In Cosmo's Shadow

By Kellie Fay

Disclaimer: Sonic, Shadow, Tails, Cosmo, and the others all belong to SEGA, Team Sonic, 4 Kids and other people not me

*waves to Kirai- Ninja* I'm so glad you got the idea of not-apologies. Heh that's Shadow for you.

Chapter 23

Homecoming

Shadow woke up early and joined Tails and Sonic gathering Amy's party stuff. He still felt awkward about acting like his year-long retreat didn't happen, but Sonic assured him that the more he acted normal, the more the others will accept his presence again.

He surveyed the pile of goods and looked back at the house where Amy was still packing. Why did they need all this stuff for just a party?

"Having doubts about how much you can carry Shadow?" Sonic asked with a mischievous grin?

"I managed to transport Egg-man's ship away from that black hole, didn't I?" Shadow countered. He didn't worry about Sonic's teasing. Somehow Shadow knew that Sonic just wanted to see how annoyed he could get Shadow, and make conversation. Shadow decided to tolerate it.

"Yeah, I remember, but you had all seven emeralds then." Sonic said cheerfully.

"I'll be fine, as long as Amy doesn't decide to quadruple the load," Shadow said.

From back in the kitchen both hedgehogs heard Amy call out, "I heard that!"

"Good, because I meant it," Shadow said. Sonic giggled.

"If that's Sonic laughing, tell him to get over here and help me haul this stuff out." Amy called again.

Sonic gave Shadow a grin, then raced into the house, and came back to the hanger with a large cooler. A few minutes later Amy came out with a similarly large cooler.

Shadow looked at the two coolers speculatively. "You can handle all that right?" Amy asked suddenly worried.

"With you and the rabbit? Not a problem," Shadow reassured her. "When should we go?"

"I'll check with Tails," Sonic said zipping off. Before either Shadow or Amy could start a hesitant conversation, Sonic reappeared. "Tails said that Rouge said give her twenty more minutes to distract Knuckles then you guys can CC up to the Island."

Shadow nodded, "Then you best get the girl so we can be ready." Shadow said.

"You don't have to worry, she's here," Amy said. Cream skipped into the hanger, and graced all three of them a hug. Amy gave Shadow a strange look, but said nothing.

Sonic grinned at Shadow and said, "So give me and Tails a ten minute head start then zap you and the girls up to the island."

Shadow nodded. "There is a small cave just north of the Alter for the Master Emerald. I'll transport us all there."

"Gotcha," Sonic said. Over his shoulder he called, "Tails you ready?"

"Ready Sonic!" Tails called.

Sonic's grin grew wider. "See you on the Island guys!" With that Sonic sped away with Tails flying in his wake.

Shadow glanced at his watch, something he picked up in his travels, and began mentally counting down to when they needed to go.

"Here Shadow," Cream said handing Shadow a shiny black obsidian stone. "I found this pretty shiny rock this morning in the stream, and I thought you would like it for your special room."

Shadow bristled a little at the mention of Maria's room, but chose to not say anything. He had been gone for far too long to complain about people going in there, and for some reason Cream kept donating items for the room. He tucked the stone into his quills and said, "thank you, I will add it to the collection."

Amy glared at Shadow again, but again kept her tongue. In the back of Shadow's mind he could hear a young girl laughing, and realized that the nearby tree was Cosmo.

"That will be enough out of you," He said to the tree.

Now Amy said something. "Okay who are you, and what have you do with Shadow?"

Without blinking an eye Shadow answered, "That is a bad question to ask me before I use Chaos Control to send you elsewhere."

Amy sighed, but her expression did not change. "Good point," she said.

Shadow nodded. "Gather your things, it is time," he warned them. Amy and cream nodded and drew closer to Shadow. He took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts, and visualized the little cave near the Master Emerald. Once he had the image fixed in his mind he called out, "CHAOS CONTROL!" Instantly the three of them and all the goods reappeared in the cave.

"Wow that was exciting!" Cream said

Amy blinked a few times, looking a little dizzy. "Yeah, exciting," she said. She shook her head a little trying to orientate herself. She took a step away from Shadow and peeked out the cave entrance. "Perfect! We can set up here. Come on Cream! Let's get ready!"

