Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stone lay in the grass of a field somewhere south of nowhere and watched the Cannon's remnants rise in the evening sky. Hello, Doctor.

"Hello, Stone."

He sat up and watched Robotnik approach, frowning under his black moustache. He breathed in and his lungs filled with a gentle warmth.

"Moping again?"

"I suppose."

"How original."

He looked back at the Cannon. His brow furrowed. Had he grown his hair out again? When he looked back he was the version he'd seen last, all red clothes and soft smiles.

"I'm sorry," said Stone.

"The pity party's unnecessary, I assure you." He sat down and offered his hand, palm up, and added, "I'm here."

Stone took his hand. They were silent for a while. Silent, save for the wind and the birds calling to each other. He sighed, contentedly, and rested his head against Robotnik's shoulder. 

"I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

He ran a thumb over his hand. The sensation was muffled, like he was wearing gloves. It occurred to him that he was dreaming at the same time that he realised he was waking up. He closed his eyes, like that'd help anything, and tried to bring the feeling of their fingers intertwined to the front. He was aware of his body back in his bedroom for a moment, even as the visuals sat on his eyelids, before the dream finally dissolved.

He woke up so hollow he was nauseous. He opened his eyes and stared at the wall in front of him. He was vaguely aware of being cold. He adjusted his shirt where it bunched up to show his stomach. It was big on him; he'd pilfered it from Robotnik's wardrobe when he went through his things. TO AVOID INJURY, it read, DON'T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB. One of Robotnik's favourites. He pulled the blankets up from where he'd kicked them off overnight. He didn't manage to sleep again.

He got up. He made two coffees. He sat across from one and let it go cold. He went to the (formerly a guest bedroom) lab. The Badniks stored inside powered on as he entered and observed him from their shelves. He'd found as many of Robotnik's abandoned projects and blueprints as he could, and the walls were lined with screens displaying them, with a workbench in the centre of the room. Some of them were almost finished, some of them were prototypes, and some were an idea scribbled in the margins of a post-it note. Robotnik had given him the world. All that was left was to build something that would let him take it. Most of the lab was tidy, but the workbench was occupied with half-finished parts and lengths of wiring. He was working on one of Robotnik's last ideas—a robotic upgrade of Sonic, built to surpass him in every way. He sat at the bench and worked until sunset. He cracked his knuckles, then his back. 

He took the elevator downstairs, nodding vaguely to his neighbour (what was her name, again?) when he saw her in the hallway. He'd rented an apartment in London. Where could he go, except for right where he left him? He'd managed to salvage most of their things from the Crab, save for some of his books that got soaked through, but its systems were flooded. He didn't think he could live there anymore, regardless. It was too haunted.

He walked to the alley between his apartment block and the next. He went out there every evening. At first it was just to think, and to get some fresh air after being in the lab all day, but he'd taken to feeding a stray cat. She watched him from the shadows, sometimes hissing. She was here first, he supposed. She was all black, and her fur was matted in places. A lot of the neighbourhood strays were obviously being fed, but she was skinny, worryingly so. Nobody, he supposed, wanted to deal with the occasional scratch. Nobody except him. He opened the cat food pointedly loud and her eyes appeared out of the shadows. Her hackles were up. He knelt down and filled her bowl. Her backed up to put some distance between them. She crept closer and sat down to eat.

He looked through the gap between the two apartment blocks, past the buildings down the street and the patch of darkening sky above them. Framed between the blocks and peeking out from the top of the skyline, the Cannon rose. It glowed like a miniature supernova. 

He got on his motorcycle and drove until the sky was black. He didn't know where he was going. He just wanted to be somewhere else. He drove until the air was salty and the waves sang choir with the traffic in a soft hiss. He sat on a wall overlooking the beach to eat the fish and chips he ordered. He wasn't really hungry, but he hadn't eaten all day and he knew he needed to. He looked at the ocean. The Cannon's reflection danced in the waves. They did this, once. When they were visiting Australia they found a beach near a small town and ate fish and chips by the beach. A seagull stole one of Robotnik's fries right out of his hand. He swore revenge on the entire species, shaking his fist. Stone bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. He spent the rest of the meal fending off seagulls with his cane.

He looked up at the Cannon and realised he couldn't eat. He left the rest to the seagulls and went back to his apartment.

He woke from another dream. He got up. He made two coffees. He came home from the store with more cat food and opened some in the alley.

"Hello, little one," he whispered, when two greenish yellow eyes peered at him from the shadows.

