AN: Inhibitor rings are not canon to this story. Reference to JP SA2 script rather than ENG script.
One last time.
Shadow tossed another stone across the river, watching it skip lightly across its surface. It moved in such deliberate arcs, yet so carelessly at the same time. There was a very distinct rhythm to each stone he tossed, no two skipped across the water's surface in precisely the same way. But every stone sank, once it lost its momentum, vanishing under the surface of the water into the blue-black below. None of these stones would sink to the bottom of this river had he not been tossing them. Did they need to be tossed? He picked up another stone, tossing it lightly, parallel to the water's surface.
Plonk.
Whoops.
He had maintained a fairly good streak, at least. No problem. He had all day to do this. Nowhere else he needed to be.
For all the people of this planet, I promise you...revenge.
Shadow's stomach lurched as he dropped a stone beside himself, his breath catching in his throat. That didn't feel good. Looks like it wasn't done yet. It was as if some cold snake was coiling around inside him, chilling him from the inside out. He blinked rapidly, trying to take a few deep breaths.
But you know, I can't let you live.
He tossed his forehead into his hand, shutting his eyes tightly as he tried to purge the memories from his mind. He just wanted to be finished with this for good. Burn it, destroy it, let it be gone, let it be finished. It seemed as though no matter how hard he tried to take solace in knowing the past was over, it would always come back to haunt him.
Maria, I just don't know anything anymore. I often wonder why I was created...what my purpose is for being here. Maybe if I go down there, I...I will find the answers. Maybe...
Another deep breath. Another, another. One more. One more stone. One more throw. He threw the small stone from his hand, and it bounced gently off the water. One, two, three...this one went far. Eight skips. That was the furthest he'd ever gotten.
I feel so sick. I feel so sick, there's a poison inside me that just won't let me live...
Standing upright, Shadow turned his back on the river, slowly walking away to wherever it was his feet intended to take him. He kept trying to get a deep breath, a good, satisfying one, but it never came. It would be one of those days. The sun was beating down on his quills as he walked silently, save for slightly distressed, strained breaths.
Something had to be said about how quickly everyone took to accepting Shadow. He still couldn't quite get his head around how they were able to forgive him so quickly, it didn't add up to him. Perhaps he truly was dreaming all along. Perhaps that's why everything felt so strange, distant, and foggy, now. Perhaps this is why he sometimes couldn't quite recognize his reflection. The name 'Shadow' grew more and more alien to him as he lived out this new life.
My name is Shadow. I'm the world's Ultimate Lifeform. There's no time for games...farewell.
He brushed a fern out of his face as he walked.
Whatever you say, 'Shadow'.
Perhaps there was a way he could make this name his own. Project Shadow was of no relevance to him anymore. Anyone who was alive to see Project Shadow come into fruition was now certainly dead. He kept having that dream, the one where he was waist-deep in dark water in a black void. One night, it had been blood, not water. Wading through death, that stream of blood and anguish that he hadn't been able to outrun, that spilled down his body, red stripes.
He stopped at a small clearing in the greenery, where the sun was shining brightly. It cast a dark shadow on the ground behind him, a perfect crisp outline of his form. He stood there, watching it for a little while. It looked so ghoulish, those upright quills reminding him of a demon's horns. The sun was warm on his fur, everything was green, the air was sweet and tranquil and alive. If he breathed deeper, could he breathe this scene into him, and finally exhale the rest of that darkness inside him?
The silence was broken by the distant buzz of a plane engine. Shadow looked up, catching a glimpse of the Tornado flying past. He watched the shape of the plane disappear into the endless blue expanses of the sky, before he kept walking.
His soles hit stone as he came across what looked like a giant, ancient sundial. Knuckles mentioned that the Knuckles clan had perished three-thousand years ago; who knew how long this thing had been here. On a whim, he walked to the center of it, and laid down beside the piece of stone that jutted out into the sky, opposite the side that cast a shadow. He lay there for some time, silent, unmoving, breathing slowly, waiting for something. He kept trying to wait for that sickness to leave him.
All living things belong to the Earth.
I belong here. The atoms in my body are as primordial and ancient as the Earth.