Amy didn't exactly ask Shadow to help. Shadow suspected that the irritable pink hedgehog felt a little uncomfortable around him. He ignored her discomfort, and moved boxes, and coolers when he thought they needed the space. Cream didn't have any trouble asking Shadow for help. He ended up helping her twist streamers, and put out the food. The whole time Amy kept looking over her shoulder at Shadow but said nothing.

After twenty minutes Tails flew over to the three. "Rouge is going to lead Knuckles over here in about ten minutes so we have to be ready."

"We're ready," Amy said. "Where are Vector and the others?"

"Here we are!" Charmy's voice squeaked over the sound of the waterfall. He flew over to Cream and Tails instantly. Vector and Espio brought up the rear.

"Well well, look who it is! It's been a long time Shadow." Vector said.

Shadow bristled a little, but remembered what Sonic said about playing it cool. "Yes it has," he said simply, and turned away from the croc. He caught Espio giving him a quizzical look, but he simply glared at the chameleon, and he backed off. Charmy took one look at him, and hid behind Tails. Shadow didn't care what they thought. They'd eventually get used to him again.

A minute later Sonic came racing into the area. "Okay he's on his way, you guys ready?"

"All done!" Amy said proudly.

"Great!" Sonic answered. He caught Shadow's eye and nodded to back over his shoulder. Shadow caught the hint. He hid behind Sonic and waited with the others.

Just then Rouge came flying over a hill with the Master Emerald in a sling. She quickly placed it back on its alter and joined the others. Shadow couldn't help notice but Rouge planted herself on the other side of the group away from him. A moment later Knuckles followed behind cursing up a storm. He was so intent on the green gem in front of him he missed everyone standing off to the side. He just walked right by them muttering to himself. "Crazy bat, playing hide-and-seek with the Master Emerald, I tell you when I get my hands on her she'll-"

"She'll wish you a happy birthday! That's what she'll do," Rouge said with a giggle. Knuckles turned around his mouth open in shock, and everyone else joined in to the cheer.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY KNUCKLES!"

Knuckles, overtaken by the surprise at first, smiled and laughed. "Gee guys I didn't think you knew it was my birthday!"

"Of course we knew!" Amy said proudly.

Just then Knuckles noticed Shadow hiding behind Sonic. "Shadow? Now this is a surprise! When did you get back?"

"Recently," Shadow said.

To Shadow's surprise Knuckles glared at Sonic. "And I wonder where you got that line from." The red echidna muttered

Just when Shadow began to feel self-conscious about the attention, Sonic said, "So what are we standing around for? Let's get this party started!

Shadow decided to keep to the background of the party. He didn't quite belong yet, but he knew they accepted him, and that was good enough for now.

Amy came up next to him. "Still hiding?" She asked.

"I'm not hiding," Shadow insisted. "I'm observing, besides if someone wants to see me they can come to me."

"Right," Amy said not sounding very convinced. "I hope you're not upset with Cream about the stone, and her talking about your room. Sometimes she tells us things, and we don't have any idea how she knows them.

"I will keep that in mind," Shadow said simply.

Amy looked at him, a question clearly on her face. Finally she said. "I know you don't like to talk about that room of yours but would you mind telling me why Cream thought that a rock would be a good addition?"

Shadow sighed, but he went with his gut. "You were right the first time Amy, I don't like to talk about that room. It's private." With that he walked away from her.

Sonic found him next. "See you're still trying to make friends," he said with a smirk.

"She had no business asking," Shadow insisted, then turning to look at Sonic out of the corner of his eye added, "And neither do you."

Sonic laughed. "I'm not asking you anything. I'm just checking to see if you're all right. I'm kinda glad to see that Cobbler hasn't changed you too much."

"Was that the purpose of my trip, to have this sorcerous change me?" Shadow asked.

Sonic gave Shadow this knowing look. "You decided to go wandering, Shadow. Nobody else made that decision, but you. Nobody told you what direction to go in either. You decided what to do that entire year you were on your own. I figured you wanted to be on your own, so we left you be."