He knelt down and emptied the tin into the bowl. She'd been letting him get closer recently, and this time she sat down to eat before he backed up. He smiled, slightly.

"The doctor doesn't like animals much," he muttered, "but I wonder if he'd mind if we kept you."

He stopped. No. Of course he wouldn't.

He looked at his hands for a moment before turning to the horizon. The Cannon rose above the skyline, red as ever. When he looked back, the cat had crept closer. He froze. She sniffed at his knee. He tensed, and the movement was enough to startle her. Damn it. She hissed and retreated into the dark. She sat down and pressed into the bricks further away from him, grooming herself. That was the closest she'd ever gotten.

He stood up and went inside. He hung his coat by the door, walked into the kitchen to make dinner, and almost jumped out of his skin.

"Shadow," he breathed. "You have to stop doing that to people."

"You wouldn't be so surprised if you were more observant."

"I was distracted." He stared at him. "You're alive."

"Yes."

Stone's mind started to reach before he could stop it. "I didn't think anyone could survive that. But if you—"

"No."

Stone looked at him, sharply.

"There wasn't time," Shadow continued, softly. "I'm sorry."

"Oh."

He felt like he'd skipped a stair and landed too heavily an extra step down.

"You can sit down," he managed, gesturing to the bar stools by the kitchen island. "Do you drink anything? Tea, hot chocolate? Coffee?" 

"Tea is fine."

"Good choice." He turned the kettle on and leaned on the kitchen island whilst waiting for it to boil. "Any particular reason for teleporting into my apartment unannounced, or is this just how you get your kicks these days?"

"I've been looking for you."

"You found me. Gold star."

"I was wondering how you were feeling."

"Oh. That's sweet." He attempted a smile. "I'm—I don't know. Fine."

"Ah."

"It's just, it's muscle memory. Loving him, I mean." He picked up the cup from earlier and sniffed it. He pulled a face and poured it down the sink. He washed it out. "It's like moving houses. I knew where all the furniture was so I wouldn't fumble around in the dark, making noise and waking him up. And now I don't. The whole universe shifted half a foot to the left."

And nobody else cared. He'd been front page, social media breaking, every channel on TV news for a week, and then it was like it'd never happened. They mourned him in a distant, grateful way, because the Earth would be ash without him, but they kept going with their lives. It wasn't fucking fair. The rest of the world kept spinning on its axis, but it shouldn't have been possible for a universe without Robotnik to exist. The last time he'd thought he was dead it was during his fungal exile, and it'd only taken a few days of living in Green Hills for the gossip to loop around to him and for him to learn that he was alive, just away. He was waiting for the same thing to happen. He was waiting for the laws of physics to repair themselves and bring him back. It was a question of survival, he supposed. His brain was trying not to rip itself apart.

"I... I know."

For a moment he wanted to snap and tell him no, he didn't, but if anyone knew it was Shadow. He poured the tea and put their mugs down, then sunk into the bar stool next to him. He ran a finger around the rim of his cup, idly. They sat in silence, sharing an ache.

"I know what it can do," Shadow said, meeting his eye, "if you allow it."

Stone's brow furrowed whilst he waited for that to sink in.

"I'm not planning to go scorched earth, if that's what you're talking about. The doctor and I never were. No offense, but that was always your thing," he said, waving a hand, dismissively. "What happened to that, by the way?"

He breathed out, visibly relieved. "I had a change of heart."

"I see." He decided not to pry.

He thought about it for a while. How out of place he must feel, in general. Nevermind grief. He was fifty years out of time.

"Oh my god," he muttered. "You missed The Cure."

"The cure for what?"

"No, no. It's a band. You're going to love The Cure."

Shadow made a face at him, but he still accepted when Stone offered him a wireless earbud so he could put on a few songs. He leaned against the counter, eyes closed, looking like he was about to fall asleep. He hadn't shared any music with anyone outside of Robotnik for ages. He watched him vigilantly, trying to gauge his reaction. He opened his eyes again after a moment, ears twitching, before settling in with his ears tilted forwards on instinct. He seemed to like it. Stone let himself relax for a moment. He zoned out and let the music take his mind wherever it wanted. They sat together until they finished an album, and Shadow told him he was going home. His apartment was empty again. The room seemed bigger without him.