He shut his eyes as the sun beamed down on him, bright light glinting off the golden bands around his ankles and wrists. Tears spilled out from under his eyelids, though he didn't quite feel as though he was crying. There was no sobbing, not even labored breath. It was just coming out. Fifty-something years of stress, of grief, waiting in a body frozen in the horrors of that day aboard the ARK in 1951 for half a century. He didn't particularly feel like bawling his eyes out again. It was too early for that.
Earth felt like a deep, low bassline and steady percussion. Perhaps the sunlight and swaying of the breeze was a melody of some sort. It didn't flow in a linear way. Everything came together chaotically, yet peacefully. To be one with the unending jam session of nature...
Sometimes he still wanted to hide. Something about being known, seen, recognized as a tangible body and conscious mind, in the realm of the material and living, terrified him. But while he was out here, he didn't exist. Not to them. Not the world. He was nobody, out here. He wasn't Shadow, he wasn't anyone. He was the living blue-black umbra of the lunar eclipse, complete with blood-moon stripes marking his body. He was the black silhouette of the trees and mountains against the red sunset. A relentless bass strumming and the daring, bold wail of trumpet or saxophone against frantic piano.
Letting go was not a chore. This was a reward. He had earned this. He lived to see the day where he could finally choose to let go. This was forever, now.
After a good thirty minutes of laying motionless in the sun, Shadow decided for himself that it was a good time to head back. He wanted to keep practicing his bass. He picked himself up, and kicked off to a light jog of about two steps before the jets in his shoes propelled him forward quickly, letting him glide cleanly and smoothly across the surface of the earth.
I'm dreaming. Don't worry about it. I've been dreaming ever since it all ended.
He heard a shout from a distance as he worked his way back up to where Tails's lab was.
"Shadow!" Sonic shouted. Was he that happy to see him?
Shadow eventually stopped in his tracks, skidding gently to a halt as a small cloud of dust kicked up around him. Sonic leapt into a ball before rapidly barrelling downwards, frantically tearing towards Shadow like a wheel jettisoned from a motor accident, before popping back up onto his feet.
"Shadow, your air shoes!" Sonic blurted out, eyes wide. "They work!"
"Do they?" Shadow asked, with a sincere note of uncertainty in his tone. He lifted a foot, looking back over his shoulder at his heel.
"Of course they do!" Sonic replied. "I just saw you skating! Shadow, your power must've come back!"
"Maybe..." Shadow mumbled, unsure as he looked over his shoes. Was he not dreaming? Sonic saw it with his own eyes. He wasn't sure how to take it. He shrugged. "...I don't know. It doesn't matter much to me anymore."
Sonic blinked curiously. "Really? But you were so upset about it before, you were desperate to find out what happened, it really doesn't matter anymore? Why'd ya change your mind?"
"I'm not who I used to be, I suppose," Shadow kept walking, strolling at a leisurely pace, as Sonic followed behind him.
"So, who are you now?"
Shadow looked over his shoulder, flashing Sonic a grin. "I'm me."
Sonic stopped, as Shadow kept walking ahead. The blue hedgehog rubbed his nose, smiling. He wasn't really the emotional, sentimental sort, but it was affecting Sonic a little to watch this. "You've come a long way, haven't ya?" he said under his breath, crossing his arms as he watched Shadow continue walking. "And so fast, too...you really are one of a kind."
But the winding path was not linear, and the highs would be high, and the lows would be low. He would trip, he would stumble, he'd lose his balance and flail and curse, begging for an explanation from the cosmos, from fate, from himself, and if there was a God, from him too.
He heard voices chattering and conversing behind him as he walked.
"I said we're going on that date now, Sonic!" Amy's voice was shrill.
"No way, Amy!" Sonic sputtered. "Why have you gotta be so...so...such a...!"
Shadow glanced over his shoulder for a second. "Be nice, Sonic."
Amy stamped a foot down. "See, even Shadow is nicer than you!"
Sonic snapped back at Amy. "That's because he doesn't have to deal with all this!"
"I bet he'd still be nicer than you, maybe you should be more like him!"
Shadow kept walking, and covered his mouth with a hand as he suppressed his laughter.
Sonic wailed. "Well why don't you go ask him on a date, then?!"
Please, no. Shadow shook his head and smiled wider. God, no.
"You're more my type! Maybe I would if he was blue!"
