"Maybe it's just because I have no sense of 'time'… Hell, I barely know what that is. Usually, I'd ask, but…" After that, all I could do was stare; I hadn't thought of anything to say next. That could've been because I, like I always did, figured my highly intelligent mind would continue where I'd left off. Pah. I guess that a sardonic bastard like me should at least have some fault, right?
I never thought that Fate could be oh so cruel, though. Let me be the first to tell you that that bitch really knows how to slug you in the balls. And it hurts. Not like pricking your finger on a needle, or even smashing your head against the stove. Nope – it hurts like all fucking hell.
My hand reached out, my gloved hand that was still soaking because of the night rain, and wiped the caked mud from the headstone – his headstone. Sometimes people were so unknowingly wicked; couldn't they have at least given him a monument, a golden statue, or something grandiose – for God's sake, Sonic the Hedgehog deserved much more than a cracked grave that was a favorite target for the 10-year-old neighborhood asswipes.
You'd probably expect me to go into the egocentric reasoning of why he deserved a gold statue – you know, 'he rescued me' or 'he touched my heart when no one else could' and all that shit – now, right? Well, I won't. Sonic should've gotten that monument for rescuing the world, and more than once at that.
Not because he took pity on me, nothing more than a facsimile existence. Not because he deluded himself into thinking that he could possibly love me. No one in their right mind would give a second thought to me, so why did he? Why, oh why, did he have to go and fucking torture me like this? Just because he could die and I can't?
"I hate that I think these things about you, but…Sonic, you'll never be able to imagine how lonely I am."
Extracting the towel from my knapsack, I began to scrub his headstone clean of the muck and grime. It was arduous work every time I went, and whenever I did, someone would have always found a new way to deface Sonic's final resting place. Honestly, the kids these days have no sense of gratitude; if it wasn't for the blue hedgehog, they wouldn't be here. Nor would I.
In all honesty, I would've placed my money on Tails; he played the perfect boy toy, and wouldn't have refused, had Sonic ever asked. The kid was constantly tagging along after Sonic like they were attached at the hip; like he was the hedgehog's…shadow. What a laugh. Hardy har har. Leave it to my mind, fucked up as it is, to come up with something that ridiculously creative. I'm the one who's destined to be Sonic's shadow, when he was alive, when we fought, and even now I live only as the mere memory of him.
Robotnik knew what he was doing when he named me.
And, as it turns out, the bastard scientist had a pretty twisted mind. I mean, I have my problems, and a lot of them, but I like to consider myself Byronic. On the other hand, Gerald Robotnik was just plain fucked up. Apparently, he had this amazing idea to create me as the ultimate life form, and part of that package was immortality – inability to be killed, non-deterioration of my body, and agelessness. In hindsight, maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. But I haven't gotten to the kicker yet. Dear old Gerald thought it would be damn hilarious to make me human – you know what I'm talking about: susceptibility to disease (which I can't die of), hunger (this is laugh-worthy), and emotion (gag me with a fucking spoon). The whole gamut.
Not dying of disease or hunger is a kind of nice deal, I guess, but emotions I could do without. They drive you crazy; spur you to make rash decisions, and all around work tirelessly to screw you up the ass. Human emotion was what got me into this mess, wouldn't you know?
"Why do I never bring two towels, or something…?" I muttered to myself. The white rag was practically black, and it was as though the shit on Sonic's grave refused to come off unless you tugged at it. Joy. Now I would have to do just that, and when I got back home I'd have to clean up the mess from coming home all muddy. That's really fucking brilliant of you, Mother Nature – pour on me while I'm trying to clean up his spot. Idea of the millennium.
Anyway, I don't truly know how it happened. Sonic and I always hated each other: we'd call each other fakes, we'd throw some punches, and eventually we'd run off in opposite directions for whatever asinine reason happened to come up. After a while, though, we came to tolerate one another, then we began to like each other's company. It was…comforting, knowing that he was someone I could talk to. And then it just…happened. Don't ask me how, it just did. But, perhaps, falling for Sonic, the personification of gallantry, was normal. He's always did have a gaggling bunch of fans following him wherever he went.
However, I never expected that Sonic the Hedgehog, who could have anyone he wanted, would choose me. What did I have to offer him, besides…nothing? To this day, I can't think of a damn thing he saw in me. Shadow the Hedgehog was, is, and always will be, scum of the earth. Created by science to be a freak, a nothing. And yet Sonic told me that he very much loved me, and I haven't the slightest inkling why.
