”

Shadow scoffed. “You jumped out of a G.U.N. helicopter. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Hold it, Hedgehog!” The red alien demanded. “We do not work for G.U.N.”

“Call us, uh, independent contractors!” The yellow one exclaimed. “We just— They asked us to help. We wanted to talk with you. We want your help.”

Shadow’s hands tightened into fists. “It doesn’t matter whether you work for them or with them. They’re your ally, which means that you are in my way.” Chaos Energy flickered over his quills, and he prepared to act.

“Please!” The yellow alien cried, desperation catching him off-guard and making him pause for just a moment. “It’s our—our brother! We don’t— We haven’t seen him for months, and we can’t—we can’t find him! He’s—He’s like you—”

The fight was over before it could even begin. Shadow flashed to the yellow alien’s side and had him on the ground in a second. The red alien went to throw a punch, and joined his brother in the dirt when Shadow grabbed his fist and twisted, breaking his wrist away from the rest of his arm.

“There’s no one like me,” Shadow growled, stepping over them. “You would do well to remember that.”

He sped away, leaving the two aliens in the rubble. There was a persistent sting in the pit of his stomach, and he charged the motorcycle with Chaos Energy to force it to move faster.

He’s like you. What a joke. There wasn’t anyone like Shadow, because if there was, they would have been snatched up just like him.

No. G.U.N. had been more than clear. The Professor had been more than clear. Shadow’s Chaos Energy was unlike any other. There had never been someone like him, and there would never be someone like him. Perhaps others could try, but they would fall behind. He would run and run and run, and no one would ever truly be able to keep up.

Shadow hadn’t a single idea what he was meant to do after getting away from G.U.N. The only thing that he could think of was returning to the facility and so… return he did. The small display on the motorcycle flickered to show a route, and he followed it. At the time, he had supposed that maybe technology had progressed enough to be mind-reading of a sort.

In actuality, it was the Professor, because of course it was. He was waiting at the base, looming in the darkness and watching as Shadow placed a hand against cracked glass and ran a finger over broken wheels, an old song playing static notes in crumbling halls.

They were joined by the Professor’s grandson, Ivo Robotnik, along with the man’s assistant. Shadow had known vaguely that the Professor had more family, but it had never really been important to him. Maria had met her uncle and aunt only a few times, and barely mentioned them. They were far younger than her own parents had been, with no children of their own and no plans to have any. Shadow supposed that had changed, but Ivo had never known any of his family, so it also didn’t really matter.

As ‘the crab’ was called in, the Professor pulled Shadow aside and murmured, “They do not know of our true plans. Neither of them. They’re looking for world domination.”

Shadow could have laughed. Domination. Over a world like this? What was there to rule? Maria was dead, and he was sure that all of the good had died with her.

Gerald must have agreed. “Don’t breathe a word of our true plans, Shadow. Not while there is still time for them to try and change them. We must ensure that everything goes perfectly.”

Shadow nodded, and the Professor stepped away, satisfaction carved into every line of his face. The Chaos Energy from Shadow’s quill had kept him alive, sustained him to reach the age he had. How could it have done that, and yet been the very thing that brought Maria her doom?

There was nothing to be gained thinking about that. Shadow had to focus on the present. He had to focus on the Cannon, and the keys, and the end of the world. There would be plenty of times to think about his countless mistakes as he burned in Hell.

The break-in to G.U.N. headquarters was easy, too. Shadow flashed in and grabbed the key from the woman—Director Rockwell—when the Robotniks called for help, and the assistant—Stone—distracted the remaining forces with the crab while they made their escape. 

They were stopped up by Red, of course, but his anger—hot, blinding pink—had been focused on Shadow alone. With G.U.N. scattered and those Emeralds gone, there was nothing to stop them once they were in the air.

Shadow’s ears popped as they ascended. Dusk was falling over London, painting the buildings golden and stretching the shadow of the Eclipse Cannon out across the city. Helicopters flitted below but didn’t dare get close. He wondered if there were cameras on them, broadcasting this to the people across the world. 

It almost seemed cruel. Even if they didn’t know for sure, people would certainly assume that it was the end of the world—which it was, of course. They would sit down there for days, weeks, wondering each morning if it would be their last. There would be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There would be nothing to do but sit and wait. Would it be kinder for the billions below to not know the end was coming until it was over, or to at least have the time to say goodbye to the people that they cared about?

Shadow liked to think that he would have wanted to say goodbye to Maria. He didn’t get to, after all. On the other hand, if he knew that it was the last time he would ever speak to her—the last time her eyes would shine or her lips would stretch into a smile or her laugh would fill the room—would he even be able to enjoy it? Or would he spend the whole time trying to bargain with a world that wouldn’t listen, asking for some other option, some other choice, some way to switch his place with hers? 

He didn’t know. He didn’t like thinking about it. There was no point in thinking about it either, because it was already done, and he had already lost her, and a final goodbye still sat on his tongue, never to be heard.

“So, Grand-Pop-Tart,” Ivo said from his position in a chair by one of the windows, “Is there anything else to this place, or are we all meant to bunk on the floor?”

The Professor chuckled. “G.U.N. wanted this designed with the idea of a crew in mind. Once it was launched, there would be no bringing it back down. They wanted it manned at all times. Living quarters are a given.”

“Thank sweet Ada Lovelace!” Ivo exclaimed. Shadow had no idea who Ada Lovelace was. He made the wise decision to not ask either. “Let’s see it, then!”

Gerald hummed. “Yes, I suppose we have a bit of time until we reach atmosphere. Come along.”

He guided them to a side of the Cannon and into a stairwell. One set led up, likely to the observation deck for the track above. The other stairs went down, and the Professor ushered both Shadow and Ivo along them. 

It was more vertical than Shadow was expecting. Each set of stairs to a lower floor brought them to yet another long corridor. There were workspaces along the first, living areas and bedrooms along the second and third, laboratories for the fourth and fifth, and storage on the sixth.

“What’s down there?” Ivo asked, gesturing to the staircase that went to what must be the seventh level.

“Our energy source,” the Professor replied. “Contained, for our safety.” He checked his watch and the corner of his mouth curled up. “But we’re almost in atmosphere, and I suppose we’ve used up a good deal of energy. We could use a recharge. Come.”

He led them back up the many sets of stairs, and Shadow resisted the urge to tap his foot impatiently as the humans had to slow down to catch their breath every so often.

“Is there no elevator?” Ivo asked, nearly collapsing in a heap once they finally made it to the main room of the Cannon again.

“There is,” Gerald said, just as out of breath but still managing to stand up straight. “We can use it, normally. It’s going to bring up the energy source now, though. Can’t really fit in there with it.”

“Yes, yes, this energy source of yours,” Ivo said, getting back on his feet again. “What is it? I mean, I’ve read the files on our little… friend here, and I can’t see why we’d want to power this behemoth with anything else.”

The Professor nodded. “I had once thought Shadow to be unparalleled in his production of Chaos Energy. When I was freed from prison upon the construction of the Eclipse Cannon, then, I couldn’t help but wonder how G.U.N. planned to power it. I was under the impression that Shadow had been disposed of, you see-” Shadow was not a fan of that choice of words, but stayed silent- “So had no clue what G.U.N. thought they might be able to use. Whatever it was, though, I wanted to find it and take it.” He shrugged. “Of course, I know now that they simply had Shadow stored away, and would have used him anyway, but the point stands that through my digging, I found something.”

He pressed a button along the lining of his gloves, and the center of Cannon where the walkways converged began to shift. Shadow’s mind raced. I had once thought… That implied that the Professor had something able to produce Chaos Energy the way that he could. That didn’t make any sense, though. He was supposed to be unique. He was one of a kind. He was the only one.

“From what I’ve read, I believe you’ve had dealings in the past with our newest tool, grandson,” Gerald said.

The center insignia sank into the floor and cracked open, allowing the elevator to properly ascend, bringing the energy source with it.

Cackling rang through the room. The Professor looked amused as well, watching his grandson pump his fists in the air, as if in victory.

“Oh, how the mighty fall!” Ivo Robotnik crowed. His eyes were bright and manic, and he pranced about as if he had just been given the greatest gift he could imagine.

Shadow didn’t really care, though. His eyes were on the elevator’s contents, the energy source that the Professor had managed to take for himself.

It kept its head down. The energy source had green eyes, and cobalt fur, and quills that flickered with the same blue Chaos Energy flowing through the Cannon’s systems.

Oh, Shadow thought. The energy source looked like him.

Chapter Text

The energy source was quiet. It stayed huddled on the ground, eyes unfocused on the floor’s metal accents. Its hands, oddly gloved like Shadow’s, rested on its knees, trembling ever-so-slightly. Its face was shadowed, as the lights in the main area of the Cannon were rather dim to allow for better viewing through the windows.

Once he’d finished his victory lap, Ivo got up close to its face, leaning in and grinning wildly. 

“This little rodent has been a pain in my backside for years,” he said gleefully. “How in the world did you manage to subdue him?”

As he closed the distance between him and the energy source, it started forward, baring its teeth into a growl.

In an instant, the collar around its neck emitted a bright red light, and it jerked backward, a weak keen pulled from its mouth as a burst of electricity ran over its body.

“Quite easily, actually,” the Professor replied, brandishing a small remote once the shock had finished. The energy source settled back onto the ground, wrapping its arms around itself, and Shadow ignored the way that his throat hurt to turn back to the conversation instead.

“Professor, you said we need a—a recharge,” Shadow said.

“Ah, of course.” Gerald ushered them to the stairwell and up the steps to the track’s observatory. “Come, come. You’ve never seen this from the other side, have you, Shadow?”

He shook his head, and wished that he could feel his claw digging into his finger through the glove’s fabric. 

The elevator rose again, bringing the energy source up to their level. A few robots drifted down from a slot in the ceiling, metal arms extending to drag the source off of its platform and onto the track.

“Good,” the Professor mused. He pressed a button on the console in front of him, and his voice was magnified, echoing through the Cannon as he said, “Set.”

The energy source glanced back at them, at the solid layer of glass between them and the track. The Professor raised his hand, that same small remote visible between his fingers. The energy source’s shoulders tensed, and it hastily turned away. It took a shaky step forward and settled into position at the starting spot for the track: where if one ran fast enough, their world would twist them to run sideways along the track’s length. Shadow was rather familiar with it. He had used it countless times in the facility before figuring out how to just teleport himself where he was meant to be running.

“Will there really be energy generated?” Shadow asked, pushing past the lump in his throat. “Those look like regular shoes.”

It was true. The energy source didn’t wear the air shoes that Shadow did, the ones that let him channel Chaos Energy into his every step and go even faster than he would already be able to. Rather, its feet looked to be covered by ratty tennis shoes, ones with burn marks along the soles and pieces flaking off of the sides.

“Your Chaos Energy functions differently than its does, Shadow,” Gerald explained. “No need for inhibitors, for one, though I cannot help but wonder why. Perhaps something to investigate, in the time we’ll be up here.” He waved a hand flippantly. “No matter. The answer is yes, my dear boy. Just watch.” He cleared his throat and pressed the console again. “Go.”

The energy source took a deep breath, one that shuddered through its frame. It opened its eyes, shifted from a dull green to a bright and electric blue, and set off. 

The Professor was right. The energy source didn’t need air shoes like Shadow did. It moved in a blur, one that he could barely keep up with. He didn’t think he would be able to, were there any less Chaos Energy in his veins. With nothing more than a pair of crumbling shoes and its own power, the energy source ran, and streaks of blue lightning followed behind it. The tips of its quills flared the same shade, and the track caught the Energy it generated, pumping it through the Cannon’s machinery. Shadow could almost feel it.

“That’s faster than me,” he murmured. “Isn’t it?”

“I believe so,” Gerald said. “Certainly without the use of your air shoes. I’d be curious where you’d match up with them on. I’ve never been quite sure the top speed of our little Battery here.”

“Annoyingly high,” Ivo grumbled, though his teeth still gleamed in his smile as he watched the streak of blue along the track above. “One of the first times we fought, he destroyed all of my weapons in the time it took my finger to move a few centimeters.” He laughed. “Not that it matters. Now, that’s our power to use.”

“Indeed it is, my boy,” the Professor said. Light reflected off of his glasses and made his eyes glow. “Indeed it is.”

The energy source kept running, Shadow’s gaze following it carefully. It closed its eyes as it moved, and though it was still stiff, as if pain laced its bones, its face was almost content. It reminded Shadow of his time on the track in the facility, before the scientists realized that he could think and understand them himself. Some days, the time that he spent running felt like his only reprieve. The Chaos Energy constantly bubbling up in his blood could be released, and he could let his mind fade away, forgetting every aspect of his existence that he despised and pretending for a bit that things were better.

He wondered, distantly, if the energy source did the same thing.

When the Professor had decided that they had enough power, he pressed a button on that small remote again. The energy source was shocked, grinding to a halt and slipping off of the track, tumbling into a heap on the ground below. “Back onto the elevator,” the Professor said over the intercom, and though its limbs spasmed, the energy source managed to get back onto the platform before another shock could be sent through its body. As glass rose up to encase it and lower it back down to the bottom floor, where it must stay, Gerald gestured for the rest of them to follow him back out of the observatory.

Shadow’s hands, clenched tightly into fists, remained at his sides as he followed behind Ivo back into the main atrium.

“How long have you had the menace, Grand-Geezer?” Ivo asked. Above them, the bright blue Chaos Energy could still be seen zipping around the track as the Cannon worked to collect and distribute it throughout its systems.

Gerald hummed. “Oh, we’ve been together some six months now. Once I found information on it while digging through G.U.N.’s files, it was little effort to take it for myself. Really, what was G.U.N. thinking, leaving it in the care of a perfectly ordinary couple in Montana?” He huffed a laugh. “It’s as if they were asking to have it stolen.”

“Ah, the do-gooders,” Ivo said. “Also known as the Wachowskis. They’re a couple of bleeding hearts, insistent on taking in any wayward creatures and getting in the way of progress while they’re at it.”

“Well, they never found us down there, and they can’t get to us up here.” Gerald twirled Shadow’s quill, taken over fifty years ago, between his fingers. Energy still coursed along it.

Ivo took a quill of his own from his suit, a blue one that sparked like the Chaos Energy on the track. He twirled it just as his grandfather did. “No need to worry ourselves with lower lifeforms, right?” He hopped on the balls of his feet. “Not when we’ve got a world to conquer.”

“Indeed,” the Professor nodded, and didn’t meet Shadow’s eyes once. He was good at lying, almost to a scary degree. Or perhaps, it was avoiding the truth? That was what he had always done with Maria, what he’d insisted Shadow do with Maria, in order to preserve her feelings. Now, it was to preserve their mission.

Shadow understood the necessity either way.

Gerald’s watch beeped, and he said, “Wonderful. The elevator is open now. Come, it’s best you two know the rooms you’ll be staying in.”

On the third floor down, where most of the bedrooms were, he directed them down separate corridors, differentiated only by a band of color that ran down the center of the white tiles underfoot. “Shadow, you’ll be down the blue one. Take any of the rooms, I don’t quite care which. Grandson, you select whichever one you want down the green corridor and get yourself situated. I use the first one down the red.” As Ivo immediately moved to pick which room he wanted, Gerald set a hand on Shadow’s shoulder to stop him from doing the same. 

“Yes, Professor?” He asked, turning to face the man.

“I have a very important job for you, Shadow,” Gerald said. “Something that is vital to ensuring our mission is completed.”

“Of course,” Shadow said. “What is it?”

Well-” The Professor’s lips quirked- “I refer to it as Battery Duty.”

Shadow frowned. “‘Battery Duty?’”

“Keeping our energy source from dying out,” Gerald clarified. “Though that felt like too long a name.”

Shadow’s stomach churned. He did his best to ignore it. “What do you need me to do?”

“You spend a good portion of your time with our energy source—our Blue Battery, if you will. Make sure that it doesn’t die, that it is not over-exerting itself in its containment unit and is getting the nutrients it needs.”

It didn’t sound very appealing, but Shadow saw the importance in it. Still— “Is…” He swallowed. “Is the energy source really an—an ‘it,’ Professor?”

“Does it matter?” Gerald asked, and his tone pulled heat from the air. Shadow barely kept himself from shivering. “You cannot feel sympathy for it, my boy. It is a tool, one that was on Earth.” He lowered his voice, and brushed a thumb over Shadow’s fur, where an incision scar from a lifetime ago lay below. “It would perish either way. Here, it has a greater purpose. We have a greater purpose. Don’t forget that by letting emotions get in the way. Remember, we are doing this for Maria.”

Shadow nodded. “For Maria,” he whispered. “Okay.”

The Professor stepped back, looking satisfied. “Good,” he said. “Twice a day, you’ll need to water it, and once a day feed it. Take the needed supplies from Storage Unit B, on the sixth floor. You’ll find them labeled. Put them into the appropriate slots in the wall next to its containment unit, and the Cannon will take care of the rest.”

“I can do that,” Shadow said.

Gerald chuckled and shook his shoulder, nails digging into the flesh beneath his fur. “I know you can.”

Shadow followed the instructions carefully. He took the stairs, descending down another three flights until he reached the storage floor. Selecting a nutrient and fluid pack from the single open box in Storage Unit B, Shadow departed quickly, continuing down to the bottom floor, the only one that he hadn’t been on yet.

There was nothing very different compared to the others, bar the lights that felt like they burned even brighter overhead. The walls were all a stark white, with a single line of gray down the center of the floor that guided him along.

Shadow wasn’t quite sure what he had been expecting, but as he walked along the corridor, the only sound being his shoes against the ground, he supposed he shouldn’t really be surprised by what he saw. There were a few rooms that he passed, all with wide-mawed openings, sparse furnishings, and no windows. Cells, he would think, were it not for the lack of bars on any of them.

When he made it to an intersection with a glass tube in the center, where the elevator must come down, he glanced down a set of corridors that seemed to mirror the one he had just emerged from, uncertain of which way to go.

There was a door at the end of the one straight across from him, likely to another stairwell. Down the other two, there were wide windows at the end instead. All three had more open rooms, except for the corridor to the left, which had only a single room, much farther down, with a pale glow dancing over the wall across from it.

Shadow started down the hall toward it. The window, another few feet past the opening into the room, showed the Earth and the stars beyond it through the glass. The sun must have been behind them, its light over most of what he could see of the planet, shining on clouds and land and ocean alike. 

He forced himself to look away.

As he got closer to the room, he was able to see what the faint glow on the opposite wall was; light from an energy field that took the place of bars. He could hear a faint buzz coming from the field, and after another few steps, the energy source itself came into view.

He was able to get a better look at it from here compared to in the atrium or on the track. Perhaps, though, that was simply the lighting. It was more clinical, both in the corridor and the ‘containment unit,’ as the Professor had called it. 

The energy source looked worse than when Shadow had first seen it. There was no other way to really describe it. Its blue fur was almost wispy, quills hanging limp from its head. It leaned against the wall, curled up with its arms around its legs. It looked thin, a pile of bony limbs that weren’t getting the nourishment they desired. Its face looked near-gaunt, lips pulled tightly shut and exhaustion carved into every feature. Its eyes, back to green rather than the sparking blue from the track, were dull and sunken, as if the life had been drained from them. 

Shadow couldn’t help but wonder what they looked like normally. How bright was the green, when the Professor wasn’t there to burden it?

He remembered what the Professor had said; it would perish either way. Here, it has a greater purpose.

It did. They both did. 

Still, as Shadow stared at the alien that looked like him, huddled in a cell with too-thin limbs and too-dead eyes, he couldn’t help the ache in his chest.

This was what had to be done, he thought. The Professor had said so, and he wouldn’t lie, not about something this important. They needed energy, and here they had a source. The Professor cared about Shadow, enough to keep him from such a fate, and he should be grateful. He was grateful.

He could pity the energy source, though. It wasn’t sympathy. It wasn’t.

There was nothing to be done about it. He knew that.

Our Blue Battery, the Professor had called it.

And, despite the voice in his head telling him that it was a bad idea, Shadow quietly dubbed the energy source Blue.

No one would ever know but him, after all. 

He found the slots for the nutrient and fluid packs first. Sliding them in, the Eclipse Cannon took it from there. A panel on the wall inside the cell—the containment unit—slid open, and a robotic arm brandishing a needle slipped out.

Blue didn’t move. The robotic arm shifted around, as if unsure of what to do.