"He's kind of blue!"
"No he isn't!"
Shadow burst out laughing.
"Look, from that angle he is!"
"Stop splitting hairs, Sonic!"
Every time he laughed, it felt like it had been stifled, buried deep inside him, down beneath the darkest depths of the sea, where it was being crushed by pressure for decades. What had come over him? Perhaps it didn't matter at all.
Good god, I'm alive. Has this only just hit me now? I'm alive.
Sonic and Amy continued bickering down below the cliff, while Shadow walked slowly down the Tornado's runway. Very slow walking, taking his time to enjoy the sea breeze again- seemed no matter how much time passed, he never got sick of it, it never lost its luster. This was the Earth he chose to protect, and to the victor, the spoils. This was his Earth now.
Mine? Maybe it's me who belongs to this Earth...
He stood out in the open and stared up at Angel Island, shielding the sun from his eyes. The island was in constant movement, it wasn't in the same place it was the last time he looked. Slow, constant movement, never in a rush to get anywhere. It didn't appear to be moving at all when observed. Action through inaction, something like that...he was slowly beginning to understand how Knuckles didn't lose his mind up there. Shadow crossed his arms, eyes fixed on the island. There was a lot he wanted to talk about, now, but perhaps it wasn't up to Shadow to go and chase him down. He grew a little weak in the legs at the idea of being so high above the ground again...
Bad memories.
You're not afraid of heights now, are you?
What a concept. The old Shadow would not, and could not be afraid of such a thing. It would be outright preposterous to suggest the Ultimate Lifeform would grow antsy over being a little too high above the ground, but Shadow wasn't entirely sure where the old Shadow had gone. He knew he was still somewhere inside him, running through his veins, racing in the electricity that traversed his nerves, and occasionally loudly demanding attention through unwanted memories being forcibly projected into the backs of his eyes. He'd never be truly rid of him, he knew that. They were the same person, after all. He was a scar on himself, and that's the way things were.
But what was he going to do, dwell on it until he burned himself out again? Forever asking desperate questions he already knew the answers to, but simply refused to hear? What a waste. He would burn himself out for good.
Amy stormed up the stairs, huffing and sighing noisily. "He's so rude! He ran away again!" she snapped. "If he spent more time with me, maybe he'd learn some manners!"
"You're certainly persistent,"
Amy clasped her hands together. "I just have to keep trying! I can't give up, someday we'll get married, I just know it!" she sighed dreamily, brushing at her hair and quills, neatening them up. "We're perfect for each other! You agree, don't you?"
"Not my call to make. One's destiny is in their own hands," Shadow responded.
The pink hedgehog's eyes twinkled with hope. "That's why I can't give up!" She approached the other hedgehog slowly. "What do you think your destiny is, Shadow? Do you think you have a special someone out there, too?"
Shadow continued to gaze out into the sky, eyes fixed on the same spot. "Don't know. Maybe, maybe not,"
"Well, I'm just happy you're here," Amy twirled thoughtfully, now pacing around in the sun. "I knew you weren't bad, deep down. You just had to see things differently, and choose to do the right thing!"
"I have never known a greater personal struggle than abandoning one's sense of purpose."
Amy paused, looking up at the sky with Shadow. She hummed, not quite sure what to say. "I guess it's not easy to change who you are...especially if you don't know what's right and what's wrong, anymore...that would be scary, I wouldn't know what to do..."
"Don't underestimate yourself," Shadow smiled in contemplation. "Every one of us is equipped with everything we need to survive rebirth within us already,"
"Rebirth...a new life," Amy pondered the thought. "Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon,"
"An apt metaphor."
The Tornado appeared as a speck in the distance, the buzz of plane engine growing audible.
Amy ran past Shadow, down the runway, waving a hand in the air. "There's Tails! Hi Tails!" She jumped up and down, now waving both arms above her head to greet the plane as it flew closer and closer, while Shadow headed inside the lab, walking up to the upstairs area, to where he stayed in a small corner.
It wasn't likely that Shadow would stay here permanently, but for the time being, it was a peaceful retreat. The plane's engine grew louder and louder outside, landing as a gust of wind blew in through the gap in the window, briefly sweeping a few papers around inside.
Should really organize this stuff and keep it somewhere more out of the way...
