Ta da! I told ya that I'd update when my other fic was done!

Feel free to go check it out anytime, btw...

Disclaimer: Today is Opposite Day, which doesn't mean I can't say I DO own Sonic! Man, I sure do hate Opposite Day...

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I was getting very frustrated. No matter how hard I tried, the stupid puzzle cube wouldn't get solved! I tossed it onto the bed and growled at it.

"Stupid box! I give up!" I huffed.

"You won't get anywhere if you give up just like that," said a voice from behind me.

I turned to see Big Brother standing there.

"Too hard," I protested, pointing at the puzzle cube.

"You can do it, Little Brother," said Big Brother, "I know you can, and I know you the best."

"How?" I asked.

"Let me help," said Big Brother as he handed me the puzzle cube back.

While I put my hands back on the puzzle cube's pieces, Big Brother put his own hands over mine.

"You gotta move it around only a little bit," Big Brother explained, "And try to feel where it's different. Can you feel it, Little Brother?"

I tried to 'feel' it like Big Brother explained.

"…Feels…different, here," I said as it slowly came to me, and the piece slid into place smoothly.

That let me move the next piece, and the next, and the next one after that, until it was suddenly finished.

"Done!" I cried in triumph as the completed puzzle cube started glowing a soft green.

"You did it! See, I told you that you could do it, Shadow. You didn't need my help at all. That's my genius Little Brother…"
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That dream had felt so real, almost like a memory. Shadow felt himself drifting towards consciousness, but tried to cling to the last threads of that scene. Himself as a very young hedgehog, and Raven actually being the part of a loving Older Brother…as stupid as it sounded, it was much better than reality.

He could hear some words from the waking world now, as the blackness around him turned gray.

"Hurt…why…need to…killed him…"

"Couldn't…now at…can help…"

"That…guy just…and…all alone…care…anything happened…Shadow…be that cruel…"

As Shadow focused, the next voice came in as clear as crystal.

"How could Raven just leave his only family in the world all alone, maybe even to die?"

A sudden jolt of pain streaked a new wave of darkness into Shadow's brain, muffling all other parts of the conversation around him.

So, it appeared that Shadow had lost his fight. Had Raven abandoned him, then? Sonic and whoever was with him now must have beaten him pretty badly. And Raven had left him there, never to return?

'It's not like this is the first time.'

That thought surprised him, and one of the earliest memories Shadow had of Raven surfaced with it.
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"Raven? Are you busy?"

"No, I'm singing and dancing. Of course I'm busy! I have lots of work to do now, and I can't waste any of my time with you and your stupid kid's stuff."

I watched as my brother stormed off, muttering to himself rapidly as he went. I sighed. It seemed the more tightly I held onto the hope that Older Brother's real self would some day reemerge, the stranger and scarier he would become.

He was like one of our old puzzles that was missing a piece, the one right in the middle where it was hard to see. But I still believed he would come all the way back one day.

After all, Raven had promised me that we would always be Brothers. And you never break a promise…
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.

But that didn't make sense. Raven had been there…

…Physically.

Had there been a time when they had really been real Brothers? Had Raven been…could he have been…like a family?

Had Raven…

Had he, at one point…

Had Raven been sane?

But if that had ever been the case, what had changed? What could have happened on the ARK to change Raven from a peaceable, caring individual to the angry, violent, and extremely mind-sick monster that Shadow knew him as?

A half-remembered echo of dark, excruciating agony leaked into his thoughts and Shadow felt bile rising in his throat.

Of course.

He had forgotten all about the Procedure! The one that had rewritten Shadow's abilities from nearly the bottom up.

The Ultimate Life Formation Procedure.

Raven was the older one of their pair, so he naturally he would have gone through it first! And for him, it might have been a totally untested procedure. Or -

And here Shadow nearly really was sick -

Or else he and his brother were just the latest of a line of hedgehogs who had suffered horrific ends while the Doctor used them to figure out how to make his terrible procedure more successful.

Shadow had nearly gone insane himself from the pain alone. The Procedure had left a dark wound in his heart, and that had nearly poisoned his spirit into something that would make Raven's actions seem like those of an newly-hatched Chao.

Only because of Maria's friendship with him had he managed to heal that darkness and retain the majority of his original personality. And Shadow would be the first person to admit that he wasn't nearly as perceptive as she was.

But Maria had first come to live in their part of the ARK only a few months after Raven had escaped. If she had been there from the very beginning…would that have helped Raven?

Shadow would have gone into hysterics if he could have moved at this point. He'd just come to a very stunning realization: he actually wanted Raven to be his Brother.

Even if the white one had forgotten his in his scheming and his madness, Shadow still felt affection for his Older Brother. It had nearly all died, but a tiny seed had remained and since the arrival of Raven, despite all things, it had sprouted.

His Older Brother wasn't fully evil, just sick. And illnesses could be cured, if you just knew how. It was like knowing how to solve one of their old puzzle cubes - if you could just feel where you needed to push, all the pieces would slide right into their proper places.

'And to think, I have Raven to thank for that knowledge,' Shadow thought, amazed at this sudden change in his opinion.

With that turmoil past, Shadow was exhausted and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

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I decided to go on a slightly less evil angle. Or did I?

(evil cackling)