"Except for the chao," Shadow said, not resisting the smirk that came over his face.

Sonic shook his, head and held his hands up in surrender. "Not my idea," He insisted. "I'm not even sure whether it was Cream or Cheese who thought of it, but yeah, she told me that Cheese had a way of asking other chao where you were. She thought you needed someone watching out for you. They kept us up on all your adventures."

Shadow expected more than that. "And?" he prompted.

Sonic just flashed that enigmatic grin. "Like you said before it's not anybody's business but yours, unless you want to talk about it."

Shadow didn't like talking to the others about stuff, but he remembered that talking to Pie often left him feeling rather good. It felt like the emotions tied to the events could finally leave him, and not end up a knot in his stomach. "Maybe in a week or so," he said softly watching Cream, Cheese, Tails, and Charmy play a game of aerial tag. "Not yet. I still need to think about it."

"Whatever you want, Shadow." Sonic said joining Shadow in watching the flyers.

To his surprise later Knuckles came by with two Star Fruits in his hands. He offered one to Shadow. "Here," he said, "Before Sonic, Vector, and the other chow hounds inhale them all; I figured I'd snag you one. I haven't seen you eat anything yet today."

Shadow did eat breakfast, but it was close to evening now, so he accepted the fruit and tossed the seeds allowing them to grow wherever they fell. He'd forgotten how good they tasted, and surprised himself by making it disappear in two bites.

"So why did you leave?" Knuckles asked once Shadow swallowed the fruit.

Shadow didn't quite know how to answer that. He didn't even know why he left himself. He originally planned to tell others that he didn't have to explain anything, but Knuckle's question, even though plain and simple, had the feeling of a test to him, so he stuck with Sonic's style of keeping everything as simple as possible. "I needed to look for something," he said.

Knuckles gave him a puzzled look, but only asked him, "So why did you come back?"

Now Shadow knew that Knuckles was testing him, but he didn't know if he could pass this test. "I found it."

Now Knuckles gave a slight smirk, "You know you're starting to sound like Sonic," He says.

Normally that would have gotten a rise out of Shadow, but he could tell Knuckles was trying to get him to react. "If you say so," he said with a shrug.

Now Knuckles got annoyed. "Now I know Sonic is coaching you!"

Now Shadow felt a flow of satisfaction. Knuckles was now the one put off guard. Deciding to twist the screws a little more, he said. "Sonic is over there with Amy and Tails, he's not telling me what to say."

Knuckles sighed and gave up. "I just wanted to make sure you're not going to vanish again soon." He said, "she missed you."

Now Shadow understood. Rouge still had not spoken to him, since he appeared at Amy's house. He knew she watched him, but she did not approach him directly. "Is she angry with me?" He asked.

"You know Rouge," Knuckles said. "She never lets you know what she's thinking, but Sonic would catch her staring at your house for like hours."

Shadow didn't know what to think of that. "Rouge had nothing to do with why I left," he said.

"You might want to tell her that," Knuckles advised. "In fact tell her everything. Maybe that will get you back in her good graces again."

Several more hours passed by, before Shadow saw Rouge. She was looking at the three youngest all dozing near the bonfire, Charmy and Cream both using Tail's namesakes as blankets. He didn't mean to get wistful, but he sighed, waking Cream's little chao. To Shadow's surprise Cheese flew up to face Shadow and looked at him quizzically trying to figure out his mood.

"May your mistress never lose her innocence," he said showing the chao the obsidian stone she gave him earlier. "And I am sure I don't need to ask you to do everything in your power to keep her that way."

Sure enough the little creature chirped happily and proudly. Shadow had the impression that the chao accepted the complement and the responsibility.

Shadow didn't resist and gave the little creature a comfortable scratching on his back. "And one of these days, you and I are going have a long talk about exactly what you and your fellows were doing spying on me, or was that your mistress' idea?" He asked.

Cheese laughed at him, and again the empathic little creature sent to him that they both decided he needed guardian angels, but he would gladly take responsibility if it meant keeping Cream from his ire."

