characters: sonic, shadow
ships: sonic/shadow
rating: M
word count: 1.3k
tags: character study, short, implied sexual content
To the unobservant eye, Shadow is invulnerable, impenetrable, unshakeable, a black solar wind. Sonic has watched him pull his fist back from inert robots, fingers drenched in diesel and coolant, counted the achingly-slow rhythm of his breathing as he played surgeon on the bullet hole in Sonic’s gory side at the edge of the bathtub. He's seen him golden and regal, voice pressing in Super Sonic’s skull inside the mechanizing Power Cannon, electricity and power incited: if we kill her, we kill her together. Shadow’s never trembled, he’s never faltered, he’s never drawn away from what was demanded of him, hoisting the world on his strong shoulders—
(Not even at the edge of space, burning and dying.)
So Rouge drags his sorry ass out of bed into the sterile gray street of a city that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. Shadow tucks his hands under his armpits even if he can’t feel the cold, only distantly perceiving the coyness of the curl of her mouth—just look what I’ve done, it seemed to keen.
“You like?” Rouge chirps. He catches the whiff of morning coffee on her breath.
Shadow stares blankly at the motorcycle tipped perilously against the curb. Nothing moves in the predawn sleepiness of 136th St., a street as pathetically futile as his attempts at playing house on a planet that all but recoils whenever he alights it.
“And what am I to do with this?” Shadow interrogates.
“I don’t know,” Rouge sighs, irritable at Shadow’s perceived ungratefulness. She rolls her eyes, turns around, and tosses the keys over her head into his clueless palm. “Go for a ride. Lose yourself in the thunder of the pipes. Pretend you’re anything but.”
She looks over her shoulder. “In other words,” her voice grows pressingly thin and sweet, “figure it out, handsome.”
And maybe she’s onto something, because that night after seeing faces in the wall and hearing voices in the TV static Shadow barrels into the wall of darkness outside of the city, just himself and the highway, finally as alone as he’s always felt. There’s kinship in the audacity of this metal, its audacity to be as loud and as proudly inhuman as it is in this kingdom of green, kin with the tar pit that ferries it. When he brings it back, appropriately tousled, he gazes upon it with something just left of pride. This is his. Not GUN’s, not Rouge’s, not the government’s, not anyone’s, just his.
So that’s why he is struggling to feel when its mechanical guts are scattered across the interstate a month later, his battered body wading blearily through the mess of its oily gore, emptiness in his chest save for the burning white hot dot of anger. It’s not the pain of his dislocated elbow or his smashed knee that bothers him, and all of that pain is just a high pitched din buzzing in his skeleton anyway.
He whips around toward the drunken bastard that caused it in the first place, pupils blown like a shark with its new score. He stalks in their shadow, a nightmare covered in blood and oily rainsoak, and when they turn to look at him, they gasp, the light of their phone shining against the gash of their forehead.
Suddenly his fury is gone. It’s just pain and the emptiness, because it wasn’t even their fault, was it? If the thunder hadn’t been so loud, if he had been more focused, if he had just known—because he should have. He should have known better than this sorry soul next to him choking on both tears and fear, because Shadow does not make mistakes.
I’m sorry, they’re babbling drunkenly, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…
Shadow looks over at the chassis swathed in the light of the ambulance. It was the car’s when its bumper poisoned and perverted its beautifully mathematical frame and then it was physics’—all its body parts flying through the air, Shadow enmeshed with it—and now it’s finally the Earth’s when the dust settles. It was never his.
When Shadow awoke again, neonatal and gasping, the crow perched on his chest recoiled with a hideous caw. It departed not without taking some of his fur with it, shouting to its friends about the dead thing that had come back to life, its heart restarted right beneath its talons with hot blood pouring back into its veins. It plunged into the deep blue until it was swallowed by it.
There had been heavy weights on both sides, his arms breaking through the deep dark. It was not the heavy warm blanket as so many had described it in the past but a flailing, sensorial blankness, nothing to hold or touch no matter how far he stretched, just his body careening through it helplessly as a vagabond through space. He may as well have been a broken satellite. There was no guiding star, no great hand, no pearly gates, no stars, and most importantly, no light.
