Chapter Text
The power of the Chaos Emeralds coursing through my veins was beyond any power I imagined I could wield. It burned as though my very being could barely be held in a physical form.
I watched as the ARK was teleported a safe distance from the planet I was determined to protect as that very energy had begun to reach its limit and drain from my very tired body. I began tipping into the atmospheric entry point.
"Maria... this is what you wanted, right? This is my promise I made to you..."
I felt a grasp on my wrist, unexpected and tight, pulling me up. The golden glow of Sonic’s Super form whirled past me as he spun us around, his grin just as cocky as I had always seen it since we first met.
"Guess this is where I hop off." His voice echoed before I found myself tumbling upward and watching Sonic plummet, that smile plastered on his face the entire time.
No. No—why would he do that? Why would he choose—
"Sayonara..." I heard it in two distinct voices.
I woke abruptly, my chest heaving as the nightmare memory faded into the distance. So often I have these same nightmares. That familiar guilt came crashing in that followed them, whether it was Maria’s face or Sonic's, both had me questioning: "Why me?"
I caught sight of the light still on in the other room, the hum of computer fans and servos and the quiet clank of tools being moved as carefully and quietly as possible. I looked to the clock to see it was four in the morning. The kid likely hadn't slept at all.
I sighed, getting up from the bed. Entering into the main room of the workshop to find Tails—just as I had suspected—his two namesakes wrapped around himself as he leaned over a disassembled badnik drone—one of the many deactivated models of badniks he had lined up on the walls. The parts were all laid out and he was analyzing the guns. The last time I had seen him this focused, this quiet, he had been designing explosives powerful enough to level an Eggman facility (or half of a city) in a single blast—until I had stopped him.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the slight tremor in his arms as he adjusted the targeting assembly, fingers moving on muscle memory alone.
"When was the last time you ate?" I asked.
Tails didn't even bother looking up. "I had some coffee in the morning. And some mints."
At one point, I would have let this slide. It was his decision. But the months we had spent living together I had learned that these self destructive habits were much too common. The kid worked himself sick or to collapsing one too many times.
"You need real food." I murmured.
"I’m fine." He said flatly. "I just need to finish this."
Finish, I noted with a tightening in my chest. Not test, not study. He was doing it again, trying to find a way to turn Eggman’s weapons against him.
"If you're testing energy weapons again, G.U.N. will notice. They always do. And they’ll track the power draw straight back here." I warned, knowing all too well how many eyes have been on us since the incident at the ARK. "Rogue elements", they called us both.
Tails' ears flicked back, irritation sparking in his azure eyes. "Let them. I don't care what they think."
His voice was much colder than it used to be. I recalled how he could barely even speak the first couple of weeks I had started staying with him, crying every night when he thought no one could hear. I always heard. After that, the first few months he had sounded so fragile—nothing like he was now.
"If I stop, Eggman will only get worse." He continued. "He'll try another attack and hurt more people. For him it's like nothing has changed, he just has less pushing him back from his goals! If I can get this working, improve the yield—"
"Is this really about prevention?" I asked, stepping closer. "You're practically hunting the doctor down lately. This seems more like vengeance." Vengeance—that's something I would know about all too well.
Tails finally looked at me then. His eyes were sharp. Focused. Empty of the warmth I remembered when we had first met. That warmth had died the day his hope finally crumpled. The day he stopped marking spots on the map to search for Sonic.
"It's been a year since Sonic died." He stated it plainly, but I still caught the pain buried in the words. It still felt unreal, even spoken aloud. "And it was all Eggman’s fault. He murdered him, and he hasn't shown an ounce of remorse or hesitation in going back to causing suffering."
The absolute certainty in the fox's voice twisted in my gut. My protest sounded in my mind: "Eggman may have been the one to put us in that situation, but it was more my fault. If I hadn't been blinded by my rage for so long, if I had listened to Sonic sooner, if I hadn't been about to fall—"
Instead, I sighed. "Believe me, I understand. But you can't let this consume you. Right now, you need food and rest. I'll make you something to eat."