Like always hearing a chao's thoughts made it hard to keep a smile from Shadow's face. "Fine, I'll blame you then," he said, "Now go care for your mistress."

Cheese nodded, and with a happy chirp, snuggled back into Cream's arms. Just then Shadow heard a voice say, "You're blaming him for what?"

Shadow made a half turn and saw Rouge out of the corner of his eye. Turning back to the sleeping mass of children in front of him Shadow said, "Chao are unusual creatures. They have some sort of a hive mind. Cheese made sure that his fellows far and away watched out for me, and reported my activities back to him."

"They did?" Rouge sounded surprised. "No wonder Sonic seemed to know where you were all the time. He kept talking us out of going after you."

"I'm glad he did so," Shadow said trying to make it sound less like an insult. "I…I needed to be by myself for a while. I needed to know I made my own decisions. I needed to find out the truth for myself, far away where I couldn't hurt anyone else."

"The truth?" Rouge asked puzzled.

Shadow sighed. "That I didn't really want to remember what I did when Doctor Egg-man first awakened me on Earth, that I didn't want to face that I had hurt others for the pleasure of hurting, that someone I cared for and respected as a parent used me as a living weapon of mass destruction."

Rough sighed and wrapped her arms around Shadow. He still flinched a little at the comforting touch, but at the same time he felt amazed that she could forgive him, and empathize with him so easily after all this time. "That sounds like a lot of stuff you had to do." She said gently.

Shadow nodded. "I also felt the need to get away from a certain hyperactive busybody of a hedgehog, and a tree who could see everything wrong with me."

"I knew we should have told you about Cosmo when you first got here." She said tightening her grip slightly. "Knuckles said it wouldn't make sense to you if you couldn't hear her, and Amy was worried that you still wanted to hurt Cosmo."

"The Metarex are gone," Shadow said, "She can't even see or hear except through others. My reasons for hunting her are actually gone."

"Good," Rouge said. "She's not a bad kid, for a tree."

Suddenly an unusual spark of curiosity hit Shadow. "How did Tails finally take it? I can't imagine after the scene I made, they could keep her quiet any longer."

Rouge shrugged. "He was a little hurt," she admitted. "He had a lot of long conversations, with Sonic, Amy, and even Cream. He's accepted it, but he's still a little upset by it."

"Upset at the others? Or upset that the girl is a tree?" Shadow asked.

"He wasn't mad at the others for more than a week," Rouge told him. "He's just upset that he can't do anything for Cosmo. She's told him she's fine with how things turned out, but he still has trouble hearing her. He spends a lot of time outside with her. Sonic thinks that's a good thing. It gets him out of the workshop."

Shadow remembered that Tails did spend a lot of time in the workshop trying to use work to stop thinking about how much he missed the girl. He privately agreed with Sonic. If Cosmo could get Tails to spend time outside even if he couldn't hear her properly it would be enough.

"I am glad my departure did not cause too much trouble," he said heaving out the tension with a sigh.

"Oh it caused trouble," Rouge said with a smile. "I wasn't happy for one thing, and Sonic felt a little guilty for a while, but we kind of understood that you were going through a hard time. Did being on your own help?"

Shadow thought about that. "It helped that no one pressured me any longer. It helped that I could make my own choices, but I did miss being where others would accept me. On my own I was always the stranger, no one really understood me. Here even if they didn't understand, they would attribute it to my issues, and leave me be."

"Is that why you came back?" Rouge asked. "Because we would leave you be?"

Shadow sighed. He still wasn't sure why he came back, he just knew he had to make a new start here. "Rouge, I'm not sure why I left or why I came back. All I know is that I feel right now I need to be here."

"So in a way you're still searching for answers?" Rouge asked. When Shadow nodded she said, "Hon, that's what life's about. Every creature on this planet or any planet always wants to know who they are and why they are here. That's what living is for."

"I suppose," Shadow said. "You know you didn't have to worry about me while I was gone."

Rouge laughed. "I'm guessing that's your way of saying you're sorry you ran off on me." She rested her head on his shoulder. "It's all right I forgive you."

Shadow merely shrugged. He was not going to apologize for running off. If Rouge wanted to think he did, that was fine with him.

