Maria didn't arrive home at ten, and Sara had rather been expecting that. She'd spent all evening trying to ease Shadow's mood, though she knew it wouldn't do much good. Perhaps the only reason he hadn't jumped on calling her at the instant ten o' clock came was Sara's warnings that it would likely drive a wedge between him and his daughter. He decided to wait...at least an hour. Her usually endearing term of "Daddy" was now being used as sarcasm as things currently stood.
At 10:58, Maria walked through the door with a smile plastered on her face, carrying her Gear under one arm and a set of bags from various shops in the other. Of course, Shadow had stayed up lying in wait for her. He wasn't the type who went to bed early to begin with, and he had extra reason to want to watch the door like a hawk.
"You're late," was the first thing he said, with his crimson eyes focused on his daughter.
"I know. I text messaged you that I'd be late, you got it right?" She continued to smile.
Shadow scratched the back of his head; he couldn't argue that point. "Yeah." He looked down at the bags. "What'd you buy?"
"Oh a few things...a new CD by Kurei Eikan...soundtrack for SNG...mmm... " She leaned her board up against the wall before leafing through her bags. "Aha! Try this!" She pulled a Lindt dark chocolate truffle from her Border's bag and held it out for Shadow. He took it and she smiled. "I bought a couple of manga to add to my collection, and a Japanese phrase book for Mama."
"I think she'd appreciate the chocolate more than me," he said honestly. He hadn't unwrapped the offered sweet yet.
"Blitz got a new iPod. We stopped by GameStop and I got a copy of Animal Crossing for Chase." Her father's ear twitched at that. "He has an Odnetnin SD too, so we traded Friend Codes." She giggled. Shadow's amusement levels were sinking through the floor at this point, and it was hard for him to maintain a neutral visage. "Oh and I am sooo full! We ate at the food court...had China Wok, Blitz had something from Chili Mac...ohh and...and...lemme see…. Oh yeah, Chase had Popeye's chicken." She nodded, recounting what they'd eaten. "Then we had Blizzards from DQ, and I am sooo stuffed right now it's unbelievable!"
Shadow shifted uneasily and tried to smile a bit. "Worn out any?" he questioned.
Maria yawned in reply. "Yeah, actually." She chuckled. "Oh...I got Mama a scented candle, is she in bed already?"
"Nah, she's in the den on the PC." Shadow was glad the conversation was shifting away from Chase.
Maria nodded. She set the bags down on a table and fished through them for the phrase book and Yankee candle. "Thanks!" She quickly hurried off to the den to deliver the gifts.
Shadow was left looking at the bags, wondering if she'd gotten anything for him...he doubted it. He looked at the round blue wrapped candy sitting in his hand, a very disposable gift and only offered as an afterthought. It was a perfect expression of how he viewed his relationship with his daughter; he was becoming little more than an afterthought. She could go to Sara for comfort and advice that Shadow was completely unqualified or able to give. They would always be close, he thought. The woman he loved had bore her and raised her with seemingly infinite patience, a guiding force that seemed to know instinctively what to do at every turn. Shadow had been protector, teacher, and disciplinarian. That role seemed to be quickly ebbing away with every inch of growth and day that passed.
"Still here?" Maria saw her dad standing where she'd left him. When he was thinking about things, he was often very still, so she guessed he was in one of those moods.
"Yeah, why not?" Shadow shrugged.
"Ahh...no reason." Maria yawned. "I'm gonna go to bed." She picked up her things.
"..Mind if I tuck you in?" he asked, his expression softened.
Maria made a face at him. He hadn't tucked her in since she was six. "Well...okay." She headed upstairs, and Shadow followed into her room.
He remembered when they moved into the house, setting up her room. In the spring, they'd added rainbow trim, which was now starting to peel away from the wall. Shadow looked around the room, comparing the many small changes which had occurred in the last three years. The chest of toys no longer existed, as many of them had been given to Goodwill not long ago. In its place was a set of shelves, which were adorned mostly with CDs and DVDs. The toy net was also thinner now, only boasting her favorite toys...a Care Bear with a button eye and a raggedy My Little Pony with stuffing popping out of its seams. She also had a couple of Beanie Babies that had been awarded to her on various holidays. Walls were covered with posters for various movies, games, and boy bands. The rainbow furniture had been repainted and sent to Ash's room, so what replaced it was plainer and more mature. It was a telltale sign that his little girl wasn't so little any more.
