-Blaze-

I watch Amy pacing up and down, and concentrate on what will be. It's easier now that it's closer; there are too many ways for things to happen for anything a long time from now. With every decision that's fixed, it's easier to tell what will happen. They'll be back soon, and it's best that I tell her what I'm about to. She's worried.

"They'll be back soon. He'll be all right."

She looks at me strangely, maybe wondering how I know what I do, or why I said that. She's asked me before why I say the things I do; I just shrug and tell her that that's what it's best for me to say. Crossfire has a 'yeah, right' expression, but he knows that I know what is, and doesn't contradict me. I focus back on the future. I can't tell what choices are being made, but they aren't bad ones. The three of them will appear here, in this room; Sonic must bring them using the Chaos Emerald, because Shadow will be hurt. There are still several different ways they could arrive, but as the seconds go by there are fewer and fewer, until it's almost certain exactly what will happen – and then it does.

I watch the flare of light and power as Sonic uses the Chaos Emerald to come here. It calls out to me, to my brother, and I remember seeking the one in Robotnik's tower. We feel their power, he and I, know when they are near. Until now we did not need to... but now we do. I sense, though it's too far in the future to see clearly, that before this is over our powers will have opened further, that he will have to balance on the very edge of the control I made him swear to. There are no such battles in my ever-clear path, and I do not think I can be the one to sway him from the edge. We are too much the same, my brother and I, mirror images of one another, and with our powers further unfolding even less of what we were will matter.

Somewhere in my mind, the little boy still wonders at this magnificence as he did even in all the destruction, even as the radiance begins to envelop him further...

Only a fraction of a second has passed since the flare, and the others are still reacting.

"Shadow!"

Amy rushes to his side, and Shadow smiles through his pain. She smiles back at him, and I know she knows that yet again, I was right. Sonic looks around, his glance pausing on me with a strange expression, and I realise that for a moment my eyes seemed to flash with their own inner light.

"...Well, guys, we got it!"

He holds up the Chaos Emerald he took from Robotnik. Soon, if the others survive, we will have the last two, and after that... my feelings are clouded. Is the eventual outcome not mine to see?

"And you nearly lost Shadow," my brother says scornfully. Sonic pays him no heed, knowing as I do that Crossfire can be nothing other than what he is. The others are used to him, but have never simply accepted that.

"But he didn't, and now there are just two more Emeralds to find!" Chess retorts.

"Who will we lose next time?" Crossfire asks sarcastically, and his words strike an echo within me. Before all the Emeralds are gathered, someone is going to die. I can't yet tell how, or who, or why; those are questions I can't answer until closer to the time, and when it comes, I will know what to do. As I always have. As I always will, until that nebulous time when, if the others survive to gather all the Emeralds, my feelings fade into fog...