Notes: Grad school got me dead. This is something I wrote during break. Hopefully, this will eventually become a oneshot/drabble collection encompassing both what happened before the war—Infinite (real name Finn) and Gadget's lives before darkness grabbed them and shook them silly—and after—the healing and new trust, the rebuilding, the sunshine and the empty twilights. There will probably be background sonuckles. (I will, hopefully, continue working on Breaking Point as well, which details what happened during the war for Sonic and Knuckles in this AU, with a little bit of Gadget on the side.)

This is a shared AU I have with this kills the man. Non-linear because I'm a literary writer now with an aesthetic.

Tenses

1. Saving the Self

It takes a while, but eventually, eventually, Knuckles trusts Gadget (not Finn) enough to let Finn go home with him. Finn's been in the medbay for a week, recuperating the loss of the giant, emblematic and powerful gem off his chest, plus the return of his sense and his non-homicidal personality. It's been slow going, but he's finally coming back into himself; Gadget can practically see Finn coming alive behind those mismatched eyes, see him sinking back into his own skin like it's a blanket after a cold day. He's slowly becoming the Finn that Gadget remembers, and that's reassuring.

He's also becoming the fatalistic, self-hating ass that Gadget hates. He's unsure of himself, resigned and apologetic, and, most annoyingly, he's uncooperative with the doctors. Not positively uncooperative either—the kind of uncooperative that's all righteous resisting, the kind where the patient just wants to go home, doesn't want to be in the hospital, the kind that can be bribed with "if you listen to the doctors, you'll get what you want so stop pulling your IV out." No, he's negatively uncooperative—the type where he just lays there and says, "Let me die," over and over again as the doctors attempt to get him to walk, force water down his throat, or give him books to read.

"Dramatic. You were a theater kid, weren't you?" Sonic asks from the bed across from Finn's. He's dehydrated, has a twisted ankle, and a chronic case of the wise-guy, though the last one isn't curable, not that Gadget would have it any other way.

Finn doesn't answer, just groans and throws his left arm over his eyes, probably because he can't take the sight of Sonic's large grin and his huge, shining eyes.

"How'd you know?" Gadget asks over Finn's loud, pointed (dramatic) grumbling. He can't help but smile fondly.

"He looked at the jell-o and said that it was indicative of everything wrong with this world." Sonic's grin only widens as Finn rolls over so he doesn't have to look at either of them. Sonic, undeterred, only continues: "Then he went, pah, and knocked it over like this." Sonic slashes his arm through the air in a wide, quick motion, flicking his wrist at the end.

"Did not," Finn shoots back, still facing the wall.

"Did too."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"If I did, it's because—"

"You admit it!" Sonic crows, and throws an arm out to point at Finn, even though Finn is still facing away from him.

Finn grumbles again, but doesn't have an answer so he knows he's been had. Sonic laughs, a loud thing from the belly, and, in that moment, more than anything, Gadget wants to bottle the positive energy that Sonic carries with him. He knows that— By Chaos, he knows that as soon as they're out of here and back home, he'll need it. He can already tell that Finn is carrying a world of blame on his shoulders, and it's only been two days.

(Later, as Sonic watches and needles him, Finn eats his dinner without anything having to force him. It's small, but it's a step in the right direction.)

Here's the thing: when Gadget found Infinite, it wasn't pretty. He was so, so tempted to leave him there, in that pool of— Gadget can't bear to think of it, even now. But Infinite was slouched over, arms limp, hands splayed, chest weeping like a fountain, and all Gadget saw was Finn. Poor, misguided, lost Finn. Finn with all his inadequacies and his fear, who always worried that Gadget would leave him for someone confident, someone assured and successful. Finn, who got up early to make breakfast because it was only thing he could do to make sure Gadget had a good day; Finn, who worked his ass off to get what he wanted; Finn, who watched Gadget with such an attentive, deep gaze that Gadget knew he was loved and secure without words.

Past-Gadget would never have left Finn here. Pre-war-Gadget would have dropped to his knees right there, pushed Finn upright, checked his pulse, and then sob when it came back weak but there. There wouldn't have been a single moment's hesitation. Just a yell, a slide through the stickiness on the ground—action, movement, something, do something.

The Gadget of now stared down at Infinite and felt his hands clutch into fists. He couldn't let Infinite win. He'd already taken so many lives, ruined so many homes, destroyed so much. Gadget wouldn't let Infinite destroy that part of him, the part that cared, the part that didn't just let someone bleed out in front of him. He'd already lost so much; he couldn't lose himself too.

