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“Sometimes the people you love just sort of… become ghosts inside you, you know? And they haunt you that way. You carry them with you like that. I think that’s how he was.”
Sonic is lying on the roof of Tails’ workshop, arms folded under his head, eyes set to the stars. The young engineer isn’t there tonight, which is exactly how Sonic wants it: quiet and mostly lonesome. There’s a slight chill in the air, and it should be a full moon, but an unnatural half-moon hangs in the sky instead.
“Surely you’ve had ghosts inside you, Sonic.”
Oh, sure. He definitely has.
“They never made me help an evil scientist threaten global extinction and then do a 180 degree flip and sacrifice myself for the very people I almost killed.” Self-sacrifice? Sure. Everything else? No.
“They might have, if you heard them differently.” Leaning against the hangar door below him, Rouge blows into her hands and rubs them together, her wings wrapping around her for warmth. Sonic doesn’t see this, but the ambient sounds of the Mystic Ruins are hushed enough tonight—as if in reverence—that he can hear every little sound she makes. “You know I only knew him for a few days, Sonic. Why talk to me about this? We barely even know each other.”
“You knew the most about him.” Sonic’s eyes traverse the skies, something pulling at him with each twinkle of a distant star. “And I only heard second-hand… from Amy… about—you know, the whole… Ma…”
He trails off. Something about saying that name feels wrong in his mouth. Forbidden.
“Yeah. I know.” There’s a low sigh, then silence. A long silence. Then, cautiously: “It… must have been difficult to… see.”
Sonic knows what Rouge is talking about, but he wishes he could feign ignorance. He wants to say that he’ll work through it, that he can accept events as they transpired, and it isn’t the first time he’s seen horrific things. But he doesn’t say any of that, or anything else; instead, Rouge’s words echo in his head, shutting out his own thoughts and what he wants to think or say or feel, and he begins to wonder about the ghosts lingering inside of him—and just how different they were from the ones inside of Shadow.
“Yeah,” is the word that finally tumbles out of Sonic’s mouth, clumsily. He feels like he should pick it up from where it fell, dust it off, give it some context and meaning, but he doesn’t. He does, however, finally turn on his side and look down at Rouge, giving her a smile as she glances up at him. Not his best smile, but the best he can manage on a chilly night with talk of lingering specters in the air. “Thanks for coming out here, Rouge.”
“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help more.” She says this with a smile, but there’s hesitation there, an uncertain light in her eyes, and Sonic briefly wonders if he’s offended her by asking her to come and talk about Shadow. He hasn’t spoken to anyone about the enigmatic black hedgehog or the ARK since that last day on the space colony, and he imagines bringing it up again out of the blue over a month later must have been weird—especially from someone Rouge had only spoken with once before now. They did, after all, barely even know each other.
“You know, Sonic,” Rouge finally continues, unwrapping her wings from around her and rising to meet his eye level while fumbling with her wrist, “I think… I think you should hold onto this for me. It’s, uh—it’s just not safe in my line of work, and it isn’t worth the risk of losing it.” There’s a quiet click, and a glint of gold. “Somehow… I trust you with it.”
She extends her hand to Sonic, Shadow’s bracelet in her palm, and he takes it from her gingerly, only realizing how shaky he is as he fastens it around his wrist.
“Thanks,” Sonic whispers, fingers feeling the ring out. The metal has a rough patch here and there, corroded with age and artificial atmosphere. He can’t imagine sanding it down or polishing it out.
Rouge departs, and Sonic lies back down, eyes again searching the cosmos. The stars dot the sky in a plethora, but instead of comforting Sonic like usual, they leave a sinking weight in his chest, as if something other than the moon had been shot out of the sky. He absently thumbs Shadow’s ring, wondering just how many of the stars burned out long ago and were now only distant ghosts. Who did they live inside of? Who carried their memories? Did the universe even care?
His eyelids grow heavy and the sky grows blurry, and he wonders, who does Shadow live inside of? Who carries his memory?
Does the universe even care?
Trauma is hard to cope with.
It’s not a word Sonic would even think of when considering a name for his experiences, and if said to him, his first thought would be trauma of the physical sort: broken bones, concussions, being thrown against a wall by a 10-foot-tall, robotic, walking egg. Trauma, he would think, is for other people: for those without the freedom he has; for those without the positivity he has; for those without the friends he has.
