Chapter Text
It's a warm dusk when Shadow wakes up in a crater the size and depth of a small lake. His eyes break open through suspiciously red crust only to close at the impact of the light on his senses. Though dull, it blinds him, putting a damper on any determination to get up immediately and carry on before he can dwell. He groans, untethering his left arm from the casing of dry dirt it had been buried in and shaking off the excess before pressing the heel of his palm square against his temple, willing away the sharp throbbing. When it starts to work, just a little, he does the same with the other.
He lies there for a good long while, gathering himself, limp if not for the strength he rallies to free himself of the worst of the headache. By the time he considers getting up and planning the next move, it's past sundown. He only notices the change in light level consciously when he opens his eyes again and finds it remarkably more tolerable.
The headache hasn't gone away, but it isn't as grievous as when the sun was out. Shadow accepts it as a blessing as he slowly lowers his arms to his sides. With a push, he is disentombed from the cast created by the impact of his landing from the hips upward.
Sitting up comes as a surprising respite from the dizziness. He can see the solid ground he feels beneath him and it's grounding. He sits for a moment with his arms propping him up, eyes glazed over.
There's no confusion over how he survived; it was his own energy creating the catastrophe. Without his inhibitors, that'd never injure him properly. The fall, however? Ouch.
Nothing is broken (thank you, Wolverine-ass healing factor), but it's obvious that he's concussed by the way the world clips and spins in short intervals, making it hard to focus on any one thing even if the whole picture is visible and available. Even when he squints, not even the contours of the crater he finds himself in can be deciphered.
'No matter,' Shadow thinks to himself, huffing out a breath. 'I have cuffs to find.'
One step at a time, Shadow drags himself onto all fours, pulls up a knee, braces a hand on it, and shoves. He's up within moments, only to promptly sway, trip out of his centre sideways and onto the curve of the crater. He yelps and catches himself, barely, on his elbow, which sends a jolting ache up his arm and into his shoulder.
At least it's the left one - he doesn't need it as urgently.
Fuck it. He's halfway out of where he started and that's a good thing.
Having found his limit, Shadow begins the unceremonious drag away from the centre and up the curve. It's slow and looks like the worst army crawl you've ever seen but it's getting the job done and that gives Shadow the barest glimmer of hope that he'll escape before everybody he knows dies of old age.
Oh, yeah. He knows people.
That sounds like the start of a new plan. What he'll do with it, he has no idea, but he's sure that something will happen the moment he makes contact with civilisation again. He wonders vaguely whether or not he's at all close to where Sonic and his family are.
While these thoughts swim around his skull untethered like flour in a food processer, he makes some steady progress, and before he knows it, he's finding flat land. No grass, of course, because the shock of the wave would've uprooted every blade in a mile. Here he sits, observing the sheer significance of such an occurrence, staring at the colourless ground with vacant eyes and an aching body.
He just knows he's dusty as Hell. He can see his arms above the wrists and how discoloured they are. He must look a state.
The very concept of standing up makes something deep within Shadow's midsection lurch, causing him to pitch forward. Not good at all. He's got to get up. He needs those inhibitors before the chaos energy finishes helping him heal and starts overproducing, and that won't take long.
With the most force he can muster, Shadow presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, sets his brow, and presses up. Nausea races up his oesophagus but he swallows it before it can cause any disruptions. Now, he sits on his heels with his palms on his knees. Took long enough.
In any other situation, being so quick to move would've been a mistake, given how his every muscle weighs with the gravity of fatigue. Immediately, his arms straighten out and lock at the joints, supporting him as his head hangs. His eyes once again close in rest, preparing him for the next leg of the search.
He can only hope that his inhibitors have landed somewhere close.
Will he even be able to walk in this state? He hasn't thought of that, yet. Knowing that the world likes to take a violent pivot when he tries, he doubts it, but it doesn't matter. He has to move.
Shadow finds his centre of balance on his left knee and pulls the right to his chest, foot flat on the floor. With the same sided hand, he levers himself into a higher kneeling position. Then, he pushes, placing his other foot in a wide stance. He's still bent over with his hands on his knees and his eyes are still closed but he's standing and that's what's important.
The next item on the list is to get moving without his knees buckling beneath him, which is more and more a possibility as seconds go on. He takes a deeper breath than he already has been, makes half a step, and quickly finds that neither of his legs can handle his weight without the support of the other by crashing to the ground sideways. Once again, he lands on his left, his shoulder taking the hit as he breaks his fall with his elbow. Without a moment of thought, he lets his forehead hit the dirt, once again having to press into his temple to quell some of the blood rushing in his ears. Even if it weren't so quiet, he suspects that any ambient sound would still be lost on him.
He's going horrifically slow in a race against time, and yet, there's no going anywhere. He needs rest before anything else and he doesn't have time for it because he needs those inhibitor rings just as badly. He needs to find a way to track them down before anything awful can happen. He needs to find Sonic.
'I need help.'
What a concept. He's only got memories of the last four years and all of them involve the lab, save for the last, what, week or so? From hopelessness with pockets of fondness, to grief-stricken rage, to...this. It's foreign and it hurts.
For a moment, he considers forgetting about the inhibitors and just letting the energy overwhelm his organic body. Letting it leak like radiation into the Earth where he doesn't have to feel its volume anymore. To just pass out here and pretend he truly did die saving the world.
That'd be counterintuitive though, wouldn't it? He'd made a promise that night on the moon. To allow his own energy to infect the planet he'd done so much to protect, to break it when the one who'd forgiven him for his actions so quickly had asked it of him, was out of the question. He knows now: Maria would never have wanted it, and that's all that matters, because she was good, and she would've loved Sonic. That's important.
With another herculean push, Shadow rights himself, soon on all fours and then once again upright. This, he knows he can do, and he's had the practice now. It's exhausting and nauseating and makes his head swish but it's worth every ounce of energy it takes. This time, when he's standing, he puts in a conscious effort to time his weight shifting from one leg to the other perfectly, eyes closed in concentration. He pushes, lands, and gasps when it actually works. The relief that floods him when he doesn't collapse after a few moments post-effort feels like morphine. It's strong enough that he actually smiles, breath evening out.
It takes him another hour to find the edge of the carnage, spreading out into a vast scape of green. In the pitch black, it looks appropriately like a swallowing void, but Shadow has never had an issue seeing in such conditions. It seems like a good place to stop and gather back his strength, which he longs for more than almost anything. He stares out into the portrait, huffs in exasperation, and keeps walking.
Shortly forward, he realises that he's on a small hill. It had blended in before but stood on the edge, he sees not only the difference, but a patch of discolouration. His eyes widen.