Chapter Text
How was this taking so long?
Shadow had spent the last three days—three days—fighting non-stop. He saw the gang occasionally, saw Knuckles or Sonia or Amy in the crowds of Swatbots and Freedom Fighters. He didn’t speak to any of them. He didn’t stop to ask if they were alright. He didn’t go back to the Resistance base at all, either, only getting close enough to pass the injured off to someone outside before running off again.
He didn’t want to give them the chance to tell him nothing had changed with Sonic.
Sometime in the first day, he stopped paying attention. He didn’t feel it when he got hurt, didn’t process the blood when a new wound was opened or the knowledge that he needed to stop it. He didn’t feel the way his power was draining, the lack of food or sleep or even a break getting to him more than anything else. If he kept up like this, he’d be dead in a week. No one could fight that long and stay upright. If he were anyone else, he’d be dead already.
He wasn’t anyone else, though.
He’d torn off his communicator as soon as he left Sonic’s side, tossing it into the sea. All anyone would do with it was try to convince him to stop for a moment. He wouldn’t. If he stopped, he would feel the blood still coating half of him from the wound in Sonic’s chest. He would see that little smile the hedgehog gave him when he said, “That’s better,” when Shadow stopped worrying long enough to hope, blindly, that Sonic would be okay. It was the last thing he said before his eyes shut.
Three days later, and they still hadn’t opened.
So, Shadow fought. He fought and fought and fought, destroying every Swatbot he saw and carrying countless injured fighters back to the base. There was no end to it. Between his own relentless spree, Amy’s motivational speeches and huge hammer, and the Resistance’s continued help, it should have been over. There was no way Robotnik still had this many Swatbots. No way, especially when hundreds of them were still making their way across the oceans.
Or they had been.
Until now.
Shadow was crouched on the furthest rooftop in the city, a mere block away from the nearest piece of the ocean. He could see them from here. Their red metal stuck out against the still-gray sky, the group of them getting larger and larger as they approached. They shouldn’t have been able to move that fast. They were, though, and this number of Swatbots all at once would ruin their remaining fighters. Half of them were kids. Shadow hoped they all had the good sense to hide.
“Shadow.” Shadow fought back a wince at the familiar voice. He turned, Amy coming up behind him and stopping a few feet away. Her gaze was locked on the horizon. “How many are left, do you think? From the island?”
“Between four and five hundred.” He stood up. “Too many for these guys to keep dealing with. Sonia needs to order a full retreat.”
“She did,” Amy said. “She specifically sent me here to get you, actually. To tell you to go back to the base.” Her green eyes met his. “You’re going to burn yourself out. Three straight days of fighting is too much, even for you. At this rate, you won’t make it out of this alive.”
Shadow turned his back to her again. He could almost see Robotnik now, leading the charge of bots. A few more minutes and he would be in clear view. “Sonic was ready to give everything to save his kingdom,” he said. “With the army gone, there’s nothing here to stop Robotnik from cleaning this place out entirely. I won’t let all of this be for nothing.” His gaze hardened. “If that means I have to fight them all off on my own, so be it. I’ll fight until I can’t.”
Amy made an impatient noise. “You’re even more stubborn than Sonic. Listen, and look.” She grabbed his chin without warning, turning his whole head down and left. “That army is gone, yes, but this one isn’t.”
Shadow stopped breathing.
Hundreds of Freedom Fighters, people who were older and unharmed and familiar, were just coming into view. They walked towards the ocean as one, coming out of the streets and flooding into the area Shadow was standing above. A whole, fresh army. He stumbled back a step. “But… how?”
Amy released his head and pointed to the front of the group. “They sent Jamal into the palace to free everyone Robotnik took prisoner. It took him days, but he did it. He got all of them back.” She was smiling now. “Bartleby is looking for the control circuit, Tails warned us when Robotnik was coming through the bot’s cameras, and we have an entire group of fresh new fighters. We outnumber him two-to-one. Shadow, we can still win this.”
Shadow stared at the army. Jamal, Iffucan, and Amir were at its head, even if Shadow barely recognized them from so far away. They had a chance. They had a shot—a real one—to win the war they’d been fighting for two decades now. Twenty years. The hope Shadow had refused to feel since Sonic fell returned, a tiny glimmer of something in his chest. They could still win. He turned to Amy, certain she could read the disbelief in his eyes. “We can win,” he repeated.