Tails’ gaze flickered, a brief war playing out in his eyes before the cold resolve won out again. "I told you I'm not hungry, Shadow. I'm close to a breakthrough. The energy matrix on this model is inefficient, the chaos drive is faulty. But if I can reroute the auxiliary power through a reverse-polarized capacitor, I can triple the output. It'll be enough to melt through standard military grade plating."
He wasn't talking about Eggman's robots anymore. He was talking about G.U.N. My own posture stiffened. "And what happens when you melt through a platoon of G.U.N. soldiers who mistake you for a hostile, Tails? They're already looking for a reason to put us down. Don't give them one on a silver platter."
"It's just defensive measures. But if they cross the line, we'll be prepared for them." Tails snapped, his voice laced with an acid I hadn't heard from him before. It was the voice of someone who had catalogued his enemies and was methodically working his way down the list. "Eggman is still the primary target. He gets to live in his fortress, building his next doomsday machine, while Sonic is... gone. It's not fair. It's not justice."
Justice. The word hung in the air between us. It was so close to my old mantra, twisted by grief into something ugly. He wasn't trying to save the world anymore. He was trying to even the score.
I moved to the small, cluttered kitchenette, pulling out a pan and some eggs. The clatter was loud in the tense silence. "Fairness is a luxury. People like you and me don't get to have it." I cracked an egg into the pan, the sizzle a small, mundane sound in a life that had become anything but. "You think what happened to Maria was fair?"
Tails flinched, just a little. I had confided in him a lot more about the truth of what happened to Maria, he knew how close my pain was to his. His hands stopped moving over the badnik's internals.
"I didn't—" he started, then stopped. "That's different."
"How?" I pressed, keeping my back to him. "One man's grief-fueled vendetta against the world. How is your crusade against Eggman any different from my quest against humanity? We both lost someone. We both wanted someone to pay."
The workshop was dead silent now, save for the sizzling eggs. I could feel his eyes on my back. I turned, leaning against the counter, crossing my arms. "The difference is, because of my fifty year stasis, my pain and rage felt fresh. You've had one year, and you're already further down the path than I was when I was broken out of that island. You're building weapons. I just wanted to burn everything."
Tails slowly lowered the soldering iron. His shoulders, once rigid with defiance, seemed to shrink a fraction. "I'm not trying to hurt innocent people."
"No," I agreed, my voice softer. "But you're not the same kid who built a communicator to call for help when he was scared. You're building weapons to ensure you never need help again. You're building a wall so high and so thick that no one can ever get in to hurt you again." I gestured around the workshop, at the schematics on the walls—no longer for planes or gadgets, but for weaponized drones and formulas for chemical bombs. "This isn't your workshop anymore. This is an armory. And you're its sole, lonely occupant."
The word "lonely" struck a nerve. His tails drooped, the tips brushing against the concrete floor. For the first time that night, the sharp, calculating veneer cracked, and I saw the nine-year-old genius who had lost his big brother.
"One of the last things he said to me," Tails whispered, his voice barely audible, "was that he was counting on me. But how can I protect people in his place when the man who killed him is still out there, winning? It feels like I'm failing him every single day I let Eggman breathe."
And there it was, the raw truth. It wasn't just vengeance, it was a desperate, misguided attempt to fulfill a promise he felt he was breaking every second. It was a grief so profound it had curdled into obsession. Something that hit very close to home for me. Perhaps it was the very reason I stayed with him. I knew I couldn’t stop the rage, but I could be here for him, someone who truly understood.
I turned off the stove, slid the eggs onto a plate, and walked over, placing it on a clear spot on his workbench. "You're not failing him by eating or resting, Tails." I looked him dead in the eye, my own guilt a familiar stone in my gut. "The only way either of us can truly fail him is by letting it destroy us. So eat. Then get some sleep. The war can wait for sunrise."
There was a moment of hesitation, a protest that died before it could even pass the fox's lips. He picked up the fork and started eating the eggs placed in front of him. "Fine... I guess I can sleep just a bit. Maybe if I come at this with fresh eyes in the morning, I'll make up for lost time."