So Shadow had broken through it all with a gasp, a newborn flailing through snapped twigs and rustling trees with all of the grace of an old, rusted machine whose systems lit up one by one. Life had grabbed him by the throat and yanked him back to it, vicious and unyielding and searing, alighting him on every plane. Vision, hearing, then touch, glorious touch, the weight of the Earth pulling him down onto it by the heels, gravity as a caress, swarming his muscles like ivy.
That night Shadow laid very still in bed, twitching his fingers and gusting his breath softly through his lungs to know he was alive. His touch wandered through the sheets, feeling the topography of the cheap material, and all the while the black loomed silently, like a predator. The umbrae stretched into his hallway and for all he knew, it was the nothingness that was waiting to jump him. It was the nothingness as soon as he closed his eyes.
Sonic stirred ever so slightly. Shadow was suddenly taken by a new fear, more harrowing than any he had ever encountered before—not the nightmares of his own exploding, malignant tissue like the Biohazard, not the susurrus, poisonous promises of Black Doom—and it was rendered all the more horrifying because he could not stop it. He could endure anything, slip through it; the nothingness didn’t even have him for long, in the end, but Sonic …
He would be taken by it one day. Wonderful, radiant Sonic, with nowhere to run, nowhere to put his feet, no sky to lapse into—
Shadow shuddered. It was a violent, reflexive thing, like emesis. Sonic’s hand journeyed towards his—that, too, a reflex—and when he opened his eyes, green like dewed grass, he stared at Shadow. The words what happened? writhed between them like worms in the rain, striving for the surface (he felt it in his chest, he did, Sonic’s lightning and Shadow’s thunder), but Shadow stayed stalwart, his face made of stone.
Shadow’s silhouette is distended by the bold, setting sun, reaching toward the darkness of the shipping container like an eldritch hand. Rouge’s chipped nails tap impatiently along the lines scored impatiently into the metal: 6 months, 21 days.
Shadow levels her with his gaze. “I think you look tired.”
The tapping stops. “All these years, and you still don’t have a single inhibition about you.”
Rouge’s voice wavers in that perfect middle between antagonized and impressed. It has a rugged timbre to it that wasn’t there a year ago, as if someone had taken the silk of her voice and ran a razor against the grain, fibers and seams spewing from the softness like unruly cables.
“You know his handwriting,” she says matter-of-factly. He simultaneously respects and resents this side of her, the taciturn spy. “Is it him?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a hell of a lot, actually,” she snipes. “Maybe you get by on no hope, Shadow, but most of us lowly lifeforms need something more than that. You’ve been gone for seven months, disappeared without a trace, and now you’re staring at me like you’ve come back half-dead, not uttering a word of your whereabouts. Maybe you are dead. And you know what? That’s fine. I made peace with the fact I could do nothing about it, so if you’re dead, Shadow the Hedgehog, then so be it. But don’t make it everyone else’s problem, and especially don’t make it my problem. Do you understand?”
Her voice had risen in volume over the course of her tirade, thin and sharp, little blades poking through the graveyard silence of the junkyard full of shipping containers. Shadow, naturally, has nothing to say to this, mostly because she’s right on two accounts: the state of his being and his own selfishness.
“The thing is, I can’t entirely be mad at you.” Rouge’s voice softens again. “I don’t have any left, either. I gave up on hoping a long time ago, and it happened long before you ever walked into my life. It happened long before Rouge, even. And though you’ve made me see things I couldn’t believe, I’m never satisfied with those miracles. You save the world. You come back to life. You keep going in spite of it all. A part of me thinks if you can make this miracle happen, maybe I’ll believe.
“But that doesn’t matter. What I need, I mean,” Rouge continues, “but I know what they need. If you can’t give them that, then I’ll go find it myself.”