Amy Rose never approved of our romance. I felt like if we told no one, life would progress in a simple way and nothing would change; that way of living had never appealed to Sonic, though. He had no qualms announcing it to everyone, going as far as to hallucinate out loud; about wedding bells. Take it from me; you can't even begin to fathom embarrassment. And Amy, being the chauvinistic bitch she was, was never the same afterward. She used every opportunity to insult me, but never her darling Sonic, who was obviously going through a phase. I still think it's, in the end, my fault that she left and died on the side of the road on a rainy April night, a bottle of booze in her right hand, lipstick in her left, and a sex-fueled maniac between her legs.
Damn emotions make me feel sorry for her when all she did was drive me into the ground.
And then life was good for about twenty or thirty years. Sonic was absolutely crazy about me, I was absolutely crazy about him, and our sheets always ended up ripped apart. The employees at Sears always gave us odd stares when we'd come in looking for replacements just about every other week. But, then again, with Sonic around, I never seemed to mind, because we weren't the typical, disgusting, "lovey-dovey" couple. Hell no. When we turned out the lights, we got fucking freaky. Listen to some Rick James and you'll get the idea.
But when those young, wild years passed us, I saw the Sonic of years gone by. He was getting older, shaggy, and worn at the edges. I was looking upon life as it was supposed to be. But when Sonic beheld me, he would just see Shadow as he had been all those years ago on Prison Island. Not a thing changed, and I don't know if it pained him or not, but it pained me. Beyond anything, I was hurt because I knew what the eventual result would be. We weren't a normal couple, like Knuckles and Rouge.
When Sonic finally died, I hadn't aged a day. As we put him in his coffin, I looked at him: his blue fur was faded, his skin pale, his eyes sagging. Just like any old creature should be. And I spent almost his entire life with him; I was still the same. It hurt like nothing else. Fuck, it was like someone was driving a rusty spike into my heart and twisting it (make up your own mind on whether it's literal or figurative – I wouldn't die either way). I remember not talking at the funeral because I was too damn embarrassed to go up there, still young, and stand in front of all of Sonic's friends – my friends, who were elderly. At the reception, Tails came up to me, and apologized profusely, and I could barely keep my composure.
It's truly amazing how the mind works. All that happened at least a couple hundred years ago, yet I still recall it as though it had occurred only yesterday. A couple hundred years go by, and all I can think about are the times with Sonic. Obsessive, much?
Because of emotion, I have to live with regrets. Each day, I want nothing more than to hear his voice one last time. That damnable emotion has driven me out of my mind over the centuries, yet I can't go insane.
Immortality is the worst fate I can possibly imagine; it's the reason I can never be with him ever again. Fate just couldn't leave me alone. "I…I let all our time slip away. Because I'm immortal, I just never realized what aging is, and how fast it happens…" And the tears started down my cheeks, spiraling through my fur, and landing on my knees. Sniffling, I attempted to wipe my eyes, but to no avail. Guess it was time to blame it on the rain. "I'm so stupid…"
The world had forgotten its savior – just friends and a few people who remembered were at the funeral. Most everyone, though, didn't know Sonic – the generation that he saved was all but lost, and the new generation had no clue why they were even there. Ungrateful pricks…So, in the end, all I could afford with what Sonic left me was the coffin and a regular tombstone. A hero deserves better.
My sense of time is distorted beyond belief, so I couldn't tell how long it had been when I finally finished cleaning Sonic's headstone. Now it read in clear, sparkling letters that yes, that was where he lay: in a grove of cancerous vines and overgrown weeds. No one bothered to come take care of the cemetery anymore, so everything just sat and wasted away. It was the same with the grave of Tails, or Rouge, or Knuckles, or Silver, or Cream (who was buried alongside Cheese's miniature grave). Everyone's body had long since finished rotting away, as I surmised, but they were all up in Heaven as they were so long ago. And I could never go up there.
I got up and grimaced at the towel, which had definitely seen better, whiter days. Now it was covered in sludge and it was disgusting. It would need a good trip through the washing machine when I got home. Where else was I supposed to go?
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I don't want to go home, but I can't just up and die. That's what I get for not being natural, for being a bastard, for being a monster. But why didn't monsters ever get breaks? Didn't someone who found love deserve to reunite with their loved one up there above the clouds?
I didn't think so. Fuck. The world is so cruel sometimes. It's not at all like it used to be.
Sonic, what's the rain? Is it your tears, falling down from Heaven? Or is it condensation being released back to the Earth, and nothing more? Just give me a sign.
And I started to cry once again. Fuck. Couldn't it have been a less humiliating, forlorn sign? Guess I'll just blame it on the rain.