It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. I made sure he finished the food, mentally noting how much thinner he was now than he used to be, though he was a bit taller as well. Then I watched as he crawled into the cot he had in the corner of the workshop, feeling satisfied as I turned out the lights.
I lingered for a moment in the darkened workshop, listening to the uneven rhythm of Tails’ breathing as he finally fell asleep. Moments of peace didn't come easy to that young fox much these days, nor did it come easy to the rest of the world.
Just as Tails had said, without Sonic, Eggman’s assaults had grown bolder, louder, and more frequent. The doctor wasn't just a villain anymore; he was a force of nature, a constant, grinding pressure on the world's spirit. His broadcasts were no longer maniacal rants, but calm, almost smug pronouncements of his latest territorial gains. He knew there was no one left who could reliably stop him, no one who could turn his own armada against him with a cocky grin and a spin-dash. Cities rebuilt only to be hit again. Evacuations were difficult, often coming too close for comfort.
Of course I was there, I protected civilians, alongside Tails and other familiar faces. We held the line firmly, but it wasn't going as well as it should have. We were the unprepared successors, thrust into a role we never asked for. Victory still came, eventually. But it came scorched, expensive, and always too slow.
G.U.N. filled the gap the way institutions always did—with curfews, surveillance, and trigger-happy task forces. They called it stability. I called it fear dressed up as order.
The others were scattered, each coping in their own way. I’d see Amy sometimes, a flash of pink and red amidst the grey rubble, directing relief efforts with a fierce, brittle energy. She was trying to be the light Sonic was, but I could see the strain in her smile.
Rouge fed me scraps of intel, a dangerous game she played from within the belly of the beast, her loyalty a precarious balancing act.
And Knuckles… I hadn't seen him in nearly a year. He had retreated to Angel Island, a solitary guardian doubling down on his duty. He was protecting the last truly sacred thing we had left, convinced the world had already lost too much. I couldn't blame him.
The world was holding its breath, waiting for a hero who was never coming back. And in that silence, the rest of us were either breaking or being reshaped into something harder.
The next morning, a sharp, insistent knock echoed through the workshop, cutting through the fragile stillness like a gunshot.
I was moving before the second knock sounded, a silent blur of black and red. My first instinct was to silence it—to stop the noise before it reached the small side room where I'd carried Tails only a few hours ago. He needed the sleep, even if he’d fight me on it when he woke.
I pulled the heavy door open just enough to block the view inside, my body a tense barrier between the visitor and everything I was trying to protect.
Amy Rose stood on the threshold. The morning light caught her pink quills, and I noted—absently—that they were a little longer than I remembered. She wore a bright red sundress, cheerful and familiar, but the smile on her face was carefully constructed. It didn’t reach her eyes. Those were shadowed, worn thin by the same exhaustion I saw in the mirror every morning.
"Oh, Shadow!" She chirped, her voice just a touch too bright. "Good morning. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by."
I arched my brow. The workshop was miles from anything that could be reasonably called a neighborhood.
My gaze dropped to the large wicker basket she carried—the kind used on picnics, now repurposed for what I assumed was a care package.
"Tails is sleeping." I said, my voice a low rumble. "He had a late night."
The cheerful mask wavered for a second, replaced by a flicker of genuine concern. "Oh. Okay. That's... good." She shifted her weight, lifting the basket slightly. "I just brought some things. I know he's been so busy lately, and I wanted to make sure he was eating. I brought groceries and I made some pastries—just the way he likes them." She paused, then added, "I also brought you some coffee beans and a few strawberry tarts. I... figured you might need a break, too."
Her perceptiveness was disarming as always. She wasn't just here for Tails. She was here for me, too. It was a kindness I hadn't earned and didn't know how to accept. I stepped aside, just enough for her to enter, and closed the door softly behind her.