He got up and washed their cups. He went to the lab. Hold it together. He touched one of the screens on the wall and brought up the blueprints he'd been working on. They still had some notes in the corner in Robotnik's handwriting. Stone—that's your bit. DO NOT fuck it up. It was such a stupid thing to feel sentimental about, but he couldn't help it. His muscles were too tired to hold him together anymore. He slumped into a chair. He'd harboured a daydream about Shadow showing up on his doorstep to tell him Robotnik was fine, he was just in hospital, and he could see him again if he followed him there. But, no. There was a hollow in the middle of his life that he had to try and build around like it wasn't there. He was suffocating in the vacuum of it.

He was gone.

It bore a hole through his lungs and into his sternum. His chest hurt like it always did before he started crying, but this time it burned. He tried to protect him. He tried, but he never listened. His face went hot. He needed to scream, hit something, anything but sit here, crawling head first into the black hole between his ribs.

"For Christ's sake," he muttered. "Damn it!"

He shoved everything off the workbench in a shower of clatters and thuds. He stood up and marched through his apartment to the window overlooking the Cannon. He opened it and stuck his head outside. He gripped the windowsill until his knuckles hurt.

"I never asked anything of you!" he yelled. "I just wanted you to stay!"

The Cannon stared back, unfeeling. Idiot, idiot. He didn't know who he was angrier at. 

"If you'd just listened for once in your fucking life, but you—and now you're—"

He ran out of steam just as quickly as it'd built up.

"Was that too much to ask?" His voice broke. The sky smudged like an impressionist painting as his eyes welled up. "Was I too much?"

He barely had the energy to stand. He stumbled, with his hand brushing over furniture or leaning against the wall for balance, to his bedroom. He sunk into bed. A sob rose in his throat like bile. He was a raw nerve held to an open flame. He reached for his pillow and held it to his chest, with his face buried in its fabric. He dug his fingers into it, reaching for warmth he wouldn't find. He just wanted to go home. His stomach hurt with the force of his sobs. He cried himself out after a while, and his body was so exhausted that it gave in and he fell asleep, still in his clothes.

He drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours before he finally got up to get into his pyjamas and brush his teeth. His head hurt, his eyes hurt, his stomach hurt. He took a painkiller, but it didn't help much. He brought his heat pad to bed and sandwiched it between himself and his pillow. He curled around it. He cocooned himself in his blankets until it was just the top half of his face sticking out. The heat seeped into the hole in his chest. Tears sprung to his eyes again, half relief and half longing. It soothed him enough to sleep. Dreamless, for once.

He didn't get out of bed the next day, except for when he had to. He didn't eat. He just lay, hollow, letting the realisation settle in. He wouldn't have gotten up the day after, either, if not for Shadow. He couldn't see him, but he felt the rush of energy through his apartment. He ran a hand through his hair to smooth it out and threw a robe over his pyjamas, but he still looked like a mess. He found him in the living room.

"Shadow," he coughed. His voice was hoarse from crying. 

He'd invited him over so they could keep an eye on each other. He was already regretting it. 

"Stone."

He smoothed his hair again, like that'd improve anything. Robotnik scolded him for the unprofessionalism in the back of his head.

"Do you want another cup of tea?"

"Thank you."

"I forgot you were coming. I'm sorry about the pyjamas."

Shadow furrowed his brow at him. "I don't care."

He tossed Shadow an earbud so they could listen whilst he worked on the tea. The motions were soothing, and so familiar he could zone out entirely, rambling between songs.

"They never made something like Disintegration again." He put the cups down. "The other albums are still worth a listen, but it's not quite the same. Anything else you want to hear? There's a lot of stuff from the nineties I think you'd like. Oh, the doctor really liked this one."

They let the music play, wordlessly. Stone stared into the steam. He could still see him dancing to it, black jacket swishing through the lab. And, later, robe swishing through the Crab, demanding Stone come dance, too.

"It's... Interesting."

"It'll grow on you. I didn't like it when it first came out."

"Do you have anything older?"

He passed his phone over to him. "Sure. Pick your poison."

Shadow typed something in and hit play. It was a classic to him, but he supposed for Shadow it must've only come out a few months before everything. The realisation shifted his sense of time, and for a moment he heard it like it was new, like he was a kid in the car listening to one of his fosters play music from their own childhood. He looked at Shadow's face. He looked peaceful, for a second. 

"She used to sing me that one," he said. Stone felt the ache in his voice keenly. "Hers was better."

"I'm sure."

He played another of Robotnik's favourites. They swapped songs for a while, barely talking. It was—nice, actually, once he got into it.