So that was why he did it, in the moment: his own selfishness, his own need to retain a small part of the morality he had before all this, his own desire to beat Infinite and the dark gravity that tried to consume everything.

It's only later that he realizes that he's saving Finn too. Saving Finn from Infinite.

It isn't that he doesn't love Finn anymore. He still does—he loves him so much and he always has, even when his common sense was demanding he cut that tie, burn that bridge to cinders and hot slag. That's the annoying thing about love: it's persistent, painful, and doesn't give up easily, even if you so badly want it to. It lives inside your ribs, in that cage, and only the force of the sky and the mountains, the wind shear and the sun, the whole power of natural disasters can destroy it when it's in there. Yes, Gadget tried to hate Finn, tried to sever the thin, stretched tie that bound them, but there were years and years that made it strong, unbreakable. He couldn't hate Finn any more than he could truly hate himself.

Infinite though?

He could and did hate Infinite.

It was easy to compartmentalize the two, despite it being the same body, the same face, the same voice. It made things complicated when they met on the battlefield, because Gadget's eyes and mind saw Infinite, but his heart felt Finn. He was angry and heartbroken all at once, seeing Infinite use Finn's body like that, watching Finn burn so much to the ground. He never considered where Finn ended and Infinite began, mostly because he was too scared to consider. What if Finn was in there? What if he was in control? What if he'd had this inside himself all this time?

So, where did that leave him now? Gadget didn't know. No one knew. Knuckles was making it up as he went along, that much was clear, just going by how one second he wanted to keep Finn imprisoned in the bunker forever and the next he was considering turning him over to GUN and then he's having a talk with Gadget in his private quarters.

"Sonic thinks Finn is safe," Knuckles is saying to Gadget's surprised face. "He thinks we should let him go home."

"Ah," Gadget says because it's all he can manage, considering how shocked he is. He can't summon any words past that, mostly because his mind is blank, sucked inward in its own vacuum, trying to reconcile Knuckles's words with what they actually mean.

"What do you think?" Knuckles continues, and Gadget realizes that everything about Knuckles is tight—his voice, his jaw, his throat, his fists. Gadget can't make sense of that. Is he nervous? Angry? Unsure?

"Does it matter, what I think?" Gadget asks. "You're the boss."

Knuckles sighs and sits back in his chair. Just barely, the table they share shakes as Knuckles kicks it. Gadget almost jumps, that's how keyed up he is. "The war's over, Gadget. I'm not the boss of anyone anymore. I'm just someone who doesn't belong here. I can't make decisions for you."

It hits Gadget then. Knuckles never lived on the surface, never spent any time in cities, never participated in the culture or society or world that Gadget loves so dearly. Now that the war's over, Eggman dealt with, Knuckles doesn't have a place here. Finn is the last thing he has to deal with, the last responsibility before he's allowed to go back to the clouds and sew himself back into his spot.

"What do you want me to say?" Gadget asks, desperate, confused. "You want me to take Finn home with me?"

"You know him best." Knuckles sounds tired, as if this is the last conversation he wants to have. "If you think he's back to normal— Hell, if you think he's controllable, and you think you can watch him, then you can. If not, I'm gonna hand him over to GUN. We need to get out of this bunker and back to the surface. People need us."

Gadget can feel his hands shaking and he shoves them between his knees, trying to keep them still. "Why is this my responsibility?" he half-demands, half-cries. He can't imagine it—going back to his apartment as if nothing happened, as if he's not broken and breaking further with PTSD and everything else. He wakes up in the middle of the night now, sweating, cold, breathing hard, with only Infinite's face behind his eyes and the feeling of a tight hand on his throat. How can he possibly take Finn home and sleep next to him? Wake up in the morning like everything's normal?

"It's not," Knuckles answers shortly. "Sonic wanted you to have the option. I told him it's too much, but he said you still look at Infinite— Finn like you love him." Knuckles pushes away from the table and stands. "I'll let GUN know they can have him."

There's something so final about that. Gadget wants to surge to his feet, slam his hands on the table, demand time, demand the option to think, but he can't. He's stuck, growing roots around his chair, and he watches Knuckles go with a hollow, thousand-yard stare.

The next day, Rouge is supposed to pick Finn up. Gadget sits at Finn's bedside, trying to come up with the courage to tell him. He can feel Sonic's eyes on his face, heavily, from across the room. Sonic has no reason to still be here, but he's anchored in the other bed, reading a book, peering over it. Distantly, Gadget wonders if Sonic's the one who's been keeping an eye on Finn to make sure he doesn't do anything to hurt himself or anyone else. Less distantly, Gadget wonders if Sonic's ankle was ever sprained.

