These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. They're short stories inspired by songs. I discovered Scribbler doing something similar with the Kingdom Hearts Videogame series, and decided I'd like to give it a shot.

I have a theory about Sonic and Shadow's relationship which I draw upon quite abstractly in this chapter. Anyone who can guess what that relationship is gets to choose a song and have one f these ficlets dedicated to them based on that song.

Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated.

25. Edge of Thorns, Savatage.

There are many things which Shadow knows he'll never share with anyone.

Which is... peculiar, really. He has had over fifty years and several mind wipes in which to forget, and yet these things remain inside of him, determined not to be driven out. They aren't memories so much as impressions. Things which would be memories were it not for the fact that his mind doesn't seem to want to allow him to hang onto things like that.

For example: he knows things about Sonic the Hedgehog.

He's not certain what these things are. The memories of his time before the Metarex came are slim and faint in his mind, except for those which have Sonic in them. Sonic or Maria. Or Sonic and Maria, and this is the strangest impression of all. Even though he knows they can't possibly have known each other –hell, they didn't even exist in the same time period. Sonic the Hedgehog has never known Maria as anything more than the motivation behind the near destruction of earth, and he never will– Shadow sometimes dreams of them together. They're on earth, running through snowy fields at sunset. Maria's eyes glow, the way they use to in the light from the earth far below while sitting in their observation room.

But she was always frowning then, and here she is smiling: laughing in fact, so hard that her cheeks are turning red and tears are running down her face. When he tries to interact with them, his presence is pushed away. As if they're inside some kind of deep, glass bubble that no one but themselves can enter.

He... hates it. The faker who never understood, and Maria, together, but every attempt to break through the bubble just pushes him further away. As if he's feeding it with his anger. Then Shadow always wakes up and spends the rest of his time awake pretending that the uneasy feeling in his body is just his overactive senses, keeping him ahead of every move his enemies may be about to make.

He tries to think less and less about Maria, these days, mainly because the memories he does have are so vague and distant that they only frustrate him. They remind him of a loneliness so deep that he can feel it in ever bone of his body, hurting more than anything has ever hurts anyone before. And Shadow doesn't like to show pain, given that he so rarely experiences it.

From the first moment he met Sonic (every "first" moment, because there have been several now and to be honest, Shadow is getting sick of all these reintroductions) he had known that something about the hedgehog was different. Connected in some way, to Shadow's first life. The Chaos Control in him understands these things better than Shadow understands himself it draws Sonic to him again and again, like a moth to a burning black and red flame, not caring how much it gets burned.

Shadow hates this fact as well. The fact that the only constant thing in all of his erased pasts is that infernal hedgehog. The fact that the one part of his existence he thought was free from memories of this creature, who is so like him and yet so different, is being invaded through his own dreams. That Maria should smile at Sonic the way she once smiled only for Shadow. These are things of the past, and Shadow is determined to find a present free from those memories, if Sonic would just stay away from him and let him get on with it.

So Shadow sleeps little, remembers even less, and keeps the dreams of Maria and Sonic together in the snowfall to himself.

"I have seen you on the edge of dawn

Felt you here before you were born

Now watch your dreams upon the edge of thorns

But I don't think about you anymore."