"You know," he said, when he'd woken up enough to realise how long it'd been since his last meal, "we'd probably both feel a lot better if we ate something. Do you eat ice cream?"

"I'm not from 74 B.C."

"I'm going to take that as a yes."

He served them a bowl each and sat back down to eat. He didn't realise how hungry he was until he started. He made them both toast afterwards. They swapped songs for a while longer whilst Stone did the dishes. He felt the silence when he went home. Wherever Shadow's home was. He hadn't gotten around to asking.

He got up and went to his lab. The Badniks buzzed around him, radiating concern. He pet the side of one of them.

"I'm better now," he told it.

He picked up everything that had fallen off the bench and rearranged the parts so they formed a robotic skeleton. His stomach panged with guilt when he saw the pieces back in their place. He hadn't meant to take it out on him. He wasn't conscious yet, he was just a pile of bolts and metal, but he was Robotnik's. He adjusted the angle of his head so it looked more comfortable. He swept up the floor. He put his tools back in their places. He swept the floor again in case he'd missed something. He paced around. He swept the rest of the house, then cleaned the kitchen until he was almost calm. He took a too-hot shower and let the steam roll against him. It was evening by then. Oh, damn. He'd forgotten to feed the cat yesterday. He put on a clean pair of pyjamas and threw a jacket over them to go outside. He was greeted by a yowl when he entered the alley.

"Were you hungry? Oh, little bean," he said, affectionately. "I'm sorry. Do you mind if I call you that?"

He put her food down. She approached him more quickly than usual with her tail up in greeting. Did she rely on him? Did she need him around? He tilted his head to look at her stomach. She was starting to round out a bit. 

"Maybe I could keep you," he muttered. "The doctor can't say no. He's—he's gone."

He reached down to grab the bowl when she was done, but she flinched.

"Look, it's just me." He held his hand still in the space between them.

She tilted her head and sniffed along his hand. Her nose made contact. He froze entirely. She rubbed her face against his fingers, eyes narrowing slightly. The fur along her cheeks was soft. His index brushed just under her eye and it almost knocked him over. She had to have known how much a sudden movement could have hurt. She slunk away, out of sight, but the warmth in his chest stayed.

"Oh." His face cracked open into a grin.

He got up. He almost made two coffees. He remembered in time. He drank his and watched the rain through the window. It kept up all day, until the thunder got so close it rumbled the building's floors. He counted the pause between the crack of light that slipped, silver, through his curtains and the rumble afterwards. It was almost instant. It was Little Bean's dinner time, though, and he wasn't going to let her fend for herself in this weather. He pulled an overcoat on and went outside. A shiver went through him the moment the rain hit his face. He pulled his coat closer to him. It bounced off his shoulders audibly.

"Little one?" he called, above the hiss of the rain.

She didn't appear. He looked around. She was always on time. Her internal clock kept better time than analogue ones.

"Bean, c'mon."

He paced up and down the alley. The sky lit up like it was daylight for a moment before the lightning faded and the thunder came. Come on, come on. Where was she? He checked around the trash cans. There was a faint sound from behind him. He spun around. He melted with relief.

"There you are."

Two eyes stared at him from under a soaked box someone had dumped by their trash can. She was drenched and her fur clung to her in wet clumps. She moved like being alive was heavy.

"Poor thing." He put her food down.

She meowed at him again, more loudly this time. He knelt down to watch her. The forecast said it'd be like this all night. Did she have somewhere to shelter? Had she only slipped out for food? It didn't matter, because she was so wet that she wouldn't dry out for ages if she was left outside. He just wanted her safe.

"You're going to hate me for this," he said. He'd wanted to wait until she trusted him more.

He pet her back, then slowly moved his hands around to her side. He grabbed her. He picked her up and tried to hold her close, but she yowled. She dug her claws into his shirt. He winced.

"You've," he winced again, "you've got some powerful claws on you."

It stung once when she scratched and again when the rain dripped into the cuts on his arms and chest. He wrapped her up in his arms until she was a barely visible, drenched pipe cleaner under his jacket. He dashed to the elevator and mentally begged it to go faster. He stepped out into his hallway.

"Mr Stone?" His neighbour stopped, key in hand.

"Good evening, how are you, gotta go, I'm sorry, bye."