“Give it your arm,” Shadow said. They were the first words he’d spoken to the energy source, and not very kind ones. Maria would be upset, he supposed, but Maria wasn’t here.

Blue’s eyes didn’t shift to him, nor did it make a sound in response, but its arm did untangle from the rest of its limbs, extending out and giving easy access for the robot to plunge the needle in.

Shadow didn’t wince, but he almost wanted to. He could remember when that was how he was fed. It wasn’t until Maria that he got to have real food, and even then it was supplemented by vitamins and extra calories. He wondered which would be the case here, out in Earth’s orbit.

Blue slumped back against the wall once the IV was in. Its arm remained splayed out to the side, unable to properly curl up again, but it didn’t really look like it cared. It didn't really look like it cared about anything.

He remembered when he had first encountered Maria, when she tapped on his tube and treated him well, despite the fact that no one even thought he was truly sapient. Shadow couldn’t do that, here. This was different. Blue was sapient, he was sure of it based on Ivo’s complaining. 

That didn’t matter, though. The Professor had said it; Blue was a tool. That was all that it was. That was all that it could be.

…There was no harm in talking to it though, right? The Professor hadn’t said that it wasn’t allowed. Shadow didn’t think that he'd implied it, either. No sympathy, but Shadow didn’t need sympathy to speak.

What would he want to hear? 

That wasn’t really a good question. Shadow would want to be freed, and that wasn’t an option.

He could clear up confusion, though. At least a bit.

“The Eclipse Cannon has launched,” he said. His voice was flat, but he didn’t think he could make it be anything else. “The Professor has placed me in charge of your well-being while we are here.” Blue twitched, but said nothing. Its face remained just as tired as before. 

They waited in silence for another few minutes. Shadow had nothing more to say, and wasn’t going to be holding a conversation with Blue. He wasn’t even sure if it could talk.

Finally, the IV pulled itself from Blue’s arm and retreated back into the wall. The limb was weaved back into the pile, and Blue almost seemed to pull itself to be even smaller.

Shadow huffed. His gaze flicked to the window another few yards past the cell. 

“It won’t be long,” he said eventually. “The Professor said only some weeks, and there will be enough charge. Then this—all of this—will end.” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to, once he finished.

There was a small hitching sound to his right, and he turned his attention back to Blue to watch as tears began to snake their way down its face, wetting the matted fur on its cheeks. Though it didn’t look at him, its shoulders trembled, breaths turning into something closer to gasps. A stray spark of Chaos Energy flickered, making it over nothing more than a few quills.

Then, abruptly, the collar flashed red and a sharp cry tore through gritted teeth, Blue’s body locking up as a shock ripped through its muscles.

It crumpled when it ended, forehead pressed against the wall and eyes squeezed shut, tremors wracking its form.

Shadow’s throat hurt. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he couldn’t quite figure out why.

He had delivered the food and the water. His job was done for now. Without another look back, he turned on his heel and stalked down the corridor, leaving the shaking energy source with the ratty shoes and dead eyes behind.

Only a few weeks, he thought to himself, as firmly as he could. Then all of this will end.

Shadow could make it that long. Blue could, too.

He would make sure of it.

Chapter Text

Shadow woke to timelessness.

It made sense. Far above the Earth, there wasn’t really a night or day. The clocks were set, but he wasn’t sure what time zone they followed. Shades were drawn over the windows of the room he’d mindlessly picked, blocking out any sunlight that may want to come bursting in.

For a few moments, he stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing over the lines between metal panels as his mind tried to settle. 

He’d dreamed—the type of dream that faded from memory the moment consciousness reared its ugly head. He could recall only bits and pieces. There was Maria’s smile, blood dripping from her lips, and the glint of light against glasses, and fur that was blue-burnt-black. When he was wrenched back into reality, all that he was left with was the rapid beating of his heart and a steady ache just behind his eyes.

Shadow pushed himself off of the bed and tried not to think about how odd it was that he was able to sleep in one. He hadn’t been allowed back at the facility, the blanket fort being the closest thing, and sleep hadn’t been a priority since escaping from G.U.N. If he had it his way, he would never have to sleep again, but his body didn’t seem to agree, so when the Robotniks went off to rest, Shadow tended to do the same.

His hands were shaking. Shadow balled them into fists, clenched tight enough that the trembling stopped, and took in a deep breath before heading for the storage floor.

The Eclipse Cannon had only been launched three days ago, and already they had fallen into a routine. Each morning, Shadow would deliver fluids to the energy source. Then, the Professor would give him some sort of task on one of the other floors to complete while Blue was dragged up to the track to generate more power. Some time after that, Shadow would give Blue the rest of its sustenance for the day. 

He talked to it, occasionally. He was sure that the Professor wouldn’t be pleased to hear that, but the Professor also didn’t have to know. Shadow didn’t think it was harming anything. The energy source never talked back, and if Shadow was alone with his thoughts for too long he might go insane, but the Robotniks were doing work that was too important for them to waste any time in menial conversation.

Well, Gerald was doing work that was too important. His grandson seemed happy to tinker with his drones and wax poetic about his world-conquering dreams and ramble into a camera that floated behind him as he skipped through the Cannon’s halls. Shadow did his best to avoid him.

Blue didn’t fight against the robotic arms much, thankfully. It let the needle pierce skin and didn’t squirm or move around or do anything that might mess up the flow. Shadow supposed that perhaps it knew that it would be more trouble than it was worth. The only thing that Blue would be hurting was itself.

Shadow weaved his way through the corridors and into the same Storage-Unit-B, grabbing a fluid pack before he set off for the bottom floor. He was to give Blue the fluids and then inform the Professor. Gerald Robotnik was not the type of man that enjoyed being kept waiting, and even though time had little meaning in the Eclipse Cannon, Shadow couldn’t help the urge to move just a bit faster.

As he reached the elevator in the center of the seventh floor and turned down the hallway leading to Blue’s containment unit, his nose twitched. An odd scent clung to the air, faint and metallic, but growing stronger the farther he walked.

What was that?

Doing his best to calm his nerves, Shadow hurried along. The moment that the containment unit properly came into view, his heart leapt into his throat and he froze.

Sheer white walls were desecrated, smeared with streaks of red and burgundy and muddled brown. Curled up in the same spot as always, Blue stared ahead with dull and glassy eyes. Bandages were wound along the length of its left arm, soaked through with red as well, and Shadow wondered if his own blood was in there too, because he was sure that all his veins were filled with now was ice.

“What—?” His words failed him. The energy source didn’t react, and he wasn’t sure if its shallow breathing was his imagination or not. 

The fluid pack fell from his hand and Shadow darted away, Chaos Energy surging through his body and fueling his steps.

He found the Professor in the atrium. The grandson was there, too, gesturing wildly to that same floating camera. Shadow ignored him.

“Professor,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Yes, Shadow?” Gerald asked. “Is the energy source ready to get going?”

Shadow swallowed. “Uh, no, Professor. There’s something wrong. When I went to deliver the fluids, there was—was blood all over the containment unit.”

Gerald sighed heavily, his lips curling into a scowl. Shadow ducked his head on instinct. “Come along, then,” the Professor said. “Let’s see what this is about.”

Shadow followed him to the elevator, keeping a careful distance between them. The Professor wasn’t the nicest when he was annoyed, and Shadow had faced that annoyance enough times throughout his life to know that he preferred to not be on the receiving end.

They descended to the seventh floor, the Professor’s coat swishing with his steps. When they reached the containment unit, a huff of air blew from his nose, ruffling his mustache hairs.

“Tore your stitches, have you?” He asked, clearly not looking for an answer.

Blue didn’t respond, but its eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly.

Still frowning, the Professor tapped something along his gloves. The energy bars shifted and melted away, but Blue didn’t move to escape. Shadow supposed that made sense. Where would it go? They were hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface, with any exits firmly shut down, and any time its Chaos Energy started working outside of the track, it only served to fuel that collar locked around its neck. There was no escape.

“Come on, you vermin,” Gerald said, striding toward Blue. The energy source finally reacted, shifting back and raising its arms as if to cover its face. The Professor didn’t care, grabbing it by the unbandaged-forearm and hauling it up to its feet. “Walk. Or the drones can help you.”

Shadow didn’t see any drones, but the threat obviously worked. Though Blue’s frame shook, it shuffled alongside the Professor, who kept a stern hand on its shoulder.

“Did you water it, my boy?” Gerald asked as they made their way back down the hallway.

“Uh, no, Professor,” Shadow replied. “I—I came to get you as soon as I saw the blood.”

Gerald sighed again, weighed down now by his disappointment. “I see. Next time, fulfill your duty first, do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The Professor stepped onto the elevator platform, pulling Blue along with him. He raised a hand as Shadow moved to follow. “No, no. I can take this from here. You make sure that the containment unit is cleaned and the fluids ready to be administered once the energy source is fixed-up. Then, go eat something. We’ll discuss this more later.”

Shadow did his best not to fold in on himself at the words. He preferred to not discuss it more later. Still, he nodded, and the Professor offered him a smile that acted as the smallest balm to his fears before the elevator kicked to life and brought him and Blue away, leaving Shadow behind.

As he walked back toward the containment unit, his mind was swirling. 

He had messed up—the Professor had said so—and he had hoped that the conversation could end there. Of course it wouldn’t, though, because it never did. There was always something that could be better, even when he’d done the best he could. An actual mistake? That was worse.

Deliver the fluids and the nutrients. That’s your job. That’s your whole job.

And somehow he had managed to screw that up, too.

Shadow sometimes wished that perfection was something that he was capable of achieving, since it seemed to be the only thing that Gerald Robotnik would ever accept. Shadow thought he had been perfect, once. When he kept his lips carefully sealed and any semblance of a soul was locked away where only he himself could find it, he might have been.

He had lost that perfection, though. He had lost perfection, and he had gained Maria, and it was a trade worth making.

Now, though?

Now, Maria was gone, and that perfection he’d once had was gone, too. He didn’t think he could ever get it back. There was too much hate and agony stuffed into his heart. He felt too much, and any attempts at perfection were tainted by those emotions that he tried his best to shove down into his shoes and bleed out as he ran.

Maria was gone, and Specimen-013—the Ultimate Lifeform—had been gone for even longer.

Shadow was all that was left, a battered and broken thing with pain-clogged machinery that would only still work as long as it was needed to. 

How long would that be? He didn’t have a concrete answer. He wasn’t sure if he wished for one or not.

The Professor still needed him to work, though, and so he would.

Just a few weeks, he repeated to himself, and all of this will end.

Robots had streamed out of the wall to clean up the blood, which Shadow supposed he appreciated. He had no idea what he would have done otherwise. The fluid pack was on the ground, discarded, and Shadow picked it up with numb fingers, managing to slide it into the slot and letting the Cannon’s mechanisms take it from there.

The cleaning was finished, and Shadow did a quick once-over to make sure it looked good. He couldn’t see any more blood, though its metallic scent still hung in the air, mixed with the sharp smell of chemicals.

Deciding that was good enough, Shadow made his way back to the stairwell. He stopped on the storage floor, grabbing a nutrient pack from Storage-Unit-B before continuing up to the second floor and into a kitchen. He was pretty sure that there were two of them, but hadn’t taken the time to explore much.

One of the Professor’s robots took it from there. He inserted the nutrient pack just as the Professor showed him and closed his eyes as the needle pressed into his flesh, just as it did for Blue.

The Professor had been rather nice about it when he told Shadow that he would be getting his calories the same way he had back in the early times at the facility. “There’s just not enough food on board, Shadow,” Gerald had said, “And your body is more accustomed to it than ours.”

He understood. He wasn’t particularly happy about it, but he understood. Shadow didn’t think that Maria would have—she would have at least advocated for some real food for him—but that was because she was kind, even to the point of it being impractical.

Besides, Shadow was still allowed to drink like usual, so it wasn’t all bad. He wasn’t using fluid packs the way that Blue had to. His fingers could wrap around a cup, and he could savor the cool feeling of water down his throat, washing away any sour taste left in his mouth. He could even do it while the nutrients were being pumped into his body, so he could say that he was basically increasing efficiency. It was better this way.

“-and of course, this is the kitchen, where—”

Shadow raised his gaze to the doors as they slid open to reveal Ivo Robotnik, in all his flamboyant glory. He was still talking to that camera, but the smile twisted into more of a sneer as his eyes fell on Shadow.

“-where our unfriendly neighborhood interloper is,” Ivo finished.

Shadow raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

“Livestreaming to my adoring fans, of course,” Ivo replied. “Though I broadcast it onto just about every screen in the world. I’m quite beloved, you know.”

“I’m sure,” Shadow said dryly. 

“The real question is, what are you doing up here?”

“Eating.” Shadow raised the arm with the IV slightly. 

“Are you not meant to be on Battery Duty right now?” No matter how many times he said it, it seemed as if Ivo would never be able to get over the glee that the name brought him. It was the most that he was allowed to talk about Blue while using the camera—one of the many concessions made in a long discussion-turned-near-argument that Shadow had been privy to when Ivo had first told the Professor about wanting to ‘livestream’ from the Cannon.

“There were complications with the energy source,” Shadow explained, keeping careful watch of his words as well. “The Professor is working on it now.”

“Ah, well, my old Grand-Pancake will have it back up and running in no time, I’m sure,” Ivo said, waving him off.

“Of course he will.” Shadow accidentally shifted his arm too much and felt a twinge of pain where the needle rested under his skin. He made a face and turned until it was a bit more comfortable. “No new power generation until tomorrow, though.”

“Shame,” Ivo said, and then grinned. “But it means I can livestream in the atrium for longer. Come along, my Eggheads! We’ll see just how minuscule human lives really are against the size of outer space.”

Shadow let out a breath once the man had disappeared. He put up with Ivo Robotnik because he was a Robotnik—the Professor’s grandson. The man confused him, though, and frustrated him. He knew that Ivo didn’t know the truth about their mission, and he was so blinded by his joy at having any family left that he had no chance of finding out until it was too late. Still, Shadow couldn’t help but be irritated at how flippant Ivo was about the whole thing. It was one of the many reasons that he did his best not to let their paths cross.

Shadow exhaled slowly, appreciating the quiet other than the buzz in the walls and the beating in his own chest, and took another sip of water.

Some three hours later, Shadow was back in the atrium, watching through one of the windows as a storm system started to form over one of the planet’s oceans, when a presence appeared over his shoulder.

“Professor,” he said, moving to get to his feet.

“Oh, no, Shadow, stay there,” Gerald said. “May I join you?”

“Of course.”

The Professor settled into a chair, while Shadow refolded his legs on the ground. They sat there in silence for a long few moments. Then, Gerald said, “You understand that I’m not mad at you, don’t you, Shadow?”

He blinked. “Professor?”

Gerald sighed. “I’m not angry with you, my boy. Only… disappointed.”

Shadow’s throat hurt. He thought that might be worse.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” Gerald said. “But you’re often sorry. Do you know what it is you’re apologizing for?”

Shadow wracked his brain, trying his best to remember the conversation from earlier that he’d wanted to forget. “I didn’t complete my task,” he finally said. “I was meant to—to deliver fluids to the energy source. I didn’t.”

“Correct.” Gerald peered down at him, and sunlight danced off of glass to shield his eyes from view. “We are at the end now, Shadow. Everything must go perfectly.”

“I know,” Shadow said. He resisted the desire to wring his hands together. The Professor hated it when he did that. “It’s just… When I found the energy source like that, I was… worried. I didn’t want it to…” He wasn’t sure how to finish. Die would be the best word, but it sounded too real, like the exact opposite of how the Professor wanted him to think.

“I have a way of being alerted if its vitals reach any critical levels,” Gerald said, and there was a pit in Shadow’s stomach, because of course he did. He was so stupid to think otherwise. The Professor had once been in charge of all of the research operations in the G.U.N. base, and that had always been nothing but smooth. Perhaps not for Shadow, but regardless… He was an idiot for even daring to think that the energy source would be able to die off without the Professor knowing about it.

“Right,” Shadow managed to say. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

Another sigh. Another sinking feeling in his gut. “Just do your duty, Shadow,” Gerald finally murmured. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Of course, Professor,” he nodded, hoping the gesture wasn’t too frantic. “I’ll do that.”

Gerald smiled, and he twisted his head, and the glare on the glasses was gone, so Shadow could see his eyes beyond them. A hand ran over his fur, over the same incision scars those thin fingers always managed to find, and he kept himself from shivering as the Professor said, “I’m glad to hear it, my boy.” The hand moved away. “Now, I believe that duty of yours awaits.”

It did. Shadow got to his feet and hurried to the stairs, stopping on the sixth floor to grab the fluid and nutrient packs before continuing on to the bottom.

Blue was in a different position than the last times Shadow had seen it. Rather than being curled into itself, its legs were crossed beneath it, head pressed against the wall. Fresh white wrappings were tight around its left arm. Its eyes gazed off into the distance, as dull as ever.

Shadow slid the packs into the slot and cleared his throat as quietly as he could before saying, “You know how this goes.”

He watched as the robotic arms flitted around Blue, taking the offered limb and plunging the needle into it.

Nothing was said until the IV was removed, some unspecified amount of time later. Shadow thought the nutrients were pumped in for Blue far faster than they were for himself, and the idea made him a bit uncomfortable. He pushed it away.

For a moment, he hovered in front of the cell, unsure of what to do. He could go back upstairs, but he didn’t feel like dealing with the possibility of running into Ivo, who was still doing his livestream throughout the Cannon, and he thought it might be a good idea to let some of the Professor’s disappointment fade away before showing his face again. He had already had food and water for the day, but the idea of laying in bed and watching the ceiling with only his own mind for company was remarkably unappealing.

Blue wasn’t exactly company, but it was better than nothing.

Shadow leaned back against the wall across from the containment unit, sliding down until he sat on the floor, his legs folded under him and crossed the same way Blue’s were. The window was a few yards to his left, and he let his eyes wander over the curve of the Earth, the delicate haze of its atmosphere. He could still see that steadily-forming storm, though it was farther away now as the planet turned and the Cannon followed its own orbit.

“It is strange,” he found himself saying. Blue didn’t react, because it never did. Still, Shadow spoke. “The Earth looks so vast from here, and yet so small. So insignificant.”

His gaze could follow along unfamiliar coastlines, tracing over millions of people, and he would never know a single one of them. They would never know each other, not really. There was too much to do and too little time to do it.

Shadow had been lucky enough to know the only person worth knowing, he thought. There had been so much to do, but time stood still and meaningless in the face of Maria Robotnik’s laugh, her hand in his, her smile as she called him her brother—

He let out a shaky breath. “All things die,” he murmured to himself, and Maria’s face rippled until she crumbled back into the recesses of his mind.

His eyes fell onto Blue. The alien hadn’t reacted to a word he’d said, staying still throughout. Dead green eyes stared away endlessly, set back into dull fur that hung as lifelessly as the quills did.

It was still weird, Shadow thought, seeing Blue here. It was as weird as it had been seeing Red and his little brother, the yellow alien, back in Tokyo. No matter what side any of them were on, there were other aliens, ones that were like him, with Chaos Energy at their beck and call. For so long, he had been one-of-one. Now, there were more, and on Earth no less? 

“I never thought that I would see another lifeform like me,” Shadow said. “I was told that I was unique for as long as I can remember.” He shrugged. “In a way, I suppose I am. You are the closest thing.”

Blue didn’t move, didn’t give any indication that it had heard at all. That was fine. Shadow wasn’t expecting it to.

“I have only known two other aliens. They did not have the capabilities with Chaos Energy that you or I do, though the red one displayed some prowess.” Shadow tapped two fingers against his knee. “I didn’t care to learn their names. I think I should have, though. Even for all the differences and strife between us, they were the first creatures other than humans that I knew.” 

Blue tilted its head slightly. It was the smallest movement, and Shadow didn’t think he’d have even noticed it if his gaze hadn’t already been on the alien. He didn’t mention it.

He wasn’t sure why he was talking to Blue—to something that wouldn’t talk back—but he couldn’t quite bring himself to feel bad about it, even if he was sure it would fuel the Professor’s disappointment if he knew. It felt good, in a way, to get out some of the thoughts that were stuck circulating his brain.

“They didn’t try to fight me much at first,” he continued. “And I never saw the yellow one again, so perhaps they could use Chaos Energy, too. The red one certainly could. Perhaps not in his speed, but it was channeled into his strength in almost impressive amounts. If not for my Chaos Manipulation—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what they choose to do, but I think it would be best for them to spend their final days with their family.” He let out something between a laugh and a scoff. “Whoever they are. Red and his little yellow brother— ”

“Knuckles.”

