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The ruined lab was almost silent, except for the sound of crumbling infrastructure and busted pipes spewing steam. And the very, very distant sound of music.
A human ear wouldn’t have picked up on it. Sonic’s sensitive hearing heard it along with the low humming accompanying it.
Sonic walked the decimated halls towards the music and its listener. He took his time, for once, observing his surroundings and trying to understand why his look-alike had come here. He’d followed the new hedgehog from Scramble Crossing, keeping enough distance so he wouldn’t be noticed. He’d have to apologize to Tails and Knuckles for leaving them in the dust since they had no hope at all of keeping pace with the new hedgehog on his energized motorcycle.
There didn’t see to be anything here worth looking for. Everything was a wreck and it wasn’t just due to the passage of time. The burn marks and bullet holes in the walls told a violent story.
“What’s that?” Sonic muttered to no one, peering through the darkness to a splash of color on otherwise dirt-smeared walls where the eye-level of an adult human would be.
He scaled a nearby pile of rubble and brushed aside the grime to reveal a faded marker drawing of a familiar, grumpy hedgehog surrounded by a bright pink heart. The worn words “Re-e-ber to b- ni-e!” were written above it.
Sonic looked around the drawing and realized it didn’t decorate a wall at all, but a door. A door that also bore the label, ‘Lab 1.’ He wondered what sort of treatment, what sort of lab work, the new hedgehog must have faced here that compelled someone to write this reminder. He wondered if anyone heeded it.
“Somebody was looking out for you, huh?” Sonic said to the humming hedgehog. He knew he’d been heard because the humming paused for a moment before continuing as low and steady as it had been. His voice was nice. Sonic wondered if he could sing, too.
Despite their earlier clash, it seemed the new hedgehog wasn’t threatened by Sonic’s presence. Not enough to come at him again, at least.
Sonic continued towards the music until he found its source. The new hedgehog was sitting on the derelict floor, knees to his fluffy chest with his arms wrapped around them in a pseudo-embrace. His back leaned against a cabinet, his quills squished against it and splayed out messily, which a record player sat atop. That was the source of the scratchy, skipping music. The hedgehog hummed along as if the record wasn’t barely discernible. Clearly, he knew this song by heart.
“You again,” the new hedgehog greeted dully as the song came to an end. The record needle lifted and silence filled the room.
Sonic wasn’t a fan of silence, so he chattered, “We really gotta work on your communication skills, buddy.” He dropped his voice into an imitation of the new hedgehog’s low baritone. “You again and throwing cars at people are not how we say ‘hello!’”
“You’re with GUN,” the new hedgehog sneered. “Did you expect flowers?”
“I’m not really with GUN.”
The new hedgehog looked dubious. And angry. Still quite angry.
“They asked me to help them capture a dangerous, alien fugitive and didn’t tell me much more than that,” Sonic explained.
“Do you always accept missions with so little information?” the new hedgehog derided. "Seems irresponsible."
It irked Sonic because it was kind of true. Admittedly, he’d been too enthusiastic about accepting GUN’s request. ‘Team Sonic’ just sounded so cool and he’d been wanting something exciting to happen again, so he hadn’t thought things all the way through.
Shibuya wasn’t the best display of Sonic’s fighting prowess, either. He’d been distracted by how damn pretty the new hedgehog was.
“Lesson learned, won’t happen again,” Sonic shrugged sheepishly. “They should have mentioned their secret lab and...”
Sonic looked around the room properly and it became immediately apparent this wasn’t just a secret lab. There was a pillow fort with an ancient television and rotted popcorn kernels inside, along with a guitar that someone had scratched a heart into the wood. The couch had been pushed into a wall, rendering it useless for sitting but making room in front of the record player for a makeshift dance floor. The carpet was particularly worn down just in front of the cabinet.
Dried out markers were scattered all over the room, indicating the presence of the door’s graffiti artist. Sonic looked at the room’s own door and found more faded words. ‘M-ri-’s R---.’ If there was a drawing on this door, it was long lost to time.
Someone loved this place, once. Someone made a home here.
“...and all of this. Obviously, there’s more going on here. I meant it when I said I didn’t want to fight you. I just wanna talk.” Sonic sat down on the carpet across from his look-alike and said, “Hi, I’m Sonic Wachowski. You might know me as The Blue Blur? Blue Justice? The Blue Devil?”
“I don’t know you at all,” the new hedgehog grumbled. “Shadow. Robotnik, I suppose.”
That got a wide-eyed stare and few surprised blinks out of Sonic. “Robotnik? As in, Eggman?”
“As in Maria and Gerald Robotnik. I don’t know an ‘Eggman.’”
