Shadow gave Abraham an unimpressed look. 'You heard me. I still think the whole affair was mishandled, but I never said I wouldn't do it.'

'Now I remember why we made Rouge your team leader,' Abraham grumbled. 'For all her tricks, she's still more straightforward to work with than you are.'

Shadow narrowed his eyes. 'I'm extremely straightforward.'

'There is nothing "straight" about you – your very quills have angles in them.'

'I am straight,' Shadow retorted. 'Very much so.'

Abraham's expression contorted briefly. 'If you insist. But am I hearing you correctly? You're agreeing to participate in the program with the Central City Children's Hospital?'

'I'm saying I'll do it. Do you want a 40-page answer to the 40-page proposal?'

Abraham blanched. 'No, heaven forbid. But are you sure? As I said, many of the junior agents lack pragmatism. You don't have to go along with their ideas.'

'I'm "going along with" it because it happens to suit my purposes. That's all.'

Abraham stared down at his desk. '… Thank you.'

'Don't thank me for doing this,' Shadow muttered, 'or I won't do it at all.'

'Right.' Abraham hesitated. '… Right. Earlier, you said you only have partial memory loss. Do you remember meeting my grandchild?'

Shadow's eyes widened. 'Yes.'

He remembered it vividly. He remembered being a GUN trainee, spending every waking hour in training simulations. He remembered being interrupted by the commander's distorted voice in his earpiece one day and thinking that he needed to upgrade his audio equipment. He remembered Abraham apologising for everything that had transpired between them. He remembered Abraham inviting Shadow to meet his newborn grandchild. He remembered showing up to a house with a white picket fence, wearing his uniform jacket and a holstered gun. He remembered a red-and-white picnic blanket on a crisp green lawn. He remembered thinking that it looked like a picturesque 1950s Americana fantasy.

He remembered thinking that Maria would have given anything to experience that moment.

'I remember her.'

'... Him,' Abraham said gently. His smile, brief though it was, faded. 'He's dying.'

Shadow stiffened.' I see.' His mind raced. 'I see … But if I discover that this proposal was actually yours all along – some sort of last-ditch attempt to save your grandchild – then I'm quitting the organisation.'

'What? No! No, it isn't. It wasn't. I have more respect for you than that.' Abraham shook his head. 'I don't know when you arrived at that meeting last night, but you may have heard me say that this all started because I mentioned something to my aide.' He exhaled. 'I was telling my aide about my grandson's diagnosis. Someone from PR overheard us and ran with the idea faster than that blue friend of yours.'

'He's not my friend,' Shadow retorted. Then he looked away. Despite his best efforts, his voice came out sounding pained. 'Let me guess. Your grandson is at Central City Children's Hospital.'

Abraham nodded. 'He has an undiagnosable immune disorder. They've tried everything they can.'

Shadow unfolded his arms. 'I was going to do this anyway. It's not as though that information changes my decision. But I can't promise to save him, or anyone else for this matter. And if something goes wrong, I won't take the fall for something that wasn't my idea. Your junior agents may have to learn their lesson the hard way.'

'Thank y–' Shadow gave him a sharp glare, and the Commander bit his tongue. 'I understand.'

Shadow gave him a curt nod and walked to the door. He paused before leaving. 'I'm sorry about your grandson.'

'Thank you.' Abraham hesitated again. 'You have a big heart, Shadow.'

Maria had said the same words to him over 50 years ago.

Shadow gave the commander an exasperated glare. 'Are you going senile, Abraham?'

'You can talk about suiting your own purposes all you want. But everyone has a reason that underlies the choices they make. And if you insist that you've left your past behind, then what do you have left to motivate you other than your heart?'

Shadow remembered Maria explaining the concept of kokoro to him. It meant 'heart', but it also encompassed mind, spirit and soul – the heart of things, in other words. She had loved Japanese expressions. She even said 'sayōnara' when they parted ways for the last time. 'Sayōnara' didn't simply mean 'goodbye'. 'Sayōnara' denoted a permanent farewell, yet Maria still continued to influence him from beyond her starry grave.

If Shadow's soul was modelled after hers, then what did that say about his heart and spirit? Was he still subconsciously carrying out her wish, even despite his best efforts to find his own path?

