Chapter Notes:

1) "Lub-dub" represents the sound of a heartbeat.

2) Shadow calls Amy by her first name in here because that is what he called her in his SA2 recap of the promise scene. He had paid attention to what Eggman had called her after the bear hug.

(*/|\*)

Lub…dub.

[[[Fluid blubbling inside a test tube]]]

…Lub―dub.

"Do what you dreamed, Shadow…(Shadow…)"

…Lub―dub.

[[[Fingers drawing hearts on the glass's fog]]]

"Do it for me…"

[[[Surgery table; liquid in a plastic bag; wires; scalpels; forceps; heart-lung machine; bag valve mask]]]

"For all the people (people…)…of that planet…(planet)"

Lub―dub.

Lub―dub.

[[[Blinding high beams; masked faces; flashing glasses; white coats; mutters; syringe-nosed robots]]]

"(Do what you dreamed…dreamed…) Shadow… (Please, Shadow…Shadow…) give them a chance… (do it for me…)"

Lub―dub, Lub―dub, Lub―dub.

"(For all the people…) Sayonara… (…of that planet) Shadow... (give them a chance…) the hedgehog… (to be…)"

[[[Vaccine injections; multiplying blood cells; spiraling DNA bridge; heart rate monitor beeping; GAAASP―――

Red eyes jumped open. Pupils dilated as a flood of oxygen was sucked in. A groan could be heard from somewhere and everywhere as the racket echoed far and wide. It wasn't until consciousness fully returned that Shadow the Hedgehog realized the groan was his.

He stopped breathing.

It was his.

Shaking, Shadow lifted his shredded gloves. He wiggled blurry white fingers that were contoured by a yellow, warm glow. "Where...where am I?" he whispered. Using his weak elbows as crutches, Shadow peeled his back off the ground to behold the log cabin before him. "Where is this place?"

"Shadow, give them a chance, to be happy..."

Shadow flinched. His tiny pupils pulsated with light. "Maria?"

"Shadow (Shadow)! I beg you!" As if a wailing ghost had flung itself across the room, the "I beg you" came from the right of him.

Shadow's eyes wildly followed the voice's relocation. What they landed on was a conked out female hedgehog sleeping on the floor. Her ungloved hands pillowed her head for comfort as her breath filtered through the "o" that her lips formed. The calcified mud grouting her legs, staining her bangs, and browning her flimsy clothes made her unrecognizable.

"Wait." Memories invaded his limbic system. "…It's you."

"They're basically good if they never give up on their wishes! They always have a reason to be happy! That's why you should help them out!"

Shadow closed his eyes and raised his hand to knead his head. "That pink hedgehog." His hand fell back down to his side. He glared at the bright world framed by the window.

Sunlight bled through the glass like strands of angel hair.

"Earth," Shadow estimated upon deeper retrospection, surprised by his own discovery. "This is...where I've fallen." He tilted his chin down to reexplore the burnt valleys in his palms. 'So then,' ―Shadow curled his fingers― 'I really am alive, after all.' A frown percolated. 'But, for how long?' His gaze backtracked to the window. 'How long have I been here? And how did I—'

Pre-recorded sound bites from hours ago replayed in his mind:

"Who...are you? What do you want with me? SPEAK."

"I—It's...it's me: Amy! Don't you remember me? You promised me that you'd save the planet!"

Shadow's gleaming eyes dimmed in vibrancy as they lowered to his skates, troubled and preoccupied by what he knew. He shifted his attention to the pink hedgehog. "'Amy,'" he said, his caramel lips forming the syllables of her name like they were parts of a foreign language he had yet to learn.

Amy's paler lips lifted into a smile. She turned her face against her wrist with her shoulder hugging her cheek. "I knew you'd come back for me, my darling hero."

Shadow's chest absorbed another shock. Hardening from the jolt, he averted his gaze and closed his eyes. 'I have already fulfilled my promise,' —his eyes opened halfway—'and yet it seems that I am once again indebted to the pink hedgehog.' He didn't smile about it. The survivor was in no position to be signing an "I-owe-you," especially since he couldn't feel his Chaos Emerald's palpitations.

"But why do you keep leaving me behind?"

"Hm?" His curiosity darted back to Amy.

The wrinkles on her snout were rucked up by a sneer. "Son-nic," she begged. "Don't go! Puh- lease stay!"

"Sonic.' Shadow observed her from the corner of his widening eye. 'That blue hedgehog.' He rewatched a flashback of Sonic reaching out for his hand as he fell to Earth like a puppet without strings. Sonic's face was full of fear while his own was full of peace. Eternal peace.

