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Shadow came to a halt in the middle of Mission Street, and he looked up at the night sky as people passed him on the pedestrian crossing. He sometimes wondered if people blamed him for the moon’s brokenness. On the one hand, it would be completely nonsensical. It wasn’t his fault. But on the other hand, he couldn’t ignore the fact that if he had been able to cure Maria, then maybe she wouldn’t have been killed, and maybe Gerald wouldn’t have sought revenge, and maybe Dr Eggman wouldn’t have destroyed the moon just to prove a point.
A car beeped its horn, and he shot a dirty look at the driver before getting out of the way. The crossing light hadn’t even begun to flash red yet.
He slipped his hands into the pockets of his winter coat, unable to help but look at the moon again as he made his way down the sidewalk. He couldn’t even look at the night sky without being reminded of the past. He wondered if the descendants of the people who had been killed on board the Ark felt the same way that he did. They couldn’t look up without remembering that their families had been broken apart in the same way that the moon had been.
He began to fidget restlessly with one of the seams inside his pocket. He didn’t like dwelling on this kind of thing, but sometimes trying to ignore it was just as bad.
He’d had a good thing going after Rouge had freed him from stasis. He’d been more or less a blank slate, and he’d been given the opportunity to live his own life. He’d lost his memories of his time aboard the Ark, he’d rejected Maria and Gerald’s wishes, and he’d defied Black Doom. He was supposed to have moved on, and he insisted that he’d done just that.
But then the memories started returning. They trickled back at first. Then he’d reunited with Maria in White Space, and the floodgates had opened. He’d spent many years wondering whether he and Maria’s relationship had been real – if they had ever met in the first place, or if she had been a phantom conjured by her grandfather in the depths of his mind. But she had been real, and so had the life they had shared together… and then she had been taken from him yet again.
He hadn’t even had a choice. He had defeated Black Doom to save her, only to lose her in the process.
The thrusters on his shoes flickered erratically, and he fought the urge to fidget with his inhibitor rings. He needed to do something, go somewhere. But he didn’t know what or where.
He hated it. He hated that he had no choice but to be reminded of his past at every turn. He hated that he couldn’t even go for a walk at night without seeing the broken moon in the sky. And even if it weren’t broken, the stars would remind him of Maria anyway.
He skated off, leaving a trail of fire behind him, and shot down the street, weaving through the agents leaving GUN’s headquarters at the end of the workday. People were on site at headquarters at all hours of the day and night. Surely there were some soldiers left that he could spar with or do training drills with. Something – anything – that would help him get this frustration out of his system –
‘Agent Shadow?’
Shadow skidded to a halt, holding one hand to his earpiece. ‘What?’ he snapped.
‘Come see me in my office when you get the chance –’
Shadow stiffened, looked up, and reappeared in the GUN commander’s office in a searing flash of light. ‘What is it?’
Abraham startled, turning away from an open filing cabinet. The office was in disarray, with papers and clutter everywhere. ‘Good grief. Would it kill you to knock –’
‘Damn it, Abraham, just tell me what you want.’
Abraham narrowed his eyes. His eyesight might be getting worse with age, but he was still very perceptive, and Shadow’s twitching ears and angrily lashing tail were not hard to miss. ‘…Who died?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Everyone we’ve ever known and cared about,’ Shadow snapped. ‘God forbid I think about it every now and then. Look, I’m not the one with memory problems. Are you going senile? Is that why you’re packing up your office? Did GUN make you redundant?’
‘No,’ Abraham said flatly. ‘I’m cleaning up.’ He took a bundled-up telescope from his desk and put it in Shadow’s hands before Shadow could so much as object. ‘I found this and thought you might like to have it. My grandson clearly isn’t using it, or it wouldn’t have floated around my office for so many years.’
Shadow’s ears flattened. He wanted to argue, but he had a feeling that he’d already said far too much. ‘… Is this a joke?’ he finally asked. ‘I’ve seen enough of the stars to last me the rest of my life.’
‘You say that, but you spend an awful amount of time on the rooftop of GUN’s headquarters at night.’
‘Can’t smoke indoors,’ Shadow said. It was stupid. He’d only smoked once in his life, and he hadn’t formed a habit. But it was easier than admitting that he had problems falling asleep. He stared at the telescope, and the dull metal reflected a ghostly version of his silhouette. ‘What am I meant to do with this?’
‘Look at the stars. Or the planets. Hell, you can look at the lights of Central City.’ Abraham turned away, riffling through the file cabinet once again, and he sounded impatient. ‘It’s not like we have a choice about whether we look at the night sky.’ For a moment, his normally ramrod straight posture weakened. ‘When I see the stars now, I don’t just remember Maria. I remember stargazing with my son and my grandson. But you can’t draw on those memories if you never make them in the first place.’