Sonic looked at the door and filled in the missing letters to make ‘Maria.’ And he quickly put together Maria as the someone who wanted people to remember to be nice to Shadow in the lab. And… that had been a very long time ago, from the state of this place.
“Look, Shadow, Shads, can I call you Shads?”
“No.”
“Shads, I really, really want a reason to not put these,” Sonic rifled through his quills and showed Shadow the handcuffs Tails had built for him, “on you. But the only Robotnik I know tried to kill me twice and you attacked GUN.”
Shadow tensed at the sight of the handcuffs. Sonic saw tension in Shadow’s legs, like he was ready to leap forward, and he quickly set the cuffs down between them.
“So please just explain what is going on and we can work things out.”
Shadow considered the handcuffs, then Sonic himself. He seemed to come to a decision and spoke.
“I didn’t attack GUN. They attacked me. They kept me in stasis for fifty years and when I escaped, they came after me, intent on killing me or putting me back in stasis to cover up their mistakes.”
Shadow’s voice was vicious and biting, then it broke at the end on ‘mistakes.’ His intensely crimson eyes closed and he took a deep, shaking breath. When they opened, they were unfocused, seeing something that wasn’t in the room with them.
Sonic’s heart hurt for Shadow. It wasn’t hard to gather that something terrible happened here. And GUN didn’t want anyone to know about it, so Shadow had to be buried along with the past. Well, Sonic wasn’t their gravedigger.
“What mistakes?” he asked softly.
Shadow looked past Sonic to the blanket fort. “Me. Maria,” he said even more softly.
Shadow’s organs weren’t right. That’s what the doctors who cut him open said, that his organs weren’t right. His heart was on the wrong side of his chest. To make room for a completely unknown organ where his heart should be. His lungs had air sacks in them to store oxygen for long periods of time. He had no large or small intestines, just a tube from his mouth to his gut and a minuscule stomach. His blood was green.
Shadow knew all of this because he heard the doctors talking while they cut him open. He saw his lungs pulled out of his torso and split open to reveal their contents. They cut out his humerus for testing, then watched it grow back over the course of a few hours. They had to keep his skin and muscle pried apart and pinned down to keep it from healing and obstructing their view.
He felt the pain, because there was a paralytic in the IV but not an anesthetic. Painkillers didn’t work on him at all, they said.
They put him back in his glass tube when they were done with him, as always. Whether it was vivisection or exposure to disease or draining him of his chaos energy until he was sick and weak and scared he was going to die, the day always ended here.
He could break the glass, he knew. But he wouldn’t. There was no place for him on this planet except for here.
Then a girl scribbled a rabbit face on his glass tube and everything changed.
“They couldn’t be careless with me anymore. It would upset Maria, and that would upset Gerald.”
Sonic thought he might be sick. This was… beyond anything he expected to hear about today. In his little world of Green Hills, Montana he’d come to understand humans as basically good. Some of them were Eggman, but most of them were Toms and Maddies and Crazy Carls.
And now there was GUN. Who’d committed an atrocity against Shadow beyond what Sonic thought possible. Instead of making amends for their past, they wanted its sole witness silenced.
“The doctors let me sleep in a real bed, eat real food instead of getting nutrient injections, watch movies and go outside to look at the stars. Because Maria fought for me to have good things.”
Sonic was next to Shadow now, having moved closer when Shadow showed no objections to his proximity. The Wachowski household was a very physical one. Lots of hugging and shoulder pats and kisses on the forehead. It was a wonderful thing after years isolation. Sonic thought Shadow might need it, too.
He tapped his shoulder lightly into Shadow’s, a tentative breach of the unspoken boundary around him. He didn’t lean into the touch, nor did he pull away. His grip around his legs loosened the most minute amount.
“She sounds like an amazing friend,” Sonic comforted.
“She was my sister,” Shadow corrected. Sonic did not miss the past tense. “There were still a lot of bad days. They kept harvesting my chaos energy and that made me sick most of the time. I hid it, so she wouldn’t be sad. She always knew anyway. She wanted them to let me go, but they couldn’t. They’d invested too much in me.”
Sonic suspected Shadow wasn’t explaining what the scientists had done to him because he wanted to elicit sympathy for himself or even to answer Sonic’s question. He wanted someone else to know about Maria and how good she’d been. He wanted her in someone’s memory besides only his own.
“What happened to her?” Sonic asked, dreading the answer.
“GUN,” Shadow answered darkly, growling low in his throat. “They weren’t getting the results they wanted anymore because they were treating me better. They raided the lab to take me away, give me to someone who wouldn’t have so much mercy on me. Gerald, Maria, and I tried to run. A stray bullet hit one of the containers holding my chaos energy. It exploded.”