—Plink-plink—

Shadow's ear twitched at the music. He unglued his hand from his temple to find the source. Rain. It seemed that the sun had been eaten by the clouds. The shadows of raindrops danced across Amy's body. Wind picked up with a whirling sound outside, and soon little stems of lightning were turning the window white.

Shadow protected his vision with the shade of his paw. The fingers in the other drew into a fist.

—CRASH—

A tree flew past the window before making the ground shake with its collapse.

Shadow grunted. "I've had enough of just sitting around." He used all of his might to stabilize his knocking knees and stand up. "I have to find that Chaos Emerald." His knee gave out, forcing him back down onto his palm. "Damn it." He cracked his eyes open with a growl, suddenly feeling like his body and mind were sinking into a pool of quicksand. "This can't be happening..."

—"S h a d o w...!"

Sweat sped down Shadow's forehead as he froze. The voice was Maria's sigh enlaced with Amy's trill. He looked down at the pink hedgehog who had gone blue in the face from the freezing cold.

"...Do it for me..."

His heart pounded. 'Maria!'

"I gotta go now! I have to keep my promise to Maria! ...And you."

Shadow pressed the heel of his fist against his forehead. He could neither battle the storm nor leave the pink hedgehog to die in the wilderness. He was enchained.

"Shadow!" Amy's twelve-year-old plea echoed. "I beg you!"

He shuddered, his head sinking. His deference for Amy not only hinged on a promise that he had allowed her to inherit, but her own act of kindness. It would have been equally hypocritical of him to be the reason for any girl's death after what happened to his sister, most of all one he'd passed Maria's heirloom onto. He couldn't have Amy's corpse on his conscience. He couldn't become the manifestation of what he was so hatefully against...not again...

'Not ever.'

He had to be better than them.

"...That's the reason why you were brought into this world…"

...Shadow's eyelids unveiled his ruby eyes. 'But Maria, why was I brought back into it? Have I not granted you all that you wished for?'

Amy sneezed, blowing his thoughts away. He reached for an unfolded blanket with one hand and slid it over her back, holding her shoulder. Powerless to his own nausea, Shadow's vision was curtained by a world of darkness once more...

...

'Maria...'

...

...

"Let (him) live for (his) dreams...(dreams)..."

...

...

...Amy blinked her eyes open to rub them raw with the back of her wrist. "Huh?" She focused on the mice staring back at her. Disgusted, the pink hedgehog rose from the blanket on her shoulders, rubbing one side of her head. "What was that all about?" She rested her hands on her lap and blubbered, "What a terrible nightmare I had. I almost thought it was...REAL?!" Amy stilled upon seeing the spectacle beside her.

Lying on its back was a figure with its hands folded on top of its bosom like a vampire in a coffin.

Amy was a breath away from crying out in horror, but then a rodeo of dark images jogged her memory. 'Oh, it's Shadow!' She held her cheeks, shaking her head twice before gaping at him.

Shadow's chest floated up and down as he breathed like a normal hedgehog.

Amy patted her heart, sighing. 'Whew!' She opened her eyes to appreciate his willpower. 'It looks like he made it, after all! Thank GOOD-ness!'

Shadow still sported the same grimace from before. His smirk hadn't softened its down-pointing arrow, and his brow line was furrowed.

Amy convinced herself to believe that the right thing to do was to check for auditory nerve damage. "Shadow?" she called with her fists under her chin. It was too much of a chore to bring her voice any higher.

His black ear rolled into her direction, and then those intimidating eyes of his sprang open.

Amy's gasp was loud enough to make his pupils shoot over to hers. "Um..." She blinked with her clasped hands pressed against her chest. "Do you...feel any better, Shadow?"

Shadow stared at her for far longer than what she was okay with. He made sitting up look painful as he rolled onto his arm to prop himself up with one elbow and a "palm. "Hardly," he confessed with a hoarse voice, but then nicks of pride seemed to deepen it as he said, "but I'll survive."

Her acquaintance talked like a shadow: low, soft-spoken, and nearly inaudible. It was a voice that Amy wasn't used to. Sonic's voice was flamboyant and fun, easy to samba with and always inviting, but Shadow's breathy murmurs―with their honeylike tone―were marooned and distant, embodying a remote island that you couldn't set foot on.

Drawing her eyebrows together, Amy tried to smile at the loner. "Well, that's a relief." She held her chest and sighed again. "I thought you were a goner for good."

Shadow's tall ears straightened at the comment. Amy noticed that his ears were longer than hers. The temptation to pet one made her mentally bop herself on the noggin.