The word was quiet. Cracked. It was a distant sound in the dead of night, muffled by walls so you could never quite be sure if you had heard it in the first place.

“What?” Shadow asked dumbly.

Blue’s eyes didn’t find him, but its mouth did move again, so he was sure that it wasn’t a trick of the light or his own head. 

“Not Red.” Blue’s voice was raspy. It was breathy. It was scratched and strained and broken a million times over only to be cobbled back together by shaky hands. “Knuckles.” A slow exhale, shuddering shoulders. “And Tails.”

…Oh. Red’s name was Knuckles, and the little yellow alien was Tails. That was what Blue was trying to tell him. It fit, too. Knuckles, for the fists and the punches and the strength, and Tails for the, well, tails.

He blinked. How did Blue know that?

With the names properly in place, though, Shadow’s mind dredged up another memory: when he met the other two aliens.

It’s our brother.

We haven’t seen him for months.

We can’t find him.

He’s like you—

Shadow’s mouth was dry. His ears were ringing, and his chest hurt. “You’re the missing brother,” he said before he could stop himself. “The one they were looking for.”

Blue didn’t respond, but its—his—eyes finally slid away from the nothingness that they were staring off at to instead meet Shadow’s own. The green was dull and heavy, and for some reason the eye contact made him feel a bit sick. 

Though no more words fell from the other alien’s lips, somehow the weight of his gaze was confirmation enough.

“Oh,” Shadow said.

Blue’s face twitched, and his jaw trembled. He clenched his fists and let out a steady breath, but seemed to fail at whatever he was trying to do. Chaos Energy sparked over a handful of quills before the collar activated, cutting the Energy off with the shock that it sent through Blue’s body.

Shadow got to his feet, doing his best to make it not look at though he was scrambling. He turned away as the shock ended and didn’t look back. Red lightning zipped between his fingertips, and he stamped down on any Chaos Energy bubbling up within him.

Blue was the lost brother. There was no chance for Red… for Knuckles and Tails to ever find their missing piece, who was hundreds of miles over the Earth's surface, separated by atmosphere and space and the Cannon itself. Shadow didn’t know why, but the thought made his chest hurt even more than it already did. Maria’s ghost hovered over his shoulder, and he almost wished he had the strength to convince her to go away.

It didn’t matter. It had never mattered. They were doomed—all of them were doomed—and the circumstances of that doom changing didn’t change the end of it. There was no perfect conclusion to the story of those brothers, no matter the way the story was told. Blue would die up here, just as he would have died down there, just as everyone else will die down there.

Shadow searched his brain desperately for the Professor’s words.

Here, a greater purpose.

The thought didn’t bring the comfort that he had hoped it would.

Shadow shoved his way through the door and into the stairwell. His eyes ached, and his head pounded, and something that wasn’t-quite-exhaustion-but-may-as-well-be clawed at his bones. Blue was left somewhere behind him, limbs spasming with electricity and fur damp with tears, in a lonely cell that smelled like chemicals and his own blood.

All of a sudden, Shadow's bed didn’t sound so unappealing after all.

Chapter Text

“Shadow,” Maria said through giggles, “Your fingers aren’t even on the right fret.”

“It’s the right string, though,” he replied, shifting back defensively when she reached forward to correct him.

“That’s not how it works.”

“Well, it should be,” he grumbled. “Whose fingers even stretch that far?”

“It just feels weird ‘cause you’re not used to it,” she said, taking the guitar back from him. He pulled his gloves back on as she did, in case anyone came wandering through the door. Shadow had never felt good about anyone seeing his hands uncovered other than Maria. He wasn’t particularly sure why. The scientists had seen them more times than he could count. They’d sliced open the backs of his palms to see just how the joints worked within. It wasn’t as though he was hiding anything that hadn’t already been revealed.

He kept his gloves on anyway.

“It’s not that bad,” Maria said, drawing his attention again. “See?” She plucked the strings easily, deftly, as if she’d done it her entire life. “You’ve just gotta practice.”

Shadow didn’t think he had time to pick up a hobby. It sounded nice, though; the repetition that might come from strumming the same notes over and over again until the air echoed with them long after they were gone.

“What about that one song?” Shadow asked. “The one you were playing the other day?”

Maria’s eyes lit up. “Oh, good choice! Here, one second…” She adjusted her fingers on the neck of the guitar and then played carefully through the introduction. She hummed softly along to the notes, as if her voice was guiding her hands. “‘Can you feel life movin’ through your mind? Ooh, looks like it came back for more.’” 

She made her way through the first minute of the song, pausing a few times in the lyrics to find the right placement, but never truly faltering. It was one of the things that was so amazing about her, he thought.

When the chorus came to a close, she grinned at him. “That what you were looking for?”

He nodded.

“Okay!” She pursed her lips and looked down at the instrument. “The picking for the opening might not be the easiest way to start, but we could go through the chords, instead!” She clicked her tongue. “We’ll start with the simpler ones. So, if you hold down these three, it’s an A chord.” Her fingers shifted to press down on three consecutive strings, all in the same fret. “But only if you strum the bottom five strings.”

Shadow furrowed his brow. “Not the top one?” 

Maria shook her head. “Nope. That’ll make it sound wrong.”

“Then why is the string there?”

She laughed. “Well, not every chord uses only five strings. Some use four. Some use all six. It depends.”

“That’s needlessly complicated.”

“No, Shadow,” she said, “That’s just how it works. It’s worth it to learn, anyway. You get to make music that way!” She changed her fingers’ positions again. “See, this one is an E chord. It’s pretty easy to go from A to E. We just have to shift up one and move this finger over, and strum all the strings instead.”

He huffed. “How do you remember all this?”

The responding laugh had an air of cheekiness to it. “Practice! Okay, look, it’s—”

They were interrupted by a crash, the doors flying open with such force it was a marvel they weren’t blown from their hinges. 

“Kids,” the Professor said. His clothes were rumpled and his eyes wide, and his voice was stern and commanding. “We have to go. Now!”

They ran. Shadow stayed at their pace, his Chaos Energy carefully kept dormant. Maria’s skates were sitting abandoned somewhere in the facility’s corridors, left by past selves that had planned to return for them in the next few days. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d had them, as there was no intention to leave the Professor behind either, but as it was there was nothing that Shadow could do to make them move faster other than pulling a bit more on the hand that was already in his own.

“They want to take Shadow away from us, Maria!” The Professor exclaimed. Maria met Shadow’s eyes, and a million emotions flashed through them. He couldn’t quite read them all, but he could feel them reflected in his own soul. Confusion. Worry. Fear. Shadow had been scared for long enough that he didn’t really feel it anymore, but that did not mean that his sister should. She was never meant to feel bad now that Shadow was here to help make the world better. He bit his tongue, and they moved just a bit quicker.

The doors were ahead of them, large and looming and things that he had long known he was not meant to go through. Beyond them, darkness had long-since fallen. The sky stretched on as an endless expanse of ink, broken up by stars that Maria always said shimmered like diamonds.

A shot.

A crack.

Nothing.

He blinked back into reality, mind stuttering past the feeling of a hand in his replaced by nothing but searing heat. There was a ringing in his ears, loud and persistent, and his head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it, even though it had been weeks since the scientists had last poked around in his brain.

Shadow was disoriented as he struggled to his feet. Blurs of shapes and colors faded into something more familiar.

Maria was on the ground, covered in soot. It seemed to stick to every part of her, dress and hair and skin. Her eyes were closed, behind lids smeared with ash.

Shadow stumbled to her side. “Maria?” He asked, shaking her a bit. She was sleeping, she just—

The Professor met his gaze, eyes red with still-flowing tears.

No.

The air around him was gone. It must be. There was nothing to breathe, nothing to feel. Maria wouldn’t move, and Shadow’s eyes burned as he tried and failed to force his lungs to work again.

“Shadow.”

He choked. “Maria!”

She was still motionless below him, though. Her eyes were still closed. Her pulse was still missing.

Shadow swallowed. He looked around. Smoke filled the room, thick and pressing in on all sides. The soldiers that had been on the edges of his vision were gone. The fires burned beyond the haze. 

“Did you hear that, Professor?” He asked, words scratchy.

The man didn’t reply. His eyes stayed on Maria, still and silent, and tears continued to make trails through the ash clinging to his cheeks.

“Shadow.”

He wasn’t imagining it, he was sure of it. Shadow clenched his fists, heart resting solidly in his aching throat. He managed to tear himself away from Maria and get back onto shaking feet. Staying at her side, he scanned the room for where the voice could be coming from.

Instead of hearing his name again, though, something else managed to cut through the din. It was low at first, but as he strained to listen, he could just make it out; the steady plucking of a guitar.

Shadow looked back down at Maria. She always tossed and turned in her sleep, but she hadn’t shifted once, and his stomach churned. His legs were numb, but he made them move, and staggered away toward the sound.

The smoke got more oppressive the farther into it he went, until he could see nothing but its black plumes and the occasional flash of orange from the flames that still raged around him. The pounding in his head escalated, and he could barely hear the distant notes over the growing ringing in his ears that pierced his every thought.

Then, as quickly as it had all come, it was gone. He was drowning, and then he wasn’t.

Instead, he stood in darkness. Behind him, the wall of smoke and fire still stood, but it did not reach him. It was like he had found the edge of the universe, and all that sat beyond was the boundless nothingness.

In front of him, sat on a ground that wasn’t quite there, Maria played her guitar. It was her, he was sure of it, even as she was faced away from him and toward that endless darkness. She was still covered in soot, her hair streaked with black and dress splotchy.

“Maria?” 

“‘But you can hardly swallow your fears and pain,’” she sang, as if she couldn’t hear him. “‘When you can’t help but follow, it puts you right back where you came.’”

He couldn’t make himself get closer to her, and she didn’t move further in the song. Rather, she sang that same verse, over and over again, as if stuck in a loop she couldn’t break out of.

All at once, the strings snapped, twangs echoing out into the void, and the guitar crumbled into ash into smoke.

Maria continued to hum.

“Maria?” Shadow prompted carefully. “What’s—”

“Why didn’t you save me?” She asked, and made him silent as easily as she sent an arrow through his heart.

“What?” He managed.

“You’re the strongest being in the world,” Maria said. “The Ultimate Lifeform.” For the first time, she wasn’t teasing him when she called him that. “So why didn’t you save me?”

“I didn’t—” Shadow wasn’t sure if he had an answer for it. He couldn’t find one. “It all happened so fast—”

She let out a bark of laughter, so unlike her own. “And how fast does your Chaos Energy make you? With those shoes? No.” She tilted her head back, twisting until he could meet her gaze. Her eyes were pits, as dark as the abyss around them, like if someone had taken the night sky and plucked from it all the stars that gave it light. “You let them kill me.”

“No!” He exclaimed, desperation clawing at his heart. “No, I didn’t! You’re—You’re my sister, I wouldn’t— I’d never—”

“You just sat there,” she whispered. “And let me die. Even after Grandfather tried to save you. Even after everything he’s done for you. And this is how you repay him?” She grinned widely, and blood fell from her lips, snaking down her chin even as her head hung upside-down to look at him. “It was your own Chaos Energy that killed me.”

Shadow grit his teeth, some sort of sob wrenching its way from his throat. He tried to squeeze his eyes closed, but he could still see her, as if his eyelids were nothing more than glass.

“I didn’t mean—” He pulled at the fur on his chest as if it would ground him. It didn’t. “I’ll—I’ll make it up to you. To him. I’ll get you the justice you deserve, I—I swear.”

“Oh, Shadow,” she sighed. He blinked, and she was standing in front of him, a smile firmly on bloody lips. Her eyes were still black, red tears leaving lines carved into her face, but she reached forward and brushed a thumb over one of his incision scars. “It’s a shame,” she murmured softly, “That hurting those you love is the only way you ever learn.”

He woke with a gasp. Reality slammed into him, and Shadow nearly choked on it. Instead, he turned his face into his pillow and breathed until his heartbeat was normal and his eyes were dry again.

Every night, Shadow dreamed about Maria.

Perhaps ‘night’ was not the right word? There was no night or day in the Eclipse Cannon. He supposed it didn’t matter either way. When he slept—when unconsciousness took him in its unforgiving clutches—Maria was there waiting.

She hadn’t been, before. In Shadow’s first days on the Cannon, the dreams had been formless. They were bloody smiles and sparking quills and screams echoing through smoke. They had been fragmented memories that he couldn’t recall and didn’t care to. 

Shadow had spoken to Blue, though, and Blue had spoken back. The energy source had gone from an it to a he, shifted to fill in the gaps of the missing brother that Red— that Knuckles and Tails had been so desperately searching for, and somehow it made his brain want to haunt him in his sleep as much as his waking hours.

It wasn’t like it mattered. It wasn’t like it changed anything. If anything, Shadow thought it might give him more conviction. That was one thing that the dreams were good for. They kept Maria fresh in his mind, always raw and painful and just out of reach, and the determination that Shadow had to finish all of this—to take revenge—stayed the same.

I’ll get you the justice you deserve, he said each night. I swear.

No matter how many promises he made, the dreams never changed, and Maria never forgave him.

The Cannon had launched a week ago, and Shadow hadn’t spoken to Blue since that first time. Not truly. The thought made him sick whenever he considered it. 

He supposed it was that same thing that made him stay away from the atrium whenever the Professor brought Blue up to generate more energy. Ivo watched eagerly, though he kept his camera carefully aimed away. Shadow, though, would all-but-beg for some other way to make himself useful. When the Professor stopped having tasks to give him, he would go off to find something himself. Anything was better than watching the he-that-became-an-it , the brother-that-became-a-tool, running around the track overhead until a shock coursed through his body and brought him to a stop.

Shadow’s mind settled back into some semblance of normal and he got to his feet, leaving his bed behind and heading for the storage rooms to grab a nutrient and fluid pack for the energy source.

When he made it to the containment unit, though, he found it empty. The energy bars were off. Blue was nowhere to be seen. The only thing within was one of those egg-drones that Ivo referred to as his babies.

Shadow was not a fan of Ivo.

As he stepped in front of the unit’s opening, the drone snapped to look at him. The lens on its front shifted as if considering what to do with him, before its color flipped to a steady white and the Professor’s voice came from within.

“Hello, Shadow,” Gerald said.

“Good morning, Professor,” Shadow replied, doing his best to not sound off-put. “I was bringing the energy source food.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” Gerald hummed. “Well, the two of us are spending some time together, but I suppose it would help if it didn’t pass out from exhaustion on the track later.” He chuckled, as if amused by his words. Shadow wasn’t sure why his throat hurt. “I suppose there’s no reason the nutrients and fluids can’t be given now. Shadow, come on up to Lab-A, fourth floor. I’ll make sure it’s unlocked for you.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Three flights of stairs up, Shadow pushed through the door and made his way down what was likely his least-traversed hallway. He’d been to the labs on the fifth floor, one below, when help was needed for one of the Robotniks’ different experiments and projects, but the labs on the fourth floor were only used by the Professor for things that he wanted to keep to himself.

And, apparently, Blue.

Shadow found the right lab quickly, and the door did a scan of him before sliding open, letting him inside.

The instant he entered, he was met by the sharp scent of chemicals and blood. He bit down on his tongue and kept his face as level as possible.

The Professor was there. His glasses were replaced with goggles, shielding his eyes from view, and gloves were pulled up to his forearms. An egg-drone hovered over his shoulder.

Below him, on the table, Blue was spread out. His arm—the one that hadn’t been wrapped in bandages a few days earlier—lay next to him, sliced up, the muscles and bones within exposed to the stinging air.

Blue’s eyes were clouded, as dull as he’d ever seen them, but lined with red. He stared at the ceiling, and tears leaked from the corners. He was still, strapped into place, and the light on the collar was dim.

“Ah, there you are, my boy,” Gerald said, as if this was nothing but normal. He gestured vaguely to a concerning apparatus of robotic arms. “Just hook them up over there. The Cannon will take care of the rest.”

Shadow wasn’t sure how he was able to, but he listened, managing to hook the packs in and then watching as the machine moved, sliding a needle into Blue’s free arm—the same one that had only been unbandaged the previous night. 

“Is there anything else, Professor?” Shadow asked.

“No, no,” Gerald said. Then— “Actually, why don’t you come look at this?”

Shadow made his way around the table. He kept his eyes on the Professor rather than what he was working on.

“Look,” Gerald said, and Shadow had little choice. He gazed down at Blue’s arm, split open. It glistened in the lights overhead, and Shadow’s own scars buzzed underneath the fur that shielded them. The Professor had always been nothing if not efficient with his every incision, and Shadow’s Chaos Energy did its part in healing well. He wondered if it was the same for Blue.

Within the blood, there were occasionally little sparks of cobalt. It wasn’t Chaos Energy reacting to anything, whether that be emotions or intent, but rather the natural contents of Blue’s body.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Gerald murmured breathlessly.

Shadow swallowed and asked, “Are you using painkillers?”

“We’ve a limited supply up here. No need to waste them.”

His mouth was a bit dry. “Then how—”

“What we are not limited on,” the Professor interrupted cleanly, “Are suppressants. The energy source is kept docile throughout the process.”

Why are there extra suppressants but not painkillers, Shadow didn’t ask. Instead— “Professor, if—if this will be over, once the Cannon is ready, then why are you… doing all of this?”

Gerald raised an eyebrow. “Whatever do you mean, my dear boy?”

Shadow felt vaguely uncomfortable, though he couldn’t quite figure why. “I mean… What is there to gain from your—your experiments? Why are you researching if no one will ever see it?”

“If it is not enough to try and find ways to generate the amount of energy we need sooner,” Gerald mused. “Why do we research even when people will? For knowledge. Science for the sake of science. Not every test we did with you was quite for furthering the Chaos Initiative, you know. Sometimes, the insatiable curiosity of humanity was all that we needed.”

For a moment, Shadow found himself glad that he got calories in the Cannon through nutrient packs rather than food, because his stomach rolled and he had to press his tongue to the roof of his mouth to steady himself.

His eyes, without his permission, wandered back to Blue’s arm. They traced up the fur damp with fresh blood until he suddenly found his gaze locking with another, dead and green and piercing. He wasn’t quite sure what Blue was saying—wasn’t sure if there was anything even being said, but his head and throat and heart hurt, and he couldn’t make himself look away.

“Now, I think that is all I need from you,” Gerald said, tearing Shadow from his trance. “Let Ivo know we’ll be up to the track soon, so he can keep that camera away.”

Shadow nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and hurried from the room, unwilling to look back lest Blue’s eyes be following him out.

He delivered the message quickly, staying in the atrium as Ivo decided to take his Eggheads to see what he was working on in one of the fifth floor laboratories. Shadow sat in one of the chairs, legs hanging over the side, and stared out the windows. He was facing Earth from this direction, the sun shining behind it, and it was bright enough that it drowned out any of the planet’s distinctive features, so it was nothing more than a dark blot in the way of an unfathomable and unrelenting light.

The atrium’s center shifted and Shadow was on his feet. The elevator raised, then, bringing the Professor and Blue with it. The Professor stepped out, leaving the energy source behind. Blue’s eyes met Shadow’s, and he felt as if they were pinning him in place. There was nothing in the other gaze, no emotions and no shine. It was the same as always, dull and glassy, and yet Shadow couldn’t break the eye contact between them.

“Oh, good,” Gerald said, glancing around. “Ivo’s not here.”

“One of the labs,” Shadow confirmed with a tongue made of lead, gaze still locked with Blue’s. “Showing off things.”

“Good, should keep him occupied for a bit.” He tapped something on his watch, and the elevator continued to rise. The eye contact was broken, and Shadow silently trailed after the Professor into the observatory on the floor above. 

Blue’s gaze was lowered toward the ground, and didn’t raise to look at Shadow again.

The Professor leaned in. “Set.” A moment. “Go.”

Blue ran, and for a few minutes it was normal. Then, though, he started to slow, grabbing at his newly-bandaged arm. Shadow bit down on his tongue. Blue continued to move, steps picking up speed again. He would slow down every-so-often, whenever it seemed as though the pain was getting to him. 

Eventually, he stumbled, seemingly too caught-up in his own head to pay attention to his running. He rolled to a stop, tumbling to the ground. Only a few seconds later, the Professor said, “Go.”

Blue didn’t move, forehead pressed to metal and fingers wrapped around the arm right above the bandages, as if trying to stabilize the shaking limb.

