Chapter Text
Shadow returned to the ARK, unsure how to feel. He could tell Sonic wasn’t entirely bad – the hedgehog made that clear in his last moment – but he was also the cause of everything that happened until now. Even if Ivo played a big part in it, Sonic still made his choices, still had a hand in the Cannon being activated at all.
There was leftover bitterness, deep down Shadow’s stomach, a kind of jealousy – inferiority he couldn’t quite blame on Sonic, but that existed because of him.
There was no name for what he was feeling exactly, at that moment.
“Where’s Sonic?” Amy ran up to him, bringing him back to reality, as soon as he stepped inside the room with everyone else. Their eyes met, desperation in the green irises, uncertainty in the red.
“He’s…” Shadow didn’t have to continue.
Amy could tell what he was about to say just by the look on his face. Come what may, she knew how to read people. Her paws covered her muzzle as she took a step back. Eyes glossed over, but no tears fell.
“Oh…” She swallowed the sob, fiddling with the hem of her dress, “Do you… do you really think a weapon was all he was meant to be? That they bought him onto the ARK just to make a copy of him, and then turn him into a soldier?”
After a bit of consideration, Shadow found the words to respond.
“He was what he was,” his eyes caught the platform they raced on previously outside the big window, “just a guy who loves adventures.”
Amy stilled for a moment, perhaps surprised by his tone, before a soft smile curved her mouth.
“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” she chuckled wetly.
Her grin morphed into a grimace as the tears did fall after all. Crying quietly, she couldn’t help herself. In the end, she really hoped to be friends with the real Sonic – the Sonic who at his core, was a good person.
A bit further from the two, Maria and Ivo stood side by side. Neither dared to look at the other. Awkward silence hung in the air between them, stretched as the minutes went by.
“As a child I really looked up to our grandfather,” Ivo spoke up first. “He was my hero. I wanted to be scientist just like him.”
“I loved him too,” Maria choked out quietly.
“Do you… do you really think he wanted to destroy us all?”
“The grandfather I knew wouldn’t do that,” she meet Ivo’s gaze,” but it wasn’t the grandfather I knew.”
“I suppose so...” Ivo nodded slowly. “He didn’t look like the man I admired either-”
“But,” Maria interrupted him, “I know that we saved Mobius together, for all it’s worth.”
The small grin didn’t reach her eyes.
“For all it’s worth,” muttered Ivo, turning his head towards the ground.
And it wasn’t all better. Nothing between them was fixed. The two wouldn’t be a real family after all this – they could never really be, despite the same blood flowing through their veins – but their minds could be at peace. Neither could look at the other with anything else than disgust, but it was the closest to understanding each other they’d ever be.
Rouge observed the two silently, before approaching the window to steal a glance at the stars.
“So…” Knuckles walked up to her from behind. She turned around surprised, but not startled in the slightest. “What’s next for you, Rouge? Off again to find those jewels you love so much?” he joked lightly, though there was a hint of honest curiosity under his words.
A smirk, more honest than any she shared with him up to this point, made it onto her face.
“Nah, I think I’m gonna take a break on this line of work,” she chuckled. “This one was too much work for too little pay. Anyway…” her eyes scanned him up and down, before she looked outside again, “I’ve got something better than jewels I’m thinking about right now.” In the reflection on the glass, she could see Knuckles rise a brow curiously, which made her slightly shake her head. Still, amusement did not leave her voice, “It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”
“If you say so.” Shrugging, Knuckles joined her by her side, if only to see what she was staring at so intensively.
Eerie yet comforting quietness coated the dust-covered spaceship. For a moment, that felt like eternity, no one dared to move. The time stopped like it had on a day – one that wasn’t supposed to be different from any other – fifty years ago. Still and empty, the artificial world returned to how it was.
“Let’s get going,” Maria coughed, and turned towards the exit. “I think I can fix the shuttle.”
“There’s a transporter on board,” Amy chimed in, right behind her.
Knuckles followed the with a grunt, and an annoyed mutter. And right after him, Ivo left as well.
Rouge passed Shadow, and tapped his shoulder.
“Let’s go handsome,” she pointed with her head. Shadow nodded, yet when she was out of the room, he was still glued to the ground.
Mobius was big and blue, and honestly, quite intimidating from the distance.
The planet would’ve been gone had the plan failed. There would be nothing to come back to.
Did it look the same back then?
For all the annoyance, Sonic ended up being something else than Shadow imagined. Whenever he heard of the original Ultimate Lifeform, it were praises. He was based on someone strong, he was based on someone who exceeded expectations. Someone born, not made.
Sonic was not a military dog he imagined, not the cold machine who could carry orders flawlessly. He wasn’t anything G.U.N made him out to be.
Maybe that’s the reason. None of the personnel knew Sonic, as far as he was aware. No one saw the blue hedgehog as anything more than a thing that somewhere, at some point, was useful. And if they twisted him into their own perceptions, then there was only one judgment he could trust.
Smirk made it onto his face. Not all the negative connotations he had with the tittle of Original Ultimate Lifeform disappeared, but some of his insecurities did. Sonic turned out to be all Shadow didn’t want to be himself – all he wasn’t, luckily.
“So there was more to you than being my predecessor…” he mused with a huff.
Shaking his head, he turned around. Stepped outside the Space Colony ARK, away from the catalyst of it all. With Sonic’s name in his memory, his tittle – the boxes in which he did not fit – behind.