Maria added her new books and CDs to their proper spaces in the room before slipping into bed, smiling at her new acquisitions. Her crimson eyes fell on her father, and he noted the somewhat distant look in his eyes. "Dad? Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Shadow walked over to the bed finally and gently pat his girl on the head. He pulled the sheets up around her and tucked the edges around her so she was in a warm cocoon. "I just..." He kissed her forehead. "You're growing up too fast." He gently brushed the hair out of her eyes. Maria remained quiet. "..Sometimes I know I can be a pain...but I do love you, Maria." He stood and took a last look at her before heading to the door. "...Sweet dreams."
"...Dad?" she called as he reached the door, "I love you too."
A smile crossed his face as he exited the girl's room. Maybe their relationship wasn't as bad as he thought.
Maria and Chase had become pen pals, since he was only in town for the competition. The two had exchanged everything; cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Friend Codes for every game they had in common on both the SD and Wii/Uss systems. More than once over the next few months, Shadow wanted to find out the password to her e-mail account and spy on her e-mail conversations...wanted to steal her cell phone and delete his number...wanted to destroy every trace of him from her life. For the most part, he kept his temper in check, though Sara was glad Maria had been out with Blitz the day a package arrived for her in the mail--a Christmas gift from Chase. It almost didn't make it into her hands.
As Maria entered her ninth year of life, and Chase entered his eighth, it was clear he was going to become a regular part of her life. Despite Shadow's best efforts to encourage her toward playing with other Mobians, and even taking her to the mall regularly, she looked forward to the hedgehog boy's e-mails and phone calls. When Chase announced that he was coming to Earth to hone his Gear skills, and was now considered a pro boarder, she'd been ecstatic.
When he showed up at the door to their house...it was all Shadow could do to keep himself from lashing out. Of course, since Ash and Sara were down with the flu, he was also powerless to stop or keep Maria from heading out the door with the boy. His well wishes that they'd get better did little to ease him, only Maria's assurance...she had her phone.
"Are those Gear shoes?" Maria asked as they headed not for the mall, but a local museum instead.
"Yep. I want to be able to keep up with you without lugging around the board." Chase grinned.
Maria blushed. "Aww, you didn't have to!"
"Well, I might need to outrun your dad too." The orange hedgehog laughed.
"What?" Maria said, aghast.
"Well, I don't think he likes me very much...he certainly doesn't like my dad." The boy shrugged as they walked.
"Ahh…. Mom said he wouldn't like any boy I hung around with." Maria shrugged. "He's...kind of protective."
"I noticed. Is this it?" He pointed to a large building ahead of them. There was a huge fountain in front of it, and the building was rather massive.
"Yeah, that's it." Maria smirked. "Race ya!" She bolted ahead and the boy chased after her.
Once inside, the two were greeted by the gaping maw of a T-rex skeleton. Something about the large and ancient beasts never failed to capture the imaginations of young ones. "Whoa, this guy's bigger than Dulcy!" the boy commented.
"Dulcy?" Maria asked.
"She's a dragon, lives in Knothole. I've seen her at the palace a few times, she's a friend of the queen," he replied.
"Oh wow." Maria looked over the bones of a few other dinosaurs and looked at the plaques saying how many millions of years old they were. "...You know some people think dinosaurs aren't that old and the world's only a few thousand years old?"
"Yeah?" Chase inquired.
"Yeah. I actually saw a textbook that said fossils are dated by the layers they're found in, but then on the next page it said that they date the layers by the fossils that are in them. Funny, huh?" She scratched her head.
"Heheh! It is. You really think a dead animal would just lay there for millions of years? You'd think other animals would just eat them. It'd have to be buried quickly," Chase commented.
After a moment of silence, Maria spoke up again, "Does your dad work at the palace?" she asked, and the two continued through a series of hallways, moving on toward an exhibit with bones and caveman artifacts.
"Yeah, sometimes. He was part of the security during the Heroes Day Parade when you visited." He smiled. "You really liked it on Mobius, didn't you?" He ran his hand across Maria's quills, making them stick out at an odd angle.