He'd clean it up later. He unhooked his bass from the wall and sat down on a crate, giving the tuning keys a few anticipatory twists, plucking some strings experimentally as they buzzed deep and low, while Tails and Amy talked outside.
Then Tails called out. "Hey Shadow!" The fox had hoisted himself up in the air by his spinning Tails, at window-level. "Knuckles says hi!"
Shadow plucked an out-of-tune string. His ears raised in attention. "Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"...t-tell him I said hi back, the next time you see him..."
"Sure thing!"
It was the impossibility of his current circumstances that charmed him the most. By no means could he have been convinced that this was the future that awaited him two weeks ago, or so. Unthinkable. But it was fighting a losing battle to keep trying to hold things in the same shape- it was falling apart, and it could have been that it was destined to fall apart. Perhaps it was backhanded vindication, in a way. He sifted through the small, messy pile of papers that sat beside him on a bench.
Lunar eclipse, blue-black umbra,
Blood moon vessels,
In the black eye of the night sky.
Moonstone sinking in the sea of your eye,
In the skull of the night sky.
I'll see what your ghost-wings mean to me,
And who I will be,
On the other side of the bitter sea.
Shadow wasn't sure it was perfect, though. He liked the sound and flow of it for the most part, but he was convinced he could refine it further. It just didn't have the 'punch' he wanted it to have. He wanted it to have an accompanying piece of music, perhaps, but he hadn't reached the point where he could confidently compose music just yet. He was still a dumb-strumming fool at the moment, but that was just fine. Soon, he figured, soon. Who should he show this to? Would Rouge appreciate it? He wasn't so sure, yet.
He read over the poetry again and again. He really wrote this. It wasn't that good, but he wrote this. That was the thing that he found difficult to believe. He knew some of his memories didn't belie him, his hands were weapons, they were made to be weapons. Shadow was the artificial incarnation of war itself. The level of command, power, and control he felt, however, from plucking strings gently, so deliberately as to create music, and from the act of writing, was almost intoxicating. This was the ultimate life that Gerald himself could not create- or at least didn't intend to. Perhaps, Shadow took after his creator in at least one way. He was his own project now.
Who was the Ultimate Lifeform?
Who cares.
A flash of impulse surged through his body. This was it. This was the moment. It had come to him on its own just as much as he had relentlessly hunted it. This was the time.
Shadow carried himself downstairs quietly, emerging from the lab, leaving it behind as he walked, with Tails and Amy having gone elsewhere. Good. He wanted to be alone for this. A slow walk down the sun-warmed asphalt of the runway ended at the very edge of the cliff, overlooking infinite expanses of sea and sky. Sun on his fur, wind in his quills, breath in his lungs. Prickles of doubt jabbed at his core, hesitation, dying gasps of a headstrong, vengeful, power-hungry ego. It attempted to viciously fight him off as he lifted his left hand, placing his fingers on the golden ring strap around his wrist. With the right amount of pressure in the right spots, the strap clicked and popped open, now loose from his wrist. He pulled it off as it snapped back into its ring-shape, and held it in his palm as it glinted in the sunlight.
Ultimate Lifeform.
Project Shadow.
Gerald Robotnik.
Biolizard.
Prototype.
50 years ago.
GUN raid.
Revenge.
Promise.
Space Colony ARK.
Maria.
He let the thoughts swim around in his mind for a moment. They made him feel ill. Waist-deep in blood. 50 years of blood rising up to his neck, drowning him, blood spilling out of every pore. It hurt. Nothing in the world hurt more. He clutched the ring tightly.
Shadow reared his arm back, before throwing it with a grunt, sending the ring hurtling forward with remarkable force. It gave its final sparkles in the sunlight as it spun, arced, and fell through the air, further, further, down, down. The tiny golden speck hit the surface of the sea inaudibly, a small jet of water splashing up, and then there was nothing. Just the sea, the sky, the wind, and Shadow himself. Perhaps it wouldn't truly end here, in this moment, and perhaps there was no exact moment where it would end. But he decided, in this moment, that this is where he wanted it to end. He made a promise to himself, now, and only to himself.
"Adiós, Shadow the hedgehog."
He turned and walked away from the cliff edge, without looking back, his black fur looking kind of blue in the sunlight.
FIN