“Should we not stop?” Shadow asked. Gerald’s head snapped toward him, and he did his best not to shrink at the sudden movement. “I mean— Injuries aren’t—”

“-A reason for setbacks,” Gerald finished for him, even if that hadn’t been his intended words. “I agree.” Blue suddenly spasmed, a fresh shock erupting from his collar. “Go,” the Professor said again, and this time Blue pulled himself to his feet and continued running.

Shadow’s jaw shifted. He turned away and left the observatory, following the stairwell until he reached the living floors. In the only kitchen he went to, he got a cup of water, and tried to ignore how every sip tasted like dust.

A few hours later, Shadow went to deliver Blue’s second fluid pack of the day. As the needle slid into the alien’s arm and Shadow settled against the opposite wall to wait, he tried to ignore how Blue looked even more exhausted than usual.

It was quiet, other than the steady whir of the Cannon, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Then, though, a voice broke out through the silence, low and cracked, but there all the same. “You left.”

Shadow furrowed his brow. Blue hadn’t spoken since correcting him on his brothers’ names days ago, and even that had been in a conversation that Shadow had already been having. Not…Not this.

“What?”

“The track,” Blue said. His words sounded broken, like they couldn’t quite figure out how to form. “You left. You never watch, and then you did, but you left.” Dull green eyes moved from white walls to Shadow instead. “Why?”

He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t give one, either, instead crossing his arms and turning his gaze away.

Blue huffed, though it sounded more like a wheeze. “Coward.”

A spark of unearned fury lit in Shadow’s chest. “Excuse me?”

“You help him,” Blue said, and Shadow was reminded of their eye contact in the lab earlier, as one’s body was cut open and the other stood stoically above. “And you can’t even watch.” Blue’s shoulders heaved, breathing shallow, but his voice was clear as he exhaled, “Coward.”

Shadow didn’t reply, and left as soon as the needle was out of the other’s flesh. His head hurt, and Maria sat just behind his eyelids, with blood-tears leaving red rivers down her face. Swallow your fears and pain, she whispered, a melodic phantom that darted between the stars through the window.

He dreamed of her again that night, that same insistent dream that haunted his steps, and as he stood before a form of his sister with black eyes and a bloody smile and a broken guitar, the wall of smoke and fire behind him flashed with blue lightning.

The next morning, he gave Blue the fluid and nutrient packs without a single word exchanged. Their eyes didn’t meet, and Shadow leaned against the same wall that Blue’s cell was on so that he didn’t have to look at him. Afterward, he took a brief stop in the kitchen before heading to the atrium, carefully nursing a cup of water as he stared through the window at the darkness between the stars—an endless abyss broken up by pinpricks of light.

He finished his water just as the elevator began to rise. The Professor, working away at the main control desk, went to meet it. Shadow lingered behind, and Blue’s gaze found him before sliding right past.

The Professor went to the observatory, and Shadow stood there for a moment, watching as Blue’s form was brought up to the track, bandages still tight around his arm. The stars watched too, countless eyes that may have long shut.

Shadow climbed up the stairs and into the observatory. The Professor acknowledged him with a single brush over the same incision that Maria traced in his dream. “Go.”

Blue ran and ran and ran, and Shadow watched. He stayed and watched, even as the energy source stumbled and was shocked back into motion. He stayed and watched even when the occasional whine of pain seemed to batter at his ears. He stayed even as phantom aches slid up his legs and pulsed in his arms.

When Blue was finally finished, another shock bringing him down, Shadow returned to the atrium. He stared as the elevator descended, bringing the energy source back down to the containment unit. At his side, the Professor droned on about something that he should probably be listening to.

Instead, though, Shadow met the eyes of Blue, and watched a glimmer of recognition appear. They stayed that way, even as the elevator continued down. 

Finally, Blue gave a single, firm nod to him, and then disappeared into the floor, the atrium’s center insignia swirling shut above him.

Shadow wasn’t sure how much longer he stood there, but he didn’t think it quite mattered. Maria’s ghost winded around his heart, and her song sat heavy in the air. 

But you can hardly swallow your fears and pain.

“Are you all right, Shadow?” Gerald asked, coming up next to him. 

“Yes, Professor,” he said, voice a bit strangled.

Gerald hummed. “Why don’t you go rest? You look tired.”

Shadow just barely managed to nod, an echo of the exchange between him and Blue, something meant only for them—for two of the same start, promised and doomed to the same end—and his throat hurt with a long-forgotten melody

When you can’t help but follow—

The Professor guided him toward the stairs, fingers around a shoulder that he had once cut into just to see how the bones moved, just like the bandaged arm of another half-a-dozen floors below. 

It puts you right back where you came.

Chapter Text

Blue was silent when Shadow delivered the water that night.

The next day, though, when he stood in front of the containment unit as the nutrient and fluid packs were pumped into Blue’s bloodstream through the needle in his good arm, the other alien spoke.

“You knew them.”

Shadow’s eyes, tracing the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, flicked to Blue, and he furrowed his brow. “Knew who?” There weren’t very many people that Shadow knew, and fewer that were still around.

Blue’s throat bobbed. His head was tilted back, leaning against the wall, and his eyes gazed sightlessly at the ceiling. He was still present, though, because he clarified, “My brothers. You knew them.”

Shadow was silent for a moment. “Knuckles and Tails?” It wasn’t actually much of a question. Blue nodded jerkily. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Blue’s lips tugged down into a frown. His eyes were glassy. 

Shadow continued, “I only met them together once. Then the red one another time after that. I didn’t know them.”

Blue breathed slowly, methodically. Shadow wondered if he was trying to keep his emotions under control. “Why?” He finally asked. “How did you…?”

Shadow huffed and crossed his arms. “They were working with G.U.N. I don’t like G.U.N.”

Blue made a small noise that almost could have been a snort. “You don’t say.”

Ignoring the other, Shadow said, “We talked, and then we fought. That’s it.”

“They weren’t working with G.U.N.,” Blue said.

He was wrong, Shadow thought. It didn’t really matter if they were working as independent contractors , or whatever the little yellow one had come up with, because the fact was that G.U.N. told them to go after him, and they did.

Shadow scoffed. “How would you know that?”

In the back of his mind, Maria’s ghost hovered, and she scolded him for being mean. He pushed her voice aside.

Blue made a face and didn’t respond. Some five minutes later, the robotic arms slid back into the wall, needle going with them, and Shadow straightened and headed back toward the stairs.

He watched Blue’s time on the track again, and returned to give the second fluid pack that night.

Blue was far more subdued than he had been in the morning. He was turned away from Shadow, curled in on himself, cradling the arm that had been cut into the day before.

Shadow’s throat hurt, and he wasn’t quite sure what to say. It was a stark contrast to earlier, when Blue must have been comfortable enough to even allow a bit of snark out. This felt more usual, and yet also more wrong. He couldn’t quite puzzle out a reason.

No words were exchanged as the fluids were delivered, and as Shadow left, he did his best to not look like he was running away.

The sustenance of the following morning was to be brought to the lab again. Shadow stood in front of the door, his stomach churning, before he stepped forward, letting it slide open and clenching his jaw when the familiar scent of metallic blood struck his nose.

The Professor stood over Blue, a mirror scene of the last time Shadow had been in here. It looked as if he was reopening the incision along Blue’s arm.

“I’ve brought the packs, Professor,” Shadow managed to say. Gerald didn’t turn to look at him, but nodded.

“Yes, yes, good. You know where to put them.”

Once the needle was inserted into Blue’s flesh, Shadow balled his fists and waited to be dismissed.

Instead, though, he simply stood in silence. The Professor did not address him, lost in his observations, and Shadow wasn’t quite sure whether it would be worse to leave without permission or to interrupt whatever thought process was running in the man’s mind.

Finally, Gerald murmured, “It is a shame that we need this specimen for energy.”

Shadow’s mouth was dry. “Is it?”

A nod. “Yes, I would say so. There’s little I can do without adding to our already-unsatisfactory timetable.”

Shadow didn’t ask what the Professor would want to do. He didn’t think he wanted to know. 

He rarely got what he wanted.

“You remember our times in the lab, don’t you, my boy?”

Shadow nodded. His voice had fled his throat, squeezing through the Cannon’s cracks and shooting off into space.

“So many things we learned,” Gerald mused, as if it had been a mutual agreement. Shadow knew that the time in the lab was important—he had told it enough times to have it echo through his every moment—but it wasn’t something he liked to think about. 

Lightning in blood, skull in pieces, water-filled working lungs—

“It is how we got such efficiency, you know,” the Professor continued. “It was why we did such things. It wasn’t to hurt you.” Eyes finally flicked up to meet his, and Shadow was pinned in place. “You know that.”

It wasn’t a question. A scar hidden by the fur on his head throbbed. Shadow nodded. “I do.” 

“We had more time, then, though,” Gerald said. “Or at least we thought we did. Perhaps it was always borrowed, and we only found out too late.”

Maria’s hands were wrapped around his throat, guitar-calloused fingers and nails painted with glitter and caked in blood. 

“Did you need anything else, Professor?” Shadow asked. He wasn’t quite sure how. Maria’s fingers tightened, and no oxygen would come. Metal hung in the air.

“No, I think we’re all right. Thank you.”

He managed to make it to the kitchen a few floors above, and as he leaned against the counter, he tried to force himself to remember how to breathe.

The scent of blood stayed, no matter how much water Shadow drank to try and wash it away.

He didn’t go to watch Blue on the track that day, too busy slumping in a corner and waiting for his nerves to settle. Maria’s grip loosened as hours slid by, and eventually Shadow pulled himself to his feet and went to give Blue another fluid pack.

They sat in silence for a long time, and Shadow almost thought that Blue wouldn’t speak at all. That was fine with him. He was exhausted, his bones weary and his brain fogged.

Then— “You too?”

Shadow didn’t reply, but met Blue’s eyes when the dull green gaze went searching, and it seemed to be enough encouragement.

“The lab?” Blue prompted. “You too?”

Scars were long-faded under his fur. They were unseen lines that often only existed in the memories that battered through his head and the fluttering touches that the Professor left along incisions that were there a lifetime ago.

“Once,” Shadow replied. “Not for a while. Not anymore.”

Blue hummed. “What changed?”

Shadow didn’t know how to answer that. In actuality, it had been Maria that made things different. She had looked at him, and she had seen somebody worth caring about—somebody worth saving. 

There was no way that he was going to mention her, though. Instead, he shrugged. “He cares about me, now,” he said, which wasn’t quite an answer to the question. He remembered what the Professor had told Ivo when they’d first arrived on the Cannon, before it even launched. “We’re family.”

The needle plucked itself from his flesh as Blue made a noise that balanced between being a laugh and a wheeze. “If that’s family,” he said, half to himself, “Then what do you call the Wachowskis?”

Shadow recognized the name, but only distantly. He might have heard one of the Robotniks say it once. “The ‘Wachowskis?’”

Blue blinked, eyes focusing a bit as he seemed to come back to himself. He was still for a moment and then shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
Shadow raised an eyebrow. “Someone you’re protecting? No one will go after them. We’re all to the same fate.”

A sigh shuddered through Blue’s body, followed by a faint trembling, and then an abrupt shock. Shadow bit down on his tongue as Blue spasmed, a whimper coming with the pain. 

The shock ended, and Blue exhaled slowly, head against the wall. “I won’t tell you,” he said softly.

Shadow scrunched his nose. “You won’t?”

“No.” Blue’s words were breathed, like a secret. One of his hands was in front of him, and he closed it carefully, as if keeping something safe. “They’re just for me.”

Shadow thought of Maria, dancing and skating and singing, and thought of Maria, dead on the ground and tucked away in his mind, and decided that he understood.

The following day, sometime after the track but before Shadow was due to give Blue his next fluid pack, he sat in the kitchen, nutrients being pumped into his body as he nursed a cup of water.

With little announcement, the door slid open, and Ivo groaned. “Why are you always where I want to be?”

“There’s another kitchen,” Shadow said dryly.

“Then you should use that one,” Ivo snipped. “This one is the only one with the sauce I like.”

“Why don’t you just move the sauces over?”

Ivo stared at him for a moment before bursting out laughing. He placed a hand on the top of the camera at his side, using his other to jerk his thumb in Shadow’s direction. “For your sake? I don’t think so, you fifth-grade science project.” He regarded the camera. “Pro-tip, Eggheads! Never feed the radioactive rodents you find on your lawn. They’ll never leave you alone. Instead, inform your local Supreme Overlord! I’m always happy to have another test subject.”

Shadow tensed on instinct. “I am not a test subject.”

Ivo snorted. “Tell that to your files.” Shadow’s hands formed fists, even as it made his arm twinge with pain where the needle pressed into his skin. Ivo ignored him, grabbed a handful of what must be the sauce he liked, and departed without another word in Shadow’s direction. It was probably better that way.

He found the Professor in the atrium. His hands were folded behind his back as he stared out at the stars. There was no wonder in his eyes the way that Maria had always had, but Shadow supposed that the man was always focused on the mission. There was little time to daydream. It was admirable, in a way.

“Yes, Shadow?” Gerald asked before he could say anything. Shadow’s heart jumped a bit, but he cleared his throat and did his best to regain his bearings.

“I’m not bothering you, am I, Professor?”

Gerald heaved a sigh, deep and long-suffering. “Little does not bother me these days, Shadow,” he said. “But I have time for a query or two.”

Shadow wrung his hands, careful to keep it from the Professor’s view, before he said, “It’s just something that your grandson mentioned… About my ‘files?’ He said that they refer to me as a—a test subject.”

Gerald was quiet for a long moment, still gazing out at the boundless expanse of space. “He is speaking on the files from G.U.N. They’re how I found you. He must have read through them at some point.”

“Oh,” Shadow said. “Is there any way that— Can you change them?”

A beat. “ Change them? Whatever for?”

“I—” Shadow closed his mouth and bit down on his tongue for a few seconds, trying to formulate his thoughts. The Professor didn’t like it when people stuttered. “I’m not a test subject anymore. I don’t like the idea of being referred to as such.”

Gerald sighed again. “Shadow, those files don’t matter. They’ll be gone soon enough, along with anyone who would ever read them. They don’t mean anything.”

“I know that,” Shadow said firmly. He hoped he didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself too. “It’s—It’s about morale.”

The Professor hummed and finally turned to look at him. A hand ran through his fur, over an incision scar—a sensation that he was all too used to. “I suppose it’s little effort,” Gerald murmured, and smiled. Shadow thought he smiled back, but his thoughts were too removed from his body to know for sure.

The following night, some thirty hours and handful of nightmares later, as Shadow sat on the ground across from the containment unit as he always did, Blue asked, “What happened to you?”

Shadow was used to conversation with the energy source now, or at least the vestiges of ones that they had. “When?”

“You were in the lab once,” Blue said. “What did he do to you?”

He didn’t really want to talk about this. He never had, not with anyone. Maria had never been privy to his times in the facility’s laboratories, because all it would only make her upset. She was already always so righteously angry about the way none of the scientists thought that he was truly sapient before she arrived and proved it. 

He couldn’t imagine how she would react if she had known the ways that they tore him apart and cobbled him back together, both before and after she entered his life. The pain that it would cause her was enough for him to keep any talks they had carefully steered away from it.

Shadow didn’t have to worry about all of that with Blue, though. For once, he might be able to talk about this with someone other than the scientists who didn’t care for him or the Professor who didn’t want to hear it. Blue was asking, wasn’t he? Even if their situations were different—even if the hands that had once broken Shadow into pieces loved him now where they never would Blue—they would die with scars that looked the same.

“Not just the Professor,” Shadow finally said. “There were other scientists. It was a project. To make the Earth better.”

Blue hummed. “Using Chaos Energy.” His words were scratchy. They always were. Shadow wondered if they would always sound like that, or if it was the remains of months of silence that had yet to fade.

“Yes,” he responded, even if little confirmation was needed.

“Fine,” Blue said. “They, then. What did they do to you?”

“A lot of things,” Shadow replied.

“Loving the lack of detail. Really adds to the dark and brooding thing you’ve got going.” Blue’s voice fell away at the end as he coughed, a dry and hacking sound. He smacked his lips afterward and grimaced. “Ew.”

Shadow wished that his claws could poke through his gloves so that he could dig his nail into his thumb. Instead, he said, “They didn’t know how Chaos Energy worked in a living being. Not so much, at least. I don’t know much about it.”

Blue coughed again. “I don’t really care what they were looking for,” he said. “Just wanna know what they did.”

Shadow was silent for a long moment. His mind flashed with memories that he sometimes dreamed were just figments of his imagination. They weren’t, but when he was curled up in the blanket fort with Maria, feeling like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, it was a nice thought.

“They watched how my blood and bones worked,” he explained. “They cut out pieces of my skull to poke at my brain. They drowned me to see if I could.”

Blue’s eyes widened. They were always glassy and clouded, but for the first time Shadow could see an emotion weave its way into the dull color. Horror. Not a pleasant one, then.

“The Professor won’t do that to you,” Shadow said, trying not to sound too hurried. “You need to be able to make the energy.”

“But they did that to you?” Blue asked. His voice was raspy, but it sounded loud as it rang through Shadow’s mind. “What— Did you at least have painkillers?”

“Eventually.” At Blue’s look, Shadow added defensively, “Once they saw I was sapient. They didn’t know at first.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Blue said, pressing his head against the wall even more. “You know that, right? It might even make it worse.”

Shadow didn’t reply, and Blue didn’t push, because if there was one thing that their conversations were now, it was two-sided. 

When he went to bed an hour later, he didn’t dream of Maria. Instead, he dreamed of harsh lights, glinting blades, and blood that gleamed with sparks of red and blue.

He didn’t speak to Blue when he delivered the nutrients and fluids the next morning, and zoned out as the energy source ran the track. 

Blue didn’t get it. He was trying to fit Shadow’s life into his narrow worldview, and he didn’t understand that things were different for the both of them. It was just like how he didn’t seem to understand the necessity for all of this now. 

How could he, though? Shadow had never told him of Maria. He doubted the Professor had, either. 

He wasn’t keen on it, though. Blue seemed to think that there was some part of Shadow that was worth feeling sorry for, some part of him that could connect the two of them beyond the Chaos Energy they both had running beneath their skin. 

There wasn’t, though. 

The Professor cared about him. He had called him a part of the family. Maria had been his sister, had been Gerald’s granddaughter, and she was dead, and she deserved justice. Blue had never known loss like that—he had been the one lost, if anything. He could pretend to understand, but he would never truly be able to.

Is this really what Maria would have wanted?

The question isn’t ‘what Maria would have wanted?’ It’s ‘what do they deserve?’

The Professor’s answer swirled in his head, a mantra to hold on to when all else failed. Shadow murmured it when he lay awake at night, eyes following the seams of his ceiling’s metal panels. What do they deserve? What does she deserve?

Revenge. Justice. Retribution.

Shadow repeated it over and over. It played on a steady loop, as if scared it would crumble to dust if it dared to stop.

The reminder did nothing to stop the pit that formed in his stomach whenever Blue stumbled on the track, or when blood seeped through his bandages, or when a shock rocketed through his body, whether from the Professor or not.

That night, then, he waited until a bit later to bring Blue his second fluid pack. Shadow sat in his room with the door cracked, the pack in his hands, and waited. Eventually, he heard Ivo stumble into his room, his rambling mercifully stopped as his livestream had ended for the night. A few minutes later, the Professor’s heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway. Shadow wondered when he had memorized the cadence of his gait. When another door shut, Shadow counted to one-hundred under his breath and then slipped off of the bed and into the corridor, closing his own door as quietly as he could and moving quickly toward the closest staircase.

Blue was slumped against the wall when Shadow approached, but he was clearly awake. One eye opened to appraise him. “Took you long enough,” he said. His voice was scratchier than it had been the night before.

Shadow didn’t offer an explanation or excuse, because he wasn’t quite sure what one to give. Instead, he put the fluid pack in and leaned against the wall, waiting for it to finish pumping into Blue’s body.

The energy source didn’t offer up any conversation, and so they sat in silence. When the needle popped out and retreated back into the wall, Blue seemed resigned to continuing his rest. 

A beat, followed by an eyebrow raise when Shadow didn’t move.

“Don’t think that’ll be the most comfortable sleep spot,” the other said.

Shadow pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, relishing in the pressure. Then, before he could stop himself, he strode toward the panel on the wall next to the containment unit and pressed a button on it.

