#i know this is set rather farther along in the au than what you've written so far after all

[solalunar-eclipse]

@teamxdark happy birthday!!! I'm sorry I haven't been able to make you any gifts in a while...hopefully this one makes up for it. I've done my best to write everyone in character, and I hope that you enjoy reading someone else's writing for Team Dark (Hotwing ver.) ^ ^

“I have to do this…for all the people on this planet…for Maria!”

Shadow was floating in space. Somehow, he could breathe just fine in spite of what should have been a crushing vacuum, but he hardly noticed—his attention far too fixated on what was happening right in front of him to even consider it.

Rouge hovered a ways away from him, her fur blazing silvery-gold in lieu of her usual white coloration. She was staring up at the ARK, the space station a hazy blur when contrasted against the light emanating from her form.

Shadow felt his legs dimly, wanted to sprint towards her and scream at her to stop, but he couldn’t muster the strength to move. He couldn’t do anything at all.

He watched as she announced one final “Chaos Control!”, and the Space Colony ARK disappeared from his periphery—and Rouge began to fall.

Shadow still couldn’t move, even as tears began to well up in his eyes, even as Rouge plummeted towards the world she’d always wanted to visit in a trail of golden light. It was only once she was nothing more than a spark burning out in the sky below that he felt the muscles in his chest unlock.

Shadow screamed.

The sound echoed in his ears, one single raw sound of loss and agony and guilt all tangled together into a blend of pure, unfiltered grief, the likes of which he would never have made had he thought anybody else could hear him. Suddenly, though, gravity took hold of him as well with a lurch, sending him plunging down and crashing into the floor with a cry.

…the floor?

The black hedgehog blinked slowly, struggling to adjust to his new position. He was currently hanging half-upside down, his torso and head flat on the floor and his legs tangled in some sort of cloth. He looked up, and…oh.

He’d recognize that tacky beige ceiling anywhere. He was lying on the floor of his bedroom, in the apartment he shared with Rouge and Omega. Rouge wasn’t dead, she hadn’t even died when falling to the planet’s surface. As a matter of fact, she was currently paying a third of the rent for their shitty landlord who didn’t ask questions and let a robot live with them.

Shadow groaned quietly. Apparently, he’d fallen out of bed while in the middle of a nightmare. Just fabulous. At least he was able to get off without a sore spot on the back of his head, though he’d have to deal with the scratches his still-tense quills had made in the flooring at some point.

Since he was alone in his room, Shadow indulged himself in a bit of immature behavior and twisted himself to lie fully facedown on the floor. He hated these nightmares.

Yes, he’d formed a stupidly strong bond with Rouge within literal days of knowing her, all because she was kind to him. Yes, that bond was somehow enough for him to track her down across six months where she was presumed dead and to continue following her around even when she’d lost all her memory. His brain didn’t need to rub it in by reminding him of all the ways he was inadequate and couldn’t be helpful or useful to her, but it had elected to make that its full time job without his permission anyway.

So now he was awake before even the fucking sun, with the sight of Rouge falling to her almost-death seared into the backs of his eyes. Lovely.

Slowly, Shadow dragged himself to his feet, fully certain that he looked like death warmed over. He didn’t even make a cursory attempt to straighten his spines, his arms feeling too much like lead to bother. Instead, he shuffled out of his room and down the hall, hoping to grab himself a glass of water just so he could have something else to focus on.

He at least made an effort to tiptoe lightly around Rouge’s room so he wouldn’t wake her—she worked hard enough to earn money each day, she deserved as much sleep as she could get. Honestly, he was feeling pretty pleased with himself for his stealthy maneuvers (seeing as Rouge had her hearing cranked up to eleven, what with the bat genes and Ultimate Lifeform powers), and he kept it up as he walked through the living room, just so he didn’t disturb Omega either.

“SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG.”

Shit!

The jewel thief nearly felt his heart exit his body, jolting so violently it was a wonder he managed to get his hand over his mouth in time to choke down a scream. He whirled to face the now obviously awake robot, gasping for breath in an attempt to recover from the shock.

“Good fucking Gaia, Omega, what was that?” he hissed. “How long have you been awake?”

Omega’s eyes glowed red in the darkness, something that would have intimidated anyone who knew him less but just left Shadow distinctly irritated.