Amy dropped her hammer, reaching out and throwing her arms around Shadow. He froze. “We will win,” she said. Her voice trembled. “We’ll win for him. We’ll win, and when he wakes up, we’ll be able to tell him he gets his kingdom back. We’ll be able to tell him it’s over.”
Shadow, careful in a way that he never was, returned the embrace. Tears filled his eyes, too. “We can win.”
Amy pulled back, wiping the tears from her cheeks and smiling up at Shadow. Her green eyes were set with determination. “A little more fighting, and it’s over. So don’t go too hard. If you need a break, take one. If you need backup, ask for it. You’re not alone anymore. Every single one of us is here to help you.”
You’re not alone anymore.
Shadow nodded once. “I will,” he promised. “We’ll get rid of the bots, and without them, Robotnik has nothing to stand on. Mobius will be free.”
“Free,” Amy repeated. She turned, a wicked smile finding its way to her face as she stared at the oncoming swarm. She lifted her hammer. “Let’s show them what happens when you mess with Team Sonic.”
Shadow couldn’t help matching her smile. They stayed on that rooftop until the army was within clear sight, until he could see Robotnik’s deranged smile at the head of it all. 'For you, Sonic,' he thought, wondering if the words would somehow reach the other hedgehog. 'We’ll win this, and you’ll have everything back. You just need to be okay until then.'
With hope he thought he’d never feel again, he charged.
*************************
~ 'No. It hurts. Make it stop.'
Deciding to fight—deciding to wake up and try—may have been the worst decision he ever made. It hurt. Everything about it hurt, every inch of his body and mind and soul. It was agony. He tried to fight against it, tried to ignore it, tried to make it hurt any less. He couldn’t. He could just deal with the pain, unable to speak or move or tell whoever was causing it to stop. He was trapped. ~
“—arm. If we take one of—”
“—won’t work. Too much blood—”
“—back in! Plug it back in before he—”
~ The voices had been fading in and out the whole time. He didn’t know if it was real or fake. He couldn’t focus long enough to hear any of it, couldn’t get his mind to hold still for even a moment. When something started to make sense, it slid away before he could actually think about it. It was all just pain. Pain worse than anything he’d ever felt, worse than anything he believed a person could feel. It just hurt.
But… every time he thought about giving up, that voice came back. Every time he tried to sink back into the painless dark, he stopped himself. He said he would fight. He promised, even if whoever begged him couldn't know that. Even if he only promised himself. He had to keep going, had to make it to the other end of whatever this was. There had to be another end. He had to believe it would stop.
So he pushed all of it down, let the pain drown him over and over and over again, and fought. ~
*************************
The fight was over before it even began.
Shadow and Amy both jumped to the ground, Shadow immediately shooting towards the ocean wall. He planned to use the edge of it as leverage, to launch himself into the middle of the group and hopefully break their ranks. The army behind him let out their battle cries, and Robotnik yelled the order to leave no survivors as the bots descended.
And then fell.
All at once, between one blink and the next, they stopped moving. They stopped flying, stopped aiming, stopped diving for Sonia’s army. Shadow stopped hard at the edge of the wall, his gaze cast up to the sky. All of the bots froze for a split second, the whole world seeming to go still.
They dropped from the sky a moment later.
Everyone ran back from the edge of the wall as every set of red eyes winked out, the bots nothing more than hunks of metal as they crashed into the pavement and the ocean. Shadow stood completely still as they fell, not daring to take his eyes off of them even as they continued to crash down. Sea water splashed up and soaked him, washing away blood and dirt and leaving a pool of brownish water at his feet. Still, he didn’t move.
When the last one of them fell, a quiet voice came over Amy’s communicator. “Mission success,” Bartleby breathed, his voice scratchy and weak. He sounded ready to collapse. “The control circuit is gone. We won’t be hearing from the Swatbots anymore.”
