Chapter Text
The moment he laid hands on the second key and realized he’d critically injured Sonic’s father, not Commander Walters, all thought of survival went out of Shadow’s head.
Which was good, because he knew he’d built the perfect trap for himself: no matter what happened, no matter how strong he was – he wasn’t going to survive it.
Either the Eclipse Cannon killed him for good, or Sonic would.
But then despite it all, despite everything he’d done… Sonic spared him.
That moment on the Moon, Shadow realized, was the first moment he’d really had alone with his thoughts since he’d gone to the wreck of the base where she’d been killed.
And the compassion Sonic had shown him was one he thought he’d never know again.
The two of them fought side by side to block the orbital laser’s devastating blast, moving the target just enough to spare the Earth entirely. Shadow had seen Sonic was losing strength fast, just managing to shove him out of the way before the beam consumed him entirely. He could only hope Sonic’s friends could save him from falling from orbit, because if Shadow had gone after him then the Earth would be done for.
Thankfully the others had managed to turn the beam enough that it passed clear of the Earth, even if they ended up slicing cleanly through the Moon instead.
Shadow had ported back to the bridge just in time to learn that there was a secondary feature to the weapon: if the beam didn’t destroy the planet, the residual radiation would.
In the thrill of fighting alongside Sonic and managing to avert the first crisis, it took a moment for Shadow to realize anew: he wasn’t going to make it alive out of this if he wanted to save the Earth for good.
But he was OK with that. He was.
All of this was his responsibility – Gerald couldn’t have gotten half this far without his help.
Gerald… he too was gone now. So, he suspected, was the Commander.
The only thing left to make this right was to push the weapon the triangle of Gerald, the Commander and himself had wrought further out into space so he could be destroyed along with it. Then the spectre of everything that had happened could finally be put to rest.
Shadow braced himself against the side of the weapon, stopping only briefly when it suddenly occurred to him that there was no point restraining his power. Not any more, not out here.
So he clicked off the inhibitor rings around his wrists and pushed as hard as he could. Even when he thought he might have done enough to get clear of the Earth, he kept going.
He could hear explosions coming from within. Ivo was still there, still trying to slow down the destruction to give him more time.
Strange to think his younger, less brilliant counterpart had turned out to be the decent one of the two Robotniks.
Naturally that thought led Shadow to thinking about her – the one other Robotnik who shone brightest of all.
Maria.
As he pushed, he let the memories flow through his mind again. But this time they didn’t stop at that last awful day.
Shadow shut his eyes as he pushed, remembering all the good days they’d spent together. All the times they’d looked out for each other, played together, laughed together.
Life hadn’t seemed so hard when she’d been in it.
And he couldn’t wait to see her again.
He had only a harsh tremor under his hand as warning before the canon exploded outwards completely, immediately consuming him within the ball of fire and radiation.
Shadow instinctively raised his arms to protect his head, even though he was sure it was already hopeless. The power granted by the emerald absorbed some of the blast, protecting him momentarily – and then it gave out, fading back into his black fur.
And the fire and radiation hit him full force.
Shadow barely had time to curl into himself when his powers fired. He began to involuntarily teleport, his body pushing him jump by jump closer to the edge of the fire in an attempt to escape the all-consuming agony at the centre of the flames.
He knew there was no way Robotnik could have survived it, but he couldn’t control his body well enough to direct his teleportation to check.
All he could do was bounce further back towards the Earth, the fire catching up to him as it expanded and starting the whole process over again.
Right when his teleportation was beginning to slow Shadow finally made it clear of the blast, finding himself drifting alone in space. His eyes stung but he tried to force them open, blinking to clear his vision just enough to see that the distance between the Earth and the newly exploded space station should be enough to protect the planet from the radiation that remained behind. If the humans were smart they wouldn’t man any crafts into this part of space anytime soon, but that was up to them…
Shadow chuckled to himself. Maybe he could just stay up here to ward them off. Here in space it was nice and quiet – no GUN, no Sonic, no sign of all the people he’d hurt… no other surviving remnants of the Robotnik family to worry about.
As his body still sizzled and stung with all the fire and radiation he’d just taken in, his mind began to drift – for once not to Maria but to Gerald.
“Kids,” he’d said, “We have to go!”