Shadow tiredly leans against the wall. The metal is cold and comforting, cooling the nuclear heat radiating off his body, sempiternal Chaos energy swirling through his core. Her words strike flesh he didn’t know he still had. Hadn’t it been his noble purpose, once upon a time? The hope?
“… I don’t think you’re pathetic.”
Rouge smirks dryly. “I never did say pathetic, did I?”
Shadow would mirror it if the sky wasn’t on fire with the remnants of a burning city. It makes the sunset stunning in a macabre sort of way, exhuming memories of trusses the color of spilled blood and bombs bursting over the horizon.
“You’re not going.”
Rouge scoffs. “Like hell I’m not.”
“You’ll die,” Shadow says bluntly. “Or worse, you’ll wind up somewhere I can’t reach you.”
“What do you think I did before you entered my life, Shadow?” Rouge sends back, her white hackles raised despite her ringing laughter. “Do you think my life began the moment you woke up? Who do you think I called upon when I was in trouble? It was myself. It will always be myself, no matter how strong you are. I know that, and you know that.”
“Forget this. I’ll go.”
“No, you need to be here. Planetside. You’re the last defense.”
Shadow’s aching bones thrum mockingly. He is.
“You’re set on this.” It’s merely an observation.
“Someone’s got to keep the hope going.” Rouge backs up out of the container, her white fur aflame. “Even if it turns out to be a lie or a red herring, the hope will keep them going for a little while longer. Sometimes that’s enough.
“Besides … don’t you want to know?”
Shadow looks back at the writing on the wall and expertly squashes the emotions that rise in tandem with the white lightness in his chest.
… No, there is no need for that at all.
“You need a little hope, too. Don’t you?”
Shadow lifts his lighter from his pocket as Rouge spreads her wings, fading sunlight streaming through the vasculature. It takes a few clicks to catch, erupting into minuscule flame in the deafening darkness of the shipping container. Then, as Rouge takes flight, he smokes the last cigarette on the continent down to the filter.
She trails off, and she’s usually not so imprecise (at least she likes to think she goes after what she wants), even though her eyes bounce anywhere and everywhere around Sonic, one moor to another. Sonic looks oddly subdued, remnants of gold scintillating on his lashes and his mouth curled into a shadow of that divine light.
“If I said something,” Sonic intones, scrubbing blood off his front teeth with a gloved finger, “I didn’t mean what I said.”
When they were children, there was wind and dings in her side and burning lungs, playing catch-up, and non-answers, too. Sonic examines his hand, the blood from his mouth smeared into the fraying material of his gloves. Amy’s examining her bedroom, thinking of all the ghosts of them, Sonic tilting around the room as he belted lyrics to Amy’s favorite song, voice cracking, head craned back, and then wheezing. Her Charioteer. The impressions of him like wheels digging into her dirt.
Sonic’s sporting an unsightly gash on his thigh, flinching away when Amy’s hands come close to it. The diffusion of red over the blue makes purple, matching the bruise in her chest.
“That’s not what I meant, you know.” A long silence has passed, Amy’s hands floundering in the gulfs of them both, seeking, stumbling, falling in the dark. The few times she’s held the pink emerald in her hands she remembers the intensity of it, hands ripping wounds open, splitting stitches. One half of the Lovers, falling from her floating palace. “... I know it has to burn.”
Something in Sonic mobilizes in that moment, and Amy knows that this is her problem: she’s too precise, too eager.
Sonic smiles a brilliant smile, the luminosity and width of it measured accordingly. He’s at the window in the breeze of an instant, wind disrupting his fur, too big for the frame he once draped himself over, roses in his mouth.
This is the first entry in a miniseries where I will attribute a few Tarot cards to specific characters and explain my reasoning behind them. Maybe this post stemmed from Mild Annoyance at seeing Sonic assigned the King of Pentacles in the official deck released by Sega. At first, I was contemplating drawing a random card for the deck while thinking of a character--and since Sonic is one of my well-beloved characters, I have done spreads for him in the past--but to distill a meaning from 78 cards, the Major and Minor Arcana, proves to be too daunting of a task, and the Major Arcana are more impactful to the layperson, anyways.