The collar around Blue’s neck beeped, eliciting a harsh flinch, but it didn’t activate, and a moment later the energy bars flickered off, leaving no space between them.

Blue blinked. 

“Don’t run,” Shadow said, even though it felt arbitrary.

“I can’t,” Blue confirmed his suspicions. “Unless I’m going upstairs with his sanction , it shocks me until I black out if I try to leave this floor.” He scowled. “And there’s nothing else on this floor.”

Shadow, having investigated the whole of the Cannon several times over, knew it. Rather than replying, though, he simply jerked his head to the side. “This way.”

Blue followed, and Shadow slowed a bit to account for the lesser pace. For someone who ran so fast, Blue sure did walk slow. Though perhaps that was because he had to run so fast on the track? Shadow didn’t ask.

He led Blue down another hallway, one without the stairwells. There was a nook at the end, tucked away from the lights, and when they reached it, Shadow took Blue by the wrist and pulled him down to the floor. Then, he fiddled with the remote he had swiped from the control desk, trying to remember what he’d seen the Professor and Ivo do with it.

Blue was just looking a bit too dubious when Shadow finally managed it. The dark panel in front of them shifted, and it faded from opaque to transparent, the window becoming properly clear.

There was a palpable feeling of awe in the air, and Shadow couldn’t help but think he was contributing to it. This was the darkest spot he’d managed to find on the Cannon, where the lights were off because nothing and nobody was here, and there was no reason to waste power. 

The window, then, had no lights reflecting on its glass, nothing polluting its view. Shadow thought he could see every star in the universe, if he looked hard enough. There were no constellations he could recognize from Maria’s books, the angle from the Eclipse Cannon far different from that of Earth’s surface. Still, he wondered how many of the stars he could see were a part of them anyway. 

What sorts of new constellations would Maria have found here, if she had been able to see such a view? She would have loved it, he thought. She would have tried to draw new images between the diamonds that sparkled millions of light-years away. She would have wondered just how many of those stars had already gone out, long before their twinkling had managed to reach them.

At his side, Blue let out a shaky breath. “Wow,” he murmured. “I haven’t seen stars like this in a long time.”

Shadow couldn’t help but ask, “You never looked at them before?”

Blue hummed, a sad and wheezing thing. “Not for a while. Probably not really since I was in the cave.”

Shadow had no clue what Blue was talking about. It was wistful, though; murmurings of another life. He thought of Maria, waving her hand through the air and tracing shapes in the sky, and supposed that he understood.

“Why’re you doing this?” Blue eventually asked.

Why was he? Shadow rolled his shoulders. “Better not to look alone,” he said, which wasn’t the answer, but also wasn’t a lie.

“Well, I’m never one to turn down good company,” Blue said, almost cheekily. 

“Am I considered good company?” He asked skeptically.

“Best on the ship,” Blue replied. 

His eyes stayed on the stars even as Shadow glanced at him, but they almost looked like they were sparkling; like there was life doing its best to bleed back into the dead and dying green. 

Abruptly, Blue asked, “How long’ve you known them?”

Shadow didn’t need to question who they were talking about. “The grandson since two days before launch,” he said. “The Professor…” He let out a long breath. “As long as I can remember.”

“And is that a long time?” 

Shadow almost laughed. He didn’t. “Depends on who you ask.”

“Did they ever even give you a name?” Blue almost sounded indignant, for some reason. 

“Yes,” Shadow insisted firmly, because if there was one thing that he actually cherished, it was his name. It was something that was his, the first thing that he had ever been given. Maria had come up with it, smiling widely even as the scientists around her reeled at the revelation that he could think, and she had called him ‘Shadow.’ It was a gift from her, and he held it close to his heart. “I do.” He paused. The Professor would not approve, he was sure of it, but he didn’t think that Blue would tell. Steeling his resolve, he continued, “It’s Shadow. My name is Shadow.”

Blue exhaled, something like a chuckle mixed in with the breath, and he extended a hand. It shook faintly as it hung in the air, but Shadow took it, and a smile, small and tentative, worked its way across chapped lips as Blue replied, “Hi, Shadow. I’m Sonic.”

Sonic. It fit him, oddly enough, though it would probably pair better with a voice that didn’t break over every-other-word. “I’ve been calling you ‘Blue,’” Shadow said before he could stop himself.

Blue— Sonic —scrunched his nose. “I’ll take it. I’ve been calling you ‘Pouty.’”

Shadow glared. “I do not pout.”

“Yeah, I guess you do brood more. Does ‘Broody’ work, then?”

“Shadow works fine.”

“Oh, you ever see Snow White? What about ‘Grumpy?’”

His face felt as if it was on fire. “Shadow works fine!”

Sonic snorted and then laughed. It was a quick thing, raspy and somehow bright, and was almost immediately cut-off by a spark of blue followed by a shock. Sonic seized, falling to the side and bracing himself against the ground, and Shadow’s indignance faded quickly in favor of leaving ice to snake up his throat.

When the shock ended, Sonic’s shoulders heaved desperately for air that would only come in quick gasps.

They didn’t speak more, and a few minutes later, Shadow led the other back through the corridors and to the containment unit. Sonic offered up no argument, simply staggering inside and collapsing against the same wall he always did. Shadow hadn’t noticed until this moment the faint but sharp scent of blood that seemed to cling to the air here.

One hand clenched into a fist, Shadow used the other to turn the energy bars back on.

He didn’t think there was anything else to say. He lingered for a moment, and then went to leave. 

As he took his first steps away, though, Sonic’s voice, quiet and hoarse, broke through the buzzing din of the Cannon’s machinery to say, “Good night, Shadow. Thanks for that.”

Shadow swallowed, hard. His throat hurt. He didn’t turn around, but, against his better judgement—as much of tonight seemed to be—he did say, “It was nothing. Good night.”

He didn’t use the other’s name, and didn’t stick around any longer. With quick steps, Shadow left Sonic behind, heading toward the stairs so he could go to bed.

When he finally fell asleep a short time later, he did it with the stars to his back.

Chapter Text

Things were uniform for a good while.

Shadow would get up in the morning, deliver fluid and nutrient packs to Sonic, fulfill any tasks the Professor assigned him or get lost in his thoughts until it was time to head to the atrium and watch the track run for the day. Another few hours would pass and he’d return to the containment unit with the second fluid pack. 

The voice in his head that spat and snarled and sounded like the Professor would then hiss that’s enough, and the urge to go back upstairs would batter at his bones.

And, every time, Shadow would instead turn off the energy bars and take Sonic to go look at the stars.

They rarely talked about anything of substance when the bars were between them, but when they were gone, it was as if those barriers were too.

The night after their first time watching the stars, Sonic settled himself against the wall as Shadow fumbled to turn the window transparent. The blue alien exhaled slowly as it did, an air of contentment on his face despite the bandages around his arm and the limpness of his fur.

“You fought my brothers,” he finally said, startling Shadow a bit at the abrupt topic. “What’d you mean by that?”

“I told you,” Shadow replied. “They were working with G.U.N.” He dropped his voice. “Wasn’t much of a fight, anyway.”

Sonic raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

For a short moment, Shadow considered teleporting down the hallway, just to show that he could. He had no idea if the Professor had a way of sensing that burst of Chaos Energy, though, and didn’t particularly feel like risking it. Instead, he said, “It wasn’t very difficult.”

“Uh, excuse you, Knuckles is one of the greatest warriors in the galaxy.” Sonic crossed his arms. “You must’ve gotten lucky.”

Or caught him off-guard, Shadow thought. He shrugged. “Maybe.” A beat. Something tickled at his mind. “In the galaxy, you said? You’ve been… elsewhere? Other than Earth?”

“Not on Earth now,” Sonic mumbled. It was more of a raspy whisper, his voice falling away as he spoke more quietly. “I wasn’t born here. None of us were.” He eyed Shadow carefully. “Doubt you were, either.”

Shadow was silent for a few seconds. His throat hurt, and he could feel sharp, heavy rock pressing in around him, so cold his blood might be ice. As quickly as it was there, it was gone, and he said gruffly, “I don’t think so.”

“Surprising lack of confidence, there,” Sonic quipped, words scratchy.

“I don’t remember anything of my life before Earth,” Shadow said. His hands balled into fists. “Only the few years I’ve been here. I don’t know what I am or where I’m from. I don’t know who I am.”

It was a vulnerability that he had only ever shown with Maria. She wasn’t here, though, and Shadow’s mystery of a past draped over his soul like a fog, and he and Sonic would be dead soon anyway, so what did it matter?

Sonic hummed, a slightly broken sound, and said, “Memories shape people. Just because you can’t remember your past, doesn’t mean that you can’t know who you are. You’re just being shaped by the memories that came after, rather than the ones that came before.”

Shaped by the memories that came after; ones of Maria, of guitars and blanket forts, of skates and stars. It was a nice thought. Shadow liked it. 

“As for what you are, I’d say it’s pretty obvious; you’re a hedgehog.”

Shadow was wrenched from his mind by Sonic’s croaked words. “Excuse me?”

Sonic snorted. “Something wrong?”

“I know what hedgehogs look like,” Shadow said firmly, because Maria had once shown him pictures and—since they both had quills—asked if they were his cousins. “I do not look like that.”

“Hey, which of us remembers our life before Earth?” Sonic asked. Shadow’s lips pulled into a thin line, and the other nodded in satisfaction. “Exactly. And it’s not like we’re Earth hedgehogs. Might be related, though. You’d have to ask Tails.”

“If we are not Earth hedgehogs, then what would you call us?” 

Sonic’s face was relatively neutral, and his eyes were still dull, but the corners crinkled near-imperceptibly as he responded, “Mobian Hedgehogs, of course.”

Despite what Shadow wished, Sonic didn’t know very much about Mobians, only that it was his and his brothers’ species, and almost certainly Shadow’s as well. It was strange, finally having a name for what he was. For so long, he’d been nothing more than an alien—one that could be used to bring the Earth into the future, sure, but an alien nonetheless. Now, he knew; he was an alien, but he was also a Mobian.

“I have an abnormally high amount of Chaos Energy,” Shadow pointed out as they spoke. “I can’t imagine it’s typical. How can you be sure that I’m one of these… Mobians?”

Sonic gave him an unimpressed look. “Dude.” One hand, trembling ever-so-slightly, raised from the ground to point at the collar around his neck, careful not to touch it. “Mobians have more Chaos Energy than a lot of other sentient species, like humans. Most of the time, it can’t really be… channeled into anything. Like how Tails can’t harness it any better than Mom or Dad can. Sometimes, though, Mobians are born with heightened Chaos Energy.”

Sonic was cut off as a cough suddenly ripped through him. It rattled in his chest, and Shadow clenched his jaw until the hacking subsided. There was quiet for a long moment, and then Sonic continued on as if nothing had happened, though his voice was certainly scratchier for it.

“How heightened depends, I think, though I don’t know if it’s random or not. Knuckles has it, I’m sure you know-” Shadow very much did- “Focused in his strength. Mine manifests in my speed the most. I’ve got more than Knux—at least according to Tails—but I don’t really know how that translates.”

“So that could be me,” Shadow murmured. “A Mobian with heightened Chaos Energy.”

“‘S my best guess.”

They didn’t speak much more, then, focusing instead on watching the stars through the window. They twinkled like they always did—like diamonds—and Shadow wondered if any of them were the one that he came from.

Was it the same one that Sonic came from?

For the smallest of seconds, he allowed himself to contemplate the idea of asking the Professor. Did they know where the asteroid had come from? Did they detect it before it entered the atmosphere, or was it only found after it had already crashed? Could he be pointed in the correct direction, if only so that when he looked out at the stars, he knew that he was looking the right way?

The answer was no. He knew it was. Even if there was information on it in G.U.N.’s files, the Professor would tell him that it was unimportant. Irrelevant to the task at hand, Shadow, he could already hear, words curling around his spine like a chain. The Professor would be right, anyway. He often was.

The next night, Shadow was staring out at the stars again. Sonic was quieter today, having been pushed harder and now more exhausted for it. The bandages around his arm were gone, but they’d been replaced by ones that entwined the opposite shoulder. What was it that some of the scientists would mutter? No rest for the weary? It seemed appropriate.

Eventually, Sonic asked quietly, “You saw Knuckles again. When?”

It took a moment for Shadow to trace his way back through their conversations. It was from a few days ago, he thought, when he mentioned that he met the brothers together once, and then the red one a second time.

“He knew about the Eclipse Cannon, and attacked me in London,” Shadow said. “Hit me a few hundred miles away.”

Sonic looked skeptical. “‘Hundred miles?’ Knux is strong, but that’s gotta be a bit of an exaggeration.”

Shadow made a face. “His power was… boosted, somehow.”

“‘Boosted?’”

Shadow nodded. “It made him… pink.”

Sonic blinked. His eyes were dark and glassy, but surprise seemed to flicker through them. “Pink? What does that— How could—?”

“There were these… gemstones,” Shadow explained. “Powerful ones. I have to assume they granted him their powers, because he was red again once I forced them out of him.”

Sonic let out a slow breath. “The Chaos Emeralds,” he said.

That’s right. That was what the red alien had called them, wasn’t it? Emeralds, at least, though they didn’t look much like a collection of emeralds to Shadow.

“You know them?”

“It was Knuckles’s job to guard them, originally,” Sonic said. “Though we kinda… all took it on. They weren’t— Normally, they were combined into the Master Emerald.”

Shadow hummed. “They’re powerful.”

Sonic’s face didn’t change much, but he almost looked amused. “Tell me about it.” He stared at Shadow for a long moment, then, before asking, “What happened to them? I mean, I don’t think you guys have them, ‘cause I feel like this whole thing would be done now if you did. Knux probably doesn’t have them either, though, or this would be done for… different reasons.”

“He scattered them,” Shadow replied. “Across the world. Some defense mechanism.”

Sonic scrunched his nose. “Feel like that would’ve been a better idea for the Owls, honestly.” Shadow had no idea what he was talking about, and Sonic didn’t seem to be jumping to provide an explanation, so a quiet fell over them instead, filled occasionally by chatter in a voice that cracked and broke as often as it stayed steady.

“How did you force the Emeralds out of him?” Sonic asked at some point. “Knux got them out of Eggman by punching really hard, did you do that?”

Shadow was a bit preoccupied to answer the question. He thought of Ivo Robotnik, somewhere in the floors above, and pinched his brows together. “That man had control of those Emeralds?”

“Uh, yeah? At one point. We beat him, though.”

For a moment, Shadow could understand why Ivo seemed to despise Sonic so much—seemed to revel in his pain; in what he had been reduced to. To have such power to complement such ego and lose it? It was a wonder he wasn’t more mad than he already appeared.

“So, how’d you do it?” Sonic asked, snapping him back to reality.

“Chaos Manipulation,” Shadow said. “They output a massive amount of Chaos Energy while in use. I just reached out for it and convinced it to leave him.”

Sonic stared at him, head turned ever-so-slightly to the side. “You can do that?”

Shadow stared right back, confusion snaking its way through his brain as he looked at the one powering the entire Cannon and asked, “You can’t?”

The next evening, as they sat in front of the window, Shadow explained as best he could how Chaos Manipulation functioned. It was difficult, with Sonic’s Chaos Energy not in a state to really work with, but Shadow had been doing it for nearly as long as his memories lasted for, and he liked to think that it was enough experience for his explanations to at least be understandable.

Sonic listened carefully, miming movements—albeit far less fluidly—and asking questions when appropriate, but his eyes stayed on the window. Shadow couldn’t really blame him. He thought that he might be able to stare out at the stars forever and never really get sick of seeing them. If it weren’t for the buzz of the Cannon, the sterile smell of the halls, or the pain in his heart, he could almost think that he was back with Maria, staring up at endless diamonds that shined even after they were gone.

He wasn’t with Maria, though. He had to remember that. Reminiscing did little more than cause that ache in his chest to grow ever greater. 

Shadow wondered if the Professor had the same ache? If he too felt that pervasive emptiness that sometimes consumed every sense he had, until the only thing that he could hear was Maria’s voice, distorted and fading, and the only thing he could feel was the pain—

He wondered how angry the Professor would be if he were asked.

…Shadow would not be asking.

Sonic seemed to have more energy the following night. The Professor had been more frustrated than usual that day—Shadow had taken care to make himself as discreet as possible—but it appeared as though it was manifesting in the form of sequestering himself in his lab instead. Shadow worried that it just spelled more trouble for the future, and he was quite sure that Sonic felt the same. Neither of them chose to voice it.

Instead, as they sat in front of the window, leaning on opposite walls, as seemed to be their normal now, Sonic sucked in a harsh, wheezing breath.

“It’s Earth,” he murmured when Shadow sent him a look. “We’re turned enough to see it from here.”

“Oh.” Shadow peered through the glass, but it must have been past his wall, only in the other’s view. “I can’t see it.”

Sonic huffed. He reached over and grabbed Shadow’s wrist in his hand, tugging. There wasn’t enough strength to pull Shadow over, and he doubted that Sonic had enough strength to do that, but he followed the implied direction anyway. Settling in on the wall next to Sonic rather than across from him, he could see the edge of Earth through the window. Limp blue fur brushed against his arm, and he tried not to think about how agonized Sonic’s Chaos Energy felt, electric from this close.

He was watching a particularly dense cloud system drag over a continent he couldn’t name when Sonic spoke.

“I love the Earth,” he said softly. “There’s so many places on it. All of them are so—so unique. So wonderful. The people, too, but I’ve found myself… less satisfied with them, recently.” A beat. “Do you have a favorite place down there?”

Shadow pursed his lips. He didn’t. He’d never really known the Earth. It had been his home, sure, but more the facility had been his home. How could he care for the planet, when all he ever really saw of it was captivity, and all it ever really gave him was pain?

“No,” he said. “I never— I was only ever in the facility. Then in—in Tokyo, when I broke out, and London when we launched the Cannon. I didn’t— There’s nothing about it that I’ve ever liked.”

If Shadow was more foolish, he would almost say that Sonic looked sad. “So, you’ve never… Have you ever heard the—the birds sing? In the morning? Or—Or smelled the forest after it rains?” He grit his teeth, words cutting off as a shock tore through his body and he twisted away. Shadow’s muscles were tense, and he only let them relax when the shock subsided and Sonic slumped against the wall. His breaths rattled for a moment before he continued hoarsely, as if he’d never been stopped, “Or run through the mountains with the—with the sun on your back?”

Shadow wasn’t sure by the end if Sonic was really asking him the questions he was saying, or if he was simply remembering things that he missed. Either way, he managed to reply, “I had many things to do. My life was too busy.”

Silence. Then, quietly— “Doesn’t sound like much of a life.”

There were tears drying on Sonic’s cheeks, and his eyes looked more like glass than they usually did, and Shadow stared resolutely at a seam in the wall and bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood.

The next morning, after delivering Sonic’s fluids and nutrients in silence, Shadow made his way into the atrium, stepping out of the stairwell just in time to bear witness as the Professor swept dozens of papers off of the main control desk and bellowed, “Damn it!”

Despite his reservations, Shadow inched closer. “Is…Is everything all right, Professor?”

Gerald rounded on him, and Shadow did his best to stay still. “No, everything is not all right! Oh, damn it all to join the gods in Hell!”

Ivo, skipping around from the other side of the atrium—camera mercifully missing—asked, “What’s got your gears grinding, Grand-Padre?”

A vein in Gerald’s neck twitched, though Shadow didn’t think Ivo had noticed, before he took a deep breath and said in a voice that walked the line between calm and furious, “It is taking longer to gather the proper amount of Chaos Energy to power the Cannon to its full potential than I had anticipated; than I had hoped.”

Ivo shrugged, unconcerned. “Then why not just work with what we’ve got? Conquering waits for no man, you know.”

Just as Shadow expected, Gerald shook his head firmly, waving the idea away within a second. “No. Trust me, no one knows this weapon better than I. We need it fully powered. The only question is how to speed up the process…”

The answer was obvious, and yet when Shadow was called to deliver the fluids to the lab rather than the containment unit later that day, it still made him want to be sick.

“Ah, come in, my boy, come in,” the Professor said, beckoning him with a glove that shined red under the fluorescents, smiling genially as if he wasn’t wrist-deep in Sonic’s chest.

Shadow swallowed down what tasted remarkably of bile and slotted the fluids pack in. 

Sonic’s eyes were cloudier than the atmosphere of the Earth that they’d watched the previous night. Shadow felt something like guilt or pity or perhaps even kinder than those wrap around his throat. They churned in his stomach, and zipped through his blood, and pounded in time with his heart, which he thought might be pulsing the same beat as Sonic’s. 