Trauma is hard to cope with, and even more so when you can’t admit to yourself that you have it.
“We’re similar in that way, you know.”
Sitting in front of him where nothing had been before is an imperfect doppelgänger, and around him where there had been no awareness is a café. He looks down at his hand and there’s a mug there, steam rising from the hot liquid inside. He lifts it slightly, picking up the scent of coffee. He doesn’t even drink coffee. Sonic’s eyes leave the mug and meet with the silhouette across from him, and a face materializes, as if slipping out from the shadows.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve never had coffee in my life.”
“Yeah, no, me… neither.” Sonic starts to push the mug away, but finds his hand clutching a cold glass of tea instead. He decides not to pursue it, because as strange as that is, the face staring back at him is even stranger, and again, he stares until the name finally comes out, quiet and unbelieving: “Shadow.”
“Sonic.”
The way Shadow says his name is soft, and his features, softer. He isn’t the same cynical, hardened hedgehog Sonic faced off with almost two months ago—he’s more akin to the resigned, softened hedgehog he fought back the Final Hazard with almost two months ago. The resigned, softened hedgehog who fell from the sky—the resigned, softened hedgehog he couldn’t save, who had saved everyone else.
A pang of the guilt that Sonic’s worked so hard to push down into the depths of his psyche resurfaces, and he wants to look away, but he just can’t. Shadow isn’t merciful to his discomfort, either; those red and gold eyes just bore into him, like a heat ray, threatening to burn him to his core. An image of a different Shadow flashes before his eyes, a Shadow too weak to scream, falling too fast to catch, catching fire at every—
“You’re dead.”
“Am I?” Shadow looks down at himself, considering his corporeal form. “I don’t feel like a ghost.”
“I… don’t know if you’re a ghost,” Sonic hesitates, eyes wandering away from Shadow finally. It hasn’t even been that long since he’s last seen ghosts—in orbs, in metaphysical visions, in an ancient pyramid base—but the Shadow sitting in front of him doesn’t seem to fit into any of those categories. There’s no sparkling orb floating there; this isn’t a vision of the past; and Shadow looks like Shadow, not a white, opaque specter. He stares out the window at the rain. “But I know you’re dead. I wa—” He stops himself. He can’t say it.
He still can’t admit to himself that he watched Shadow die.
“I suppose I might be.” Shadow’s nonchalance on the topic is jarring. “Then what are you? We’re here together, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but where is ‘here’, and what—”
Sonic stops short as he feels Shadow’s hand on his, and he jerks his head back to face the black hedgehog with surprise, stunned into silence at the touch. Another memory flashes through his mind—of Shadow’s hand in his own, slipping—and his heart beats heavy in his chest.
“Let’s talk.” Shadow smiles, and Sonic tries to remember if it’s the first time he’s seen Shadow’s genuine, non-malicious smile. It isn’t, but it still feels so novel. “I thought about that briefly, you know. That it was a shame I couldn’t have known you more. You were such… a mystery to me.”
“Me?” Sonic splutters. He shakes his head. “I’m not mysterious. I’m simple. You’re mysterious.”
“Am I?” Shadow repeats, giving Sonic a jolting sense of déjà vu, as if time had skipped backward only a few minutes and decided to take a different path. “What’s so mysterious about a person with faulty memories living a lie, only to realize in the eleventh hour they were wrong, and doing all they can to make amends? It’s a logical route, I think.” Shadow closes his eyes, and seems to glitch out of reality—or unreality—for a moment as he lifts the cup to his lips, only for it to be back on the table a second later, as if he’d never touched it at all. “Working with that person, though? Sacrificing yourself when you have no amends to make, no promises to keep? All for the sake of—what? Valor? Selflessness? I never understood you, Sonic.”
“I’m just…” Sonic’s voice wavers, and somehow, saying he’s just an ordinary guy doesn’t seem to cut it in this moment. He knew exactly what he believed. His convictions were strong. He didn’t need a reason to save people. But being put on the spot like this makes his heart beat heavy again, and every answer he comes up with seems feeble, unworthy of being voiced. “It’s not for me,” he says, feeling like a liar, “it’s for those I love.”
