# Disclaimer
—The author does not own the cast of SonicTeam, but the author does own their mental maladies.
The writing tone is marinated in dark themes. Timeline launches off from Sonic Adventure 2's platform! If you find a "sense of insensitivity" in the opening, it's only drawing on the lack of emotion to SA2 that the cast displayed in SH when Shadow "reappeared after death."
Chapter edited: 7/19/17
:: Prologue ::
ARK.
It was all but a memory bobbing along the surface of Amy's brain like a bottle cap in a river. Her mind swam back to flashbacks that were wet with tragedy, only docking on main events from an era long gone:
―"Can you both hear me? The ARK is close to the Earth! Please hurry up!"
"As a child, I looked up to my grandfather because of all the great things he accomplished in his life. He was my hero, and I wanted to be a great scientist like him. But...did he really mean to destroy us?"
"I don't know...but what I do know is, we all did it together!"
"Sonic? What's taking you so long? If you don't get here soon, she WILL die!"
"Just letting Knuckles pilot the ship over here was more dangerous than you could ever be!"
"It's all going according to plan; there's no reason for me to help them..."
"There has to be!"
"...Do you really think...that the professor created Shadow to carry out the revenge on all those who live there, on Earth?"
"What's the matter, Sonic?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Come on! Let's go home! To the planet as cool and blue as me!"―
For two years, Space Colony Ark had been just another star on Orion's belt, and like an artifact lost to history, it was a star that no one looked at. As she turned her ear away from the old monodies of what was echoing, she blended in with ebullient citizens who were unsullied, unrazed, and unaffected by the glimmer of her adventure on the Milky Way. Her eyes were for others stars ― stars that raced against the sun with red sneakers. Her heart was for other matters ― matters that involved romantic dates in "One if by Land, Two if by Sea." Her brain was for other memories ― memories that blurred tragic sagas to buttress the rainbows in her brain.
She'd never thought of herself as any kind of /m/u/r/d/e/r/e/r/ hero when she already had a hero to do her saving. And her hero, alas, hadn't been seen in nearly two years, but it didn't stop her from seeing his color. She saw blue in the sky when she looked up, blue in the ocean when she looked down, {oh, how ironic; he hates the water, but it's as cool and blue as him!}, and blue on the magazines rocking a thumb's up. She missed his blueness to tears and sighs; she missed it to death and insanity!
A month before his disappearance, he would talk less, stare more, rescue off time, and disappear all the time. He had stopped acting impatient and started acting indifferent. An alter ego had encapsulated Sonic then ― an entity with some kind of bipolar depression that made him bluer than blue could get. When he finally returned to her district bluer than ever before, it was reflex that made her want to crush him with a hug until his ribs cracked. Yet when she saw him, and he saw her, she had no desire to smother him with lip-glossed kisses and sobbing hugs.
Sonic's eyes didn't "wink with a twink," as she had once petnamed their green personality. They were these unsmiling, stale types of jade...well, things to look at! And instead of giving her a wave, his lips contorted into an upside down smirk. She rubbed her ankle with her toe in angst before looking down at her feet. This was not the type of blueness she had wanted to see. This was not his blue.
Nevertheless, to the train station they went, having agreed to see Tails months ago. She spoke and he mumbled.
{...S—Sonic...}
She walked and he staggered.
{Sonic...}
She hated brushing shoulders with him.
{Sonic...!}
She hated it when he didn't look at her.
{SONIC!}
And she hated wondering if he hated her.
{Where are you, Sonic?!}
Vaguely she knew that he was falling apart in some way. Vaguely she knew he was out of touch. With today, tomorrow, next week. Forever.
{My goodness, no! Not forever! Please don't let it be forever! Sonic!}
When they took a train into Mystic Ruins, he murmured, "Pathetic." His tone was foul as he watched the city's gray towers morph into the jungle's green trees.
That recognizable quote was used by only one hedgehog, but he was the hedgehog whom Sonic was now becoming.
And Amy hated it.
:: Chapter One ::
"Sonnnic! Oh, Sooonic~!"
A blue dash-mark zigzags between the trees, taking their green leaves with it.
"Sonic? SONIC! This is getting a little OLD don't you think, Sonic?"
...Old.