In the silence surrounding them, Shadow knew at least some of the army could hear him. For a moment, nobody moved. Then Iffucan spoke, his voice starting out quiet. “We won?” A hushed murmur ran over the crowd. Iffucan looked at the few bots that landed on the ground instead of in the water, and a smile slowly spread over his face. His fist lifted in the air. “We won!” he screamed, loud enough for everyone to hear him.
The cheers were immediate. The army erupted, weapons tossed aside as people latched onto one another and screamed in victory. “We won!” The words were repeated over and over again, tossed back and forth in the crowd amongst cheers and screams and tears on almost every face.
Shadow stumbled, collapsing to his knees as the adrenaline went out of him in a rush. “Shadow?” Amy said. Her voice was alarmed. She knelt down in front of him. “Hey, talk to me. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
It took him a moment, but he met her eyes. “We won,” he breathed, his voice barely audible compared to the noise right next to them. “We won, Amy, we—” He stood, not thinking as he reached out and yanked her against him. He lifted her off of the ground, laughing as he spun her in the air a few times. “We won!”
Amy was laughing, too, and she half-tackled Shadow in a hug as he dropped her back to the ground. “We won!” She tilted her head up to the sky and screamed, the sound brief and loud and triumphant. “We did it! Mobius is free, it’s finally—”
“STOP!”
Amy broke off as the yell sounded, somehow carrying above every other noise around them. Everyone went silent immediately. Shadow subtly tucked Amy behind him as Robotnik dropped from the sky, landing his cube thing roughly on the ground and half-stumbling out of it. “All of you, stop!” he said. “You haven’t won anything.” Shadow recognized the look in his eyes—recognized the delirious, panicked way he was speaking. “Just because my bots are gone doesn’t mean I am, and my bots don’t rule Mobius. I rule Mobius. I am in charge, and with both your Queen and your King dead, the throne rightfully belongs to me! Me! I will not let you show up here and—”
“Enough.” The voice—yet another new one—was filled with a deadly sort of calm. Shadow stepped aside on instinct as he turned, his eyes finding Tails as the fox walked up to them. He didn’t acknowledge anyone. His eyes were locked on Robotnik, on the man who was now panting and glaring at the fox. Those eyes—eyes that Shadow knew, that he’d seen laughing and angry and worried and everything in between.
Now, there was nothing in them.
Something was very, very wrong.
Tails stopped a few steps in front of Shadow, barely letting the hedgehog keep his view of the doctor. “Dr. Robotnik,” Tails said, his voice deathly quiet. Everything else was silent. “Do you know who I am?”
Robotnik laughed deliriously. “Of course I do. You’re that little fox Sonic was so worried I was going to kill,” he sneered. “Didn’t expect that, though, did you? You’re welcome, by the way. For sparing your life.”
“Sparing my life,” Tails repeated. The fox still hadn’t moved. Shadow didn’t take his eyes off of him. “Is this your idea of mercy? You save one life just to take another moments after? How many people have you killed, Robotnik?”
“Countless,” the doctor hissed. “Freedom Fighters, family members, anyone else caught in the crossfire. I’m sure your blue friend told you all about that factory I blew up—and the one casualty that turned out to be untrue.” He smiled, and there was nothing human in the expression. “There was a memorial built where that factory was, one with the names of everyone who died there. And I blew that up, too.”
Amy gasped, and Shadow felt rage unlike anything he’d ever felt slice through him. He moved, but Tails held out a hand to stop him. Shadow froze. The fox’s voice didn’t change at all as he said, “Do you know how many people I’ve killed, doctor?”
Robotnik chuckled, the sound low and dark. “You’re too weak to kill anybody.”
“You’re right.” Tails’s answer was immediate. Shadow felt every muscle in his body tense, felt like whatever was said next would be worse than anything else he’d heard in the last week. Worse than all of it, somehow. “Or… I was, at least.” He raised his hand, and Shadow saw the gleam of black in it as he pointed the device in his hand at Robotnik. The fox’s voice finally broke. “Until you killed my best friend.”
Shadow believed himself to be good in a crisis. He was good at problem solving, and even when he got frustrated or even outright mad, he’d panicked very few times in his life. When he did, his instincts tended to take over faster than anything else. So now, in a brief, panicked moment, he thought back to something Sonic said to him during one of their fights.