He knew what his own heart looked like, but it was strange seeing someone else’s. It looked remarkably normal—at least, what he supposed was normal. It was like the one he remembered catching glimpses of within his own chest, but with blue lightning darting across it rather than red.

“Professor,” Shadow started, ignoring both the lump in his throat and the bone sitting discarded in a tray at the man’s side, “I thought you were… unhappy with how long things were taking. Will this not take too much time to heal?”

“You think well, dear boy,” the Professor said, teeth glinting. “Not to worry, though. This has long been perfected since those early days with you. A healthy amount of Chaos Energy to the right places and its healing processes will be kicked into overdrive; enough to have it functioning by tomorrow.”

Shadow almost choked. Tomorrow? “Is that not a—a waste of Chaos Energy?” He hoped the stutter wasn’t noticeable.

“If it results in a higher production, then we can spare some for now.” The tone ended low, like a dismissal, and Shadow took the hint.

“Is there anything else you need, Professor?”

“No, that will be quite all right. Thank you, my boy.”

As Shadow went to leave, his gaze found Sonic’s face again, and those dull green eyes unclouded enough for just a moment to focus in and meet his own, sharp and pained and all-but pleading.

Shadow swallowed, hard, and did his best to walk out of the lab rather than running.

With the fluids already delivered, and Sonic preoccupied, Shadow did not go down to the containment unit. Rather, he fled straight for his bed, and turned over to face the wall, and refused to look at the stars.

He delivered the nutrients and the fluids to the lab again in the morning. There were no more operations going on, and Sonic’s eyes were closed, as if asleep, though it did little to settle Shadow’s nerves. The other alien had an array of wires and tubes sticking out of him, bright blue Chaos Energy being carefully funneled into his body. His face twitched regularly, and the IV that came down to stick a needle in his arm didn’t even look out-of-place.

The Professor was certainly confident in and set on whatever experiment he had performed, because only a few hours later, Shadow found himself standing in the observatory, watching as Sonic shakily got to his feet and stumbled to the starting point of the track, bandages tight around his chest.

Gerald watched on impassively while Ivo—still sans camera at least—lounged in one of the chairs in the atrium.

“Go.”

Shadow’s hands were clenched into fists as Sonic heaved in a breath and began to run.

It did not take long for things to go wrong.

Sonic started slow, and it took a good amount of time for him to get up to anything even close to the low-end of his average speed. Shadow could follow him easily, and could see the way that his eyes drooped, and his shoulders sank, and his mouth screwed up in pain.

A hand came up to press against his chest, and then all at once Sonic collapsed.

The Professor sent a shock through him only a moment later, and then another, but nothing changed. 

“Unconscious,” Shadow said, trying to keep his voice level as they left the observatory and returned to the atrium.

“Indeed,” Gerald said. His words were tight, as if held in a vice grip. “It is weaker than I suspected.”

Well, you did cut open his heart yesterday, Shadow wanted to reply. Instead, he bit the inside of his cheek to ground himself with the pain and said, “I could do it.”

“Pardon?” Gerald asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I could make the rest of the Energy we need.” Shadow’s legs felt as if they were burning, and his heart might pound out of his chest, but above him Sonic was splayed out and unconscious, with a heart struggling to beat behind bones that were just stitched back into his ribcage, and so he steeled his resolve and continued, “Run the track. Like in the facility.”

Gerald stared at him for a moment with something indescribable on his face. Then, he shook his head. “No, that won’t work. It is not the same Chaos Energy. We’ve no way of knowing what will happen, but this is volatile work. We can only assume that combining the two Energies will result in a catastrophic outcome. It is not worth the risk.” He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up to do it, and sighed. “We will simply have to resign ourselves to figuring out how to get what we need from the energy source faster than we are.”

Ivo raised a hand where he was still spinning in his chair. 

“Yes, Ivo?” Gerald asked, strain evident in his tone.

“What about the Master Emerald?” He suggested. “Unless they’ve misplaced it—which, to be fair, they are stupid enough to do—that pesky rodent’s family should still have it.”

The Professor furrowed his brow. “What is the Master Emerald?”

“Only a source of unlimited power,” Ivo said, grinning widely. “Should be able to power this baby no problem. The Wachowskis took it from me when they last-” He scowled- “Ugh, defeated me.”

The Master Emerald. It was what Sonic had been talking about only a few nights ago. It wasn’t the Master Emerald at the moment though, was it? No, not at all…

“It’s not one Emerald,” Shadow said. Attention snapped to him.

“Elaborate, dear boy,” Gerald pressed.

“The red alien—”

“Oh, my good friend Knuckles,” Ivo interrupted, and then put up his hands in mock-surrender when his grandfather glared at him. “Ahem, continue.”

Shadow regathered his thoughts. “The red one used this power you speak of to try and stop me. Once I removed it from him, it manifested as seven gemstones, powerful in Chaos Energy, that he referred to as the Chaos Emeralds. He used some defense mechanism to send them scattering to different locations all around the world.”

Ivo huffed. “Of course. ‘Cause it can never just be easy.”

Ignoring his grandson, Gerald said, “I suppose we are getting little luck here. Perhaps it is time to bring in outside help.” He paused. “You shall retrieve them, Shadow. Once we have a location narrowed down, you will descend to Earth and find one of these Chaos Emeralds. Use its power to return here, and we will see if this plan perhaps has merit afterall.”

Shadow glanced at the Earth, the surface hundreds of miles away. He thought of Sonic, with that stuttering heart in a broken ribcage. He thought of Maria, and of the justice that she deserved.

“Yes, Professor,” he said, and though he drew blood in his mouth when a hand came up to brush an incision scar, all he could taste was ash.

Chapter Text

“You’ll use one of the escape pods to reach the surface,” the Professor said. “Once you’re there, search for the Chaos Emerald. It will be within fifty miles of where you land. With it in hand, if Ivo is to be believed, you should be able to use it to enhance your own abilities and return to the Cannon.”

Shadow nodded. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good.” Gerald stepped away, looking over his shoulder. “Grandson! Do you have a location for me yet?”

“We’ve got a few, Grand-Paddington,” Ivo replied. His eyes were bright with excitement. His camera was off. According to the Professor, it would not do to broadcast to the entire world—G.U.N. included—the locations of the Emeralds before they themselves could grab them. 

“Which one will be the most accessible?” Gerald asked. “Least populated, least damaged by the landing, et cetera.”

“Well, what a question that is, indeed.” Ivo tapped away at the computer. Things flew across the screen, ones that Shadow could probably process if he tried to, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care. He just wanted to get this done. “I would say Antarctica, but I feel—”

“Yes, a disturbance there would be rather obvious,” Gerald interrupted easily. “Even if human presence is sparse. What else?”

“Let’s see…” Ivo dragged out the word for a moment before exclaiming, “Ha! Got it! The Namib Desert, in Africa. Barely any living within, and it’s looking like our Emerald is in the south, with much of the native population located in the north and central regions.”

“Perfect.” Gerald turned to Shadow. “I presume you’re ready, my boy?”

There wasn’t really a world in which he could say ‘no.’ Even if he wasn’t ready, Shadow thought that he would still say he was. That was the way things were.

“I am, Professor.” He clenched his fists, and Chaos Energy flickered over his knuckles. “Ready to get this done.”

The Professor chuckled, patting him on the shoulder with a heavy hand. “As am I, Shadow.” His gaze turned to the windows, and the Earth beyond. “As am I.”

Ivo pushed away from the computer, spinning in the chair as it rolled closer to them. “Done! Coordinates are in and escape pod is primed, ready to transport one rodent from atmosphere to surface.” A beat, and then he added, almost begrudgingly, “Safely, of course.”

“Well done, Ivo,” Gerald said without looking at him. Ivo preened, even so.

As the Professor did his last checks—as if Ivo’s word wasn’t quite enough—the grandson himself hurried over to Shadow and pressed something into his hands.

“Sample bottles,” he said eagerly—perhaps the most positive he’d ever been with Shadow in his line of sight. 

Shadow raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

The positivity drained to make way for annoyance. “Sand. What else? There’s nothing to do up here, and I have to keep things fresh for my Eggheads.”

Shadow huffed, but he didn’t feel like arguing with Ivo. Perhaps it would keep him occupied, having little bottles of sand to play with. If it kept him away from Shadow for more time, then it would be worth it. He snatched the sample bottles and tucked them away just as Gerald finished his checks and returned.

There were two escape pods on the Eclipse Cannon, across from one another on the sides of the atrium not occupied by stairwells. The Professor guided him toward one of them.

“Now, Shadow,” he said, “There is nothing that you need to do in order to get down safely. Simply reply when directed to, so that we know that you have made it.”

“Yes, Professor.” 

The escape pod door hissed as it opened, and Shadow stepped inside. It was large, likely designed to fit more than half of the number of crew the Cannon was meant to operate with. Shadow selected one of the seats and settled down in it, staying still as a harness flew out to secure him in place.

From the door, Gerald grinned at him, and the glare of his glasses hid his eyes from view. “Enjoy your flight,” he said, and shut the door. It hissed again, and a moment later the entire pod hummed to life, vibrating beneath him. Shadow felt the thrumming in his cheeks, as if his flesh and the bones below were tunes played in conflicting keys.

He turned his gaze to the porthole window, trying to keep his mind off humming, the sensation of the walls around him getting tighter. He did not look at the floor, because even though he was sure that there was no fluid that would be leaking up from grates to freeze him for another fifty years, it felt better to keep his gaze aimed away.

The escape pod rumbled as it unlatched from the Eclipse Cannon, moving away from the Cannon’s side before hovering in place. There were stars blinking past the glass.

“Still alive in there, erizo?” Ivo’s voice rang through the space.

Shadow frowned. He wasn’t completely sure what erizo meant, but he assumed it was some sort of insult to him. He chose not to address it. “Yes.”

“Of course you are,” Ivo mused. 

“Well done, Shadow,” Gerald cut in, even though he hadn’t done anything yet. “Prepare for descent.”

Shadow had only a moment to grip the seat’s handles before the pod jolted and moved, his stomach dropping out from under him as he rocketed toward the Earth. He didn’t know if it was the pod’s own engines or gravity that was doing the work, but either way he was going fast. 

Through the window, flames danced along the pod, searing in their colors. Everything trembled, and he thought his ears might be ringing. The stars were gone, and the darkness of space with them, replaced instead by an ever-lightening sky. He tore through the highest clouds that the atmosphere had to offer, and wondered if they were left burning in his wake.

“Noctilucent clouds,” Ivo said.

“Indeed,” the Professor murmured. A moment passed, and then— “That’s the mesosphere done.”

Ivo made a noise of assent. “Now entering the stratosphere.”

“Watch for any aircraft,” Gerald said. 

“Roger, roger.”

Shadow would close his eyes, if he thought it wouldn’t make things worse. Instead, he kept his gaze glued to the porthole, though there was little that he could see other than the flickering fires of re-entry and the sky beyond.

“Troposphere.” There was something like excitement in Ivo’s voice—an almost-manic form of it. Was it the anticipation of the Emerald? Or, rather, was it the power he held in this moment; the control over Shadow’s life?

He would be foolish to be excited over that, Shadow thought. Despite any fears that may be nestled within his chest, he was fully aware that there was no way the Professor would let him die. Once, that was because of the Project. Now, it was because they were family. The Professor had said so himself.

“Shadow?”

He swallowed. His throat was dry. “Yes, Professor?”

“Touchdown in T-minus ten. Brace for landing.”

Shadow had not been briefed on how he was meant to ‘brace for landing.’ He chose to keep his head back, fingers still around the handles, though his muscles stayed as loose as he could get them. That was something Maria had taught him, a lifetime ago—tensing up is more dangerous in the end. He thought of her, laughing rather than still, and breathed.

The pod hit the ground, and the world turned upside-down. Shadow continued to breathe as best he could through the shaking as the escape pod flipped and rolled. It was bright through the porthole, a blend of vivid orange and blue.

“Touchdown successful,” Gerald’s voice murmured. The audio was more broken than before, but considering the escape pod just crashed into the Earth, Shadow supposed he wasn’t too surprised. “Are you all right, my boy?”

Shadow extracted himself from the harness and got to his feet, straightening his back. “Yes, Professor.”

“I swear to Alan Turing, does this guy know how to say anything other than ‘Yes, Professor?’ A bit of a broken record, if you ask me.” There was a scuffling noise. “Ow!”

Gerald sounded a bit more gruff when he said, “You know your mission, Shadow. Locate the Chaos Emerald and take it. It should be within fifty miles of your location. Once you have it, use its power to return to the Eclipse Cannon.”

“Yes—” He cut himself off. “I’ll be there soon, Professor.”

The reply came fondly. “I know you will, my boy.”

Shadow shifted his way toward the door and pulled the lever. The same hissing sound tickled at his ears, and the pod opened. For a moment, blinding light filled his vision. He blinked rapidly, and the light calmed, revealing endless stretches of sand and sky beyond.

There was nothing in any direction; countless dunes towered.

Shadow closed his eyes, and did his best to feel for any Chaos Energy that might be around him and out-of-place.

It didn’t help much. The Chaos Emerald, wherever it was, had been here long enough that it seemed its power had seeped into the environment. The sand buzzed with it. Shadow bit back a sigh, because there was nothing it would do, and started running.

As he did, he let his thoughts wander.

It was strange, being back on Earth. When the Eclipse Cannon had launched, Shadow had been sure that he’d never set foot on the planet again. He couldn’t remember the last step on land he’d had—some gravel underfoot, or broken concrete perhaps? It hadn’t mattered, then. Did it matter now?

He thought that Sonic might remember. If Shadow asked him, he might say so.

What was your last step on Earth?

It was grass.

It was rubble.

It was my own blood, slick and sticky and nothing, all at the same time.

Shadow had never felt sand before. He was almost tempted to bend over as he ran and take some between his fingers—to watch the tiny particles tumble back down into a greater whole. 

Maria had seen sand before; she had told him about it, as she told him about so many things. It wasn’t a desert she’d visited, but a beach. Per her words, the sand had been white, a band that stretched on for miles of coast. The sand beneath his shoes now was some shade between yellow and orange, bright and warm and not at all how she described it.

It gets everywhere, Shadow, she always grumbled, and it was easy to believe her, looking at it now. If he took some in his palm, he thought he might never stop finding the grains between the seams of his gloves.

Something caught his eye; a glint in the sand, unlike the scorching brightness of the rest of the desert. His gaze followed.

There, atop a dune, was a Chaos Emerald. It was the yellow one, locked in a tentative hover, rotating slowly and methodically to a beat all its own.

Shadow approached carefully, but the Emerald did not change its dance. It didn’t even react to his presence until he reached out for its Energy and felt it sing in response.

His mouth was dry. The fault of the desert, he was sure.

Bending down, Shadow filled Ivo’s sample bottles with sand, taking care to avoid touching it as much as possible. He was already sure that the sediment was finding its way through the fur on his legs, so that it could stick to his skin until he died.

Something like that.

He took a measured step toward the Emerald. It was as if it resonated on a frequency just a bit different. There was a melody that he could hear; one he could follow if he only tried. Instead, he did his best to ignore it, and took the Emerald in his hands.

In an instant, he could feel how it boosted his Energy. Did it produce its own, or only improve that which was already there? The Professor would probably know better than he, and Shadow supposed it didn’t matter either way.

Turning his gaze to the sky, he scanned for the Eclipse Cannon. His eyes flicked over blue expanse, horizon to horizon, until it finally landed on the construct, orbiting in the outer atmosphere. It was barely visible, but Shadow only really needed an idea of where it was.

He gripped the Emerald as tightly as he could and let its power course through his veins, until he thought Chaos Energy might explode out of his body if he was to open his eyes. There was a tugging on his stomach and a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned, and the overwhelming heat of the Namib Desert gave way to the sterile, cool air of the Cannon.

Shadow collapsed the moment his body materialized, though he kept a hold on the Emerald. He tried to regulate his breathing—because he could do that; if nothing else, he could do that.

Footsteps came closer.

“Well done, Shadow,” the Professor said.

He didn’t need a command or an order. Shadow knew what to do well enough. Despite the ache in his limbs, and the exhaustion that suddenly filled what must be every cell he had, he forced himself to his feet.

“It was nothing, Professor,” he said. No one mentioned the scratch in his voice. “Barely even an inconvenience.”

“For someone like you, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Gerald hummed. He reached forward and easily extracted the Chaos Emerald from Shadow’s hold. “An appropriate hue.” He glanced back at Shadow. “There certainly seems to be potential here, though we won’t know for sure if it will help us until we get our hands on another.” Eyes sparkled beyond glasses, warm in a way that made Shadow’s insides feel fuzzier than they should. “But that is for a different day. You’ve performed excellently, Shadow. Go and rest.”

Ivo was not around to poke fun. “Yes, Professor,” Shadow nodded, and managed to convince his feet to move toward the stairwell.

It took him a decent amount of time to make it down to the lower floors, far longer than it normally did. Shadow had teleported before, and he had done it a lot in very quick succession, but nothing of such magnitude as going from the planet’s surface to its orbit in a single flash. Even with the boost that the Chaos Emerald so graciously provided, Shadow felt tired in a way that he hated—one that reminded him of the times before Maria, of endless running and bursts of pain and lips that stayed sealed all the while.

Halfway down, the door to one of the floors slammed open, and Shadow flashed behind the figure in the opening, ready to kick them hard enough to break their spine.

Ivo screeched, and Shadow scrunched his nose, dropping his foot. 

“Watch where you’re teleporting, rodent!” Ivo brushed himself off. His camera was hovering behind him again. 

“Watch where you’re going,” Shadow shot back. 

“Great comeback,” Ivo drawled, looking at the camera to roll his eyes as he jerked a thumb in Shadow’s direction.

“I suppose you don’t want your samples?”

Animosity forgotten, Ivo whirled back to face him, grinning widely. “Samples? For me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

Shadow had five sample tubes filled with sand. After a beat, he passed over four.

Ivo peered at them. “This is four. I gave you five. Where is the fifth one?”

“Broke,” Shadow replied easily. “But you’re welcome to go and get more yourself.”

“I swear, there is no good help on this Cannon these days,” Ivo muttered. Then, with a swish of his coat, he turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs two-at-a-time, the camera drone zipping after him.

Shadow rolled the fifth sample bottle between his fingers. Biting down on the tip of his tongue, he continued his journey down into the depths of the Eclipse Cannon.

“You look awful,” Sonic said as the needle shoved its way into his arm. His voice was as raspy as ever, limbs twitching more than usual and eyes rimmed with red from a weariness Shadow can still remember knowing. Bandages remained tight around his chest.

“Thank you,” Shadow said dryly. 

“Sound terrible, too. I’d whistle if I could get a deep enough breath for it.”

Shadow didn’t fully know what that was supposed to mean. He didn’t ask.

“What were you doing?” Sonic finally asked. “Must’ve been important. I’ve been in here all day.”

It was a fair enough assessment. The Professor was busy making sure that Shadow’s mission went well, and so he left Sonic alone. He never left Sonic alone, so it must have been something significant. Sound reasoning.

“I went back down to Earth,” Shadow replied after a long moment.

Sonic stilled. “Back to—to Earth?” The desperation made Shadow’s throat hurt. “What—What for?”

Shadow searched for the right answer. “The Professor is… unhappy with the timeline as it stands. He wishes for the Cannon to be ready sooner.”

“Oh, sorry, is my suffering getting in the way of his efficiency? I’ll try to tone it down,” Sonic said bitterly. 

It was not a word that either of them had ever used to describe what Sonic was going through. It wasn’t something that Shadow even used to describe the times that he went through the same thing. He hadn’t been living, then, so how could he suffer? His chest ached as Sonic’s words roiled in his head, and he did his best not to think about them.

“The Professor and his grandson worked to locate where those… Chaos Emeralds landed on Earth. I went down in an escape pod to collect the first.”

Sonic was quiet for a long few moments. Shadow didn’t dare look at him. He didn’t want to see the other’s face—didn’t want to feel his stomach churn as he knew it would.

Finally, Sonic murmured, “The Chaos Emeralds. Of course.” There was weight behind the words that Shadow didn’t understand, but he didn’t think it the best time to ask, either. “Wait, do the escape pods, like, go back up? How did you get back into space if you only got one Emerald?”