...Old!
Old was good.
Old was normal.
Taking this perk into account, the flavor in the following lines have never tasted sweeter to their sayer: "Darn! Why does he always have to play so hard to get?" Amy Rose drummed her foot against the soil. "Not to mention leaving a poor, defenseless girl like me all alone in a place like this!"
And then, suddenly — oh! just beyond the trees!
She blinked her antenna-like eyelashes and squealed, "Sonic!" Her feet took off.
The pink hedgehog had been chasing zaps and zips of blue through the Mystic Ruins like a kindergartner, but her purpose wasn't to hammer him in the dome until he agreed to take her paw in marriage. She planned on kicking Sonic back into the habit of being Sonic, which would only work by reminding him of the part he was supposed to play in her presence. Amy promised herself that she would dress him in Sonic's skin at all costs — and then pick a restaurant for them to dine in. 'Should it be Blue Hill or Faith & Flower?'
Ha, no matter! She'd have loads of time to brood later because her current mission was taking longer than expected! To think that Sonic had sworn an hour ago that all he needed to shake off his blue funk was a few laps around the rainforest, at that! He was such a brat sometimes! She'd be lying if she said that she was unhappy about him acting so in-Sonic, though.
"Slow down, SONIC! Y'know I can't run as fast as you can!" Amy huffed and puffed, still grinning under her sweat's heavy weight as she hightailed after Sonic. She was going to complete her mission and bring "Sonic" back once and for all. "Ready or not, here I COME!"
A chill ran all the way up to his quills. Amy swung out her Piko Piko Hammer and slammed its massive head against the dirt to launch herself into a high jump.
The shadow above Sonic began to triple in size. As it blocked out the sun completely, he looked up and saw a laughing, hysterical Amy with her arms and legs spread out like a flying squirrel. "WAHOA!" he blurted.
The two rolled down the road in a tumbleweed of squeals and hollers. Their bodies — well, Sonic's body — crashed face-first into a tree's stomach, shaking three coconuts from its pinnate leaves. The hairy fruit missed Sonic's skull, but Sonic's muzzle slid down the trunk until his chin dropped into a puddle of yuck. He surfaced from the mud and spat out its putrid flavor.
Sonic's catcher, who clung onto his back like a monkey on its mother's, nuzzled his head of spikes and sang, "I got you now, my darrrling Sonic!" For some reason, she was hoping that this rosy catchphrase would lead to some cute roundabout of banter and bicker, but her ears heard not one groan or stutter.
No, what Sonic did instead was very un-Sonic. He robotically stood up like he had no soul at all, causing Amy to slip off his back and land on her rump.
"Ow! That hurt!" Amy nursed her bottom with a weep before attacking him with a scolding, "What's your problem?!"
The anti-Sonic caricature didn't budge.
"I said, 'What's your problem?!'" Amy's temper jumped in front of her fear. A text box glowing with her mission assignment flashed in her head to reunite her with her original strategy. She swapped out her attitude for a better one. "What's wrong with you, Sonic? Loosen up and have some fun!" She playfully catapulted mud at his back, which was another battle technique to mask her consternation.
The gunk leaked down her victim's back and thighs. Amy paused in mid-throw when all she got from him was silence.
Birds catcalled.
Squirrels tutted.
"Sonic?" she baaed.
"You should go back home now, Amy." His un-Sonic voice was raggedy like a tattered electrical wire that had been chewed through by a puppy. "I'm not good for you to be around anymore."
All her funning deserted her face. "Sonic?" Tears arrived. "What're you...what're you saying?"
The hedgehog's posture slackened, his blue suddenly lighter than it had been a second ago. His ears became droopy looking, too. The voice that spoke next was Sonic's soft timbre, "It's just..." He looked down, turning his head. He crushed his limp fingers into a fist. "I just need a little more time."
Amy heaved herself off the ground in a frenzy that almost made her stumble. She hurried after him, hands asking for his embrace, eyes pleading for his submission, heart begging for his friendship. "B-But you've HAD time! You've been away from us for months! How much more time do you need?!"
"Amy..."
"Sonic!" Amy puled.
"You don't understand," he gently insisted.
"I do understand!" Amy cried for her Sonic and not this one.