Shadow’s words became clipped. Like talking about this clinically would make it hurt less. A long silence fell between them. Sonic let it linger, giving Shadow all the time he needed. He resisted his urge to fidget or put an end to the quiet. Sometimes, Tails needed Sonic to be strong and silent when he remembered the bullying he’d endured in his old village. Sometimes, Knuckles wept over his lost family and only needed Sonic’s steady presence.
Right now, Shadow needed someone to listen. Sonic could be that person for him.
“She died,” he said, finally. He shut his eyes and tears fell down his muzzle. “They caught me. Put me in stasis. I didn’t try to fight, I didn’t understand what was happening- I didn’t understand why she was gone.”
Sonic pulled Shadow into his arms, who buried his face into Sonic’s chest. He trembled with the force of his overwhelming sorrow. Sonic thought Shadow might be able to hear his heart breaking. He knew the confusion that came with the death’s first visit at his doorstep. The horror of learning how easy it was to lose someone you love. The grief that threatened to pull you under and never let you go.
“Stasis, it, it trapped my mind, too. Put me in a loop of my final waking thoughts over and over and over- Maria- she didn’t believe in hell but it’s real and that’s what it is.”
Sonic wanted Shadow to stop already, because it just kept getting worse. He couldn’t fathom the depth of suffering and sorrow Shadow had been put through. He couldn’t take this anymore.
But Sonic wanted to be a hero, didn’t he? He wanted to save people, protect people, and here was someone in desperate need of protecting. Still, how did Sonic protect Shadow from the ghosts in his head?
Then Shadow started crying for real. He muffled his wailing in Sonic’s fur and gripped him tight enough to hurt. Sonic only held him, cooed meaningless words of comfort to him and pet his quills because that’s what Maddie did when Sonic woke up at night from a nightmare of holding Longclaw’s bones. He shored up his defenses against his own rising tide of anger and sadness.
Sonic let him cry until his tears dried up and Shadow was left shaking in Sonic’s embrace.
“When we go to Green Hills, let’s have a funeral for Maria.”
When, not if. Green Hills was safety and family and home and Shadow deserved to have that again.
“Where? A what?” Shadow pulled away, baffled enough to interrupt his fit.
“A funeral. Tom and Maddie helped me have a funeral for Longclaw. You can talk about all the things you loved about Maria or you can stay quiet and you can have friends there or you can do it on your own, it’s whatever you need to remember her.”
It’d helped Sonic say goodbye and it could help Shadow, too. He’d never had the chance to hold Maria tight, love her with everything he had one last time, then let her go. He needed it like Sonic had needed it.
As for the rest, all the pain the scientists had inflicted on him, Sonic frankly had no idea where to begin helping him heal from that. Tom and Maddie would know. Tom and Maddie always knew how to help.
“I don’t… have any friends,” Shadow objected weakly. He hadn’t said no to the funeral idea, Sonic noticed.
“Sure you do! We’re friends, so Knuckles and Tails are also your friends. Tom and Maddie can be too. Oh, and Wade! He’s great, too, he helped Knuckles out a lot-”
“I threw a car at you, and now we’re friends?” Shadow looked completely lost, like he had no idea what was happening right now.
“You cried and snotted all over me, and now we’re friends. That’s how it works here on Earth, my alien compadre!”
“I have been on Earth for years and that is not how it-”
Footsteps crunching the dirt and kicking up rocks interrupted their banter. Both their ears perked up and pinpointed the sound as coming from the entrance way. Their gait didn’t match anyone Sonic was familiar with, but Shadow stood suddenly and bolted out of the room. He was fast with those fancy shoes of his. He’d be so much fun to race.
Sonic ran after him, catching up easily and finding himself face-to-face with Eggman if he’d aged fifty years or so. He had a good guess of who this was before Shadow said,
“Professor Gerald?”
“Shadow, it’s good to see you, my boy,” the old man greeted jovially.
After having just torn his own heart out and handing it to Sonic for safekeeping, Shadow’s ragged and bloody chest was left exposed. He was in no fit state to deal with Gerald’s reappearance. His face twisted into an awful expression, one that said he was feeling too many things at once.
This was the man that ordered both the worst of Shadow’s torments and delivered him salvation, though the latter had been at Maria’s behest and not his own. Of course Shadow’s feelings were all twisted up.
Sonic took Shadow’s hand and squeezed it in solidarity. He wasn’t facing this alone. Shadow didn’t squeeze back. He also didn’t pull away.
“How are you alive?” Shadow asked cautiously. “You must be-”
“110 years old? Yes, son, I have you to thank for that.” Gerald held a single black quill tipped with red aloft. “You are remarkable in many ways we’ve yet to understand.”
As Gerald tapped the tip of the quill to his tongue, making red sparks fly and his head jerk around, Shadow cringed away and Sonic thought, Yup, definitely Egghead’s grandpa.