'I …' Shadow still remembered tossing aside the only photograph he had of Maria and Gerald, leaving it aboard the Ark, in the depths of outer space. He'd been bitter and exhausted, ready to throw it all away and let his past burn until it became a black mark on the floor. '… I haven't. I haven't left my past behind. I told Maria I'd keep fighting with her wish in my heart. I just don't want my past to define me any more.'

Abraham's face whitened. 'Wait. What do you mean … you "told Maria"?'

A beat passed, and Shadow swiftly looked away. He hadn't realised that Rouge may have been selective when debriefing Abraham on what happened in White Space.

'White Space is a distortion of the spacetime continuum,' Shadow said. His voice was flat and emotionless. 'There were numerous anomalies, but the timestream stabilised after I defeated Black Doom.'

Abraham locked his fingers together, refusing to look up. 'So nothing changed? Aside from you?'

'No, I …' Shadow stopped. 'Aside from me?'

'You've always insisted that you had put your past behind you. But here you are, talking about Maria's wish.' Abraham forced a smile. He looked like he was in physical pain. 'Maybe GUN wasn't the only place that had what you needed. Whatever happened in White Space … I hope whatever you found was worth your while.'

Shadow said nothing.

Abraham opened his desk drawer and took out a pen. Then he stopped and reached inside again. 'Wait.' He stood up and walked over, holding something in his closed fist. When he reached Shadow, he opened his hand, revealing two medals. 'You're already here, so –'

Shadow stepped back, shaking his head. 'No. I said that I wasn't going to accept any honours from GUN. And I don't need these –'

'Yes, you do.' Abraham grabbed Shadow's hand, stopping him in his tracks. 'The public will never know about White Space, let alone what you did there to stop Black Doom. It doesn't matter what you say – you need to know that at least one person appreciates what you did, even if that person is just me.'

'I can't accept these.' For the first time in months, Shadow felt panic begin to rise in his chest. 'I don't deserve them. I couldn't … save her.'

'You saved the world. You saved humanity, Shadow –'

'I don't care about humanity,' Shadow snapped, and Abraham flinched. 'Maria was the one who loved the world, not me. It doesn't matter what I've done – I've only ever protected the world for her sake, not for the sake of its people. I don't deserve to be rewarded for that.'

Abraham's grip tightened. 'Do you have any idea how much self-sacrifice it's taken for you to do that? To protect humanity even though it cuts against the very grain of who you are? Even if you don't believe your actions deserve to be rewarded, your selflessness is medal-worthy.' Abraham let Shadow go and held out his other hand. The two medals glimmered in his palm. 'But there isn't a medal for selflessness, so I have to give you these instead.'

Shadow was too stunned to speak.

'Shadow?'

The door was right behind him. He could leave at any moment.

'Shadow –'

Shadow gave Abraham a weary look. 'I'm still here, aren't I? You're not getting any younger, and I have places to be. Hurry it up.'

Abraham shook his head and smiled wryly, opening the pins on the backs of the medals. Shadow stiffened as Abraham pinned the first one to his jacket, above his heart. 'The Purple Heart. Even though you insist you can't be killed, Rouge told me that you were still wounded.'

Shadow remembered the diamond-shaped scar on his back, a reminder of the agonising cost of using the Doom Wings. 'I did it to myself. Out of necessity.'

'You think that makes it any less commendable?' Abraham pinned the second medal to his chest. 'And the Distinguished Flying Cross.'

'I'm … not a pilot. Why are you giving me this?'

'It's for heroism and extraordinary achievement related to flight. I think Rouge is more than qualified to make that assessment – she's our only agent with wings.' Abraham stepped back and slid his hands into his pockets. 'Though I heard that for a brief time, she wasn't the only one.'

Shadow stared at the cross-shaped medal. It occurred to him that even though he had lost his wings, he would still have something to remember them by after his scars healed. Because despite the horrific, scream-inducing agony that using the wings had inflicted on him, they had still given him the ability to fly, catching one more glimpse of the freedom that Sonic held so dear.

'Well?'

Shadow gave the medals a disinterested glance. 'At least I can melt them down for bullet casings.'

Abraham shook his head and returned to his desk with a weary chuckle. 'I thought you didn't use guns any more.'

'I use whatever means necessary to achieve my goals.' He withdrew the Chaos Emerald. 'Despite everything, that's one part of me that hasn't changed.' And with one last glance at the commander of GUN, he dematerialised and vanished.

To be continued…