Sonic opened his hands and looked between them. "You don't—...I don't even—...Augh!" He shook his head before holding it.
"Oh, Sonic! It'll be alright, Sonic! See?" She crept closer to him and touched his shuddering shoulders, smiling in tearful understanding, oblivious to the tendons that tightened under her touch. She looked around his arm to look at his face. "Nothing will hurt you as long as I have something to say about it! You just need to tell me what's wrong; then we can start figuring out how to make you feel like yourself again! And we'll do it together—"
Sonic rounded on her. "Amy, you don't get it!"
Amy's gasp was a choke. Under the shade of the tree, Sonic's eyes were blood-red, his fur was blue-black, and his molars looked like fangs.
"..." Speechless with no rational explanation to buffer her, Amy backed up until she had tripped over her own sandals. She doubled over and rolled onto her side, cowering in her hero's shadow. "S-Sonic? SONIC!"
The fanged monster vanished in a flash. In its place stood a traumatized Sonic the Hedgehog. He looked at his palms, head rocking from side to side, and then looked blindly at her. "Amy..."
The Sonic before Amy wasn't breathing right. It was like he was scared to be in his own body, and that scared the pink hedgehog even more. He came over to her and showered her in apologies, but she smacked his hands away.
"Keep your hands to yourself, Sonic!" Amy shook her head, pressing her eyes shut. Two tears raced each other to her chin.
Sonic looked at her like an abused chihuahua. "Amy, I'm sorry, I...!"
"You can eat your apology!"
His feet stopped in their tracks as a cloud umbrellaed them, darkening his body. "Amy..."
"What else do you hafta say for yourself?!"
"I need you,"—Sonic's open palm, the shaky palm he had lent for her to take, changed into a gesture for her to back away from him—"and everyone else, to just stay away from me."
Amy retaliated with sadness, "But you were already alone before you got here! And now that you're back, you can't even talk to me! I've spent all my time kissing the ground the Sonic I knew walked on—"
"Exactly, Amy!" His pitch went higher. "You've spent all your time kissing up to this "one-hero glory" stuff like you're part of some sheeple after the hero no one even had a memorial for died on our watch! You've been skipping like a goat in your own little dream world like you don't even care, like it never happened, like the whole world just woke up one day and forgot about...everything! I'm not even the hedgehog who—..." Sonic turned away and grabbed his temples, tossing his head as he unleashed a baritone that was torn between a beast's and a child's, "I couldn't save someone for the first time in my whole life..."
"..." Amy's balled hand covered her mouth. More tears surfaced from her eyes as his own fell down his. She dragged her feet forward, reaching for him with compassion. "Sonic, this isn't you—"
"Don't." He held his left hand out, crooked fingers digging into his forehead. The pain in his face softened into grief as he partly opened his moist eyelids. "Go back to your life, Amy. Chase a real dream...because Sonic can't be your life anymore after you realize he's not as perfect as you cracked him up to be."
Amy's pupils seemed to get smaller and smaller after every word he panted. Without a glance, her lovable hero bent his knees and bulleted out of sight.
"Sonic..." Amy sat on her knees as a tear wiggled down her cheek. It hung on her chin before bouncing off her bracelet with a soft ping. Selective outrage tampered with her memory of what he had shouted, motivating Amy to squeeze the mud in her fingers and hop onto her feet. "FINE, then!" She cried to him as he wandered far out, tears still biting at her eyes. "Y...you...OOOH, you...!"
No answer.
"Go right ahead, Sonic! Run away from your problems, because running away is what you do best!" She kicked up a stone and broke down the opposite road. The pink hedgehog had no sense of time or location as she knifed through the trees with self-victimization keeping her guilt at bay. As more and more trees zoomed past her, Amy Rose saw the road darken.
Twilight draped the Mystic Ruins, creeping along the jungle with eerie shadows. Amy wounded down to pant in front of a creek. The break gave her mind fissures of clarity.
"Run away from your problems, because running away is what you do best!"
"That was wrong of me, wasn't it?" Amy's whisper quavered in her strangled throat. She watched the waterworks gush up, shoot out, and pour down. Her hands hovered in front of her cheeks to catch tears. "I should've tried harder to listen to him." She dug her face into her palms to hide it from the world, ears flattening against her head as she bawled. "Oh, Sonic!"