“I EXITED SLEEP MODE UPON HEARING A SOUND BRIEFLY IN EXCESS OF EIGHTY DECIBELS. SUBSEQUENT ANALYSIS SUGGESTS IT WAS PRODUCED BY YOU.” he informed Shadow, who glowered unhappily back at him.

“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing that’s none of your damn business then, huh?” he grumbled sourly, turning back to his initial mission of getting a drink. 

“I LIVE HERE. THAT MAKES IT MY ‘DAMN BUSINESS’, IF ONLY PERIPHERALLY.”

Shadow pointedly took a gulp of water in favor of answering, turning away to lean on the counter of the apartment’s tiny kitchen.

“VERY WELL. IF YOU INSIST ON BEHAVING IN THIS MANNER, I WILL BE FORCED TO RESORT TO DRASTIC MEASURES.” Omega announced, not sounding even the slightest fraction either reluctant or remorseful.

“You know you’re not allowed to shoot this place up, you signed the contract like the rest of us,” Shadow muttered. He refused to grant Omega the courtesy of eye contact, electing to remain facing the wall.

Omega whirred sharply, sounding almost as though he had scoffed. “YOU THINK TOO LOW OF ME, SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG. MY PROCESSORS ARE SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHERS, AND THEREFORE I CAN CALCULATE COURSES OF ACTION THAT DO NOT INVOLVE VIOLENCE IF I CHOOSE TO DO SO.

“AND BEFORE YOU ASK, THE REASON I DO NOT CHOOSE THIS MORE OFTEN IS BECAUSE IT IS, AS YOU WOULD SAY, ‘LAME’.”

“Oh yeah?” he taunted, finally turning around. “So what’re you gonna—” 

His words dried up in his throat, clogging it and making it difficult for him to breathe.

Omega had called Rouge.

“I don’t know what he told you, but whatever it is, he’s a filthy liar,” Shadow said instantly, nearly tripping over his words with how quickly he spoke.

“…so you didn’t have a nightmare?” Rouge asked him, her voice far softer than he preferred (than he deserved).

The hedgehog scoffed. “Psh, what, me? Nightmares? Since when?” 

“Then what was that scream I heard earlier?” she pushed, one eyebrow raised doubtfully. (So she had heard him after all. Dammit.)

“Um, I just fell off the bed, and it startled me!” Shadow explained—why did this have to happen so damn early? He wasn’t at his best in the middle of the night…

Rouge gave him a Look. “And why did you fall off the bed?”

“BECAUSE HE HAD A NIGHTMARE.” the traitor robot said.

“Omega I will actually sell you for scrap.”

Rounding the counter corner into the kitchen, Rouge stopped less than a meter in front of him. “Somehow, I’m inclined to believe Omega here,” she remarked dryly, clearly attempting to get him to snap back with his usual sass.

But he couldn’t. Not when the sight of her tumbling to the planet was still fresh in his mind.

“Believe whatever you want,” he mumbled.

“Shadow…?” Rouge moved a little closer. “Why won’t you talk to me about this?”

Shadow shrugged listlessly. “You shouldn’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” He attempted to summon up his usual cocky smirk, but only managed a ghost of the real thing. “You’ve already got enough on your plate, yeah?”

Suddenly, he was startled by a pair of hands landing firmly on his upper arms, holding him with a gentle strength that belied Rouge’s true power.

“Do you even hear what you’re saying?” she asked him, so visibly concerned he almost wanted to apologize just to get her to stop looking like that. “You had ‘enough on your plate’ trying to survive an alien invasion, but you tracked me down not once, but twice just to convince me to snap out of it and save everyone. Heck, you had ‘enough on your plate’ when it came to making me and Omega stop fighting long enough to survive, but you still somehow got us to actually team up so I could recover my memories when we’d been at each other’s throats seconds earlier.

“After all that, well—I’d drop everything else in a heartbeat to help you if I thought I could.”

Now it was Shadow’s turn to frown. “I didn’t do all that so you’d owe me.”

“I know you didn’t. You tried so hard to hide it, but I could tell…you were worried. And I’m worried now, so please, tell me what’s going on?”

