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Shadow is falling.
He searches for anything to stop or even slow his descent, but there's nothing but a vantablack void.
He fights the urge to scream, but even when he loses, no sound escapes. His heart is in his throat, and he's choking on it. He silently begs for mercy.
No one responds.
He finally stops falling, but when his feet land on solid ground, the nightmare isn't over.
It's worse.
He's back on the ARK, witnessing the same horrific scene that would never cease haunting him: he's trapped inside the escape pod, and blood is blossoming across Maria's blue dress as she falls.
"Maria!"
Heavy footsteps approach, but they don't belong to a GUN soldier.
They belong to him.
He is somehow both versions, experiencing the grief and rage at watching his best friend die, but also sadistic glee at being the reason she's living her final moments in agony.
He aims his gun at Maria.
"No!" the scream rips from his throat.
Maria just manages to look up at her assailant, and a shuddering gasp escapes her. "Shadow?"
He shoots her. Her blood splatters across the glass.
He slams his fists into the escape pod. Tears pour from his eyes.
He laughs maniacally. He kicks her lifeless body out of the way as he walks over to the escape pod launcher.
"I'll kill you!" Shadow howls.
You will, he replies. His mouth doesn't move.
He's hurled into space–without the escape pod. He tumbles, watching the ARK sail in and out of view.
You killed her, several different pitches of disembodied voices say in unison. Your fault.
"No!"
You have to atone for all the damage you've caused. So here you fall. Alone. Forever.
"Get the hell out of my head!"
Oh, but you know. You know you're better off alone. But you're so very scared of it, aren't you? Pathetic. Some "Ultimate Lifeform" you are. Too weak to live, but too strong to die by any normal means. Don't you wish you could? So you don't have to take the coward's way out?
He stops falling without impacting anything. He's still in the void, but he's simply standing despite there being no visible platform.
The same gun he had shot Maria with is in his hand once again. Her blood is splattered over the barrel.
Just pull the trigger. Give in. You should have never been created, so do the world a favor and rid it of your miserable existence.
Shadow's finger rests on the trigger, but he doesn't look down the bloody barrel. "I made a promise that I have to keep." He tosses the gun away, and it drops down past his feet, falling indefinitely.
Do your friends really have to die by your hand before you get it through your thick skull?
"I don't have friends," Shadow says through gritted teeth.
Oh, you don't? Well, I guess we can dispose of these things, then.
All of the Restoration members suddenly appear in front of him, standing in rows. They have blank looks and glassy eyes.
Let's see…eeny, meeny, miny…moe.
A clawed hand darts out of the darkness and wraps around Rouge's neck. The arm fades into the shadows, concealing the rest of the body it belongs to.
Catch a bat-girl by the throat.
"Let her go!" Shadow attempts to dash forward, but a glass tube drops down over him. Shadow beats it, kicks it, spin dashes against it--nothing works.
If she hollers, I'll let her go.
Rouge claws at the hand, turning purple.
Oh, right. She can't holler, because she's choking. Silly me.
"Stop!" he begs.
The voice sighs, and tosses her in front of Shadow. She rolls and slides as she gasps for air, and all Shadow can do is watch her regain her color as she sits up.
Which one should we strangle next? Maybe…this one?
The hand picks up Cream by her ears, who screams.
"Leave them out of this!"
Why do you care? You don't have friends.
"They're still people. They still deserve to live."
The hand drops Cream. As she falls, the whole group blows away like chaff–minus Rouge, yet including the hand and the invincible glass.
Unfortunately, the voices persist.
Why should you decide that? You were created to kill.
"I was created to give people another chance at life."
Actually, you were created for both. But they war within you.
"I know which is right."
You can't have one without the other. You cause the very thing you try to prevent.
A shrill screech of a whistling sound pierces the air, and Rouge screams, clutching her ears and hunching over herself. Shadow clamps over his ears instinctively–he tries to remove them to help Rouge, but the sound is like shards of glass stabbing into his eardrums, and he has to keep them there.
"Stop!" He's not sure if his voice even leaves his throat.
What? I can't hear you. The voices come clearly from inside his head.
Rouge continues to scream, face contorted in agony. Blood spills out from between her fingers, running in revlets down her ivory fur.
Shadow drops to his knees in front of her, forcing himself to remove his hands from his ears to reach for her. He doesn't know what to do, but he can't just let her suffer alone, even if he never hears again.
But Rouge's eyes roll back in her head, and she falls over backwards, writhing.
The screeching stops. She goes limp.
"Rouge," he gasps, pulling her into his lap.
Blood gushes from her ears, runs from her nose.
He shakes her. "Rouge!"
Even if she was alive, she wouldn't be able to hear you. Did you know that bats have extremely sensitive hearing? You know, except when you burst their eardrums.
Shadow lays her down gently before jumping to his feet.
"Come out and fight me, coward!"
I can't.
"You can't, or you won't?"
The voice is only one now, and it chuckles lowly. I can't, because I'm you. The voice is unmistakably his.