It makes sense. Sonic is the most well-equipped to handle Finn if he got rowdy, and he also has a calming, friendly presence. He knows how to laugh and he knows how to pick and prod at people; he knows how to make them relax and how to get them to talk. It suddenly clicks—why Sonic got to make the call, decide if Finn was stable enough to go home.

That hits him hard, a smack in the chest, and he breathes out heavily, which makes Finn's ear swivel toward him slightly. Sonic, the one most directly impacted by Infinite's violence, had decided that Finn was safe, was good to release into the populace at large. The only reason he isn't walking out of here right now is Gadget's own cowardice.

Finn, alerted by the hard sigh of air, is watching Gadget attentively, ignoring Sonic's curious gaze, and he reaches out slightly to grab Gadget's hand. He aborts the move almost immediately, probably figuring that physical contact isn't welcome or wanted right now, and Gadget hears his hand land back on the blankets with a soft sound. Finn's chest is wrapped with bandages that have to be changed every few hours, but all of his superficial wounds are healing. The hole in his chest is slowly sealing itself up, though it has to be packed with bandages to ensure it heals from the inside out—a grisly process that requires intense patience from both Finn and his nurse. Taking him home would be committing to all of this—the bandages, the packing, the stare, the baggage that they'll have to work through. Is he prepared to do that? Is he prepared to directly confront the Ruby's physical effect on Finn's body? Is he able? Does he want to?

"Here's the thing about fighting," Sonic says, apropos of nothing. He's looking back at his book and he flips a page, as if he's reading from it. Both Gadget and Finn are startled and they reach for each other, reflexively, and then jerk away when their hands brush.

"It's really easy to break something," Sonic continues. "It's the fixing that takes time and effort. You can knock down a building in a couple seconds, but it takes months to build it back up again. The same thing with people—you can break them like that." He snaps his fingers, and the loud, sudden sound makes Finn jump. "You can bust holes in people so fast, and it takes forever to heal. That's how it is. We can either accept it and help each other get better, or you can hide and try to fix yourself. Trust me." Sonic looks up at them, smiles thin and tight, closes his book, and slides off the bed, landing easily on his feet. "I know a thing or two about breaking things."

Gadget can't help but smile, because he's right. All Sonic does is break things—destroy robots, break barriers, slam through windows, out of buildings, crush Eggman's plans. But, he also knows that Sonic knows what it's like, to lose and lose, both those large battles and the small, personal ones. Yet, he's still moving, still helping people, still holding tight to Tails, to Knuckles, to Amy, helping them move on and be strong, and they help him.

"I'll see you around," Sonic says, and he's looking directly at Finn. "Don't let this hole beat you."

"I— I won't," Finn mutters.

Sonic nods and pads out, closing the door behind him with a definitive snap.

Gadget, in the end, waits until the very last second to make up his mind. Rouge is literally at the door, talking to Sonic, who looks very up in arms about something, when Gadget finally, finally makes the choice he knows he has to.

"What do you think?" Gadget asks as he reaches up and grabs the railing on Finn's bed. "Think he's right?"

Finn shrugs. "Healing is complicated."

"I think he's right." Gadget sighs. "We need to help each other."

Tentatively, Finn places his hand over Gadget's and is rewarded by Gadget staying still, no jerk or hiss of surprise or disdain. "Even if we hurt each other?"

There's something about that word: hurt—past, present, and future tense all wrapped up in one word, no inflection to change when the hurt happens; it's undecaying, everlasting, this concept of pain, but there has to be an end. He has to decide to let it stop hurting him.

Gadget looks toward the door, where Rouge is laughing now, one hand on Sonic's shoulder. She has a gash on the side of her face where a laser struck her that looks to have a few weeks of healing left, but Gadget knows that her real pain is inside, the place where she's still worried about Shadow, where we all worry when those we care about go missing, even if they return no worse for wear. He knows that spot well, knows that Tails, Knuckles, and Amy have a Sonic-shaped one, knows that the only way to heal those spots is to fill them with company and time.

Gadget flips his hand over and laces his fingers with Finn's. "If we don't forgive, then we'll lose ourselves."

Finn looks up, and his expression is an active, surprised mix of fear, gratification, and relief. Gadget is shocked to see tears in his eyes.

"Let's go home," Gadget says, and is pleased to see Finn nod.

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