“That’s why I need you to come with me, son. You’re the only one that can deliver justice for Maria.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sonic didn’t like where this was swiftly headed. He wanted to take Shadow away from this grim place, away from this man, away to somewhere safe and warm where he could hold him again until he stopped hurting.
Something like a voice was calling out to him from very far away. He had a chance to prevent something terrible happening, a chance to protect Shadow who was precious, and he needed to seize that chance.
“How could a world that took away a good, kind soul like Maria ever be called good itself?” Gerald continued. “This whole place is rotten and we could put an end to it. Along with ourselves and this never-ending misery.”
“GUN isn’t the whole world,” Sonic shot back. “What they did was terrible, but most people would agree it was terrible! They’d also agree what you’ve done to Shadow is a nightmare.”
“He wasn’t always-” Shadow muttered. “He tried to-”
“Stop calling him ‘son,” Sonic went on, not letting Shadow justify what Gerald did. “I know a thing or two about what a good dad does for his son, and it’s nothing like what you did!”
Dads didn’t make their sons suffer so completely and so consistently, they talked about being vivisected like it was normal. Dads took their sons on fishing trips and camping and taught them to be kind and make good choices.
As soon as Shadow met Tom, he’d understand that.
“Quiet, you!” the old man snapped. “You don’t know Shadow and you don’t know Maria! You don’t know what I- we lost!”
“No, I don’t know her like you do. I just know one single thing about Maria and it’s that she loved Shadow!” Sonic lifted their joined hands. “And nobody would ask someone they love to destroy themselves for them!”
Shadow made a noise Sonic didn’t know how to decipher. Sonic turned to him and was struck by the intensity of his gaze. He looked at Sonic like one might look at a comet shooting across the sky or the northern lights. Like Sonic was something beautiful and rare and cosmic.
It was doing a lot for Sonic’s ego. And his heart. He thought he might really like to kiss Shadow right now.
“Keep quiet, you meddling-” Gerald ruined the moment and Shadow broke their gaze to address him.
“No, he’s right. You’re using her name to get what you want out of me.” Shadow seethed, finding his courage, his hand linked with Sonic’s shaking. “How could you shame her memory like that? Your own granddaughter!”
Gerald took a step forward and Sonic pulled Shadow behind him. He didn’t want this man even looking at Shadow. Pushing back against Gerald must be hard for him, it meant so much for him. He was severing the one remaining tie he had to a past he’d been mourning not ten minutes ago. He was holding fast to Sonic and the future he was offering, as uncertain and frightening that must be.
Shadow was incredible and Sonic was thrilled down to his bones by him.
Sonic didn’t know what kind of expression Gerald saw on Shadow’s face from over Sonic’s shoulder, but whatever it was, it made him stop in his tracks.
“Fine. Leave Maria in the past like the world has. You’ve sunk lower than even GUN. Betrayal can only come from someone I cared about.”
A small jetpack shaped itself into existence on Gerald Robotnik’s back and he flew backwards out of the hall, then upwards out of their reach.
Sonic turned to Shadow and saw the hurt on his face. “Don’t listen to him, Shads. You can’t betray someone who betrayed you first.”
“He never betrayed me,” Shadow protested.
Sonic scoffed. “He was supposed to take care of you and he tortured you instead. A jerk like that doesn’t get a say in what betrayal is.”
“I…” Shadow hesitated. “We shouldn’t have let him get away. You heard what he said, he’s dangerous.”
Sonic let him get away with the change in subject. Shadow had to be exhausted and Sonic needed prep time before tackling the monsters Shadow was fighting.
“I’ve got a pretty good track record of stopping Eggmen when they make trouble. We’ll take ‘im down if he makes good on his threats. You’re a total badass, dude, I think you and me are gonna make an awesome team. We’ve got something more important to take care of.”
“We do?”
“Yup,” Sonic said, popping the ‘p’ jovially. “You. We either make peace with GUN or make them back off. Then we plan a proper funeral for your sister so you can say goodbye. Also, you gotta apologize to Knuckles for breaking his wrist. I know we were fighting and all, but that was a bit much. He’s gonna want a rematch, by the way. Then we catch up on the fifty years of movies you’ve missed out on. I can’t imagine living a life without seeing Speed. You’re gonna love it! Hang on, wait, wait, wait, you did the Akira slide up a building without even knowing what Akira is?!”
“Akira slide?” Shadow interjected, blinking and adorably confused by the onslaught of words.
“Dude. Dude!”
Overwhelmed, scared, and unsure, Shadow followed helplessly after Sonic, tugged out into the sunlight by his warm hand.
He smiled when Sonic grinned back at him. No, the world couldn’t be as bad as Gerald said it was. Not when Sonic was here.