He ducked his head close to his chest and made a run for his door. He shifted all of Bean's weight to one arm. She doubled down on her escape attempts. She squirmed like she was boneless. He dug his key out of his pocket and opened his door right as she escaped. She landed, feet first, on the mat. He slammed the door behind him. She scanned the room. She disappeared under his couch. He stood motionless for a moment, breathing heavily. Blood mixed with water and dripped down his arms, followed the curve of his fingers and landed on the welcome mat. He shrugged off his overcoat. He was down to torn shirtsleeves. He washed up in the sink and bandaged his wounds.

He stood in the middle of his kitchen, still dripping water, and realised he'd just done something very stupid. He'd be lucky if she ever trusted him again. Even if she did, he didn't actually have anything for a cat, and he'd need to take her to the vet, and—no. One thing at a time. He turned up the thermostat so she could lay by the heater and dry off whilst he went out into the rain again to pick up some supplies from the nearest pet shop. He came back drenched. She was nowhere to be found. He put out her litter box and some more food. 

He didn't see much of her for the next few days. She came out for food, then returned to her hideaways under the furniture. He found her curled up behind a Badnik one afternoon, and she watched him whilst he worked on Metal. He left the heating on in the lab when he went to bed.

He woke up in the middle of that night. He rolled over and let a hand dangle over the side of his bed. He startled when something nudged it and he reached under his pillow for his control gloves. His brain woke up the rest of the way and he looked over the side of the mattress. 

"Hello, you." He gave her his hand again. "Is that where you got to?"

She let out a small meow. She sniffed his hand, then butted into his palm. He pet her between the ears, lightly. Her fur was dry again. It still needed a brush, but he could deal with that in the morning.

"Have you forgiven me for the crime of bringing you off the streets and giving you actual meals, or would you like to go back to diseased pigeons?"

Another meow.

"Yes, I know, I'm the meanest man alive. You're talkative, aren't you?"

She pushed further into his hand. She was—well, it was more of a soft vibration below his hand than a sound, but—she was purring. His breath caught in his throat.

"I thought you'd hate me."

She slipped out from under his hand and lay down on the bottom shelf of his bookcase with her cheek squished against the spine of one of the books. He sat up in bed and watched her, smiling. Did she know he was trying to help her? She must have. Was that love? Trust? It was all semantics. She knew that, if she needed something, he was there. He picked at one of the bandaids on his arm, absently. She was worth the scratches.

He got up to get a glass of water. He passed by the window and watched the Cannon outside of it. His heart pressed against his ribs, warm and aching at the same time, like a sore muscle. All the anger melted out of him. Of course Robotnik couldn't give up his one chance at a family just because of a phone call. There was a part of him buried somewhere—maybe near his sternum, the same place Stone felt it—that longed for love. Was it enough to only have it for a moment? They'd never find out what they were like as friends. He tried to picture it. Late nights in the lab, giggling because everything was funnier when they were exhausted. His head against Robotnik's shoulder as they watched a movie. Robotnik, smiling at him like he did during the livestream, all soft and—affectionate. It hurt too much to look at. His eyes welled up again and his breaths came out as sobs.

No. No, it wasn't enough. If the universe wasn't going to fix itself, then he would. He just needed to figure out how.

Chapter Text

The only motel in Green Hills was a grey, two floor block of concrete on the edge of town across from a gas station. The floors hadn't been vacuumed. Stone sat on the edge of the bed with his laptop perched on his knees and his phone held between his ear and shoulder.

"No, she doesn't kill him at the end," he was saying. He'd given Shadow free reign of the apartment (save for the lab, which was locked and, hopefully, teleport-proof) for the weekend, if he wanted. He hadn't told him why he was going to America. He just said he was homesick, which was true. He was homesick all the time. "I think you'd like horror movies. Is that all you called me for?"

"No," said Shadow. "That was tangential. I called because your cat has produced a hairball on the carpet."

"Ah." His face crumpled. "Okay. I'll have a Badnik handle it. Is she alright?"

He had a few Badniks assigned to caring for her, and sending him pictures of her asleep and purring by the heater.

"She's fine."

"Good." He hesitated. "How've you been? Genuinely?"

"Much the same."

"Me, too."

Shadow went quiet.

"Well. Anyhow," he said, when it was starting to stretch out too long. "Help yourself to anything in the fridge."

He put his phone down next to the other devices near his knees: a headset and something that looked like a smart watch. It was not a smart watch. It could not tell time. It couldn't go back in time, either. It could go forwards in time; if he left it on the bed and waited sixty seconds, it'd be a minute into the future. So far it was mostly useful for glancing at mid-conversation as a cue to wrap things up. He was generously calling it a time machine prototype. He just needed to find a way to power it for longer than a few seconds.

