AN: Well, I've done it. I posted my version of the classic scene aboard the ARK. That's all this is, really. If you don't want to read yet another version of the same old scene, I suggest you skip over this one.
FREEZE-FRAME
One moment in time, marked by a single gunshot, changes everything.
How cliché.
The image of innocent blue stained red will never leave him. He takes it all in for a fraction of a second, his eyes passing over her face, the blood, the trembling hands of the one who had fired the shot. A strangled cry of her name passes from behind his lips as two gloved fists slam into a wall of unbreakable glass. The child inside the blood-spattered capsule listens to the final countdown with ears pinned close to his head, desperate to free himself, to right their destiny, to see the dawn of another day by her side. No matter how many tears force their way down his face, none of it will ever work out for him. No sunrise will ever be as beautiful, no song will ever sound as sweet. Nothing will be the same.
Widened crimson eyes look on in horror as the children's world is completely and utterly destroyed. He knows that he's not ready to become an adult, not ready to venture away from her side.
But he doesn't have a choice.
Her last four words are the catalyst.
"Sayonara... Shadow... the Hedgehog..."
He falls, watching the fragments of his imagined future fall with him. Though he is young, he is hardly a fool; he knows that a single gunshot has drastically altered the course of his life. The world that they had once dreamed of walking together is waiting for him, and only him.
He doesn't want any of it. No matter what the planet Earth holds for him, it is meaningless without her by his side. The dreams that they had shared are no longer his, for they were sent to die with her. Already he can feel all of the positive emotions that she had shown him melting away, all replaced by a blinding hatred and a far-reaching sadness. The happiness of only hours ago fades and a crushing loneliness takes its place, filling his chest with its weight and dragging him down to the floor.
His eyes remain on the shrinking shape of his former home, though his vision is becoming increasingly blurred. His lips tremble, his fists clench tighter, and his heart wavers, helplessly crying out her name again and again. For the first time, he realizes that he will never feel her touch again.
It is here that reality sinks its teeth in and forces out one word:
"NO!"
~End~