“I…” Shadow shifted his jaw. He finally looked at Sonic again, though barely. “It boosted my Chaos Energy. I used it to teleport back into the Cannon from the surface.”

Sonic blinked. “You… teleported… from Earth to outer space?”

He nodded.

“Dude…” 

Shadow wasn’t quite sure if it was awe in Sonic’s expression or something else, but either way it made his face burn.

The needle plucked out of Sonic’s arm and slid away, and the blue alien took the opportunity to face Shadow more fully, the right side of his body pressed against the wall as he leaned his temple on it. “Oh, that’s why you’re so tired!”

“Like you’re one to talk,” Shadow said.

Sonic, with his ever-dull and ever-dead eyes, rolled his shoulders in a weak facsimile shrug. “Hey, I get cut open every day and then run ‘til I pass out, you teleport, like, a hundred miles in one go. We’ve all got our quirks.”

When Shadow turned off the energy bars this time, Sonic didn’t even question him before following. They made their way down the corridor to the same window they always sat in front of—the one that almost felt as if it didn’t belong on the Eclipse Cannon, for how quickly it had slotted itself into place as a comfort.

They stared at the stars, and Sonic eventually asked, “So, where was the Emerald? Someplace fun?”

“Not particularly,” Shadow replied, though he wasn’t sure what Sonic thought of as ‘fun.’ “It was in the Namib Desert.”

“In southwest Africa, right?” Shadow didn’t know, and it must have shown on his face, because Sonic let out a small puff of air when he looked at him. “Ah— After the, uh, last time I fought Eggman, we kinda all got really good at geography? Mostly in case something ever happened again where we ended up in, like, Siberia. Don’t want the only way we can figure out where we are to be Tails’s translator, which you just have to hope won’t insult the locals and curse out seven bloodlines at once.” By the end of his spiel, Sonic’s voice was near-completely gone, clearly unused and unprepared to go such a length without break.

“Yes, well, wherever the desert may be, that is where the Emerald was,” Shadow said, clearing his throat. Hidden by his knees and by Sonic’s own attention on the stars instead, Shadow thumbed the last sample bottle of sand.

For all intents and purposes, it was only a little bit of sand. A single vial, not even made of glass. If it broke, the shards wouldn’t even be able to cut skin. It was no use for anything other than testing, really. 

Shadow passed it over before he could think about it too much.

“Sand,” he said when Sonic was quiet. “I got some for the grandson while I was there.”

“And you…” Sonic’s voice trailed off. “You got some for me, too?”

“You don’t have to take it,” Shadow said, though he was unsure what he would do with it otherwise.

The vial was snatched from his hand, almost faster than he could process it. Sonic gripped it tightly, and then spasmed when blue Chaos Energy flickered over his quills and sent his collar surging to life.

When the shock faded, Sonic was quiet. Eventually, he said in an even scratchier voice that before, “The Namib Desert’s the oldest desert in the world, did you know that?”

Shadow didn’t. “Perhaps that drew the Emerald to it,” he said.

A small noise that could have been a hum, in a different world. “Maybe.” And then, firmly, as if it was something he had to do, Sonic turned to meet Shadow’s eyes and implored, “Thank you.”

Shadow shifted uncomfortably, even as his face heated again. “Don’t say that. It took me half-a-second. Hardly something worthy of praise.”

The corners of Sonic’s lips twitched, almost in amusement, but never quite reached it. “That’s not what I’m thanking you for.”

No more words were exchanged, but the two of them turned back to look at the stars in a silence more companionable than Shadow could remember having in what must be over fifty years.

It felt something like a lifetime.

Chapter Text

A day was enough time to rest. 

The Professor thought so at least.

He pressed the yellow Chaos Emerald into Shadow’s hands, fresh sunlight through the atrium’s windows glaring off of his glasses. “You’re up for this, Shadow, are you not?”

As usual, ‘no’ wasn’t really an answer he could give. Shadow nodded. “Of course, Professor.”

Gerald stared at him for what almost felt like too long before he seemed satisfied, taking Shadow by the shoulder and steering him to join Ivo at the monitors. “Do you have a location for me, grandson?”

“I’ve got many locations, Grand—”

“A reasonable one,” the Professor cut him off deftly. “Whatever is closest to us now.”

“I wouldn’t call any of them close,” Ivo grumbled. He narrowed his eyes at the screens in front of him. “But if we’re talking the smallest distance, that would be… the Daintree Rainforest. Australia.”

“Ah, and it should even be the dry season. Perfect.”

For another ten minutes, Shadow was positioned directly in front of the screens, staring at images and doing his best to memorize them, to burn them into his brain.

Finally, the Professor guided him toward a window, pointing at a landmass on the planet below.

“That is where you are going,” Gerald murmured, fingers brushing against incision scars to face him in the right direction. “Just focus on where you want to end up, and let the Emerald do the rest.”

It… wasn’t so simple, but Shadow wasn’t going to let the Professor know that. He wasn’t using the Emerald’s power, the Emerald was amplifying his. There was a difference, and even if he didn’t quite know whether or not it mattered, it felt like it did.

“Yes, Professor,” Shadow said instead, and ignored Ivo’s small sound of amusement in the background.

It was harder to get down there than it had been to go up from the desert. Shadow wasn’t sure if it was because he had never been to the place he was teleporting to, or because he was still drained from the day before, but it didn’t really matter either way. He had to get down there. The Professor would be disappointed if he couldn’t.

He squeezed his eyes shut and held the Chaos Emerald tightly, letting its power flow through him. 

There was a tugging on his stomach, and a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned.

Sterile air and mechanical whirring gave way to something cool and fresh. There was some kind of fluttering overhead, and Shadow eased his eyes open to see leaves, ruffling in a canopy above him.

More green was around him than he’d ever seen in his life. Somewhere nearby, water bubbled, perhaps stumbling over rocks. It wasn’t hot, though warmth caressed his arm where sunlight speckled through the branches. Shadow supposed the Professor had said that it was the dry season, wherever he was. It was preferable to the desert, at least.

As if reminding him, the gemstone in his hand seemed to pulse with energy.

Right. Emerald. 

Closing his eyes, Shadow reached for any out-of-place Chaos Energy.

Like with the Namib Desert, the landscape was already be imbued with it, though it was stronger in one direction than any other. Shadow moved.

It was harder to navigate the Daintree Rainforest, for obvious reasons. The endless brambles and trees, the uneven terrain underfoot, proved a stark contrast to the eternal emptiness that the Namib Desert had to offer. While the pull of the Emerald was far clearer, it was hard to focus on it without his eyes shut, and there were so many obstacles in the way that it was impossible to both feel for it and run at the same time.

After about five minutes of going at a far slower pace than he would like, Shadow skidded to a stop and closed his eyes, feeling again for the Chaos Emerald. He wondered if it was easier to locate it more exactly with the other Emerald still held in his grasp. Something pulsed behind his eyes, and then he could sense it, farther to the left than he was going. He changed direction and set off again.

Like with the desert, it was strange being in this rainforest. He had never been anywhere like it—had never expected to be anywhere like it. The ground squelched beneath his shoes, a dampness clinging to leaves and bark and fur. The Professor had called it the dry season for this place, and Shadow wondered what it must be like to be wet, then. Would it be even brighter than it already was? It felt as if every green he’d seen with his own eyes dulled in comparison to the color that surrounded him.

Unbidden, his mind gave rise to Sonic’s eyes; their dull-and-dead shade burned in his thoughts. Could his eyes look as bright as this rainforest, when their vibrancy was unshrouded? Could they be brighter?

Something pounded in Shadow’s chest—foreign and familiar and all-too-warm for comfort—and he pushed it down, choosing instead to focus again for where the Emerald might be.

Memories of Maria clawed at his mind, almost angry in their desperation to be recalled.

“I know,” he hissed, not quite sure what it was he was saying—what it was he was reassuring. “I know.”

Shadow didn’t think Maria had ever been somewhere like this. She had told him about forests, of course, but he was sure that the pines and evergreens she spoke of were nothing like the drooping canopy he found himself beneath. He could almost hear her wonderment, though, tickling at his ears.

Imagine what types of animals live here!

How many trees do you think there are?

Do you think this place is old? Do you think dinosaurs walked through here, just like we are?

The desert had been nothing to marvel at, in Shadow’s opinion, and he didn’t think Maria would have cared much for it, either. It was big and barren, with nothing but sand for company. 

The rainforest was different. There were plants and sounds, and air that didn’t suffocate someone with its heat. Maria would have enjoyed herself here—would have run her fingers over safe and poisonous leaves alike, all with a smile on her face.

Shadow’s thoughts were getting too scattered. He had to focus. The Professor would not want him on the surface for long. Every moment that passed just gave way to bigger risk.

With any musings of Maria firmly locked away, Shadow continued his search.

He found the Emerald some ten minutes later, bursting through a tangle of vegetation into a clearing. Atop a small stack of stones, standing tall in the midst of a stream that babbled over rocks smoothed by time, the cyan Chaos Emerald hovered just as the yellow one had, to a slow and steady rhythm all its own.

The Emerald still in Shadow’s palm pulsed, as if sensing its counterpart. He reached out with his Chaos Energy, and could hear them again; that same melody played. The yellow’s hum was joined by the cyan’s, as if a harmony was constructing itself within the fabric of the universe. There were only two voices for now, and so it sounded unfinished, but it sang on regardless.

As quickly as the melody came to him, it was gone, and Shadow was left with the sounds of the rainforest, two Chaos Emeralds grasped securely in his hands.

The world seemed calmer, now. If Shadow was weaker—if more doubts rested within his heart than did—he might feel tendrils of remorse snaking their way into his heart as he looked around the tranquility of this little clearing and thought about how it would all be ash soon enough.

He…He wasn’t weak, though, and so he felt nothing. His heart thrummed with nothing but the Emeralds’ power, and no guilt slipped into his mind and bounced between his thoughts. None at all.

Shadow looked up. Through the gaps in the trees, he could see the Eclipse Cannon on the outer reaches of the atmosphere. The Chaos Emeralds’ power mingled with his own, coursing through his veins, and a storm brewed in his mind.

There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and—

He opened his eyes. The power retreated. Around him, the leaves waved as easily as before. It was morning, still.

Something rose in his mind, words between a day and a lifetime old.

“Have you ever heard the—the birds sing? In the morning?”

He hadn’t.

It was stupid. It was a waste of time. Shadow knew that.

Still, he listened.

For a few moments, there was nothing other than the swaying of branches brushing up against one another, and the gentle purl of the stream.

Then—

Birds chirped.

They weren’t like the bird songs that he’d heard while watching some movie or another with Maria. There was no common tune they followed, no harmony that they found.

And yet…

Some went high and soft. Others were low and sharp. One floated above the others, a piercing trill totally its own.

It was morning, in the Daintree Rainforest, and the birds were singing to no one. Shadow was the only soul around to hear it.

He stood there for a long few minutes, listening to the birds tweet and warble and croon. Reaching a hand out to one of the low-hanging branches, he plucked a long leaf off and tucked it carefully between his quills, out of sight.

Then, the Eclipse Cannon in his view, Shadow closed his eyes and let the Chaos Emeralds’ power flow through his body once more. The birds and their symphony faded to the rushing of blood in his ears. There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned.

It was louder in the Cannon than it should have been. Shadow eased his eyes open and watched as, overhead, Sonic sped along the track. Bandages were still tight around his chest, and he was not as fast as he should be, but he didn’t look two seconds away from collapsing, either.

A few minutes passed, and Shadow watched Sonic run, because it felt wrong to look away. The Emeralds were a stark weight in his hands.

Finally, Sonic skidded to a stop, leaning on his knees to heave breath into bound lungs. Their gazes met for the smallest moment, and Shadow hurried off to meet the Professor as he came down from the observatory.

“Ah, welcome back, Shadow,” Gerald said. “Your mission was successful?”

“It was.” Shadow held out the two Chaos Emeralds, yellow and cyan glowing in sync. 

“Perfect.” Gerald took the cyan Emerald from Shadow’s grasp and strolled over to a pedestal—newly constructed in the atrium. In the corner of his eye, Shadow saw Sonic in the elevator, disappearing into the floor. “Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

The Chaos Emerald slipped into the slot. It stuttered for a moment, as if unsure. Then, it began to hover, as it did on Earth, though spinning much more rapidly. The blue Chaos Energy that coursed through the tubes along the walls sped up, too, as cyan lightning zipped along it, almost looking like it was urging the Energy forward.

Ivo, fiddling with something across the atrium, yelped and fell off his chair. He scrambled to his feet as they looked at him and exclaimed, “Next time you’re gonna give the power a boost, warn a guy!”

Gerald smiled widely. “Now that is what I call a success, my boy.”

“Is it enough?” Shadow asked, trailing behind the Professor as he moved toward the main console.

“Not yet,” Gerald replied after a moment. “But getting the rest of them should be just what we need.” He turned his head, and their gazes met. “Are you up to the task?”

Shadow nodded as firmly as he could. “Yes, Professor. You know I am.”

Gerald chuckled and patted his shoulder before brushing his fingers through Shadow’s fur and over long-faded scars. “That I do.” He straightened. “No one saw you, I presume?”

“No,” Shadow said. “I didn’t see anyone, other than some birds.”

“You know, some people think birds are drones that report to the government,” Ivo cut in, sidling up next to his grandfather. He still looked a bit singed from whatever power surge he was caught up in.

The Professor sounded unamused as he said, “Lucky we’re not amongst them, then.”

“Ah— Yes, of course,” Ivo laughed. “The only drones down there that anyone has to worry about are my own!”

“Indeed.” Gerald adjusted his glasses. “Speaking of which— No more cameras in the atrium.”

“What?!” Ivo gasped as if it was the worst news he’d ever heard. “Why?!”

“While we are working on gathering the rest of the Chaos Emeralds, we cannot afford to have those plans broadcast to the world. Ergo, they cannot know that we have them at all. Understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, capiche, Grand-Ping-Pong, I got it,” Ivo grumbled, slinking off toward the stairs. “None of you know how to have any fun.”

The Professor sighed once his grandson had gone. “Just a bit more,” he murmured. 

Shadow knew that he wasn’t being spoken to, but he nodded anyway. “And then Maria gets her justice.”

Gerald glanced at him and a small smile flickered over his lips. “And then Maria gets what she deserves.”

The Professor took the yellow Chaos Emerald back from Shadow for safe-keeping before sending him off. He had some time to kill before he had to deliver Sonic his second fluid pack of the day, and so he returned to his room, collapsing on the bed and turning toward the wall. Sleep did not find him, but rest did, and the hours slid by easily, filled by thoughts of greenery and bird songs.

“So, you found another Emerald, huh?”

Sonic’s chin rested on his hand, propped up on a knee while the other arm lay out to the side so that the needle couldn’t be jostled too much. He tilted his head and observed Shadow as if he couldn’t quite figure what to make of him. Maybe. It was hard to tell.

“Yeah,” Shadow said. 

“Where’d you find it?”

“Some rainforest,” Shadow replied. “The… Dan-tree? Daintree.”

Sonic stuck his tongue out, holding it between his teeth. “That’s… Where is that…? Australia?”

Shadow shrugged. He couldn’t remember.

“Whatever,” Sonic said, voice raspy. “It’s, uh… I’m pretty sure it’s the oldest rainforest in the world.”

Shadow hummed. “Could be a trend,” he suggested. “First the oldest desert, now the oldest rainforest?”

“You’ll have to let me know.” Sonic played with the limp fur at his temple. “Solve the mystery.”

Scrunching his nose, Shadow said, “I wouldn’t call it much of a mystery.”

Sonic rolled his eyes. “Dude, there’s nothing to do here. Let me have this.”

The needle popped from his flesh and back into the wall, and a few minutes later they were sitting in front of their window again, looking out at the stars. Shadow’s bones ached as he leaned against the wall. Even with the power from the Chaos Emeralds, the teleportation was taking a lot out of him.

For a good while, he was content just sitting there, listening to the steady thrum of the Cannon and tracing lines between diamonds. 

Eventually though, he shifted his head, and a bunching between his quills drew him back to his body.

Without saying a word, Shadow grabbed the leaf and held it out.

Sonic blinked. “Is this… a leaf?”

Shadow nodded, face warm. “I got it from the rainforest.”

A long moment, and then Sonic asked, “For—For me?”

“Yes.”

“...Why?”

Shadow bit the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know. Do you want it or not?”

For a moment, there was silence, filled only by the wheeze of Sonic’s shallow breaths. Then, gloved fingers reached out and took the leaf from his own. Sonic turned it over, dull-dead eyes darting across the veins that winded up from the stem.

“Thanks,” Sonic finally said, voice wet.

“It was nothing.”

Sonic would not let him brush it off. Their gazes met. “Stop it. You were—You were down there, and you thought about me.” He spun the leaf slowly. “It’s not—It’s not nothing.”

Shadow’s mouth felt oddly numb. Still, he said, “I almost didn’t.”

“Yeah?” Sonic held the leaf aloft, twisting it in different light. “What made you change your mind?”

Shadow swallowed. His throat was dry. “I…I heard the birds singing.”

The leaf fell. Sonic’s hand rested in his lap again, and he looked almost lost in a stupor. “You— What?”

“The other day,” Shadow explained slowly, “When I told you that I hadn’t— That there weren’t many places on Earth I’d seen… You asked me if I’d ever heard the birds sing in the morning.” He let out a small breath. “I have, now.”

Sonic’s brow wasn’t quite furrowed, but it was something close. Silence reigned, and then he asked, “So? What did you think?”

“It wasn’t anything like the movies,” Shadow said.

Sonic made a sound almost like a snort. It was too weak for that, though. “Nothing ever is.”

“It wasn’t like the Emeralds, either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shadow tugged at the pointer finger of one of his gloves and focused on following the stitching. “The Chaos Emeralds make a sort of… It’s almost like they’re singing some common song. When I use them.”

“Huh,” Sonic said. “I thought that was just me. They’re always like that?”

Shadow nodded.

“Good to— Well, actually, I don’t know if that’s good to know, ‘cause how does that help, but still cool, I guess.”

“The birds didn’t sing like that,” Shadow said. “They weren’t following one song. They all sounded different.”

“They’re birds,” Sonic replied. “That’s always how they sound. I don’t think it makes them bad.”

Shadow looked back out at the stars, and drew between them the same veins that stumbled over the leaf’s flesh. A million-and-one bird songs tumbled through his mind, as if each star was belting its own. They didn’t harmonize, and they knew it. 

They sang regardless.

Shadow exhaled slowly and caught Sonic’s gaze with his own. “Neither do I.”

Chapter Text

“Antarctica?” Shadow furrowed his brow. “Isn’t it… cold, there?”

“I’m sure it is,” the Professor said. His eyes were on the screens, showing a blinking dot along the shore of the South Pole’s home. “‘A continent of superlatives,’ it’s often called; the highest, driest, windiest, iciest, and, yes, coldest in the world.” Glasses gleamed and Shadow bit the tip of his tongue. “Not that it will be an issue for you, will it, my boy?”

Through a clenched jaw, Shadow replied, “Of course not, Professor.”

A hand clapped his shoulder and teeth glinted behind wrinkled lips. “Best get going then.”

Shadow’s bones still ached from how much Chaos Energy he had been using. Even with the help of an Emerald or two, the teleporting was still a lot, and he wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel, march down to the room he’d claimed for himself, and sleep for a week-and-a-half.

His mind turned to Sonic, though, tucked away in the depths of the Cannon. He thought of the track overhead, and how greatly the Professor desired getting just enough energy—

Gripping the yellow Chaos Emerald firmly in his hands, Shadow followed the Professor toward the windows.

“There,” Gerald said, gesturing to one edge of Antarctica. They couldn’t see the whole of the continent from their angle, but it was enough. “That is where you are going; the Ross Ice Shelf. It is large, snowy, and empty, so do your best not to get lost, hm?”

“Check on the areas overlooking the water,” Ivo piped up, peering at the screen his grandfather had left behind. “Looks like it’s somewhere there. And maybe be quick about it, there are some pesky scientists on that slab of ice that might notice if something is amiss.”

Shadow nodded tightly. “Can I go now?”

Gerald snorted, perhaps at the snap in his words, but his smile was mirthful. “Yes, yes, go on. We won’t hold you.”

The Emerald’s power flared in response to his own, strengthening the Energy coursing through his veins, and Shadow closed his eyes.

There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned.