She laughed, "Well yeah. Probably because I didn't grow up there." She gasped as one of the displays of a group of cavemen started moving; she hadn't been paying attention to where they were going.
He laughed at her reaction, "This place is pretty cool, you know. I'm kind of liking Earth. Hey check this out!" He went over into an Egyptian section. "This looks like some ruins on Angel Island."
Maria followed him and looked over the murals and hieroglyphics. The art was stunning. "Angel Island?"
"The Floating Island. You know Knuckles, right?" he asked.
"Oh! Right! I heard he was a Guardian there...mmmm... Man, there's a lot I don't know about Mobius." She looked over at a sarcophagus. "I know more about King Thutmos or Queen Hatshepsut than where my mom grew up."
Chase's wistful expression softened a bit. "It's okay. How about you teach me about Earth, and I teach you about Mobius?" he offered.
Maria smiled at that. "You don't think I'm being stupid?"
He shook his head. "Not at all. What would be stupid is not wanting to learn."
"So there's more to you than Gears?" Maria smirked like her mother did at times.
"Of course! I can't depend on being a pro Gear boarder for life. I've learned how to build and improve them. Some day I'll probably run an Extreme Gear shop," he explained.
"You should talk to Uncle Tails then." The pair lingered in the room dedicated to aviation. From the first airplane to a model of the Lunar Lander, to jumbo jets and even Extreme Gears, everything was covered. The Gear section mentioned its Mobian roots and link to the Babylon Garden. "He builds planes...and he makes Gears. I mean, Sonic says there's nothing he can't build." Maria smiled at the prototype gear, which looked like an ornate carpet.
"Now that is cool," Chase replied with a smile. "Think you could get him to show me a few things?"
"Probably. So, where to next?" Maria glanced around and saw a staircase leading to an observatory.
The boy looked over to where she was turned and nodded. "How about there? Bet we see a million stars. Maybe more."
"You like to exaggerate, don't you?" Maria took his hand and pulled him toward the stairs.
"Ahh just a little." He shrugged idly and followed her up to the observatory. Maybe it wasn't an exaggeration, as the dome of the observatory was illuminated with a slide show of the solar system. The display of dots and nebulas was a fantastic sight, and the two stood there staring, awestruck.
"You know...I'm rather proud of you," Sara said before she coughed. She was sitting up in bed and had a serving tray on her lap with soup and crackers on it while Shadow sat beside her.
"What's to be proud of?" he said morosely.
She smiled a bit and took a sip of the soup. "Well, I know you're unhappy, but you made the right choice...not stopping her...staying here where you're needed more."
Shadow sighed but leaned against his mate. Her body was warmer than usual, but he didn't mind. "Why are you so accepting?" He lightly kissed her forehead.
"There's things out of our control... You just have to accept it." She took another sip of the soup.
"So what am I thinking right now?" Shadow lay back on the bed and put an arm around Sara's waist.
"Hmm..." She crumbled a few crackers into the soup. "Why do you ask?"
"...Because you seem to know what I want to say, and I don't want to say it," he replied.
"You're scared...Maria's growing up, doing things without us," she said softly. She coughed a few times before she continued, "It was thrilling watching her take her first steps, say her first words...make her first snowman, eat her first hamburger...the first time she could reach the sink without a stepstool...but now she's using those freedoms to stay out late and explore places she couldn't go before... I can't say I'm not worried…about who she's with or where she'll go..."
"...So what do we do?" He closed his eyes.
Sara moved the TV tray onto the dresser next to their bed. She lay back down on the bed and put her arms around Shadow and curled up to his chest. "...Trust that we raised her right and hope she makes the right decisions."
It might not have been the answer he was looking for, but it hit a chord in the back of his mind. He recalled a light blue hedgehog trusting that his little girl could make up her mind. He held that "little girl" in his arms tenderly. Even sick, she could be a comfort to him. "I hope you're right…." An ear turned aside a he heard an unpleasant sound from the next room.
"...Daddy! I t'rew up!" Ash's voice called.
Sara gave her mate an apologetic look. "Sorry he caught my cold…."
"You didn't do anything, and don't you even think about moving from that bed." He slipped out of bed and sighed a bit. He glanced back at Sara before going to check on their son. Now why am I not concerned about Ash like I am Maria? "Hold on, champ, Daddy's comin'!"