He looked down at his left hand for some reason, allowing her to only see his cheek. "Because I am an artificial life form," he murmured, "I am immune to illnesses."

Shadow's decision to speak had caught Amy off guard. "Are you one hundred percent sure about that?" She leaned forward with her paws kissing the ground between her knees. "You almost wouldn't stop hyperventilating! I was so afraid for you!"

His ears rounded to her again, his red eyes following suit. She didn't breathe in the same way that he didn't blink. Talking to Shadow the Hedgehog was such a bizarre phenomenon. Their voices just weren't in harmony, but she had a feeling that he too didn't know how to interact with her.

Shadow broke their gazes after breaking the suspense with, "It must have been my system's reaction to being inactive for so long."

"Oh." Amy leaned back, frowning. "I guess that would make sense."

"Exactly how long has it been?" His bass was weak and craggy―perhaps due to the fact that he hadn't used his chords for two years.

"Huh?" Amy scratched her cheek, tilting her head. "How long has what been? You mean how long have we been trapped in this cabin, or how long were you hyperventilating?"

"How long has it been, since the publication of my so-called death?" Shadow asked louder, better at speaking once his own embarrassment over how feeble he sounded had become agitation.

"Oh. That." Amy watched her fingers score ice-skater spins in the pile of soot on the floor. "Well..."

Shadow waited patiently.

"It's...been two whole years since..."―she looked away to buy more time for thinking up a better phrase than what she was thinking of―"your victory against the Biolizard. I found you inside of this giant meteor crater in the Mystic Ruins, which is a rainforest that's a pretty long way off from Station Square and Central City." Amy glanced at the window worriedly. "I've been waiting for the storm to die down so that I could get us both out of here, see...but it's been raging like that forever."

The glimmer in his eyes disturbed her because it was difficult to decipher the emotion behind it. "I see now." He frowned at his naked wrist. "And my power ring...where is it?"

"Sonic saved it, but then he gave it to Rouge, and then Rouge had to give it to G.U.N."

At the mention of that name, Shadow's heart blackened. 'Those pathetic pests,' his black look seemed to say.

Amy fidgeted while he dealt with the darkness within himself. A second party's off-putting temperament never discouraged Amy Rose of all chatter-boxes to pause at the end of a period, but for all Shadow's taciturnity, his air was thicker than butter. 'Or maybe cement is a better description.' She didn't fear him because of it as she had on Prison Island, that much was certain; he had been oh so kind enough to promise her that he would save the world at the expense of his own life.

Though she liked him for that, she was still feeling out of place with him like a dumb guppy, and she couldn't explain why. He was hardly any different from Mr. Robot, and deep down, she wanted to tell him how much it meant to her that he was alive; how sorry she was for not crying; how bad she felt for not making a memorial for him...

'You should've been the one to do it out of everyone because you're the one he promised to save the whole world for. You're the reason why he did it, the reason why he...' Her eyes were pushing back a familiar wetness that she hated to her very core. Amy jumped when she realized that the dark hedgehog had not liberated her from his gaze. "S―Stop staring at me like that. It's rude to stare, you know!" The decision to chide him was an impulse rather than an intention. She had been feeling emotionally weakened by her guilt, and responded to it with her own barriers.

The trademark cleft between Shadow's eyebrows sank deeper, making the frown more of a scowl. He closed his eyes, slewed his head away, and stood up, managing to cross his arms like the Shadow she once knew.

Amy's heart broke a little. She couldn't quite cotton on why he was walking away from her. 'Because you scolded him, you big dummy! That's why Sonic wouldn't even stick around!' She focused on Shadow's back. 'But Shadow's the one you have to make things right with for now. You have to tell him how you feel, how Sonic feels. Show him that he means what he's supposed to mean―'

Shadow's left heel didn't touch the floor when he got to the sixth step. One cough after another expectorated out of him without warning, causing him to cover his mouth with the back of his fist and hunch over. His calves trembled.

"Shadow!" Amy got up, torn between staying and leaving. "Are you alright, Shadow?" She gathered the courage to walk toward him. Her palm hesitantly went to his arm, but Shadow spun away from Amy and groped the wall for support instead.

Amy's hand dropped off his shoulder like a tear. Her body tensed with each smatter of bloody mucus that hit the floor. The hemming and hawing slowed in time, but Shadow continued to harrumph and pant, putting her on edge. She quietly waited for him to recover.

Shadow finally stood erect after a short spell. "I'm fine." Only the thunderstorm destroying the jungle behind the window had the privilege of seeing his expression now.