He went back to fiddling with the dataset of a program Robotnik had created years ago. It was still functional, but it had some glaring gaps in its knowledge. He'd spent the past couple weeks working on it when he had the time.

A program designed with the sole purpose of laying out the exact dimensions of the pair of scissors they're trying to take to the fabric of spacetime, Robotnik had said, waving his arm in a wide arc across the screen. If they still want to green light the time machine after this, their inevitable worldwide murder-suicide will be their own fault.

Essentially, a probability calculator. It worked. They'd dropped the project completely, which was for the best, but he still regretted never asking about it. He only knew it was possible. He'd already run through some old conversations, trying to find cracks in the timeline that he could slip into. He sometimes wished he could go back entirely, before everything, but who would that make them?

He put the headset on, and he was home. It was just as messy as he remembered. The nostalgia made it hard to breathe. He'd lived this night before. He had been tracking some stray impostor Badniks, and he finally had a lead. They'd been eluding him for weeks. He knew how Robotnik felt about people using his machines without authorisation. It felt like a betrayal to just—not. Even though it wasn't real. Even though he knew exactly how this ended. He hesitated over the controls before he set a new course. His fingers waved through air, even when the simulation rendered him as touching the screen. Osaka, he decided, on a whim. Then they could go somewhere very far away and let the whole thing blow over. London, maybe. He could find his apartment and Little Bean. Leave some food for her. Invite her in, again. He took off his gloves and boots by the door. Robotnik turned to watch him.

"I thought you were going out?"

"I changed my mind."

He skipped over the next couple of days. Everything seemed fine until the news came that the Eclipse Cannon had been stolen. His heart beat against his ribs. He was certain Sonic could take care of it, until he wasn't. It ended in a flash of light, then dark. It was odd. Like dying in a dream. He breathed in, shakily, and took the headset off. He had to take a moment to steady himself. It was fine. It wasn't inevitable. It was just one route that didn't work, the same as all the other routes that didn't work. He tried not to think about it. 

For now, he had a visit to pay. He got dressed in the bathroom and looked at himself through the crack in the mirror. He'd salvaged Robotnik's old coat, the one with his shirt still sewn in at the sides. It was too big on him, and the sleeves hung over his hands, but he refused to alter it. He draped it over his shoulders like a cloak instead and strung a lapel chain across it to hold it on. He leaned closer to the mirror and tilted his head to move it away from the crack. He was starting to grey around the temples. He'd noticed it a while ago whilst shaving, not long after his death. He adjusted the coat and left.

He took a walk by the roadside. He kept close to the trees to avoid being seen, but the traffic was almost non-existent. He stopped in some dappled shade and peeked through the trees at the Wachowski house's backyard. They were all outside. They gathered around a long table in the sun. Tom was the only one standing over the barbeque. The air was thick with smoke and conversation. His stomach panged. Someone must have told a joke, because the whole table erupted into laughter. Oh, everything was perfect for them, wasn't it? It made him sick. As if any of them deserved it. He pressed two fingers of his gloves together. The air rushed around him and he appeared in the empty seat at the head of the table. A small fleet of Badniks came with him. He watched the party over the cake stand, heaped plates, mugs and glasses that lined the table. 

"Anyone save me a plate?"

He crossed one leg over the other, smiling affably. The table went quiet. Most of them froze, save for Rachel muttering for JoJo to get inside. Tom clacked his tongs at him like a startled crab. 

"Eggman's attack dog, is it?" asked Sonic.

He beamed. "Thats me."

"Stone!" Wade waved at him from his seat.

Stone gave him a withering look.

"That Agent Stone?" A voice at the other end of the table piped up.

"Randall?" What the hell was he doing here?

"I haven't seen you in years." Randall grinned and raised a glass to him. "The rumour mill was right about you, huh?"

He grimaced. "How so?"

"You and that mad doctor of yours!"

"He isn't mad."

"No, no judgement at all. Uh. I heard about what happened. I'm sorry."

The others echoed their condolences. He prickled.

"I'd prefer you didn't pretend to care." There was a pause. "Can we get this over with?"

"What do you want?" asked Sonic.

He needed a battery. They had one.

"The Emerald."

Knuckles folded his arms. "We will never allow you to take it."

"You're outnumbered," added Sonic.

"Why don't you try and stop me, then?"

