Okay... so this chapter has some more of the Shadow-Maphiles-Bonding thing to it... However... I must say that I did not originally plan to end the chapter the way I did. But... I am pleased with it...

Hope you like this one ;P

Shadow the Hedgehog was at a loss as he stared at the quivering, crying mess of a hedgehog before him that was Mephiles the Dark. Mephiles seemed unable to stop his tears and was utterly upset the moment he had laid eyes on Shadow's injuries, which had been inflicted on the shade's part.

As the crystalline hedgehog choked on his breath, Shadow tried to touch his hand to his shoulder again, this time Mephiles not bothering to jump away, but instead shuddering.

"Look… like I've said, I've had worse…" Shadow tried to say reassuringly, trying to calm Mephiles down. "It'll heal over like those other times… It's not a big problem…"

Obviously, Shadow realized the moment he said that, Mephiles started to tremble now, even worse than before.

"It is! It is a big problem!" He yelped out, closing his eyes, gripping a hand behind an ear and shaking his head frantically. "You weren't supposed to get hurt! Not at all! What is wrong with me?!"

"There's nothing wrong with you… you just have an inner demon who wants me gone, and keeps messing with your head…"

"But there is something wrong with me!" The shade snapped his head up and locked gazes with Shadow, who could see a considerable amount of pain behind Mephiles' eyes. "There is! There is! Something is very wrong with me!"

"What makes you say that?" Shadow was very much worried about him now. Mephiles was always one to deny having any flaws, so to claim something like this repeatedly was not really a good sign.

Mephiles held back another flood of tears long enough to whisper out: "Dark wasn't the one who hurt you at the bridge… He told me that was on my part… I did it… I… it was… I'm so… I…"

He couldn't finish his sentence. He choked on the last words, and dissolved into silent tears this time, shifting his eyes to the grey tiled floor quickly as his ears flattening and disappearing under his quills.

As Mephiles shuddered again, Shadow was quiet. His silence was upsetting to Mephiles even more than if he had just decided to hit him upside the head and yell at him about his problem.

"… You should have just let me drown…" Mephiles whispered hollowly, not looking up. "… You should have just left me alone and all your problems would have been solved… you hate me anyway…"

…

…

"I don't hate you…" Shadow said finally.

This caused Mephiles' ears to perk upward quickly as he looked up once this was said. At those words, his despair had shifted into shocked disbelief, as if he wasn't sure he had heard that right.

"I don't hate you…" Shadow repeated with a small laugh once he saw the shade's confusion. "If I did… I wouldn't have bothered to look for you once you ran off, nor would I have tried to swim to save you… heck… I wouldn't have even tried to help you at all if I hated you…"

"Wha..?"

"Just between you and me…" Shadow said with a slight smile as he decided to let Mephiles in on a little secret. "When you jumped… I'll admit that was the first time you've made me cry…"

"… You… cried… about me?" Mephiles said in complete astonishment. "But… why? I… all I've ever really done to you was hurt you… I don't deserve that…"

"Ah, but see…" Shadow pulled a chair in front of him, facing the back of it towards Mephiles, and rested his arms on the backrest of it as he sat down. "If you had killed yourself… I would have the one to live with the fact that that could have been avoided if I had just listened to you. I've already lost one friend trying to protect me before… If it happened again… I don't know what might happen to me…"

"… You lost a friend before..?" Mephiles' despair seemed to have steadily dissolved as he became increasingly interested in what he was being told. "… wait… did you just imply I'm your friend now..?"

"Sure… I mean, you've been living with us for a good ten months now… even I can't hate anyone for that long…"

"What happened to your friend?"

Shadow's expression died just a bit, but only minimally. If Rouge had been around, she would had recognized that as him recollecting on that day, but well determined not to get upset about it. Shadow was working on letting it go, and in fact… he was doing pretty well, only remembering Maria and Professor Gerald as how he would like them to be remembered… before they had been killed…

"How do I start this one?" Shadow tapped a finger to his forehead in thought, trying to collect his thoughts and stringing them into a coherent form. He had it figured out in no time flat. "Okay… remember when I told you I had been in a coma for fifty years?"

"Uh huh…"

"I said that GUN had done that to me?"

"Yes…"

"And told you about what had happened fifty years after that?"

"You said that you had met Rouge and everyone after Eggman had set you free the first time. Then you had ended up in another pod, and was freed by Rouge, but couldn't quite remember several things…"

"True… but I left quite a few details out on purpose…"

"Like what, and why?"

"I didn't feel like sharing many of those things. There are a few things about me that even Rouge has had to find out on her own, because I wouldn't tell."

"But like what? And what does this have to do with your friend?"

"You already know I'm not a full bred hedgie right?"

"You're half Black Arms alien… whatever they are…" Mephiles had never really bothered to look into the fullness of the truth of Shadow's other side of the "family", he just simply knew the classification.

"Ah, see now… that's part of how this story starts…" Shadow grinned at him. "The other part is that my friend had an incurable illness called 'Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome'. Part of the reason for my creation was that I was made as part of research for looking into immortality, which in turn could help Maria and hopefully cure her."

"But… how does that explain you being half Black Arms… in fact what are they, exactly?"

Shadow explained in pretty good details about the demonic alien race, and how they had tried to use the planet as a fuel source by latching their comet to the Earth, and paralyzing its inhabitants with a gas that locked all motor movements, gradually making its victims weaker and weaker as the time under its control went on.