Amy squeezed the end of her shirt, then lowered her head sadly. He obviously didn't want to be in the same room with her. He wanted her to be gone and―

"Amy."

Amy flinched, fresh tears springing off the corners of her eyes. "H-Huh?"

Shadow's head turned some, facing his shoulder, but he didn't glance back at her. "You carried me here in this weather, didn't you?" he whispered.

Amy tilted her head at the way he said it. "Of course I did, silly." She smiled gingerly. "How else could I have gotten you all the way here? You were pretty heavy, too," she inserted.

Shadow the Hedgehog glanced back at her from over the bank of his shoulder. Amy was on her toes as she held the bottom of her shorts, hoping he'd say something else so she could talk more and be herself again. His eye seemed to regard her and perhaps even the companionship that she craved, but in ten seconds flat, he returned his gaze to the outside world where rain squiggled down the window. Amy rubbed her big toe with the toenail on her opposite foot.

"Thank you."

She lifted her head, quills rocking. "Wha?"

Shadow looked down, then off to the side again, quills swaying. He expanded upon his gratitude softly, "For helping me, like you did once before."

Amy brightened up. She gave him a very Sonic-like answer: "No problem. That's what heroes are supposed to do, right? Help people when they're in need!" Saving someone freshened up her self-esteem just like when she had saved Birdie and Gamma. Now was the time to shed her guilt: "And I was so glad that I found you, I―..." She stopped babbling when she felt his strong energy block her. It was an unconscious block made by the mere act of him plunging into his deep, caliginous thoughts.

"Heroes." Shadow raised his open palm to look at it. "Hmph." The sound was sad and cynical.

Amy's shoulders and ears sank. Nothing more was asked or said by her damsel in distress. Regardless of his appreciation, Shadow felt like he was galaxies away from her, lost in a quasar of limbo and melancholy. 'I know he's unhappy about his power ring falling into G.U.N. hands, but why isn't he at least happy to be alive? Is he upset that I saved him?' She wanted him to talk to her about his frame of mind. "Shadow?"

Shadow didn't budge, but she could see him bending his fingers into his palm.

"What's the matter, Shadow?"

He looked at his right foot and not at her, crossing his arms. "It is no concern of yours."

She cringed in mortification at the rejection. Amy bumped her back against the wall and stared at her muddy toes, seeing tears again. She didn't want to be in the same room with him anymore. She didn't want to be stuck in Mystic Ruins. She didn't want to be ignored anymore.

She just wanted to go home because at least the lonely walls of her apartment wanted her. Amy's hands made small fists against the wall. "Why're you both like that?"

Shadow's scalp of kicked-up quills still faced her.

...Amy sagged down the wall until her backside hit the floor. "Please talk back," she whimpered, on the edge of her sanity.

Shadow wouldn't turn his head.

She squeezed her arms around her legs. "Please don't be Sonic." Amy squinted out two floods of tears. "Anything but Sonic." Her body began shaking uncontrollably. "I don't want to be left behind again." She raised her head.

And then suddenly, it was Sonic standing behind the curtain of tears―the blue dream and the blue nightmare―with his back rejecting her and the rest of the world.

"Sonic? Sonic!" Amy dragged her feet across the floor in the lazy walk of a zombie, her hands lifting and reaching out to him, her fingers shaking to touch him and warm him and love him, and...and...and...'Oh, Sonic!'

Sonic's head moved by the slightest inch. That's when Amy did what Amy did best: she jumped onto him, her arms desperately locking around his waist, and tucked her face into his blue fur. His back muscles locked together tightly until his body felt rock-hard against her soft one.

"Oh, Sonic!" Amy rubbed his back with her forehead and her tears, flattening her bangs against her headband. "Let me in so I can help! I just want―"

Sonic's hand grabbed her wrist, prying her moist palm off his stomach. Amy quailed. She peeled her damp cheek off Sonic's spine to look up over his two spikes. Sonic did not shrug or shove her off. He moved his eye over his shoulder to look down at her with an iris that blazed like a bonfire.

That same eye wasn't green. It was...

Amy's gasp betrayed her terror. She keened and whined as she backed away from the black hedgehog. The tears were on a rampage down her horrified face. Shadow the Hedgehog continued staring at her over his shoulder with that one eye. Amy stumbled into a dark corner until the shadows ate her up, sliding down onto her rump.

The teen covered her face to shield herself from her shame. "It's all your fault that Sonic's the way he is! This is all...all your...all my fault..." Like a baby without its parents, Amy sobbed with an open mouth.