The humans started to stand up, wary and slow. Sonic looked around for a trap, shrugged, and went for him at full tilt. He smacked into the air a few inches from Stone's face and rolled across the table. The table cloth bunched up under him and a shower of plates hit the ground. He landed in the cake, wincing. Energy rippled out from the impact and outlined a sphere around Stone.

"Sonic!" yelped Maddie.

"Energy shield. Impervious to most weapons. Let me make this quick."

He clicked his gloves and the Badniks beeped. They spread out until they surrounded the clearing. Each of them aimed a laser at a guest until they all had red dots on their foreheads, save for Sonic. Stone lifted his arm and aimed his own purple laser at him.

"You're surrounded, unarmed and unequipped. You're—sorry, Tails—fucked." Stone paused. Where was Tails, anyway? Inside with the kid?

A laser fired next to him. It went through the shield and made a bullet hole in the dirt an inch from his shoe. He got out of his chair and spun around.

"Apology accepted." Tails grinned at him from his perch on the disturbed Badnik. He leapt to another and Stone had to call them off.

He caught a red blur out of the corner of his eye and teleported to the middle of the yard. The humans stood back whilst the others threw themselves at him like primary coloured bullets. He focused the Badniks on them and the air fizzed as all of them fired at once. He blinked out of the way when he could, but Sonic moved faster than he could see. He struck the shields most of the time. He rolled in the dirt, then came back. He was relentless. All of them were; but so was he.

His gloves beeped at him and he checked the screen. Shit. His shields were low on charge. He teleported out of Tails' path, only to land in front of Knuckles. The impact was enough to knock him back. He collapsed into the table. The shield shattered on impact and brought the table with it. It toppled to the ground. He landed in a heap of tablecloth and spilt food. His shield had taken the worst of it, but the fall went up his spine. He hissed. He got onto his knees. Four metal arms emerged from under Robotnik's coat. They pushed the fabric aside. Two leaned against the dirt and helped him up whilst he recharged his lasers.

One arm on each side activated a smaller shield. They fended off Sonic and Knuckles at his sides whilst Stone kept a laser aimed at Tails. Someone stepped into his peripheral. He dodged under Randall's punch and surged forwards. He tackled him to the ground and they wrestled for a moment until his robotic arms pinned his limbs. He pointed his laser at Randall's neck. He sat up, straddling him.

A thrill went through him. He had them backed into a corner. 

"I'm going to repeat myself. The Emerald. By force, if necessary."

There was silence for a moment. He watched each of their faces, waiting to see who would break first.

"Dad!"

JoJo ran out of the house towards Stone. Rachel ducked out from under the laser pointed at her head. Stone aimed at her on instinct. She kept moving. They locked eyes and she shot him a look that was—angry, yes, but mostly terrified. His brain caught up to his impulses a second later and he lowered his laser to let her grab her kid.

The next thing he knew he was on the ground, aching. He gasped. There was a metallic pool under his tongue. He got to his hands and knees limb by limb, testing each of them as he went. Everything hurt. Nothing broken. Knuckles had been going easy on him. The metallic taste got overwhelming and he had to spit the blood onto the ground. An avulsed tooth landed in the puddle. More blood leaked into his mouth from the empty socket where it'd been. Sonic and the others gathered around him, with Randall on his feet again. He wasn't going to win this fight, he realised. 

"Tom." He looked up.

Wade got in front of Tom's injured side, and Maddie stepped in front of the other.

"Yeah?"

"Does your dentist take walk-ins?"

He grinned at them. He grabbed his tooth and teleported back to his motel room.

It hurt worse later, when the adrenaline had worn off. He tried to take a nap after getting his tooth back in, but he couldn't sleep, even though his limbs were heavy. He went for a walk to clear his head. He came to the edge of town, then kept going into the fields and forests beyond. He didn't know where he was going until he drifted into a familiar clearing. He found the Death Egg's body still laying in the grass.

He stopped to stare at it for a while. His memories came back unbidden and tangled; the white walls of the hospital, the sting of his bruises and the nights he and Robotnik spent talking when neither of them could sleep. It had moss on its back where the rain collected, and the impact crater was filled with grass and standing water. Wildflowers swayed in the breeze. They shifted against his legs as he walked. He leaned over until he was elbow deep in them and pulled up a handful of flowers in purple, red and yellow.

"Doctor," he called.

He approached the mech's hand. A chorus of frogs croaked as he got closer. The curve of the fingers formed a small cave between them and the ground. He placed the flowers in the hollow. He put his own hand over the mech's.