Then, “They’re trying to take Shadow away from us!”
And finally, “It’s good to see you, Shadow. I knew you’d come home.”
Home.
Was Shadow a fool for thinking the Professor had considered him family once, too? Shadow had certainly trusted him more than he had the other scientists. He’d handed over one of his quills without thinking when the Professor had asked, and it must have been Gerald who had broken him out of containment; no one else could have done it.
But he’d done that because Shadow was essential to the plan, to activating the secondary properties of the weapon. Not so that they could be a family again.
Even if Shadow had asked, he doubted Gerald would have stayed with him so they could grieve together. He cared enough that he hadn’t blamed Shadow for Maria’s death, even though there was no getting around the fact his beloved best friend would have been still alive now if only they’d never met. But something in the Professor had irrevocably broken with her death – even the discovery of a younger Robotnik, probably his last remaining flesh and blood, hadn’t been enough to dissuade him off the path for revenge.
Maybe to Gerald family meant standing and dying together. He’d have loved Shadow again only if he’d given the old man what he wanted.
And Shadow couldn’t articulate it well to himself, but he knew that wasn’t love. He’d never have dreamed of putting such strings on his love for Maria, nor would she for him.
He couldn’t imagine Maria ever wanting revenge on anyone, but if it had been her in Gerald’s place he knew she would have listened when his doubts began to pile up.
Shadow shut his eyes again. No point dwelling on it now. Much more pleasant to simply drift, letting his gloved hand gently glide through the darkness.
If he drifted far enough, could he touch the stars they’d both loved so much?
Yes, maybe he’d stay up here. It was simple and quiet and he could keep an eye on the remnants of his and Gerald’s mistakes, make sure no humans came along to try and salvage parts out of the radioactive scrap of their weapon.
When he let his eyes open again he realized with a start he’d drifted further than he intended to. The momentum from his last teleport was carrying him along, away from the debris – and closer to Earth.
Shadow turned to face the planet, realizing with a sinking pit in his stomach that he was much, much closer than he thought he was. If he didn’t do something he was going to get caught in its orbital pull and fall straight down through the atmosphere.
Maybe that would burn him up for good. Maybe that’d be the end of it.
But it wouldn’t be a pleasant way to go and he didn’t want to give G.U.N. the satisfaction of stumbling on his remains and burying them somewhere no one could ask them any inconvenient questions about their role in this entire sideshow.
Shadow focused, finding his teleportation was taking far more effort than he’d like. But then it flashed – and he travelled only a few inches back away from the Earth.
Without his intending to, it flashed again – not only resetting him back where he was but putting him nearer the Earth.
Shadow frowned. That wasn’t right; normally he had complete and total control over his powers. Was the radiation sending his powers haywire? Was he just tired?
He didn’t have time to speculate on it, though; he was still drifting the wrong direction and had no way to slow himself down. He didn’t even have much strength to move; he’d heal soon enough but right now he was aching so bad he could hardly lift his arms.
He looked at his hand, feeling static crackling around his fist. Was it worth taking the chance, one more time?
He shut his eyes, focusing hard on the direction he wanted to go.
Away.
Away.
Further out into the dark.
Then he teleported.
Backwards – right into the Earth’s orbit.
Shadow cursed his stupidity, but it was too late now – the big blue planet, Maria’s home, had a hold on him and even Shadow couldn’t escape its gravitational pull. He began to fall, the reassuring nothingness of space changing into the pale blue of the upper atmosphere.
Then the heat came.
Shadow instinctively used what energy he still had to force himself to wrap his arms around his head as he dropped, his skin already burning uncomfortably hot. He began to fall faster and faster, a red light surrounding him as the heat grew to unbearable temperatures.
The last thing he saw before shutting his eyes was the light turning from red to orange, soon to become white hot.
Even though the scientists had discovered he was capable of withstanding extremes of temperature, this was a lot even for him. He felt his fur beginning to overheat and catch fire in places, but there was nothing he could do except fall like a comet out of the sky.
Right as he was hitting terminal velocity, a stray thought crossed his mind: if anyone looked up at the blazing trail he was leaving behind him, would they think he was a falling star?
…If Sonic and the others saw it, would they realize it was him? Or would they hope that along with Robotnik, he was gone for good?