--- The hedgehog was pinned, Shadow’s knees holding his wrists in place and Sonic’s back on the ground. How often did they end up like this? Sonic didn’t even try to struggle as Shadow leaned over him, his hands planted on either side of Sonic’s head. “How many times, Sonic, are you going to get in the way?”
“As many times as I have to,” Sonic hissed back. He was glancing over Shadow’s shoulder every now and then, no doubt looking for the fox that started all of this. Shadow sneered. When he showed up looking for Sonic, Tails—who had just crashed his plane and was in an uncharacteristically terrible mood—just looked at Shadow and told him to take his pathetic feud somewhere else for the day. Shadow took the insult to heart. When Sonic showed up barely in time to catch the fox as Shadow flung him, it was Sonic who started the fight for once. Shadow loved making him mad enough to throw the first punch.
Shadow chuckled darkly. “All of this for one little fox,” he crooned. “He refused to hit back, you know. Said something about having no reason to hurt me. Pathetic.” He spat the last word. “With the company you keep, it’s a shock that the person you’re closest to is nothing more than a coward.”
Sonic—to Shadow’s surprise—laughed. “You’re wrong.” He was smiling, even as he held one of his eyes closed to account for the punch Shadow had landed on his nose. “Tails isn’t a coward. He’s braver than anyone I’ve ever met. Who else would hold so tightly to their ideals, no matter how much danger they’re in?” He coughed, no doubt struggling to breathe right with Shadow’s full weight on his chest. “Tails doesn’t hurt anybody by choice. That’s why he’s the best of us.” ---
The words rang in Shadow’s head. 'He’s the best of us.' Tails—Tails, the quiet fox who chose inventing over fighting and spent most of his time in his workshop and could talk Sonic down with no more than a few words. The most gentle being Shadow knew, even if he was terrifying when he wanted to be. Tails was the best of them. The best of all of them, the one who gave everyone—the Gogoba and Eggman and even Shadow—chance after chance after chance.
Shadow was moving before he could think twice about it.
He shot forward, faster than he ever had before, aiming directly for Robotnik. Everything around him seemed to move in slow motion. He threw Robotnik to the ground, raising an arm to keep the bullet Tails fired from hitting him in the face. It went clean through his arm, but the detour slowed it down enough that Shadow was able to catch the bullet in his other hand. Robotnik hit the ground, Tails’s eyes shot wide, and Shadow skidded to a stop on the pavement.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Shadow saved Robotnik’s life. Robotnik, who tried to kill Sonic and made Queen Aleena give up her children and spent twenty years giving them hell. Robotnik was always scared of Shadow particularly for this reason—because he believed Shadow had no qualms about murder if it was Robotnik who was receiving it. And Shadow had just taken a bullet for him—taken his own bullet for him, one that had been fired out of the gun he carried everywhere.
The same one he shot Sonic with.
Tails was breathing hard as he lowered a now-trembling hand. “What have you done?” he whispered. His voice rose. “Why, Shadow?!” The device—a small, unassuming black box that somehow acted as a firearm—slid from his hand and clattered against the floor. “Don’t you know what he’s done? Sonic is dead because of him! He’s gone!”
“Sonic isn’t dead!” Shadow reached out, grabbing the fox by the shoulders and shaking him—hard. He didn’t even care about the bullet hole in his arm. “He’s alive! He is alive, and until that changes, we treat him as such!”
“He still did this.” Angry tears welled in the fox’s eyes. “He still put us here! What if he doesn’t make it out? You’re just okay with him living and breathing and being while Sonic isn’t? While Sonic doesn’t get to anymore, because of him?”
“Of course I’m not!” Shadow’s voice broke, and Tails’s eyes widened a little. “That is the last thing in the world I would be okay with, and for years, I have wanted him dead more than anyone! But not like this, Tails.” His voice dropped to a whisper, all of the anger disappearing from it. “Don’t let him turn you into him. Don’t let him ruin the thing Sonic loves best about you, that gentleness that none of us have ever been brave enough to have.” A few tears slid down his cheeks. “Don’t let him break you.”
