Work Text:
Two villains, alike in vitiosity,
Beyond Anteros, where we lay our scene,
From vengeful grudge break to new anarchy,
Where sacrifice kills the aide unforeseen.
///
Agent Stone stood motionless beneath the statue of Anteros. He gazed upon the sky, where a glimmer of the supernova’s orange glow flickered through his dark irises. It was quite the sight to behold if it weren’t for the fact that he was staring at the last visible remnants of the man he loved most. How cruel that all he could do was watch helplessly.
If only he could get to him. Cradle him in his arms, nurse him back to life… Stone would do whatever he had to. He always did. He’d thought he’d lost the Doctor twice already, yet those times had been different. There’d always been hope. There had been a reason for Stone to get up every single morning as he awaited the Doctor’s return. Ivo had always been the very center of his universe.
That very center had shattered underneath Stone’s feet, and with that, so had every last bit of hope and sense of direction. The Doctor was gone.
Dead, he thought bitterly. Dead, dead, dead.
Stone knew what he had to do. After one last loving glance at the wreckage in the sky, he turned around and walked away. With each grueling step, he dragged himself to the river, where he used his glove to summon the Doctor’s spawn. One by one, the small egg drones came surging from beneath the water’s surface, and they found their way over to the lost man at the quay beside the Thames.
Their quiet whirring was comforting to Stone. He watched as the drones neatly positioned themselves around him, awaiting further orders. The agent knew the robots weren’t sentient nor programmed to appear like it, yet he felt as if they, too, knew that their Creator had passed. Stone stared into their little single-red eyes and smiled weakly. He wasn’t scared of what he was about to do. How glorious would it be to die at the hands of the one he’d served so devotedly?
Stone began humming the Ride of the Valkyries while he prepared their sequence. The tiny red dots of light on his body felt like a last caress of the Doctor. His thumb hovered over the switch, and he closed his eyes.
He was ready.
“I’ll be right with you, Doctor,” he whispered.
He flicked the switch.
///
Dr. Ivo Robotnik blinked - and blinked again, groaning and squeezing his eyes shut at the stingy rays of the street lantern above him. Everything hurt. He felt disoriented and weak, and the loud ringing in his ears made it so hard to think.
“You’re alive,” a low, grunting voice said to him. It sounded vaguely familiar. “Good. I have to go.”
What?
“W-Wait,” Robotnik croaked out. “Hold on. I need a moment-”
Robotnik winced as he tried to sit up, shaking and ignoring the stabbing pain throughout his chest. He tried to open his eyes again, squinted, and was met with a blurry image of that wretched emo hedgehog. Shadow. If Shadow was here, then… Robotnik gulped when memories of the Eclipse Cannon came rushing back to him. All of that had been real.
“How?” He asked incredulously. He should be… dead. The hedgehog looked annoyed by his question.
“The suit Gerald made for you. Upon the impact of the explosion, it turned into a spacesuit. I carried you back down here.” The hedgehog paused. “I have tried to contact your agent to come pick you up, but I have not been able to reach him. I heard rumors about a man having been killed by your drone tech near the launch site of the cannon… The description matches him.”
“What are you implying, Rainbow Dash? That’s impossible. My Badniks are programmed to protect him, not murder him,” Robotnik huffed, equally annoyed. “It's probably just any generic middle-aged arab man in a suit.”
Shadow just stood there with a gloomy expression on his face, and Robotnik squinted at him, trying to ignore that horrifying sense of impending doom within his chest. “You-” he chided. “-do not get to flaunt this redemption arc of yours. If something happened to my henchman, then that’s on you, you crackbrained urchin! My Grandbop conveniently left out the fine print when he recruited me, but you- You wanted to obliterate the Earth! You’re no better than him.”
That finally seemed to stir a reaction in the hedgehog. He balled his fists and shot a filthy glare in Robotnik’s direction. Robotnik noticed the tears in the furry teen’s eyes, but he couldn’t be bothered. He grunted as he tried to get up, swatting away the hedgehog’s attempt to help him. Pathetic.
