A World Without Him (Shadow the hedgehog x Reader)

Chapter 13: Echoes of the past

It was the only thing keeping him from losing himself entirely.

Then one day, something changed.

A spike of energy—subtle, but unmistakable. A Chaos signature, flaring just long enough to be noticed, but distant. Too distant for any of G.U.N.'s technology to register it properly. But it wasn't G.U.N. who noticed.

It was ORACLE.

The moment Shadow had unleashed his power upon the world, they had felt it. Across galaxies, across dimensions, his energy had been sensed. A signature unlike any other, powerful and raw, yet eerily familiar to them. It wasn't just that he had Chaos abilities—it was that they had seen something like them before.

They sent Sonic.

Out of all their operatives, he was the one most suited to handle something like this. A wild card, unpredictable and fast enough to avoid disaster, strong enough to hold his own. More importantly, he was the best shot at recruiting Shadow rather than allowing him to become a threat.

By the time Sonic found him, Shadow was already deep in the ruins of yet another G.U.N. facility, his search still fruitless, his fury still burning. The two clashed immediately, neither backing down.

Sonic was persistent.

He fought not just to stop Shadow's destruction, but to talk to him, to understand. And, frustrating as it was, Sonic did understand.

"Look, I get it. You're angry. You lost people. But tearing through these guys isn't gonna bring them back," Sonic had said, dodging a blast of Chaos Spear. "And it sure as hell isn't gonna help you find the ones who might still be out there."

That stopped Shadow in his tracks.

Might still be out there.

He hadn't said it outright, but Shadow knew exactly what Sonic meant.

He still thought about Maria every day. Her absence was a gaping hole in his chest that nothing could fill. But Y/N?

Y/N's absence was something else entirely.

He had no idea if she was alive. No confirmation, no body, no proof of anything. Just an empty space in time where she should have been. And the uncertainty of it all, the not knowing, was unbearable.

And Sonic, despite his infuriating attitude, was offering him something no one else had: a chance at something new. A chance to leave Earth behind, to stop fighting a war against ghosts, to find a purpose beyond vengeance.

It wasn't easy.

Knuckles and Tails had to intervene more than once, each of them reinforcing what Sonic was saying. That the people Shadow was hunting now weren't the same ones who had taken Maria. That punishing them wouldn't undo what had been done.

That it wouldn't bring Y/N back.

Shadow fought them. Hard.

But in the end, he relented.

Not because he was tired, or because he believed in what they were saying just yet, but because he knew they were right about one thing: Y/N wasn't here. She wasn't on Earth.

And he had exhausted every lead trying to find her.

So he left.

It was strange, being on Mobius.

The planet was unlike anything he had seen before, vibrant and full of life in ways that felt almost surreal after so much time spent among the cold, sterile environments of space stations and G.U.N. facilities. And while he never admitted it, the sense of freedom it provided—the open landscapes, the endless skies—was something he hadn't realized he had been missing.

He had spent so long looking for something, for someone, that he had forgotten what it was like to simply exist.

And for a while, he tried.

He settled into a rhythm, helping Sonic and the others when they needed it, disappearing when they didn't. He never fully integrated himself into their world, but he didn't push them away entirely, either. They respected his space, his silences, the unspoken grief that lingered in his presence.

But there were moments.

Moments where he would catch a glimpse of something that made his heart stop. A flash of a familiar hair color in a crowd, the glint of pale gold rings on someone's wrist, the echo of a voice that sounded too much like hers.

And every time, for the briefest of seconds, he would believe.

Believe that maybe, maybe, she was here.

That maybe she had made it to Mobius, too.

But reality was cruel.

Every time he turned, every time he chased that flicker of hope, it would disappear. It was never her. It couldn't be her.

He wasn't sure what was worse—the false hope, or the realization that he had been looking for her all along, even when he told himself he had stopped.

Sonic had noticed. Of course he had.

"Y'know, for a guy who says he's moved on, you sure do stop dead in your tracks a lot when you see someone who isn't her."

Shadow never responded to that.

He couldn't.

Because the truth was, he hadn't moved on.

Not from Maria.

Not from Y/N.

Not from the life that had been stolen from them all.

After a year on Mobius, ORACLE reached out to him. They had seen his skills, his power. They wanted him.

He said yes.

Not because he particularly cared about the agency, or because he felt some newfound sense of duty.

But because if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was fight.

And if there was one thing he could do, it was make sure no one else suffered the way he had.

So he became an agent. A protector.

A soldier with a new cause.

And in all the crossover, all the twists of fate, all the close calls—he never realized how close he had been all along.

Y/N was here.

She had been here.

They had walked the same streets, breathed the same air, lived within reach of each other, worked at the very same company, and neither of them had known.

Neither of them had allowed themselves to hope.

Until today.