She set the basket on a clutter-free corner of the workbench, her eyes scanning the room. They moved as she unpacked, cataloguing the space with quiet attention—the weapon schematics pinned where flight designs once hung, the disassembled badnik parts, the calculations scrawled hastily in the margins of old blueprints. Her smile faded completely.
"It's... different here." she murmured, more to herself than to me.
"Things change." I replied, leaning against the doorframe.
"We've all had to." Amy exhaled, turning back to the basket. She busied herself with arranging the food and putting groceries where they belonged, her movements practiced. "I've been keeping busy. Helping with the reconstruction in Station Square, organizing supply runs for the smaller villages that Eggman keeps hitting... it feels like there's always something. If I stop, I think..." She trailed off, placing a box of assorted pastries on the bench. "I think it might all catch up with me."
I understood the impulse. It was the same one that drove Tails to his workbench and me to my ceaseless patrols. Keep moving, don't let the grief catch you.
"You can’t outrun grief forever, Amy." I murmured quietly.
"I'm not running." She defended, brittle edge to her voice. "I'm helping. It's what Sonic would have wanted. He was always about protecting people, right? So that's what I'm doing." She finally looked at me, and her gaze was soft, piercing through my usual defenses. "And you? I know you’ve been watching Tails, trying to protect people, dealing with G.U.N. How are you holding up, Shadow?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and unwelcome. I didn't have an answer. I hadn't been focusing on myself in all this time. All I knew was a hollow feeling deep inside—tangled with webs of guilt and a confusing, tangled mess of feelings I had no name for. A rivalry that had shifted into something else, something I hadn't had the time to understand before it was violently erased. I didn't want to think about it. I couldn't.
Before I could formulate a deflection, she closed the small distance between us. Her hand brushed my arm softly, her presence a warm, gentle force against my cold aura. It was achingly familiar.
"You're not alone in this, Shadow." She breathed, her voice barely a whisper. "We lost him, too. You don't have to carry it all by yourself, you don't have to be alone."
For a fleeting, dangerous moment, I saw not just Amy, but a lifeline. A warmth that had nothing to do with the Chaos Emeralds, a softness that felt like a memory of a home I'd almost forgotten. The thought was so alien, so potent, that it made my chest ache. I could have leaned into it. Let myself believe—just for a moment—that I was allowed to rest. I could have let her in.
But then—unbidden—an image flashed in my mind: Sonic, grinning that cocky, infuriating grin as he plummeted towards Earth. "Sayonara..."
That all too familiar pain twisted in my heart like a knife. If I could see that grin one more time...
He was gone. He was the axis everything now spun around—the reason for Tails’ obsession, Amy’s forced brightness, my own relentless vigilance. He was the reason she was standing here offering me comfort, because the hedgehog she truly loved was dead. And the hedgehog who had carved out a space in my own guarded heart, a space I refused to even acknowledge, was dead, too. The thought of accepting her kindness, of seeking that comfort, felt wrong. Like stealing something that belonged to him. Like betraying something in my own heart.
I took a half-step back, the movement subtle but definitive. The wall was back up.
"I appreciate the food, Amy." I murmured, my voice flat, all emotion carefully erased. "I'll make sure he eats it."
I saw the brief flicker of hurt in her eyes before she expertly masked it with a sad, knowing smile. She understood. She always understood more than people gave her credit for, I knew. In that shared, unspoken pain, we had reached for each other, and found only the space where Sonic used to be.
"Right." She whispered softly. "Just... make sure you eat some, too. Both of you."
Amy's hand was on the doorknob, her shoulders slumped in quiet resignation that almost made me feel guilty for turning her away. The air was thick with the things left unsaid between us. Before she could turn it, a new sound cut through the tension—a sharp, deliberate pattern of knocks. Three quick raps, a pause, then two more slower knocks. It was a code Rouge used to bypass the usual ignoring of company, it meant: emergency.
I moved past Amy, pulling the door open wider. Rouge stood there, clad in her dark purple G.U.N-issue uniform, but without her usual grin. Her expression was grim, her eyes wide with an urgency that instantly put me on high alert.