“Get lost, Red Vines. You’ve done enough,” Robotnik spat at him. He could barely stand up straight, but anything was better than being in the vicinity of that self-pitying rat. One quick glance around him told him he was close to the launch site. Robotnik had to find Stone. He took a deep breath and clamped his jaws together - pain is but an illusion - and started limping toward it. He didn’t look back.
Shadow was wrong. Stone couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead because it was a Friday, and ever since Ivo’s tumble from the giant robot, Friday was their non-negotiable movie night. That suck-up of an assistant was probably just doing something lame like groceries or laundry. He couldn’t be dead, for fuck’s sake.
He couldn’t-
Robotnik stopped right in his tracks when he turned the corner and saw the scene Shadow had mentioned. Robotnik’s little hatchlings were pointlessly hovering over a man’s lifeless body. A few bystanders were hysterically on the phone with what could only be the police, and others were consoling each other. Robotnik couldn’t breathe.
Stone…? No-
Nonono. No, this couldn’t be happening.
“Get away from him!” He yelled in a blind panic and staggered closer. He still couldn’t see the man’s face with those damn people flocking around. He pushed a few miserable bystanders out of the way and-
Robotnik fell to his knees and clutched the jacket on Stone’s lifeless body. Fuck- Fuck, how was he already cold. The ugly, red holes blown in Stone’s chest proved it had indeed been the Badniks that shot him. There was no way they could’ve done that- unless- Unless Stone had forced them to.
The Doctor whimpered as grief washed over him. He ignored the people around him who tried to drag him aside, and he shook Stone as hard as he could. “Wake up Stone! You manipulative imbecile! What were you thinking!”
“Sir, I’m afraid he’s-” A bystander tried in a futile attempt to calm him.
“Don’t touch me! He’s my assistant! I need him!” He sobbed, searching for any sign of life in Stone’s empty, soulless eyes reflecting the vast nothingness of the night sky. He smacked Stone’s face harshly.
Nothing. No pained grunt, no silly little chuckle, no “Sorry, Doctor.”
Absolutely nothing.
Robotnik pressed his face against the cold, blood-soaked fabric on Stone’s corpse.
“Stone, you can’t leave me. It’s in breach of the contract. I- I can’t lose the only friend I’ve… ever…” His voice faltered, and he cried like he’d never cried in his life before. Sick, uncontrollable wails tore from his throat. He barely noticed the sirens getting closer in the background. The quiet, unresponsive flesh beneath him felt so surreal. He still expected it to move- to breathe and talk and-
Suddenly, at least four pairs of hands on him tried to move him away. Robotnik snapped his head up and found some underpaid police officers trying to pry his hands off Stone. He screamed, resisting their grip, and almost as if they understood what was going on, his Badniks whirred to life and quickly surged between him and everyone else. Their threatening red beams sent a clear message not to come any closer.
Robotnik slowly stood up, breathing heavily, Stone’s blood dripping from his face. His nostrils flared as his gaze quickly took in the scene around him. Armed officers had him surrounded, their trigger-happy hands trembling as they aimed at him. He let out a maniacal chuckle.
“I just saved the entire planet for the only person who ever cared about me, and he killed himself?!” He growled like a rabid dog. “I’m not afraid to die!”
“Sir, you’re under arrest. Please take your weaponry down slowly.”
Robotnik trembled, and he glanced at Stone again. Everything he’d done, he’d done for him. If Stone had still been alive, Robotnik would have happily surrendered to the police if that meant his assistant’s safety. Now, however… What did he have to lose? He had no family, no goals, no… Friend.
He swallowed heavily and shook his head. He had no reason to stay. If Stone had decided it was time to go…
“You idiot,” he whispered quietly, only for Stone to hear. “If only you’d waited a bit longer- Fuck- We could’ve…” He clenched his jaws. There was no use in saying it now. He missed the window. He took a deep breath and raised his hand, commanding one Badnik to turn around and focus the laser on Robotnik’s forehead.
He didn’t have anything else to say to these people. No grand speech, no heartbreaking goodbye. He closed his eyes and pictured Stone in his mind’s eye.
“Thanks. For… Everything.”