It was cold. Before anything else, Shadow noticed that. The cold was sharp and oppressive, biting at his skin as if the fur that covered it wasn’t even there. He eased his eyes open only to shut them immediately, head pounding from how absurdly bright it was.

Exhaling through his teeth, Shadow carefully opened his eyes again, bracing himself for the pulsing that quickly appeared in the front of his skull. Around him, white stretched on endlessly. It reminded him almost of the Namib Desert with its desolation, but the sky was more gray than blue, broken by dark clouds boiling in the distance.

There was none of the beauty on Earth to be had here, though he was sure that both Maria and Sonic would find a way to insist otherwise. Shadow was cold and miserable, and he wanted to leave, so he pushed his thoughts past the wind in his ears and tried to focus on finding the other Emerald.

The warmth from the Chaos Emerald in his hand vibrated, and he reached out for it eagerly. 

Snow crunched under shoes as he ran, moving with caution after nearly falling into a fissure. He could teleport out, of course, but the thought of using any more Energy than absolutely needed left his heart thrumming at an uncomfortable pace. It would be better to avoid.

Unfortunately, the emptiness of the icy plains made for few distractions, and Shadow’s mind had always been prone to wandering. Even as he tried to focus on the Emerald’s guidance, it was hard to ignore how cold everything was. The tips of his ears were numb, and his fur was stiff, and every lungful of air hurt more than the last. His fingers twitched, wanting to test the bounds, feel how far the glass reached—

It was stupid. There wasn’t anything around him, Shadow knew that. He wasn’t trapped—far from it. The tube and the facility and the endless chill they pressed into his bones were thousands of miles away. He was never going back to them, and he could rest easy knowing that they would be turned to ash along with everything else once all of this was over. 

His eyes stung from the wind, and his joints might be freezing together, and memories threatened to sink their claws in and drag him back into the abyss he’d been stuck in for so very long. 

Shadow had always known how to run, though, long before he’d been permitted to speak or allowed to think, and so he ran. Snow billowed up in his wake, but he didn’t look back, and breathed in frigid air with the reassurance that he was moving fast enough to shatter any glass that may try to close in.

Eventually, the landscape shifted. White snow gave way to darkness that stretched on forever as he reached the edge of the Ice Shelf. Though the Emerald’s pull still coaxed him forward, he couldn’t help but stop for a moment, looking out at the sea.

It churned angrily, waves smashing against the cliffs below. The storm brewing in the distance pulled ever closer, and the ocean heralded it. The water was dark, broken only by the crests and caps and spray whenever another wave struck home.

If that was where the Emerald was, Shadow might just leave it behind. He could pretend that he didn’t feel the walls of the tube around him when it was only the cold that he was dealing with, but if he had to go down there, into the frigid and merciless water? He could feel his limbs locking already, and how would he even pull himself back out—

He was thinking too much. 

Shadow forced his gaze from the ocean, relished in the sting of lightning flickering over his knuckles, and convinced his legs to move again.

By the time he found the Emerald, the snow and wind were picking up, the clouds closing in overhead and blocking out the gray sky. Even with its color, the white Chaos Emerald still sparkled in the haze. It slotted into harmony with the yellow as he reached out to take it in his palm, singing clearly in his mind even as he was buffeted by raging gusts. 

He was on another cliff, overlooking the sea, which nearly danced to the same melody the Emeralds made—that song stitched into the universe itself. 

There was no diving into the ocean today. Water would not fill his lungs as the cold did, and glass would not close in on every side as pitying eyes stared on.

Shadow was fine. For just a moment, he watched the waves, and thought that maybe he could even see how someone might like them.

The moment ended, and Energy surged in his veins, drowning out the harmony and chasing away the freezing air still around him. There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned. 

In a heartbeat, the roar of the wind and water was gone, and the Eclipse Cannon’s cool, sterile air felt almost like a blanket. 

“Welcome back, Shadow,” the Professor said, glancing up at him. His lips twisted. “And well done, I see. Give me the Emeralds, and you can go clean up, hm?”

Shadow accepted gratefully. He handed over the two gemstones before heading for the showers, taking care to flick melting ice from his quills at Ivo when the man stuck his tongue out as they passed one another.

It wasn’t as if the shower was particularly long—it couldn’t be, up here—but Shadow appreciated that he got to pick the temperature and put it just to his liking. That was never something he was allowed to do in the facility. The water was always aggressive, and it either froze or burned him, and rough hands would scrub at his body and his quills and scars that ached anew. 

This was better—much better—and he nearly smiled when he thought of the Professor telling him that first night “of course you can use the showers, my boy. You’re family, aren’t you?”

That’s what all of this was for, wasn’t it? It was for his family. It was for Maria , and the justice that she deserved, and he could rest easy knowing that the Professor felt the same way. 

The water turned off on its own five minutes after he’d entered. It was supposed to do that, though, and it was his fault for getting lost in thought. Shadow dried off, ignored how his muscles pulsed with pain once he got moving again, and set off to take a nap before visiting Sonic for the evening.

He dreamed of softer snow, rhythmic waves, and a gentler breeze.

“Quiet today.”

Shadow jolted, pulling his gaze from the stars to look at Sonic, leaned against the wall across from him.

“Excuse me?”

Sonic nudged Shadow’s foot with his own. “You’re quiet today. Well, quieter. You know.”

Shadow very much did not know, because he wasn’t the best conversationalist to begin with, but he explained, “I went to Antarctica today. It just took a bit more out of me than usual.”

A harsh puff escaped Sonic’s nose. “Antarctica, geez. It as cold as they say?”

Shadow didn’t really know what ‘ they ’ said. He thought of frozen lungs and glass pressing in on all sides, though, and replied, “Colder.”

Morning came, and Shadow drank slowly from a cup of water in the kitchen when the Professor entered, looking remarkably well-rested for a man that retired later and woke earlier than any of them. And a man who was one-hundred-and-ten, Shadow added distantly.

“Good morning, Professor,” he said.

“Ah, good morning, Shadow.” Gerald adjusted his glasses and stared intently at Shadow for a long moment before humming. “You seem tired, my boy.”

He was tired. His bones and his muscles and his head hurt, and the thought of using Chaos Energy for anything made his stomach churn worse than those waves off the Ross Ice Shelf the day before.

“I’m fine,” Shadow said.

“Be that as it may, how about you take a break for today?” The Professor suggested. “You’ve been working so very hard, there’s no reason why that energy source of ours can’t generate a bit more so you may rest for the day.”

Well, his stomach was certainly turning now, and quite angrily at that. Shadow grimaced, and tried not to think of Sonic’s heart thrumming open on a table as he said, “No. I can do it.”

Gerald clicked his tongue. “Shadow—”

“I can , Professor.” Lips tightened, and Shadow quickly continued, “Sorry. It’s very thoughtful, and thank you, but I can do it. I insist. I swear .”

A smile pulled at the Professor’s mouth, fondness twinkling in his eyes. “I can always count on you, can’t I, Shadow?” The words were soft, almost like Shadow wasn’t meant to hear them at all. They were all the better for it. “Even when the world seems against me, I always have you at my side. Just like—”

He cut himself off, and Shadow jerked forward on instinct, though he wasn’t quite sure what kind of comfort he could offer. Still, fingers found fur, brushing over long-healed scars, and tension bled from taut shoulders.

Gerald cleared his throat heavily, adjusting his glasses and looking away. His hand fell. “Well then,” he finally said, “Let’s find that next Emerald, why don’t we?”

Shadow met him in the atrium after delivering Sonic his first fluid pack of the day. Ivo was there, because whenever he wasn’t prancing through the Cannon’s lower floors with his camera, he was hovering near the Emeralds, as if their pull was too great for him to resist.

“Have you narrowed it down, Ivo?” The Professor was asking as Shadow pushed through the stairwell door.

“Just one moment, Grand-Paperclip…” A finger tapped against one of the screens. “Got it! Sognefjord, in Norway. Or, well, above it, but whatever.”

Shadow did not know how the word on the screen translated to the one that came from Ivo’s mouth, but he chose not to question it. He didn’t need to know how to pronounce it, after all. 

“Wonderful,” Gerald said. He spotted Shadow a moment later and strolled over, holding out the yellow Chaos Emerald. “Come, my boy.”

He directed Shadow’s gaze to images plastered over the screens, and then down to Earth, pointing to a landmass higher on the planet. 

“Tourists like it,” Ivo piped up. “Especially now. It’s warm there.”

“So, you’ll have to be careful,” the Professor nodded. “You can be careful, can’t you, Shadow?”

A hesitant smirk formed as he asked, “When am I not?”

Gerald chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. It made the ache in his body flare, but Shadow appreciated the gesture regardless. “Good luck, dear boy.”

Shadow closed his eyes, tracing his destination in his mind. The Emerald grew hot in his grip, and his blood grew hot with it. There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned. 

The ground squished underfoot. Shadow blinked open to a kinder scene than the one from the day before. Mountains towered up around him, and puffy clouds floated lazily across the sky. It was warm, but not unbearably so. It would almost be nice, he thought, if not for the fact that he felt more tired than he had in a long time. The Chaos Emerald, as if sensing his exhaustion, pulsed weakly and urged him on.

Shadow couldn’t really enjoy the sights as he ran, more focused on following the Emerald’s path and keeping himself moving. If he stopped, he was worried he might never start again; not soon enough, at least.

Beneath his every step, the ground stayed squishy. It must have just rained, leaving the soles of his shoes streaked with dirt. 

He was ducking into a stretch of trees, the distance between him and the next Chaos Emerald becoming ever smaller, when he took in a breath and nearly tripped over nothing.

Even though he had promised himself he wouldn’t, Shadow skidded to a stop, pushing away how his limbs screamed in protest in favor of breathing in again.

A strange scent clung to the air. It was earthy and damp and oddly fresh, and almost reminded him of the faintest undertones he’d gotten back in the rainforest.

The mud shifted under his feet again, and water dripped off of leaves and onto his forehead, and oh—

Shadow remembered Sonic, so in pain and so in love with the Earth throughout it, and softly realized, “This is what the forest smells like.” Shadow held his hand out, and more droplets soaked into his gloves. “After it rains.”

The Emerald drummed, and his limbs ached, and his head hurt with a mix of smells and memories, and he had to keep going. Still, as he managed to start running again, he breathed carefully through his nose, and tried to get the scent to stick in his brain. It had been a lifetime since he smelled something with so much vibrancy to it; a brightness weaved into its very existence. It was comforting, like the smell of Maria’s shampoo or the lavender that she decorated half the facility with when none of the scientists were looking.

What would it smell like, when the Cannon finally fired? Would the brightness give way to misery, the same way that the lavender gave way to ash?

It didn’t matter. Shadow took in another breath, and continued running.

The next Emerald was atop the mountain he was scaling. He emerged from the trees to find it overlooking the fjord below. What was a fjord, exactly? Maria had known, and he was certain she had tried to explain it once or twice, but Shadow couldn’t— It was sometimes hard to grasp things, when the movies and the facility and the lab were all he really knew. 

Sparkling purple in the afternoon sun, the Chaos Emerald slowly rotated in the air, just as the others had. The yellow one in his hand sang out an incomplete tune, and as Shadow wrapped his fingers around the purple Emerald, it joined in. What would it sound like to have all of the Emeralds singing together? He couldn’t cobble together the parts he had already heard in any way that really sounded right.

There was no use in pondering such a thing; such an impossible, unattainable thing. 

The scent of earth and water and life still hung thick in the air, even broken from the treeline. Shadow swallowed, thought of the forest after it rains, and bent down, taking a damp stick and shoving it into his quills before he could think about it too hard. 

Aiming his gaze back toward the sky, Shadow found the Eclipse Cannon again. Chaos Energy sparked in his veins, and though the Emeralds were lending their power, it felt almost as if he was being fought against anyway. His body wanted nothing more than to rest, but he had to do this. He could rest back on the Cannon anyway.

Soon enough, he could rest forever.

Gritting his teeth, Shadow pushed past his own reservations and focused on teleporting instead. There was a tugging on his stomach, a pressure in his skull, and all at once the world turned.

He fell to his knees when he landed back in the atrium. The warm and damp air, scented with rain, was gone, replaced by chilled metal and chemicals. Shadow was burning, and if he sliced into his skin, he thought that fire might come out instead of blood.

“Are you all right, Shadow?” The Professor asked, casting darkness over him.

“Just winded, Professor,” Shadow said, pulling himself to his feet even as bile rose in his throat. 

Gerald hummed. “You’re pushing yourself quite hard, my boy—not that I don’t appreciate it, of course. Go rest before you finish up on Battery Duty.”

Shadow bit back a reply about how he had planned to do that anyway, and nodded instead. “Thank you, Professor.”

He held out the two Chaos Emeralds. The Professor took the purple one quickly, but paused as the yellow gem was passed over. After a long, careful moment, he handed it back to Shadow and smiled easily. “How about you hold on to that one instead, hm?”

“Are—Are you sure, Professor?”

“I always am,” Gerald said. “Besides, I can trust you, can’t I, Shadow?”

His heartbeat thrummed in his neck, and guitar-calloused fingers wrapped around his airways, but Shadow said, “Yes, Professor. Of course. Always.”

“Good.” Gerald patted him on the head—on incision scars that were from so long ago they may as well not even exist anymore—and shooed him on his way.

As Shadow made for the stairwell, his gaze found the white Chaos Emerald, spinning in its container and sending its own streaks of color bursting through the tubes of Energy lining the walls. 

He could see the endless expanse of space through it—bent and distorted by its facets, but there all the same—and wondered if this was the kind of diamond Maria imagined when she talked about the stars.

The nap was better than normal, and Shadow thought that the Emerald might have something to do with it. It persuaded his Energy—in gentle notes and broken chords—to run smoother, feel calmer. Its power was immeasurable, but it used it peacefully of its own accord, as if the universal threads stitched into it knew nothing but how to be kind.

He woke in the evening to a quiet Cannon, and went to the bottom floor with a still-damp stick and a still-warm Chaos Emerald tucked between his quills.

Sonic’s eyes were glazed over when he came into view, but they cleared quickly, focusing on Shadow and then squinting. 

“Dude,” Sonic said in that scratchy, wheezy voice of his. “You look awful.”

“Thank you,” Shadow said dryly, putting the packs into the slot on the wall. “I’m just tired.”

“You were tired yesterday,” Sonic pointed out, holding his arm in place as the needle slipped in. 

“It’s the teleporting,” Shadow explained. “It’s not that bad, normally. Doing it constantly is a bit… draining, though.”

Sonic wrinkled his nose and tried to turn only to cringe when it seemed to pull at the needle. He shifted back. “Why won’t they give you a break? I mean, what use are you if they keep pushing you ‘til you can’t go anymore?”

“You’re one to talk,” Shadow diverted.

“Mm, nice try, but you’re talking to the master of deflection here,” Sonic pressed on. “Not slipping away from this one, mister.”

Shadow huffed. “The Professor does care about me,” he said, even though Sonic hadn’t actually stated otherwise. It felt important to say, anyway. “He offered me the chance to rest, told me that I didn’t have to go and get an Emerald today. I simply refused him.”

Sonic sputtered. “Dude, you look like your eyebags have eyebags. Why’d you say no? Are you, like, a fan of feeling like crap?”

Shadow crossed his arms and averted his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

For a few agonizing seconds, it felt like Sonic was going to keep pushing—going to insist that he answer. Instead, though, the seconds passed and the other alien sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Fine.” A beat. “Where’d you go today?”

“Some fjord in Norway,” Shadow replied, eager for the topic change. “I don’t remember how to pronounce the name.”

“Norwegian words can be hard,” Sonic nodded sagely. “That’s cool, though. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a fjord.” He paused. “What even is a fjord, really?”

Just like earlier, Shadow didn’t know. He contributed, though, as Sonic mumbled through possibilities. They were in the middle of trying to agree on if it was the shape of the land or the water itself when the needle popped out and slid back into the wall.

Shadow opened the cell and Sonic—without question—followed him to the little corner of the Cannon that felt all their own. The Professor and the grandson could have the rest of it, Shadow thought. This nook, though, with the lights that don’t quite reach it and the window to the stars, was just for them—just for him and Sonic.

They settled in as always, and Sonic had barely slid to the ground when Shadow reached back into his own quills and pulled out the stick. It was mostly dry by now, other than a few spots of stubbornly damp wood-flesh. 

Sonic’s eyes found it immediately. “Is that for me?” He asked. Shadow couldn’t quite determine where the breathlessness stemmed from.

“If you want it to be,” he replied instead of asking.

Sonic took it between his fingers, turning it over and holding it as if it was the most precious thing in the world. There was nothing particularly impressive about it, but then there had really been nothing impressive about the sand or the leaf, either.

“Thank you.” It was said in the same tone as before. Their eyes met. “You know you don’t have to do this, though; give me things. Not that I don’t— I love them. I do. It’s just…” Sonic trailed off, as if the words evaded him. They were scratchier than earlier, and Shadow wondered if maybe he should be more active in their conversations, if only to save the other’s voice.

“I had to run through a forest,” Shadow said rather than anything else. “To find the Emerald. It had just rained, and I remembered— You asked me—”

“If you’d ever smelled the forest after it rained,” Sonic softly finished for him. “And now you have?”

Shadow nodded. “I have.”

Sonic hummed. “What did you think?”

“It was…” Shadow thought through it—inhaled deeply as if he could still catch a whiff if he tried hard enough. “Earthy. Wet, too, and… it was bright, I suppose.”

“That’s a good way to put it,” Sonic said. “There’s a word for the smell of rain, actually. It’s, uh… petrichor. Yeah, that’s it. It’s different in a forest, though, I think. Always smells more… alive.”

Shadow nodded. “Yes. It smelled like that.”

Some strange sound bubbled in the back of Sonic’s throat, as tired as Shadow himself felt, and the two of them fell into silence.

The Chaos Emerald still tucked in his quills pulsed gently, a constant reminder of its presence, but it didn’t feel imposing. Its melody never wavered, but the instrument it was played on shifted as easily as the diamonds across the night sky, and it found its way to the careful strums of a familiar guitar.

Maria sat before him, guiding his fingers, and laughed in harmony with the song. Her arms wrapped around him and held him close, keeping him safe. Promises fell from lips that would one day hold only blood and ash, and told him that nothing could hurt him anymore; that nothing should hurt him anymore.

He swallowed. There was a lump in his throat. “If I didn’t go to get the Emerald today,” he said slowly, and though Sonic didn’t turn to look at him, Shadow knew he was listening, “Then the Professor would have had you pick up the slack. So I went.”

Sonic’s brow furrowed, eyes flickering. “Why?” He asked. 

“Why, what?”

“Why bother?” Sonic’s fingers—tattered gloves—traced the stick’s grooves. “It clearly exhausts you. It hurts you. And the—” His throat bobbed. “It all ends the same, doesn’t it? It only—It only ends one way.”

(The scientists in the lab would get their answers—their Energy—no matter what. It mattered how , though.)

(Maria thought so, at least.)

“It only ends one way,” Shadow confirmed. He bit the inside of his cheek, and a scar above his temple twinged. “But you—” A slow exhale trickled from his once-twice-thousand-times-drowned lungs. “You don’t deserve to spend the time until that end in pain. Not if I… Not if I can do anything to—to stop it.”

The look on Sonic’s face was uncomfortable. It wasn’t a smile—it wasn’t even happy —and yet it was like a dawn, cresting over the distant, yet-discovered landscape. Then again, Shadow had only seen one dawn before, and it might pale in comparison to the sudden shine in Sonic’s eyes.

As quickly as the expression was there, it was gone. The shine remained though—a spark in a long-dead gaze. Shadow didn’t know how to feel about it.

“Thank you,” Sonic finally said. “For thinking that way. When no one else will.”

He wasn’t teleporting, but there was a pressure in Shadow’s skull. Even as it grew, and even as it felt wrong, he said firmly, “I think you would. For me.”

Sonic’s breath hitched and his eyes turned glassy, but he tilted his head to the side in consideration. “Yeah,” he eventually murmured. “I guess I would.”

It didn’t change anything, in the long run. None of this did. Every conversation would be wiped away along with the rest of the Earth, as would every memory of pain and every ache that still remained.

In the moment, though, Shadow didn’t think that it was important that the end would always be the same. The words and the hurt would happen regardless, and—perhaps even with their inevitable erasure—it still mattered that they did.

Folding his legs beneath him, Shadow settled the silence around his soul, looked out at the stars, and wondered how many of them sang the same song the universe did.