A crack of thunder made her ear spring up. As if she had chanted a spell in elven, down came a barrage of raindrops. Amy blinked in disbelief as gallons of water soaked her to the bone. She inhaled to ululate, "Why is this happening to me?!"
Lightning arced across the clouds.
Amy's arms umbrellaed her head as she screamed. She hunted for an exit that would hopefully take her to Tails's workshop, but a hair-raising thought killed her momentum. 'But what about Sonic?!' She clasped her hands together and looked over her shoulder worriedly. 'I can't just leave him out here like this—"
A thunderbolt torched the tree that had been sheltering Amy.
The hedgehog dodged its flaming branch by falling onto a bed of moss. In tears again, she closed her eyes and flew into another direction, howling Sonic's name. Hoots and caterwauls mutated into wicked laughter all around her. Evil eyes filled the trees.
"Why is this happening?!" Amy panted. "Why is this—?! BUH?!" Amy's toe tripped over a vine on the footpath. Her sob caught in her throat as the world catapulted into slow motion.
Time sped up and her face skidded against the ground. Growling, she slammed her palms down and pulled her face out of the mud. Just as she had finished smudging mire across her muzzle, the wind blew her hair sideways, making the pink strands straddle her eyes.
The draft faded and her quills swung back down into their original position, giving her the opportunity to blink at the gap of missing earth in front of her. 'Is that...a meteor crater?' her mental Wikipedia identified. 'What's something like that doing here?' The puzzled girl peeked inside the chasm.
Lightning lit the dark. Her pupil was sucked back into her iris. There, lying in cakes of mud, glistened a black ball of fur. The lightning flickered out and the image was lost in the darkness.
"H-Hoof!" Amy covered her mouth.
The ebony quills, which were crowned with vermilion streaks and overgrown ferns, and the rusted air-blades, which were covered in dirt and animal feces, belonged to him.
"But it...it can't be! That's impossible!" Amy cried. "Isn't it?" She waited for the lightning to light the sky again. When it did, the power of her denial changed the figure's anatomy. The creature below favored more of an anteater with blood streaks on it, granting her mind permission to run with the illusion.
"See?! Look! It's not him, so just snap out of it, Amy!" She wobbled up onto her feet and gulped as she squeezed the hem of her shorts. "The lightning was just playing tricks on you!"
Even if it wasn't, she didn't want to see his dead body. She didn't want to remember how she had pressed her fingertips against the glass of the space shuttle to reflect on his death for less than twenty minutes. She tried to close her eyes and just leave it all behind, but her slippery sandal made her slide down the hole's muddy walls without her consent. She screamed and tumbled until her body was left sprawled out in front of the corpse. Amy sat up, hugging her cold chest while rain drowned her cheese-thin clothing to the point where it looked as transparent as plastic.
The girl had no choice but to lift her head and see the truth lying a foot away from her beyond a wall of tears. Roots, mushrooms, mold, and even moss had grown on and under his body, shackling his limbs to keep him as a prisoner of the earth.
"It...it is him!"
The glare that had always been there — the cleft between his eyebrows with the red highlights in the arches of his lids — sculpted his expression into one of eternal hatred.
"Shadow!" Amy knew it to be so a long time ago, but saying his name out loud made her feel less woozy. The frightened pink hedgehog edged near the ancient carcass. "Shadow?" She reached out to touch him to see if he was alive, but she was too afraid to find out. Animals that looked dead were known to spring to life in Lifetime movies. "Sh—Shadow?" Amy stressed the syllables of his name, trying to will him awake without having to grope for a pulse. "Oh Shadow, y-you're..."
Alive.
Shadow the Hedgehog was alive.
"You've spent all your time kissing up to this "one-hero glory" stuff like you're part of some sheeple after the hero no one even had a memorial for died on our watch!"
Amy gasped at the echo of Sonic's shout. "Sonic!"
"You've been skipping like a goat in your own little dream world like you don't even care!"
Another gush of tears stung her eyes. She had blocked Shadow the Hedgehog out of her mind for two years. Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, and even Eggman avoided topics about ARK. The lack of dialogue helped the world feel like the galactic episode had never happened. It appeared to her now that Sonic was the one who had suffered the most from the event.