Rouge looked so earnest. He’d only seen her like this a handful of times: when she was struggling with her memories, when she was standing up to Black Doom…when she’d thrown herself into the final battle against the Finalhazard…

He couldn’t look at her. Not now, not like this. “I know I wasn’t there when it happened, but somehow I still see you saving the ARK sometimes. And—and I can’t save you. When you fall, I can’t help.”

Rouge’s eyes widened. “Shadow…I’m so sorry. I should have known it would hurt you when I chose to do that…I was in a lot of pain and convinced myself that I’d already pushed you away, but that’s no excuse.”

“B—wha—of fucking course that’s a good excuse! I should’ve tried harder, reached out again, anything! I could’ve helped somehow!” he sputtered, visibly taken aback.

“You did help me, in the end. And don’t say anything about doing it sooner!” she insisted, cutting him off just as he opened his mouth to speak. “I was determined to fight until I was worn down. You came for me at just the right time to make sure I could find myself and rebuild my life.”

Shadow scowled, still doubting her. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“Can’t I do that and also have it be the truth?” Rouge asked.

“…what do you mean?” 

The bat smiled faintly at him. “I care about you, Shadow, of course I want you to feel better. That doesn’t mean I have to be lying.”

“Oh. Um.” He blushed nervously, reaching up to brush his quills back in an unconscious movement. “You…you care about me?” he asked, in the smallest voice possible.

Rouge looked a little awkward in the face of such a raw moment, but continued onwards regardless. “I did ever since I met you, I think. It just took a while for me to realize it…and then once I had, no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I couldn’t stop.”

Shadow’s face fell. “So you don’t actually want to feel that way?” He sounded pathetically lost and confused even to his own ears, and his insides twisted harshly with shame.

“No, no, that’s not it at all!” Rouge said hurriedly. “It…felt like I was betraying Maria, at first. But after a while, I realized that she would want me to keep living—and more importantly, I wanted to keep living. And I wanted to do it with you and Omega.”

“I APPRECIATE THE INCLUSION.”

Shadow rolled his eyes, and Rouge half-smiled. “Anytime.” 

She turned back to Shadow, and then, almost hesitantly, held open her arms to him. 

He felt his eyes burn with unshed tears as he practically threw himself into the hug, reveling in the feeling of being held with genuine care by another. Rouge was here, she wasn’t dead, she was here and holding him and liked him.

“…ttle br…Shadow.”

“Huh?” His ears flicked upright, too late to properly register what Rouge had said. “I didn’t catch that, what’d you say?”

When he pulled back to look at her more closely, he saw that Rouge had started to blush a light green, and was biting her lip nervously. “Back on the ARK…before everything…Maria used to call me her Little Sister Rouge. I got older than her eventually, though—weird genetics stuff, you know—but she didn’t call me Big Sister until…that day.”

Shadow didn’t need clarification as to which day she meant.

“Lately, I’ve been thinking, and I want to—I’ve started, in my head…saying “L-Little Brother Shadow.” Rouge explained, her voice and posture stiff with discomfort.

That was the final straw for the young hedgehog, who promptly burst into tears.

“Ah—Shadow! I’m sorry, are you okay?”

��Y-you really wanna c-call me that?” he gasped, in between sobs.

“Only if you’re alright with it,” she reassured him, pulling him into another hug and wrapping her wings around him as well.

“I—I am.” He gave himself a minute, just taking some deep, shuddering breaths. Then he added, still crying a little, “…can I call you ‘Big Sister Rouge?’”

She froze for just a moment, before swallowing thickly. “I’d like that a lot.” she confessed, sounding as though she might shed a tear or several herself.

They stood there in the kitchen together for a long moment, just holding each other and resting in the newfound security that was their love made obvious. Eventually, Shadow did stop crying (after feeling a few drops on his head that had made his throat tighten all over again), but he didn’t let go just yet, reluctant to potentially ruin the mood.

Then, of course, it was ruined anyway.

“MIDDLE SIBLING OMEGA DEMANDS PARTICIPATION IN THE HUG.”

Shadow felt his stomach lurch, looking up at Rouge to see if she’d be upset with Omega’s brazen co-opting of her special words. Instead, however, she looked amused more than anything, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth despite her still-damp eyes.

“Very well. Come on…Little Brother Shadow.”

And when his Big Sister Rouge said that, before pulling him into a hug pile on the floor with Omega (and lots of pillows and blankets), well.

How could he ever say no?