Much later, after everyone left the island, Shadow volunteered to carry a very sleepy Cream and Cheese home. Once in her mother's arms, Shadow felt compelled to look in on Sonic and Tails. He saw Sonic coming out of Tails' workshop, and only needed an inquiring glance to hear Sonic whisper. "He's still out cold, and having very nice dreams right now."

Shadow looked at Sonic warily. "I thought you could not hear thoughts that were not directed to you," he said, wondering if that had changed to in the past year.

"Don't have to," Sonic said shaking his head. He closed his eyes, and took a strange listening pose. "Can't you feel it?"

Puzzled Shadow tried to hear what Sonic thought he heard. He felt more than heard a pleasant hum, and the giggling of a young girl, and Tails. A warmth spread through his body, and his mind filled with images of a bright green field with Tails and Cosmo chatting under the branches of what seemed to be her tree.

"It's the tree," Shadow said realizing that the girl was sending Tails the dream.

Sonic opened his eyes, and nodded. "Tails still can't hear Cosmo speak in words, but he can pick up her feelings. And at night Cosmo gets into his dreams, and they talk there. He's getting used to it. I guess I'm glad it happened the way it did. Tails got used to the idea pretty fast, and he didn't worry about you reacting to her."

"I have nothing against the girl." Shadow insisted. "My reasons for hunting her died with the Metarex, and I bare no grudge for her stopping our disagreement before I left."

"And knowing you that's as close as you'll ever come to saying I'm sorry," Sonic said chuckling. Before Shadow could protest Sonic added. "It's okay, you were just reacting like when you were sleepwalking. you weren't thinking logically. I was just saying stuff you weren't ready to face yet. I forgive you." He then looked Shadow up and down, and said, "Just remember, you may think you're the ultimate life form, but nobody is perfect, not me, or Amy, or Tails, or Cosmo, or the guy who made you, and you're not perfect either."

It was a truth, a hard one, but a truth nevertheless. Shadow nodded, and bowed his head in shame.

"That's why we have friends," Sonic added philosophically. "Friends help when you make mistakes, and friends understand you, so they'll forgive you if you're wrong."

Shadow looked up at Cosmo's tree, and his thoughts turned to Maria. "All my friends are dead. I don't know if I should have more."

"We are your friends Shadow," Sonic insisted. "And I can't promise we won't die, but while we're around we can help you unwind, and have fun."

Shadow nodded. Sonic was right. He needed to stop running away from people, and accept friends once again. He pulled out the stone Cream gave him earlier. It instantly caught Sonic's attention. "Where did you get that?" Sonic asked him.

"Cream found it, and gave it to me," he said. "She thought I would like it for Maria's room."

Sonic's head snapped up, when he realized what Shadow said. Very gently Sonic asked. "That little side room, you made is for Maria?"

"I know she's gone," Shadow snapped. This felt painful, but Shadow felt this was the best apology he could ever give Sonic for how he acted before he left. "But I wanted a room for her anyway. I want to fill it with all the things she wanted to see and touch that she wasn't allowed to when she lived."

Sonic nodded. He put his hand on Shadow's shoulder. "You're a good friend to her Shadow. I'm sure she loves you very much."

Shadow gave Sonic the most puzzled look. Why did he speak of her in the present tense? Sonic chuckled, and then said, "What? I know you spent time with Cobbler. I know what she can do. I don't think you would have mellowed out unless she sent you on a vision quest, and if she did that, you know those who you loved aren't gone. They're just somewhere else. We can't see or hear them, but we can feel it if they're near. We just have to learn to listen. We don't lose friends when they die. When you love someone it's forever."

Shadow didn't know what to think. Sonic guessed very accurately what happened to him. "She…she said she's been watching me ever since I was locked away in suspension all those years ago."

"It's something to remember," Sonic told him confidently. "True friends are forever."

Shadow nodded looking at the sentient tree before him, feeling a tremendous burden lift from him. He did have friends again, and they would last forever.

Not quite the end. Epilogue 1 & 2 Coming Soon

Or did everyone forget that Shadow is immortal?