"They're nothing fancy, but I hope you like them," he muttered. He ran a thumb over the cold metal. 

He stepped onto the hand and climbed up the arm. He stood on its back and looked at the trees and the mountains beyond. The breeze rippled through Robotnik's coat. It was nearing sunset, and the light was honeyed. He sat down and summoned a holoscreen. He needed something to do with his hands. He flicked through his art files.

He hadn't drawn in a while, and the last file was from before. It was a study of Robotnik, lying on his side on the couch. He had one arm awkwardly wedged behind his head, and the other lay over his chest. One leg was tucked close to his torso, and the angle squished his stomach so that the fat there dipped into a valley. He looked so peaceful. He hadn't been sleeping well that week; finding him asleep on the couch was like when the rain finally broke through relentless humidity. He'd woken up just after he finished the sketch and he had the gall to mutter that he was a mess. He always meant to turn it into a painting, but he was busy trying to track down the impostor and he never got around to it. It felt wrong to, now. 

He opened a new canvas and started to sketch him from memory instead. He had enough videos of Robotnik that he'd always remember his face, but he wondered what would happen to the moments that only they shared. If this didn't work (it had to, it had to) would he forget the way they glanced at each other when they were sharing a secret? Would he forget the bite of his fingers against his skin when he grabbed him? He couldn't remember what his parents' faces or voices sounded like; they died when he was small, and he'd lost the few mementos he used to have.

The sun painted yellow up one side of the mountains, then deep blues on the other. Eventually the yellows faded into lighter blues, then darker. He looked up at the Cannon. It was a red smudge against the Milky Way. He could only see it at night, now. He was going to lose him all over again. He had to remember him. He had to keep him alive somewhere, until he could come home.

"Stone?"

He wiped his eyes hurriedly and looked over his shoulder. He tensed.

"Tails?" he asked, then added, "I'm not looking for a fight if you're not."

"Truce," he said. "What're you doing here?"

"Licking my wounds. What about you?"

"I come here to study this place." He flew up the side of the mech and landed next to Stone. "I've been getting some weird energy readings."

"Weird how?"

"Weird, like, the energy in this area should be reaching its half life, but it's going up instead. I've been keeping an eye on it to make sure it stays stable enough."

"Hm." He leaned closer. "Can I see that?"

"I... Don't know if I should be showing you this."

"Strictly non world domination related. That's on the back burner, for now."

"I thought you wanted the Emerald?"

"I do." He thought for a moment. "I was—I thought I could get him back."

"So that you can rule the world together?"

"Not necessarily," he said. Tails narrowed his eyes at him. "But yes. Would that be so bad, though? We were going to offer universal healthcare to cover any injuries sustained whilst tolling under Robotnik's machines."

"You guys had policies?"

"What kind of evil empire doesn't have policies?"

They looked at each other for a moment in bafflement. Stone sighed and looked away.

"It's not just the world. If he wanted to retire again, I'd be behind him all the way. I just—I miss him."

"I know," said Tails, softly.

"You don't," he growled. "You have friends. You have a family. You have barbeques. You don't know what it's like to be alone."

"I know," he said, more loudly. "All of us do. Everyone in my village thought I was a freak. I know it hurts."

Stone looked at him.

"But when you've been alone, you gotta take that with you when you find your people. You've gotta love them twice as much."

He bit his cheek so he wouldn't cry.

"My person's gone."

"That doesn't mean there's nobody else."

He almost laughed. 

"There isn't. It's different for you. You're young. You'll learn, one day, that you need people who care enough to tear it all down. The world needs him." He didn't know why he was telling him all this. He wasn't going to change his mind, but still. "I need him."

Tails hesitated. He fiddled with the device in his paws.

"I'm sorry," he said, eventually.

He was too tired to fight the condolences again. He reached up and scratched behind one of his ears. He'd always wanted to do that. "You're a good kid, Tails."

He flicked his ear, smiling slightly. He nudged Stone's arm and showed him his screen. 

"Those are some weird numbers," said Stone.

"Mhm."

They went quiet. Stone started sketching again. They stayed in their uneasy truce until Tails said he had to go. It was almost his bedtime. Tom would fuss if he wasn't home soon, apparently. He laid down on the back of the mech and stared up at the sky. The moss cushioned his head like a pillow. The metal was hard against his back, but in that moment it was more comfortable than any motel mattress.