“That’s not the most mysterious thing, though.” Shadow’s gaze leaves Sonic and now he’s staring out the café window into the void of space, watching the stars twinkle and meteors fall and burn. The rain that had been pattering outside before is snuffed out, and the café and its contents are only visible through a supernatural, cosmic glow. “You harnessed Chaos Control, and you used a fake Chaos Emerald to do it. You and I were evenly matched. I was engineered—created—to be this powerful, but you?” Shadow’s eyes are on Sonic again, and the reds of his irises are overtaken by gold now, and his expression is impassive. “You save the world time and time again, effortlessly. When you powered up—your super form—it was… angelic.” Shadow shakes his head. “You lived. I didn’t.”
“You should have—”
“You had the will. I didn’t.”
Sonic’s eyes fall and now he’s staring down into the void of space too, a familiar sight, and he’d never feared falling before, but now, his chest is tight, but somehow, he can’t distinguish the fear of falling from the chokehold of Shadow’s words. He looks up and Shadow is no longer black but a dull gold, except the shine is fading from his quills, and his eyes are tired.
Sonic grabs for his hand instinctively, but there’s nothing corporeal to grab, and he falls through Shadow’s form instead, landing on his knees—but he doesn’t fall any further. He lifts his hands to his face, golden dust scattering from his arms as the scene plays out in his head again: his grasp on Shadow weakening, his energy depleting but Shadow’s fading much faster; his attempt to secure his grip, grabbing Shadow’s bracelet for leverage, the faint smile Shadow gives him. It’s okay now, the vision whispers, I did what I was made to; what I promised, and the words are accented with a faint click, and Shadow’s hand slips out of his—
“I didn’t want that!” Sonic screams, sending a shower of gold off his body, as his own super form begins to fade and the blue finds its way back to his quills. “I didn’t even get to know you, and you died!”
His body is racked with sobs, each gasping breath sending convulsions through his body and a chill down his spine. He doesn’t even know if Shadow is still there, alive or not, but the idea of the apparition departing is more than he can handle, and the tears fall harder. He hasn’t cried like this—let anybody see him cry like this—for as long as he can remember. He’s always tried to be strong. How could he take care of anyone else when his own defenses were down, when his heart was just there, vulnerable for anyone to enter and leave exit wounds on their way out?
It’s why he had given Rouge the bracelet in the first place. He’d told her she deserved it, she’d known him better, but more than that, more selfishly, he couldn’t handle looking at it again, knowing that he’d let Shadow die. He couldn’t be reminded.
Sonic’s sobs die down slowly, and he lowers his hands to his lap. The bracelet is still there.
“Something in me wanted to,” Shadow whispers above him. “I told you we’re similar in that way. We can’t face our pain. We just have different ways of avoiding it.”
Sonic lifts his head, staring at Shadow. The stars around them begin to burn out, one by one, until only the two of them are left in a void of nothingness.
“We could have been friends.” Sonic’s voice is just as soft, just as quiet. “We could have… we could have been…” Sonic lifts his hand to his chest, lying the other over it, fingers clutching onto the bracelet. The heavy beating in his heart returns, and something in his head clicks. “I was drawn to you. You were so mysterious and everything I stood against, but so… different.” Sonic inhales deeply, closing his eyes and letting the air out. “I… felt something about you I’ve never felt before. We worked so well together in the end, and it felt right. You gave me a smile I hadn’t seen from you before. Why would… why would you… give your chance at a new life up? Why would you…”
Why would you give me up? he wants to ask. It’s a stupid question, he knows. Why would he hold on for someone he had tried only hours before to destroy? Why would he hold on to something so uncertain, for someone who knew almost nothing about him? Why would he feel the same for Sonic?
Shadow is kneeling in front of him now, and he takes Sonic’s arm gently, running his fingers along his wrist, tracing the outline of the bracelet that was once his own. Sonic notices that Shadow is wearing the one on his left wrist—but not his right. He gives Sonic that smile again, and it feels more like a stab in the heart than a bandage around it.
“I hope you keep it,” he says. “It suits you. But you don’t need it like I do. You’re so much… more in control than I ever was.”
“What—what do you mean? Shadow?”