During all of this, Shadow did not speak. He only watched Amy Rose wilt. She sniveled and sank into the floor until she had managed to sink into a lake of dreams about rainbows and blue hedgehogs with red stripes. A red-eyed rat slithered across her leg while she slept in blissful ignorance. Right before the critter nipped her ear, Shadow stomped his foot down and crushed it. He slid its dead body away from Amy and dropped a tattered blanket over the pink hedgehog's shoulders.

Shadow loomed over her form like the Grim Reaper standing over one's bedside. He narrowed his red eyes in the darkness before edging away from the girl and meeting the window once more. "It's my fault for surviving," he whispered, "and your mistake for having brought me here."

Back in the heart of the Mystic Ruins, hard pats were tatting against the window of Tails's shop. Sonic the Hedgehog stared out of it with his chin in his palm as his foot tapped on the floorboards at a maddening speed. He glowered at the reflection of the dark hedgehog who glowered back at him.

Tails stopped screwing the screws into the back of his Chaos Emerald radar. He lifted his goggles. "Sonic?" The fox blinked. "Hey, Sonic!" His eyebrows curled inwards. "Are you feeling okay over there?"

Sonic didn't budge. It was like he had been hypnotized by his own reflection.

Tails chewed the inside of his cheek. "Sonic?" He approached the best friend who had alienated him for months. The fox's tails danced like snakes as he stood behind the hedgehog.

Sonic looked over his beige shoulder as the lightning flashed in the window. His idol's eye seemed to regard him and perhaps even the companionship that he craved, but in ten seconds flat, he returned his gaze to the outside world, where the rain squiggled down the glass.

Tails's pluck weakened. His ears sagged with his eyelids. "Sonic," he moaned, trying to control his tear ducts. "Who are you?"

The electricity went out, scaring Tails. Sonic's fur went all black, but the lamplight swinging outside touched his quills with a dull red light. Sonic had transformed into that other hedgehog―the black and red chimera who wore only one cloth of emotion on his face...

Tails shook his head in denial of what he was seeing. Just as he was about to backpedal, the lights flickered back on. The blue was back and the black was gone.

"…I'm just thinking a lot about Amy, that's all," Sonic voiced from what seemed like the bottom of a canyon.

'That's all?' Tails's inner voice mocked. His eyes were tingling again. 'That's all?' No, "Sorry, pal," just, "that's all."

"I'm worried about her."

"You're worried about Amy?" Tails parroted, blinking away his tears. "Did...something happen to her?"

"No, something happened to me," Sonic threw back with his best grunt, standing up. "Whatever's in me..."―his fists trembled―"I need to get it out." He gave the window a cold shoulder and power-walked into the center of the lab, pacing in circles as his hands animated his story. "I was watching it happen but I couldn't put a stop to it. I couldn't yell; I couldn't move; I couldn't do anything!'" His throat virtually caved in on itself.

Tails was getting dizzy from watching Sonic march to and fro, but his concern outranked his daze in importance. "Sonic, what're you talking about? I don't under―"

"Don't you get it?!" Sonic stopped pacing to jab himself in the chest with his thumb. "I hurt her feelings, Tails!"

Tails hopped back, startled by his passion. Because a shadow darkened one side of Sonic's face, one eye looked red while the other looked green.

"And you know how Amy is." Sonic's beige and black eyelids lowered a little as he frowned at his fist. "She's probably so upset that she didn't even..." He grunted again. The hero swiped at the air and got into action mode. "What am I even doing here?! I gotta go after her―"

"Sonic!" Tails held his hands up. "You can't go after her now!" He pointed to the ceiling. "I know you're Sonic, but those lightning bolts could strike you at any given moment! Do you know how many people die per year by lightning strikes?"

Sonic turned away, snorting like a pig and shutting his eyes angrily. "Gee, thanks for the relief, Tails."

"What I'm saying is that Amy's smart. She would've gotten on the train right away."

Sonic's ears hung lower. His fingers rolled open. "I sure hope you're right, little buddy. I sure hope you're right..."

"Little buddy" had a nice, familiar ring to it, one that brought a smile to Tails's sheeny eyes. The sparkles in them stopped twinkling when he suddenly reconsidered his own report. "Wait a second..."

Sonic's ears popped up. He frowned back at Tails. "What'd you mean, 'wait a second?'"

Tails grew nervous.

Sonic faced him. "Something you wanna tell me, little buddy?"

"Um..." Tails's ears lowered this time. "Weren't the...station workers having some type of strike at noon?"

"...TAILS!"

"It slipped my mind!" Tails shrieked.