"You're not me. You're a result of the fake emeralds. You trapped me within them, within my own head."
They didn't infect you with something foreign, imbecile. They simply amplified what evil, what chaos, was already there.
"No!"
I am you. I am all the noise in your head, all the dark thoughts, all the violent tendencies, all the sinful desires, every ounce of rage. I am every single suppressed thought resurfaced. I am all of you. This is who you are that you wish you didn't have to be. But secretly? You love it.
"Go to hell!" He starts launching chaos spears haphazardly, hoping to hit whatever part of him is hiding in the darkness.
Don't act like you didn't enjoy watching the life drain from Maria's eyes before you expedited the process. Don't act like you didn't love blasting her brains out. Like you weren't thrilled to see Rouge writhing in agony while her blood drained from her deafened ears.
"The only violence I'm going to enjoy watching is when my fists beat you into a bloody pulp!"
"Shadow."
We've been over this. I. Am. You.
The face that shoots out from the darkness at lightning speed is his own, mixed with the demonic features of Black Doom.
He punches reflexively. His hand drives right through, image rippling outward.
Like he's looking into water.
Shadow's arm falls uselessly.
His reflection leans in, and speaks without a mouth. If you want to kill me, you'll have to put a bullet in your brain.
"Shadow!"
—
[Restoration Medbay]
At his name, Shadow jolts up with a shout, throwing a punch that is deflected. He pants, realizing that he's not in danger, and that he nearly hit–
"Rouge," he breathes, dropping his arm. "Are you okay?"
Rouge relaxes from her defensive stance. "I'm not the one who's been thrashing around and screaming," she says.
"I didn't hurt you, though?"
"I'm okay, hon. You didn't hurt me." She carefully sits on the edge of his bed.
He breathes a sigh of relief and rubs his face, wiping away cold sweat and warm tears.
"You're shaking," she says, reaching out for him.
Shadow nearly falls backward off the bed to avoid her touch. "Don't!" The sensors attached to his chest yank on his fur, and the needle in his forearm burns as it's jostled.
She flinches away, concern in her teal eyes. "It's just me, Shadow."
"I don't want you touching me, I don't–" He gasps for air. "I don't want anyone touching me."
"Okay, okay, I won't touch you."
They sit in tense silence while he collects himself, breathing deeply to stop his thrumming adrenaline.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Shadow throws his legs over the side of the bed, his back to her, and starts ripping off the tubes. The heart rate monitor flatlines, and an alarm goes off that Rouge scrambles to mute.
"Shadow, you need to lay down. You used an enormous amount of energy, and obviously the fake emeralds affected you more than we realized--"
He yanks the needle out of his arm. "I'm fine. I heal fast." He bends down to slip on his shoes.
Rouge sighs, watching him, seeming to chew on words Shadow is sure he doesn't want her to say. He stands, and pulls on his gloves before taking a few steps toward the door.
"I've told you before," she says. "I'm always gonna be by your side. But you gotta let me stand there."
He freezes. His chest stirs with warmth at the reminder, but it also constricts with panic. He thinks about her in his nightmare, limp and bleeding out in his arms.
He hears Rouge approaching, but before he launches himself away, she says, "I'm not going to touch you."
She doesn't have to touch him for him to feel her at his side.
"You don't have to shoulder this alone," she whispers.
"Unfortunately, I do." He makes a beeline for the door again, and Rouge doesn't try to stop him.
Before he opens it, he pauses, and turns his head to the side. He can barely see her out of the corner of his eye, and that's almost too much for him to see.
"Thank you. For trying to stay by my side. I'm sorry that I make it impossible to." At least he can leave her with that.
She starts counting off on her fingers. "Impossible, unbearable, insufferable…I could go on, but you've gotta go be angsty." She's teasing, but he knows there's some truth for how difficult he makes things.
"So why do you try to keep me around?"
"For your good looks, obviously."
Shadow breathes a laugh out his nose, mouth twitching into an amused smirk. "Same reason I try to keep you around, then." The door slides open, and he steps out. The hallway is dimly lit and empty. He has no idea what time it is.
Shadow jumps as Rouge grabs his hand, and turns back to her in alarm.
"I keep you around because I want you around. You're my best friend."
He knows that. He's known that for a long time, but it's not something either of them have ever said allowed, at least not directly.
He looks away. "I can't stay."
Rouge smiles, bittersweet, her eyes glassy. "I know." She lets go of his hand, and there's a communicator in his. "If you need me, or anyone. You know we'd be there in a heartbeat."
Shadow swallows hard, nods, and starts off down the hall. "Tell Omega good bye for me. And Cream."
"I will."
In his other hand, he palms a chaos emerald--a real one, but the stone feels foreign in his grip. Still, in a flash of green light, he chaos controls to the base of a volcano. The sweltering heat chokes him.
I'm sorry, Rouge. Omega. Cream.
He clenches his fist, breaking the communicator into pieces, and sprinkles the pieces into the lava, watching them disappear into the molten liquid.
Then, in another flash of green light, he disappears.