"There seemed to be no way that we could get out of this one. Every one of us was forced down and frozen in place. I, much to my dislike, was stuck in a way that looked like I was bowing to Doom, because I had collapsed once I heard about why else I had been created…" Shadow rested his fanged teeth on top of each other and clenched them in contempt, frowning slightly. "And then he sent those little Death Leeches of his after us to devour us from the feet up… aaaaand… we couldn't move… at all…"

"Obviously, you did… because we wouldn't be having this conversation if you had been eaten…" Mephiles wiped at his running nose as he started to settle down, any trace of his recent hysteria fading gradually as his interest increased.

"Luck have it that my half Black Arms genetics gave me the ability to resist the gas… but I didn't know I was able to until I got really fired up. Stood up, and stomped the little thing into a slimy puddle on the floor…"

Mephiles actually laughed at the thought of that.

"I see you're feeling a little better…" Shadow flashed a grin at him.

"A bit… but, please… continue…"

"Okay. I took off after Doom, who had left once I broke free, and it took me a good ten minutes to find him again. He's standing there with the seven Emeralds, and tried his mind trick thing on me again… it was then I found out that he could actually get into my head, force me down and that was also when I found out the darker side to the reason of my creation… which was that he had given his DNA so he could use me as part of his plan to kill the planet…"

"He… got in your head? Wait… you were supposed to be used to destroy the planet?!" Mephiles exclaimed the last sentence in total disbelief as he shook his head. "No way… you're a good guy… right?"

"Wasn't always…" Shadow said with a considerable amount of regret in his voice.

Mephiles' ears shot up as far as they could go as soon as he heard this, his eyes widening. Then, with a frown, he leaned forward as much as he could without falling off the bed to stare at Shadow as hard as he could, said hedgehog feeling like he was being scanned.

"Explain further…" Mephiles requested simply.

Pause…

"Uh… 'Kay… I was kinda on the aliens' side for a while…"

"WHY?!" Mephiles yelled loud enough to cause Shadow to flinch and swivel his ears down.

"… They told me they could help me with my amnesia… I was desperate!"

"And you believed them… Oh c'mon… If I, the most omnipotent of former demons, couldn't get you to fall for the slim chance of what could happen to you in the future… what made you believe them?"

"They were using my hatred of Humans against me…"

"But, your best friend was a Human… your creator was a Human…"

"I didn't begin hating Humans until after they were killed…"

There was this awkward silence. Mephiles expression softened as he sat back down and stared at Shadow, the both of them with their ears flattened. Mephiles' ears went down further as he looked away.

"… Sorry… I had no idea…"

"That's okay… you couldn't have known about it…"

…

"What happened to them?"

"GUN shot them…"

Mephiles turned his head to Shadow swiftly.

"Not the same GUN that you work for?"

"The same branch… but not the same people… they've either died, been killed or retired…"

"Why did they kill them?"

"It's a bit of a long story… but they thought that I was being created as a weapon or something. They stormed the ARK, and tried to not only shut it down, but destroy me and any research that was used in my creation. I think they thought that because of how unruly the Biolizard was becoming. She was my prototype… and very unstable. GUN stormed the ARK after she went nuts and decided to purge the research, and that included taking me out as well..."

"But you survived… what happened to Maria and your creator?"

"Maria took the shot for me while she was trying to save me. That's just not right… I was supposed to be the one to protect her… to help her… and she lost her life because she was standing in the way. And I couldn't do anything about it… I couldn't do anything…"

It seemed now that the roles between the two hedgehogs had switched. Mephiles was now the one to watch Shadow as he poured out his story to the shade. Mephiles could now understand where Shadow was coming from with why he continued to protect him from harm… it was because of what had happened to someone close to him, and… if Mephiles had let himself die… it would have made Shadow relive that day… A friend losing their life because they were more worried about his safety…

…

He would have hurt Shadow by doing that anyway…

…

Something he had wanted to avoid…

…

…

As Shadow half hid his face in his hand, staring at his hover skates on his feet, Mephiles slid off the bed carefully, a shiver running through him as his feet touch the cold tile of the hospital room.

Without a word, he took a few steps forward, and did something unexpected…

…

…

He wrapped his arms around Shadow, whose eyes widened with surprise. Mephiles rested his head on his shoulder and whispered: "… I'm so sorry…" before shuddering a few times, obviously trying to hold back his own tears.

Shadow stared ahead in confusion before hesitantly bringing his own arms up to return the embrace. His body relaxed some as he murmured back: "… It's not your fault…"

And then... they both wept…

I'll say it again... I did not plan to end the chapter this way. But, I like how the two have a bit of a better understanding of each other. Plus... this shows just how far Mephiles has really matured as a person (hedgehog?), and shows just how far he can feel sympathy for others. I'm so proud of him! :D

I tried to not have Shadow become a mess at the mention of Maria's name, as it seems to be customary with many fics (looks around shiftily)... after all, in Next Gen, Shadow had not mentioned Maria, Gerald, or the ARK at all, obviously meaning that he's starting to heal over that. So it made sense to me to acknowledege that acheivement somewhat in this chapter. Shadow's growing as a character in the games as well!

As for any questions about the location of Rouge, Rae, Jak and anyone else right now... I guess I can just say we're at the gift shop or something... you know you can get lost in a hospital... so we could be anywhere... :D

See you next chapter! :D