Amy's eyes widened.
It was Sonic who averted his eyes and balled his hands into fists when the G.U.N. Commander thanked him for saving their world and ridding them of the Professor's "weapons." Even those who had thanked Sonic without badmouthing Shadow ignored the black hedgehog's fallen alliance. Worse still, Sonic knew that Shadow would not have fallen if it weren't for Amy Rose. Amy's now shaking fingers hovered over Shadow's forehead.
Sonic had been the one hurting — the one resenting her because she was...
"—skipping like a goat in your own little dream world like you don't even care!"
Her chin trembled.
Was she truly this one-dimensional?
"Like it never happened, like the whole world just woke up one day and forgot about...everything!"
Amy stared at the black hedgehog's face, inhaling it all in, trying to imagine Sonic's pain, trying to feel it and make it her own, but she could only think one selfish thought: 'You're the reason Sonic hates me.' A teardrop fell from her nose and patted Shadow's quill.
Red eyes flunked open.
Amy wheezed. She was going to die. She was sure of it — sure of it the moment she felt his eyes impale hers. The Lord of Hades materialized from the earth as the shadows of his horned quills engulfed her face like a crown of damnation. His eyes blazed with inferno, and his molars glinted like sabers in their hateful grit.
Rain rolled off Amy's flapping eyelashes. "Sh...Shadow..."
Shadow's eyes enlarged. All of a sudden, the black hedgehog crumbled to the ground.
"Shadow!" Amy yelped in distress.
With unsteady elbows, the curled hedgehog raised his body off the patch of broken mushrooms before keeling over in pain again. "Gruh!"
Amy, for the third time, gulped down her fear and dived in to help, but he recoiled. Right then and there, Amy did not see him as a murderous somebody. She saw him as a frightened anybody.
"Who...are you?" The hedgehog's raspy voice demanded. His eyes were half-open. "What do you want with me? SPEAK."
Amy cowered from the ringing in her ears. "I—It's...it's me: Amy!" she bleated. "Don't you remember me? You promised me that you'd save the planet!"
For a moment, Shadow's eyes cleared, almost scintillating with recognition, but in the next, they clapped shut. "M-Mm...!" His hand snaked around his chest to clutch his white bib.
Amy moved her attention away from his face and brought it down to his glove. "Shadow, you're hurt! You hafta let me help you—"
Before he could reply, Shadow collapsed.
"Shadow!" Amy came forth and rolled him over, watching in horror as the trembling Shadow shriveled up into a ball.
The black hedgehog moaned without opening his mouth while he held his chest, most likely loath to express the depth of his pain. Amy shook and shook and shook him, baaing his name until she could baa no more. Shadow drifted into another coma despite her wails.
Stunned, Amy cautiously touched his soaked chest, stroking through the knotted mats of fur and moss to feel burn marks. She shook her head, grunting. "Get a hold of yourself, Amy! Shadow needs your help right now, so get your butt into gear and get him out of here!" She nodded to herself after balling her hand.
Amy used the thickest lianas she could find to tether their bodies together. She tested the durability of the liana that was dangling from the crater's rooftop and got to climbing. "Oi, Shadow," Amy huffed. "You're heavier than you look!" With Shadow slung over her back, she scaled the wall until her fingers could grip the jungle's grassy floor. She scrambled onto the road and looked around for a log cabin.
The cabin she spotted was hidden under a canopy of vines and branches, but she still prayed to whatever God was up there that someone would offer them a night's stay. 'Maybe it's Big's place!' "Don't you worry, Shadow! I'll do my best to keep us both from harm!" She dashed towards her destination with Shadow's body bouncing on her back. "I'm making a promise to you just like you made a promise to me—"
Thunderbolts struck the trail Amy was jogging on. She scurried under a palm's tree fallen leaf and pulled it over their bodies, whimpering. Once the lightning shower ended, the path was cleared for her again. Amy ran up the cabin's porch steps and knocked on the door. She wiped her runny nose and heaved Shadow's body onto her back to keep him from sliding off. "Almost there, Shadow! Just hang on a little longer!"
After ten minutes, she was still on the porch, so she knocked again. "Hello?! Anybody in there?!"