"Shadow." Rouge spoke, her voice a low, urgent hiss. She glanced past me at Amy, her gaze flickering with slight annoyance that there was someone here to listen in. "I really shouldn’t even be here." Rouge said. "But you need to hear this before someone kicks the door in."
"Hear about what?" I asked, my body tensing reflexively. "It's fine to speak in front of Amy, you know she can keep a secret."
"Fine. Just—listen carefully. It’s about G.U.N." she said, stepping inside and forcing the door mostly closed behind her. "They've reclassified you. You're no longer a 'rogue asset.' You're an 'unstable risk'." Her eyes darted to the workshop, to the schematics on the wall. "And the kid... Tails has been flagged as an 'unsupervised weapons developer with chaos-level access'."
Amy gasped softly, her hand flying to her mouth. "That’s—no. That’s not—"
"The collateral damage from the last few skirmishes with Eggman, combined with the energy signatures they've been tracking from this place..." Rouge shook her head, her lips a thin line. "They think you've radicalized him, Shadow. That you've taken his grief and twisted it into your own brand of vengeance. In their eyes, you're not just a threat to the peace anymore. You're possibly a bigger threat than Eggman."
My blood ran cold. It was one thing for me to be their target, but to drag Tails into their crosshairs... That had been something I had hoped to avoid. My every instinct, every waking moment since the ARK, had been geared towards protecting him. I had stepped into a role I never wanted, a mentor, a guardian, trying to fill a void so vast it threatened to swallow us both. And now, my very presence, my past, my darkness, had been used to paint him with the same brush. They saw my influence as a poison, and I couldn't even argue with them. How many times had I seen my own rage reflected in his eyes? How many nights had I stopped him from going too far, only to realize I was the one who had shown him the path? The irony was suffocating. I had sworn to protect him, and in doing so, I had become the greatest threat to his freedom.
"That's ridiculous! Shadow and Tails are nothing like Eggman!" Amy protested, her lips pouting in frustration. "They’re heroes! They’ve only ever helped people!"
"As if that matters to them." I growled low, a pulse of rage flitting through my head. "G.U.N. works in preventative measures, they don't concern themselves with whether you've acted on any crimes yet."
Rouge nodded grimly. "It gets worse." She continued, her voice dropping even lower. "I think Eggman handed them exactly what they were looking for. Someone 'leaked' some intel suggesting Tails has been researching miniaturized Eclipse Cannon tech. Around the same time, the original ARK schematics went missing from a secure archive." She paused for a moment, the implication sinking in with a chill in my blood before she continued. "They believe Tails is smart enough—and now, unstable enough—to replicate the tech."
"So they'll be coming here." I said flatly.
"Yes, and they're not coming to talk." Rouge said, her voice hard as steel. "There are already containment protocols in place. The execution window for the operation is only days away. By the time I decrypted the files, it was already in motion. They're going to take you both in."
The workshop was silent. I could feel Amy's terrified gaze on me, but my own mind was racing, calculating, planning. We needed to run, find a place to hide Tails away from G.U.N.
"Then let them come." The voice was small, cold, and utterly devoid of fear. It came from behind me.
I turned slowly. Tails was standing in the doorway to the room, arms wrapped tightly around himself. He was pale, his eyes wide and shadowed, but they weren't the eyes of a scared child—they were cold and calculating. He had heard everything, every word.
"Tails, you don't understand—" Amy started, taking a step toward him.
"I understand perfectly," he interrupted, his gaze fixed on me. "They think I'm a threat? They want to lock me away for what I might do? For trying to do what Sonic should have been here to do?" A bitter, broken laugh escaped his lips. "Fine. Let them try. Maybe they'll see what a real threat is."
The sheer, chilling certainty in his voice stopped us all. The kid from a year ago, who cried when he thought no one was listening, was gone. In his place stood something else entirely. Something forged in grief and fueled by a rage that now had a very clear, very dangerous target.
"Tails, you shouldn't say that kind of thing! Sonic wouldn’t want—" Amy began, her voice trembling with a desperate plea.