Tails’s eyes changed, then, all of the rage and emptiness fleeing out of them. He stopped breathing for a moment, stopped doing anything but searching Shadow’s gaze with wide, impossibly sad eyes. Shadow didn’t dare move.
Then the tears spilled down Tails’s cheeks, and he buried his face against Shadow’s chest with a heart-wrenching wail. Shadow dropped to his knees beside the fox, cradling his tiny, broken frame as he sobbed openly. He didn’t care about the tears soaking his fur, didn’t care about the blood running down his arm, didn’t care about anything but the relief shoving its way through his chest. 'I got there in time,' he thought, his heart pounding faster than it ever had. 'I was fast enough.'
Shadow heard Robotnik move somewhere to his right, and he reached out before the doctor could try anything. The precise jab to his neck had him out like a light instantly. Shadow let out a quiet sigh, tilting his head up to the sky above him. “We did it,” he whispered, to Sonic or the stars or anything in the world that was listening. “It’s over.”
As if it was waiting for the verbal confirmation, the sky opened. Rain started falling in torrents, cold and wonderful and instantly soaking Shadow. It washed away blood and tears, washed away salt water and dirt and the remnants of a fight he would never have to fight again. Tails pulled back from him, looking up into the rain for a moment before his blue eyes met Shadow’s. “It’s really over?” he whispered.
Shadow nodded. “It’s really over. You can rest, Tails. It’s done.”
The fox held his gaze for a moment, some mix of gratitude and relief and still so, so much hurt shining there. Then his eyes closed, and Shadow didn’t even have to move to catch the fox as he crumbled. He adjusted the way Tails collapsed, standing and lifting the little fox in his arms. He didn’t think he’d ever realized how small he was.
Shadow turned to the crowd of people, who were all staring openly at him. They wanted him to say something. He took a quiet breath, knowing he’d never been good at speeches. He supposed it didn’t really matter. “The Swatbots are gone,” he said, raising his voice so everyone could hear him over the rain. “Robotnik will be stripped of his weapons and devices and brought back to the palace, where we’ll hold him until we know what else to do with him.” As Shadow spoke, more people joined the crowd. More Freedom Fighters, Sonia and Manic, Bartleby and Knuckles and the injured Sticks he was carrying. Shadow raised his voice further. “From this moment forward, Mobius is free. Ruling rights will be returned to the royal family, and nobody will ever have to answer to Robotnik again.”
Somewhere in the crowd, a sob sounded. Pride shone in Sonia and Manic’s eyes, and Shadow watched as Bartleby silently came up behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist. Amy shot a watery smile at him, and Sticks shot him a quick thumbs-up. Shadow adjusted the fox in his arms.
“It’s over,” Shadow said, the finality in his voice filled with pride and relief and hope. “You’re free.”
For a moment, nothing but silence greeted him. Then the cheering started up again. Screaming and tears and loud, broken cries drowned out the rain, filling the sky with the sounds of joy coming from everywhere all at once. People latched onto friends and fellow warriors, no one seeming to care about injuries or pain or the Swatbots still littered everywhere. Mobius was free—free, and never going to be anything but that again.
“Spoken, if I do say so myself, like a leader.” If everyone was silent before, it was nothing compared to the hush that fell now. Confused looks went around the crowd. Shadow located the person who spoke, a hooded figure slowly making its way to the front of the crowd. Obviously female, slightly accented, and completely unfamiliar. A glance at his friends revealed the same confusion reflected on their faces. “I would like to say I’ve heard a lot about you, but unfortunately, it would not be honest. Word of anything is hard to come by in my position.”
Then the figure reached up, lowering her hood. Shadow went still. Gasps sounded, a few cries went up, and Manic made a noise unlike anything Shadow had ever heard. From the corner of his eye, he saw Bartleby holding Sonia up as her legs gave out. 'She looks just like the photos,' Shadow thought. She looked just like her children—like all three of them, somehow, even if the triplets looked nothing alike. She looked exactly as he had always expected her to, tall and regal and with kind, brown eyes that Shadow imagined were seeing directly into his soul.
Queen Aleena Hedgehog leveled him with a gentle smile, one that reminded him so much of Sonic his breath hitched. “You must be Shadow,” she said, her voice soft. “I believe I owe you a thank you.”