There wasn't even a creak inside the cabin to imply that someone was coming to the door.
The diabolic eyes watching Amy from the jungle killed her will to keep her nerves under control. "Somebody, PLEASE! Hurry up and open this door right this minute!" She shivered from the bipolar mix of Shadow's hot breath warming her neck and the cold weather freezing her skin. "I need help! Please HELP me!" Her knees started bending; Shadow was getting heavier.
"Anybody!" Amy flattened herself against the door to express her desperation as she sobbed and banged on the wood. "S—Shadow needs help!"
But no one was coming for her or Shadow. Not even Sonic.
"Arrrrgh, is ANYBODY — HOME?!" She hammered and hammered on the door with her fist before using her foot to kick at it.
The door flew wide open at the demand of her sandal. She stood in bemusement before her bemused mind remembered Shadow's condition. Amy waddled into the cabin and evaluated the space. It had one room, three windows, no furniture, firewood, a fireplace with a chimney cap, and an okay ceiling. By looking at the number of roaches and mice that were hiding in odd places, it was plain to see that no one had vacationed there in months.
Even though she was scared and disgusted, Amy knew she would have to make the best of it. She assessed the moth-eaten blankets hanging from a coat rack. 'Hopefully, they'll work for the both of us.' She shook out a blanket and laid Shadow down with extra caution, whose wet fur was forming a rumpled spot on the fabric. Amy massaged her thumbs into his shoulders all the way down to his forearms to knead some heat into his body.
Shadow's body had temperature now, but it was colder than metal under a pile of snow.
"I have to find a way to keep Shadow alive!" she warned herself, glaring at her thumbs as they went to work. The pink hedgehog swiped the sweat on her brow with her wrist. She had no knowledge of whether or not an artificial entity was immune to infections, but she wasn't going to risk it. Amy bit her lip as Shadow exhaled fogs of white from his nostrils.
Every breath appeared to hurt him.
Amy looked outside, then looked back at Shadow. She leaned over him to say softly, "Don't worry, Shadow. You can count on me." Amy left his side and ran over to the fireplace.
The pink heroine had to make sure her firewood was ridden of moisture before starting a small fire with dry kindling. Then she added logs to the pit. She dragged Shadow toward the fireplace by the armpits, which helped her discover muscles she never knew she had. Amy folded her legs into their calves as she watched Shadow from behind the flickering orange wall between them. Shadow's eyelids, muzzle, and forehead glowed with the firelight; his beige lips were curled into a down-pointing arrow.
It was worth noting that Shadow didn't look scary to Amy anymore. He looked — and Amy's eyes gentled with the realization of this — helpless. She crushed her legs against her chest with her arms. The embers of the fire filled her eyes, turning them into burning emeralds. Those burning emeralds were soon glazed over by tears.
Amy dropped her face against her knees, crying. 'What do I do now, Sonic?'
# Author's Note
The point behind Sonic's flanderization - at least to Amy - is that old blue has been slowly mutating into "Shadow." Remember how people thought Shadow was Sonic physically? This, to Amy, is the reverse, but to an emotional extent. The cause, she believes? Losing a potential friend whom he could not save for once and being exposed to death.
In my eyes, I too wouldn't think it makes sense for Sonic's shiny world to not be affected by such a jolt. For this, Amy interprets it as mild psychopathy. He's not seeking sustenance from his companions. He's disconnected and wants to be away. He's going through what Shadow went through after he lost Maria, she feels, since it was implied that Shadow had been "perfect and pure" before his own trauma struck.
She always sees Sonic so well put together with his feelings, even in the worst circumstances, so some severe trauma at the horror of being the only one who saw a friend die - one he couldn't save - has thrown everyone for a tailspin. Such is partially like the route that was taken for Fleetway Sonic when he lost his bunny comrade because he became the same person who is written here.
—* EDIT: This is an old story, so I don't want/need critiques. I know where it falls, and I know how I've improved since this time.
I was one of those earlier willows when this shipping first came around the bin, so it's obviously not too fresh when it comes to scenario. I was probably one of the first to write this goofy, "Amy gets lost in the jungle/finds Shadow's body" plot. After that, several may have mimicked it, but enjoy.