"Sonic isn't here! He should be—but he isn't!" Tails snapped, his voice cracking with a fury that was both immense and fragile. He looked from Amy to me, his eyes wild. "Would you rather I just let them take me?!"
The question hung there, raw and wounded, stealing the breath from Amy’s protest. But in my mind, I wasn't hearing Tails. I was hearing the frantic yelling of a little girl on the ARK trying to protect me. I was seeing the cold, unfeeling faces of G.U.N. soldiers as they raised their weapons. I was feeling the gut-wrenching helplessness of watching Maria fall.
Not again.
Thinking again of Sonic’s smile, I made a silent promise. I wouldn't let them do to Tails what they did to her. I would protect him.
"Nobody is taking you anywhere." I stated, my voice cutting through the tension with authority and certainty. I held Tails's frantic gaze, forcing him to see me, to see the gravity in my eyes. "But you won't be staying here to fight. You will not challenge them. Do you understand me?"
He glared, the defiance in his azure eyes warring with the confusion. "Why not? They're our enemy now! They're siding with Eggman by trying to stop me!"
"They are not the enemy." I reminded him, taking a deliberate step forward. "They are a storm. A force of nature. You don't fight a hurricane, Tails. You get out of its path. Fighting them is exactly what they expect. It's what they want. It proves they were right about you."
I could see the gears turning in his head, the tactical analysis warring with his emotional need for a target. I pressed that to my advantage.
"This isn't about honor or proving them wrong. This is about survival. You challenge them, and they will bring overwhelming force. They won't try to capture you. They will neutralize you."
My words finally seemed to land. The fire in his eyes dimmed slightly, replaced by a dawning understanding.
"We'll leave." I stated, making it a decree. "Pack what we can and disappear."
"But where will you go?" Amy asked, finding her voice again. "Doesn't G.U.N have eyes everywhere?"
"Not everywhere." Rouge interjected, her mind already working on the problem. She pulled a small data slate from a pouch on her belt. "There's some off-the-grid locations I know of. I'm not a part-time thief for nothing. But you two will need to move fast."
"We will," I said, not looking away from Tails. "We'll find a place to lay low. And while we do," I added, my gaze sharpening, "we'll figure out what Eggman is really up to. He's the one who lit this fuse. He wants G.U.N. focused on us. That means he's plotting something. We're not going to play his game. We're going to find his board and flip it over."
For the first time in a long time, I saw a flicker of the old Tails in his eyes. The strategist. The problem-solver. The idea of outsmarting Eggman, of turning the tables, was a language he understood far better than blind vengeance.
He looked down at his workbench, at the disassembled weapon, at the tools of his self-destruction. The fight seemed to drain out of him all at once, leaving him looking small and profoundly tired. He nodded slowly.
"Okay." Tails whispered. "We can run."
The workshop, once a place of morbid obsession, erupted into a flurry of controlled, desperate activity. Rouge laid her data slate flat on a cleared space, a holographic map of the continent flickering to life above it. "Eggman's most recent activity has been concentrated here," she said, pointing to a cluster of abandoned industrial zones in the mountains. "For months, he's been funneling resources into a massive construction project, but the energy output has been... unusual."
"Unusual how?" I asked, my gaze fixed on the pulsing energy signature on the map.
"Erratic," Rouge clarified, zooming in. "It doesn't seem to be a regular weapon. It's not a factory. It's like he's building something incredibly complex that keeps... failing. Or rebooting. The power surges are massive, but they don't result in any kind of attack. Just a few days ago, the entire project went dark. Then, a single, massive energy spike, and now... nothing. All construction has stopped. All power has been diverted."
"He finished it." Tails murmured, his exhaustion momentarily replaced by sharp focus as he peered at the data. He tapped the screen, pulling up a waveform analysis of the final spike. "But that's not right. The energy signature almost looks... biological. And it has Chaos Energy readings, but I know he can't have the Chaos Emeralds."