Shadow held the telescope awkwardly. It was like clutching a child’s toy, because it was. It had bright blue plastic attachments, and the tripod legs were marked with stickers. ‘Did you call me here just to give me this?’
‘Were you in the middle of something?’ Abraham asked wearily.
‘No.’ His shoulders slumped, and he backed away, scuffing his heels on the carpet. ‘Not really.’
He vanished before the conversation could get any more awkward and reappeared on the rooftop of GUN’s headquarters. He winced. He hadn’t meant to come here, but between Abraham mentioning it and the location being one of his regular haunts, his subconscious had brought him here anyway.
He looked over the telescope. Then he clumsily unfastened the tripod and set it up, adjusting it to his height. Even once it was set up, he couldn’t bring himself to look through the lens.
He didn’t want to look at the stars. He didn’t want to remember how she had described each constellation. He didn’t want to think about the fact that this world – the earth – might no longer exist one day, and he would have no choice but to keep living. He would still exist after the sun had burned out, alone at the end of everything, beneath the swindling light of a long-dead stars.
He lowered his eye to the telescope and looked. A random assortment of stars floated before him like large pieces of glitter. He didn’t want to recognise the constellations. He didn’t want to think about it. About anything.
It felt like things would never change. Like they were never going to get better. The only thing that was changing was him. He was growing more bitter and jaded, lashing out at anyone who tried to help or reach out to him.
He looked away and recognised the name of Abraham’s grandson stickered on the barrel of the telescope. His chest tightened. It wasn’t as though he and the commander were close friends, but they had managed to put aside their differences, even if they hadn’t fully resolved them. The commander and the president had both committed to making the world a better place, but he felt like he was becoming a worse person.
He didn’t owe anyone goodness or kindness. But if he really had Maria’s heart and soul… shouldn’t it be easier?
Why was he like this?
‘Yoo hoo.’ His head snapped up, and he saw Rouge sitting on the railing beside him. She grinned and gave him a teasing wave, and he mentally berated himself for not noticing her. He had to get out of his own head. If he kept getting lost in thought, then he would start making mistakes on missions.
He felt the weight on his chest begin to ease. It was easier to let something go if he had a good reason. And maybe being kinder to himself was a good reason… but it wasn’t enough. ‘Combat effectiveness’, as Omega put it, was the next best thing.
‘What are you doing?’ Rouge asked. Her seafoam eyes reflected the starlight.
‘I don’t know.’ He awkwardly tilted the telescope. ‘The commander was cleaning out his office. He gave me this. Said it used to be his grandson’s.’
‘Ah.’ Rouge pulled a face, no doubt wondering, like he had, whether the gift might have been in poor taste. ‘Not surprising.’
‘What is?’
‘I got the impression that Abraham’s parents neglected him due to their research, and then they passed away. I can’t blame him for spoiling his grandson. The kid probably has more toys than he knows what to do with.’ Rouge slipped off the railing, and her face brightened. ‘Can I have a go?’
‘Please,’ Shadow said, relieved to have an excuse to stop using the telescope for the time being. He stepped back, and she took his place.
‘Ooh, that one looks like a diamond,’ she said, pointing in the general direction she was looking. ‘I want that one.’
A laugh escaped his throat, and he said, ‘It’s a star, not a diamond. Please don’t tell me that all the world’s stars are yours to keep as well.’
‘Why shouldn’t they be? It’s not like they belong to anyone.’ Rouge’s wings fluttered. ‘All right, they’re mine now. I’ll let you look at them occasionally.’
He stared at her, and it occurred to him that going forward, he might remember this moment instead of countless others when night fell on Central City. His eyes began to burn, and he exhaled shakily. ‘… Can you keep talking?’
She stirred, as though she were going to look back at him, but something about his tone of voice must have stopped her. ‘Sure.’ She began to ramble about constellations, laying out her own memories of how she had learned to recognise them or life experiences she’d had related to them.
He felt a twinge of guilt. He felt bad for essentially “overwriting” his memories of Maria, but the longer Rouge talked, the more he came to realise that it wasn’t true. He wasn’t erasing his memories of her. He was adding new ones, balancing out the bitter with the sweet.
‘Shadow?’ Omega’s voice crackled in his ear. ‘Report status.’
‘I’m fine.’ He rubbed at his eyes and returned his gaze to the stars. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘...I was enquiring about your location.’
‘We’re on the rooftop, dumbass,’ Shadow said, and Rouge laughed.
‘Unnecessary hostility.’ Shadow heard the sound of the service elevator, followed soon after by Omega appearing and joining them. He scanned the telescope, then went into standby mode with an air of resignation. ‘This is boring.’
‘Shut up,’ Rouge scolded.
‘You cannot even use the stars for target practice. They are too far away.’
Shadow leaned against the railing, listening to their bickering with a half-smile on his face. In time, maybe his old memories would become as distant as the stars themselves. Maybe it would just take time.