Shadow sighs, and he sets Sonic’s arm down in his lap. “There’s so much I want to tell you, Sonic. I want to tell you about Maria, and why I did what I did. I want you to see that I know how much I was wrong. I want to feel like I did something right, but the guilt just wouldn’t leave, and I couldn’t reconcile it no matter how I tried to clean up my mess.” There’s a break in Shadow’s voice now, and his eyes begin to water. “You don’t get it, Sonic. You were the mystery I never deserved. The good that I never deserved. There’s something dark in me, I can feel it, no matter how good I want to be. It’s been with me since I was created. I don’t want it, but I feel it.” His eyes close tightly, and the pain in his voice is fully evident now. “I was drawn to you, too, but you were so radiant. I never… I never knew how you could glow even before I saw your super form…”
“I glow?” Sonic whispers, unable to process any other set of words. Tears stream down his face again, and he grasps tightly onto Shadow’s hand, determined not to feel it slip this time. The fear is back: the fear of falling. The fear of Shadow falling. He knows, deep down, Shadow won’t be here much longer, and he won’t be here much longer, but he’s trying so hard to hold on.
“Sonic.” Shadow’s voice is firmer, but still wavering. “Every time I look at you, I see a healing light. I feel it radiate off of you. For so long, I hated it. I didn’t want to feel it.” He inhales deeply and opens his eyes. “But right now… this feeling… I want it one last time. One last time before you give it back to everyone else again.”
And in the dark, a soft glow emanates off of Sonic. He hasn’t transformed, and he feels no different, but he sees it in his peripheral vision, and he sees it gleaming warmly on Shadow’s face. In the soft light, Sonic wonders how he ever saw the black hedgehog as malicious. He wonders how he didn’t see all along that Shadow needed to be saved, too—and that Sonic had failed to save him.
Sonic swallows hard, and he pulls Shadow’s hand to his chest. “Don’t leave again. I want to get to know you.”
“You can’t.”
The light surrounding Sonic is growing stronger, but it isn’t embracing Shadow anymore—instead, it’s beginning to obscure him.
“Don’t—”
“There’s always a price to pay for coming back from the dead, Sonic.” Shadow’s quills are fading, just as they had when his super form had dissipated, but now, they’re fading into nothingness. “No one is ever really the same. I’ll never be the same hedgehog you fought on the ARK, just like I couldn’t be the same hedgehog that Maria loved before she died, before I went under.” He’s not just fading—he’s falling away, dissolving into that pale golden dust his super form exudes. “I want to meet again, Sonic, but I won’t know you if we do. I’ll be different. I knew I’d lose you—but I didn’t think it’d be like this.”
“I—I don’t understand,” Sonic says, grabbing onto Shadow’s other hand now. His grip is shaky, but determined, and he can hear the panic in his own voice. “I’ll know you. Won’t that be enough? We’re going to see each other again, right? You’ll tell me everything when I see you, right?”
There’s a burst of green light around them, and Shadow, literally breaking apart, stops disintegrating for that moment in stopped time. He lifts his arms, untangles his left hand from Sonic’s grip, and lifts it to Sonic’s cheek. He pulls the right hand free and replaces Sonic’s needy grasp with a softer, calmer one—and he leans forward, laying a kiss on Sonic’s lips.
The green light around them fades away as Shadow pulls back, and he smiles.
“I hope so.”
Shadow is gone, and the light radiating off of Sonic dies.
The blue hedgehog wakes up with a splintering headache.
As he rises, letting his legs swing off the edge of the roof over the hangar door, he presses his palms to his eyes, feeling slight relief from the pressure that only fades away when he lowers his hands down again. Sonic sighs.
He could swear he’s been asleep for days, but the sun hasn’t made its way past the horizon yet, and the same stars are still visible in the sky overhead. He remembers nights as a child, learning to watch the skies for changes in constellations and their position in the sky, but the thought of staring too long now leaves an emptiness in his chest and he looks out over the ocean instead.
He thinks about the people he’s saved and the evils he’s defeated. He thinks of a so-called “god of destruction” and how alike it was to a revenge-seeking ultimate life-form. Sonic thinks about the ancient Echidonia destroyed by fear and pain and retaliation, and how much he had sympathized with the mutant god even while fighting him back. He wonders how he had taken so long to see the same in Shadow, if he had been too blinded by his own pride to see it. Chaos had, after all, never been mistaken for him.
Maybe it had been a lesson in humility all along, and he had refused to learn until it was too late. Maybe he couldn’t stand the thought of the similarities he could see in Shadow, the thought that if he had heard his ghosts differently, they wouldn’t be that contrary after all. That they weren’t that contrary. Maybe he can’t face his pain.
He doesn’t know.
He only knows that he carries Shadow’s ghost inside of him, and it’s all he can do to keep Shadow alive with him, waiting for the day he can meet him all over again.