"That's what has the boys down at G.U.N so spooked." Rouge explained grimly. "We know he's been known to throw small animals in his robots in the past, but if that all led up to the development of a biomechanical super-weapon..."
"Then we need to find and stop it." Tails stated with unwavering determination.
"Right now the area is going to be crawling with G.U.N. agents investigating it. And you need to lay low." Rouge reminded him, her lips pressed into a line. "However if you go west from here to the desert, I have a contact who can give you a place to stay and can help you move along undetected. It's a long haul, but it's your best shot."
While they plotted, Amy moved with a quiet efficiency that belied her earlier distress. She began pulling supplies from her basket and the cupboards, her movements practiced. "I can help," she said, her voice firm. "You'll need non-perishables, water purification tablets, first-aid supplies." She started assembling a medical kit with a grim determination, as if patching wounds was the only way she knew how to fight a battle she couldn't be on the front lines of.
When she turned to a small duffel bag to start packing Tails' things, he recoiled. "I can pack my own bag!" He snapped, snatching it from her. "I'm not a baby."
The defensiveness was a shield, but Amy didn't flinch. She just nodded softly, understanding. "Okay, Tails. You pack what you need."
I looked back as he stuffed it with clothes, tools, and data drives. But his most important item was a drone, one of the smaller badnik models he had completely repurposed. The metallic casing was scrubbed clean of Eggman's insignia, replaced by a simple, stenciled image of his twin-tailed logo. "For safety and surveillance," he said, his voice low, as if he needed to justify its existence to the room. It wasn't a weapon of war; it was a guardian. A piece of himself he refused to leave behind.
Only an hour later, our bags were packed by the door. Tails held his bag close as he looked back at the workshop that had held so many memories, I could almost see the scenes of simple little moments with Sonic replaying in his eyes as he looked over everything for what may be the last time. The place had long since felt stripped of its purpose. I lay a hand on his shoulder and he turned away.
"Go," Rouge said, her voice urgent. "Now. Don't look back. I'll run interference, feed them false trails. But you need to be gone before the sun is at it's peak."
I nodded, grabbing my bag. I looked at Tails, who stood by his drone, a small, determined figure in a workshop that was no longer his. Then I looked at Amy, who stood by the door, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. She met my gaze, and in her eyes, I saw the same unspoken plea that was in my own heart: Don't let him be lost, too.
I gave her a curt, almost imperceptible nod. It was all the promise I could give. Then I turned and opened the door, stepping out into the chill of dawn with Tails at my side.
"Shadow, wait!" Amy called out as she caught up with us out onto the cool grass of the yard, the faint light of dawn catching the determined glint in her eyes.
"Are you sure you don't want me to join you?" She asked, her voice trembling with resolve. "I can help. II'mstrong, I can fight, and I can... I can keep things organized. I don't care if it makes me an enemy of G.U.N. If they're coming after you, then they're my enemy, too!"
The offer hung in the air, tempting in a way I hadn't expected. A part of me, the part that was tired of being the lone pillar against the storm, wanted to say yes. Another ally, one with a spirit that would make the burden lighter. The selfish urge to accept, to not face this alone, was a powerful pull.
But I looked past her, at the city sleeping in the distance, at the world that was already fractured and afraid. I saw the relief efforts she coordinated, the hope she inspired in people who had none left. She was a beacon. You don't hide a beacon away, you let it shine.
"No." I firmly stated, the word coming out harder than I intended. I softened my tone, forcing myself to explain. "Your fight is here, Amy. People here need you. They need someone who still believes in helping, in building things back up. Not someone hiding in the shadows."
Her shoulders slumped, but she understood. She wasn't just offering her skills; she was offering her heart, and I was refusing it for her own good. It was a kindness that felt cruel.
"Alright." Amy whispered, wiping a tear at her cheek. "Just... be safe. Both of you. I don't want to lose any more friends..."
I gave her one last, lingering look—a silent acknowledgment of her bravery and her sacrifice. Then I turned and walked away into the pre-dawn gloom, Tails trailing silently behind me, leaving not just a workshop, but what was left of a sense of "home".