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Every time Shadow sleeps, he feels himself luckier when he doesn’t dream at all.
The nightmares had been harrowing, absolutely agonizing after the Black Arms invasion. He’d begin to feel dread every time the lack of sleep caught up to his body, knowing that his consciousness would torture him with yet more images so unsightly and disturbing that sometimes he’d wake up with heavy breaths and salty tears running down his face, feeling like he hadn’t slept at all.
The more time passes, though, the less dread it is that settles within his chest when his body reminds him he needs rest. The nightmares become less frequent, and sometimes when pieces of the past show up in his dreams, they’re not as heartbreaking as they would’ve once been. Chunks of the present start hazily sneaking themselves in during his slumber, and even if he even forgets he needs it sometimes, falling asleep hasn’t been so bad lately.
Tonight, the moment he falls asleep feels too vague to fully remember. He remembers being the slightest bit awake after a while, feeling the sensation of getting gently picked up and held in metallic arms, then put back down on top of a soft blanket he immediately instinctually wrapped around himself. Tonight, he falls asleep and when he feels a dream creep in, he fully allows himself to become enveloped in its reality.
Tonight, when Shadow opens his eyes, he does not realize he is dreaming.
He looks around, and he’s… somewhere familiar, but not quite. A mishmash of something that looks like the Doctor’s bases and industrial factories, but not a specific one. It’s eerily silent; he gets the feeling he’s supposed to be looking for something. Something or someone.
Deciding that walking won’t get him anywhere, he revs up his air shoes and skates his way through long, metallic hallways. Unnaturally long. They don’t last forever, though, and when he reaches the end, he reaches a large room and is greeted with an explosion.
“THERE YOU ARE,” he hears a familiar monotonic voice boom, loud from within.
“Omega?”
The dust hasn’t settled entirely, but Shadow can see Omega’s figure from where he stands. The room is full of a mixed horde of badniks and G.U.N. robots, and Omega stands in a battle stance with his arm cannon ready to fire.
“COME, SHADOW!” Omega says, shooting missiles at the fleet of robots that charges towards him. “JOIN ME! LET US CAUSE DESTRUCTION TOGETHER!”
Here, Shadow openly feels a grin spread across his face at the invitation. Of course, of course he will, without question as to why or how they’re here right now. It’s not even a thought to wander through his mind—what’s that to matter when there are robots to destroy with the best robot fit for the job?
From the moment Shadow charges into the room, and during those he spends with Omega as they both let out their fine-tuned power at their metallic victims, it feels blurry. However blurry it is, it does not stop the feeling of the patterns in his attacks combined with Omega’s from feeling like a dance. Clouded and misty, he shoots a Chaos Spear at the same time that Omega—who he stands back-to-back with—shoots from one of his flamethrowers. The sounds of explosions and malfunctioning machines and roars from Shadow’s air shoes and Omega’s jets melodically blend together almost like they’re forming a song, and the satisfaction of blasting robots with his teammate settles in Shadow’s chest.
“WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT!” Omega shouts after a while of tearing robots down that feels like an instant, running and shooting one of two robots still left functioning in the room. “AN ABSOLUTE DECIMATION OF WORTHLESS INFERIOR MODELS!”
A beautiful sight it is, Shadow thinks. He skates towards the center of the room, heading for the final robot that stands in front of Omega. He homing attacks it and the impact after the small explosion it causes launches him directly at Omega. His hands end up holding onto Omega’s shoulders for balance, and Omega practically catches him in his arms.
“YOU HAVE SATISFACTORILY AIDED ME IN DEMOLISHING ANOTHER GROUP OF MISERABLE, INFERIOR MACHINES,” Omega says, holding Shadow as he sits in his claws. “IT APPEARS THE DUO OF THE ULTIMATE ROBOT AND ULTIMATE LIFEFORM CANNOT BE STOPPED.”
“You’re right, we can’t,” Shadow says with a smirk, moving his hands from Omega’s shoulders to pressing his palms against his chassis. He looks into the red glow of Omega’s eyes, and he swears he feels static electricity run up his quills. He glances down at the strip of metal beneath Omega’s head, and in what feels like slow motion he thinks his friend might be bringing him in closer, and closer, and closer…
Shadow’s eyes fly open and he shoots up to a sitting position in his bed, the light of the morning sun peeking through his curtains and making him squint. There’s a split second where he can’t recall what he’d seen in his sleep, the picture foggy in his mind. But then the image and feeling of being held by his robotic teammate and looking into his eyes comes back to him, and as he raises his hand to cover his mouth he feels his heartbeat quicken and heat rush up to his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Oh.
“Shit.”