[1] Do note that I am using a variant of the Rider Waite deck due to its ubiquity, its simplicity, and relative accessibility. For transparency, the deck that I am using is called The Change Tarot, illustrated by Xaviera Lopez; the imagery, compared to the Rider Waite deck, is almost a complete one-to-one, with a few minor changes. I will supplement each post with images of the original Rider Waite deck for accessibility, as the meanings remain unchanged for the most part.
[2] I just want to make it clear: I am not an expert. This is purely for fun. Your mileage may vary.
#1: Big Picture - The Fool
[ID: A young man stands on the edge of a cliffside against a warm yellow background. His arms are wide open, with a white rose held in his left open palm and a bindle held in the other, propped on his shoulder. A white dog is reared back on its hind legs at his feet.]
I know. You probably saw this coming.
The Fool is denoted by #0 - the number of Endless Possibility infinite potential. For all intents and purposes, The Fool is the very first card of the deck, and that makes sense; his carefree pose and expression imply he has the world at his feet, ready to take a leap of faith. He is eccentric, forward-thinking, radical, and prepared to embark on a journey with an almost blind trust in the universe. The Fool is succeeded by the more austere Magician, #1 of the Major Arcana (which is one of Shadow's cards, in my experience). It sounds familiar, doesn't it?
[ID: A collection of song lyrics. Top left - "Never fear the fall / When you leap without a net, you'll find / It won't be there all the time / So watch your step now, watch your step / Don't fall!"
Middle left: "I won't even hesitate / A second left to alter fate"
Middle: "Hold on to 'what-if'! Hold on to 'what if'!"
Bottom middle: "Long as the voice inside me says 'Go', I will always keep on running / There is no way to stop me from going to the very top"
Bottom: "This is my escape / I'm running through this world and I'm not looking back / And I know I can go / Where no one's ever gone and I'm not looking back"]
To outsiders, The Fool is precisely that - ruled by his blind faith and his thirst for adventure, he may unknowingly stumble into trouble, danger, and hardship. He may find himself jumping from The Tower if he is not careful.
More significantly, The Fool is governed by Uranus. Uranus is associated with freedom, airiness, revolution, and independence (one wouldn't be shocked to find that The Fool's element is air). Although Sonic's personality may have been ... sterilized over the years, his childhood (teenhood?) revolved around defeating Ivo, who, for all intents and purposes, is perhaps a not-so-covert metaphor for capitalism and industrialization. He is the oppositional force to Sonic's wildness and free-standing nature. Interestingly, Uranus also represents forward-thinking, innovation, and the (positive) future that can come from said innovation - one could argue Eggman is like the other-side of Uranus, its dark hemisphere, innovation in blind excess.
One more thing I wanted to add (courtesy of Tarot & Astrology by Corrine Kenner) because it blew my mind when I was making this post:
Uranus rules Aquarius, the sign of futuristic thinking, and the eleventh house of the zodiac, where astrologers look for information about social groups and idealistic causes. Like Aquarius, Uranus is associated with the lower legs, the ankles, and the circulatory system.
#2: Impact - The Tower
[ID: The Tower shows a tall tower perched on the top of a rocky mountain. Lightning strikes set the building alight, and two people leap from the windows, head first and arms outstretched. It is a scene of chaos and destruction.]
When I say impact, I really mean the effects of Sonic on others.
The Tower gets a bad rep, and for good reason - the imagery on it is striking and unsettling. Death, breakups, or loss of a job are all what we would colloquially call Tower moments: moments that irrevocably alter the course of our lives. The Tower, therefore, represents stability, structure, even if that structure is built on shaky ground - yet this card reminds us that nothing is permanent. As scary as that may sound, The Tower isn't all negative: it signifies a purging of false beliefs, interventions, tearing down concepts and things in our lives we thought were here to stay.
More significantly, The Tower is succeeded by The Star: What goes up must come down, or what falls will always rise again. Such is the harmony of the universe. Regardless, when you rise from the ashes of the fallen Tower, you're stronger, brighter, clarified.