The pain mounted into white hot agony and Shadow could tell his powers were trying to spare him by attempting to get his teleportation to kick in again, but the fizz of energy that usually built right before he vanished was struggling to form before sparking out completely.
All his energy was going towards handling the huge amount of radiation and heat he was currently dealing with – he realized he simply didn’t have anything left to spare to protect himself.
He hoped against hope that wherever he landed, it wasn’t somewhere G.U.N. could easily come across him. If he survived this, he knew he’d heal fairly quick – but given how fast they’d tracked him down in Tokyo he wouldn’t put it past them to be monitoring the skies right now.
The air quality began to change – Shadow sensed he was in the lower atmosphere now, sure to contact the Earth any second.
He risked taking a look.
A wall of water was rising up to meet him.
Shadow barely had time to figure out whether this was good or bad luck before the comet of his falling body struck the ocean’s surface at full force.
Good luck: the painfully cold water doused the fires on his fur immediately.
Bad luck: he hit with such force it felt like hitting the hard ground.
Shadow sank into the water in more physical agony than he’d ever felt in his life. Every part of him was raw from radiation or crying out in pain from the force of the impact. Despite his strength and pride in being the so-called Ultimate Lifeform, right then he’d have given anything to not be awake to feel it any longer. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes and floated off his face, back towards the surface he was rapidly sinking away from.
The way the moonlight was shimmering on the water… it kind of looked like stars in the night sky, too.
Shadow managed to hold onto consciousness long enough to think that he could make his peace with dying if the last sight he saw was one as beautiful as this. He gave up the ghost and let his eyes slide shut, letting himself imagine he wasn’t in the water at all but was back on the roof with Maria.
Even in the cold cocoon of the water, Shadow could not find rest.
Images began to form in his mind, nothing he’d ever seen before and nothing he could make sense of.
A dark presence. A single eye opening, yellow irises. A huge pupil that shifted then contracted.
Somehow Shadow knew it was looking at him.
His body was burning, gulping in water. He remembered vaguely they’d tested him for swimming, holding his breath, breathing underwater. He’d excelled at all of them… except for the last.
He didn’t know if he could die by drowning, but the sensation was so unpleasant he’d never managed to last more than a few minutes when he was submerged in regular water instead of the weird containment cryo substance the military had cooked up.
But even as his half-conscious mind was giving in to the instinctual urge to panic, the strange presence in his mind was spreading, urging him to let it take over.
Shadow didn’t have the strength to refuse, even when the pain momentarily increased – but now instead of his lungs he felt a sharp pain in his head. Unlike his usual bright red light his powers made an inky black aura around him in the water.
This new power reached inside and drew from him even though Shadow thought he had nothing left to give.
Everything went a bit fuzzy; the pain of drowning fading so fast he wondered for a second if it was trying to kill him quicker.
But then he felt something new forming around his back: a strange fleshy disc.
Then the pain passed, the presence faded – but the disc remained.
And it began to swim.
The strange creature began towing him up, up, up, back up towards the surface of the water. It broke through with blinding speed, waiting for a second there while Shadow rolled onto his side and choked up lungful after lungful of water and probably bile and blood, too.
Once he’d collapsed onto his back, panting and exhausting, it began to swim again. It went slower this time, but no matter how choppy the waves they had to cross were the strange creature never lost Shadow from its back.
He pressed a hand to the warm, fleshy surface beneath him. Large, round and flat – yet he could feel the creature’s body flexing as the surface of the water passed easily beneath it.
It reminded Shadow of something he’d seen in one of Maria’s picture books: a marine life creature called a manta ray.
And yet something told him the creature was somehow, some way, still a part of him.
Even after all that testing, all those fights over the past few days and going super against Sonic… there was still so much he didn’t know about himself.
He rolled onto his side to breathe easier, letting the remains of his charred glove gently touch the creature in a silent thank you.
He could have been content, alone out there in space. He could.
But since he’d accidented his way back to Earth, he’d just have to deal with the hand he’d been dealt. He had no idea where to even begin, but maybe it was time to use his powers for something more meaningful.
Body completed depleted of strength, Shadow rested his head against the strange ray and let his eyes drift shut. For the second time he fell into a half conscious stupor, allowing the ray to carry him to whatever shore it saw fit.