This is definitely a take on Sonic that is more personal and less grounded in canon, but it feels so pertinent to me that I want to include it anyways. Sonic himself is life-changing - that's the whole conceit of his character. Sonic's role as The Tower is felt most palpably in Shadow's character saga: the appearance of Sonic heralded immense change in his life, from remembering his true purpose to emerging from the other side of his fall as stronger, more dignified, and certain of himself. The same can be argued for Surge, and if I wanted to reach, even Tails. What they all have in common is the change that Sonic inspired in them.
For the best application of Sonic as The Tower, look no further than Sonic & the Black Knight, wherein Sonic literally destroys the false kingdom Merlina built out of a feverish desperation to preserve her status quo:
[Picture 1 ID: Sonic asking Merlina, "What good is a world that goes on forever?!"
Picture 2 ID: Sonic charging at Merlina to attack, shouting, "No! And I don't want to [understand]!"]
The Tower is most closely associated with Mars/Aries, whose domains encompass strength, prowess, and impulsivity (among others). I would be remiss to exclude the fact that one of Mars' associations is sports and competition (Sonic Riders mention). Additionally, I'd argue that almost all of the Titan songs in Frontiers are very warlike in their intensity and genre, exemplifying Super Sonic as Sonic's ultimate weapon. All four songs seem to scream jump out of the Tower now!
[Pictured: Sonic threatening Surge with a Tower Moment, or the infamous "a bigger shame is what'll happen to the idiot that tries that" moment.]
Honorable Mention - The Chariot
[ID: The Chariot tarot card depicts a brave warrior standing upright in his chariot. His lower half is obscured, and the chariot is being driven by two sphinxes. In his hand he clutches a wand.]
I was hesitant to include this card, but I decided to for two reasons: 1) Sonic is a Cancer (at least if you acknowledge June 23 as his birthday), and I wanted to pay homage to that; and 2) there are aspects of The Chariot that resemble Sonic to me.
To put it simply, The Chariot is an adventurer, much like The Fool (in this instance, perhaps The Charioteer could be The Fool?). Unlike The Fool, though--and more akin to its ruling sign, Cancer--The Chariot houses its home on its back. In other words, where Sonic goes, home goes with, even if he never stays in one place for long. Furthermore, the advent of Cancer season is marked by the summer solstice; thus, The Chariot also symbolizes new beginnings, much like our adventurous Fool. The charioteer is ambitious and focused, commanding his body and his vessel forward through the world (as evidenced by the wand in his hand, which represents our spirit and unconscious). The charioteer knows what he wants, and he goes after it boldly and decisively.
This wasn't in my top two spots solely because The Chariot has a kind of austerity and severity that I don't quite associate with Sonic. While Sonic does have serious and grounded moments, I prefer the more airy and lackadaisical approach of The Fool, or, if we're characterizing Sonic by his impact on the cast and the world, the more intense and lightning-quick change of The Tower.
That concludes the first post in this little miniseries! These are the three cards I wish Sega would have associated with Sonic, as opposed to the Taurean and wizened King of Pentacles (which, in my opinion, is very antithetical to Sonic's nature). Both The Fool and The Tower remind me of Sonic in different aspects, and I think they embody his characteristics more accurately than what they went with. Alas, one can dream.
In my next post, we'll touch on Shadow. I have a lot to say about him ...
every time i start to feel cringe for being too deep in the hyperfixation i remember the intense depression i have waded through and have to remind myself that enjoyment is fleeting (so grab it with both hands), and life is for loving (so hold that love close), and if anyone thinks i’m cringe they must not be having a very good time (and i hope they can find a good time soon).
I want more freaky and unnatural Shadow. no, I don't mean eldritch, I want more emphasis on the fact he was made, not born. he breathes as a performance to make other people feel better, but doesn't need air. he doesn't need sleep except once every few weeks. he has to remember to blink. when he's focused he forgets to do all the things that keep up this pretense as an organic creature. he's just unnerving in his stillness, like an inert machine
