Sonadow - The Island

Epilogue

As promised, here is the last chapter! Please enjoy - and read the information under it, too! Thanks!

3 months later

"Alright, everybody ready?," Tails asked, hovering over the white line, that marked start and finish. His tails had healed completely and he had been shortly after already been able to do everything he was used to – including flying.

The last few months had been hard. Not physically, but emotionally. After recovering his body, the guilt had been overwhelming. It had been all his fault, he had been, for a while, convinced of that. He had, after all, agreed, that Bryan took Sonic in the first place. He felt, as if he had almost dug his brother's grave.

It took a lot of talking with and staying close to Sonic and helping him recover from the whole ordeal for him to forgive himself. He swore to himself, that he would be much more careful with everything he would learn in the future, especially, if it had something to do with Sonic or his friends.

"Ready as I'll ever be!," Sonic declared, taking his position at the line, next to Shadow and Silver.

The last few months had been hell. There was nothing worse than recovering in the blue hedgehog's opinion. Besides the nightmares, that had kept haunting him, it had taken him agonizingly long to get back into top shape. Gaining weight had been the easiest, getting his speed, strength and stamina back, had been more difficult. All the drugs he had been forced to take, had done some damage to his body. At first, he had been barely able to run for a minute at a mobian pace without being out of breath. Slowly (far, far too slow for his liking) but surely and with the help of everyone, he had returned to his normal self, physically and mentally. Was he truly back to normal now? Only one way to find out, with a good old race! Besides, he had always wanted to know, who was faster – he, or Shadow?

Said dark hedgehog just grunted as an answer to Tails' question, his shoes powering up, while the three hedgehogs crouched low at the start line.

The last few months had been intense. Helping Sonic had been his priority for the longest time: holding him in his sleep, waking him up, if the nightmares became too bad (usually, his presence kept them away, but sometimes, it wasn't enough), feeding him, monitoring his diet, making sure, that he ate, when he could eat on his own, supervising his physical recovery, keeping him informed, getting the people and things he wanted, as long as he was stuck in bed, making sure, that he slept, drunk and ate enough and so on.

During this time, he had noticed...that he had strange, rather bipolar feelings towards Sonic. One part of him was just happy to see him getting better, to see him happily interact with his friends, admiring the number of friends he had, listening to his stories, watching his progress in recovery with adoration of his strength and unbeatable will.

Another part of him, however, didn't want him to recover. This part wanted him in his room, in his arms, forever, never seeing anyone but him, never going out, never leaving his sight. And at times, this didn't seem such a bad thought at all, especially, when Sonic told him about his highly dangerous adventures.

It was a good thing, that he had his job to distract himself, otherwise he would have probably forced his love already to things he didn't want. Shadow was still working for GUN – but under a new Commander, an old friend of Rouge.

Commander Topaz had once worked together with the bat, when she had just made a deal to avoid jail for her thievery. The two female agents had started out as enemies, but they had soon become partners, if not friends. And Topaz had learned, that mobians weren't as bad, as Towers had always insisted. While the bat had then been ordered to watch over Shadow (not that she did that, but what Towers didn't know, didn't hurt him), Topaz had started to interact more with the mobian employees of GUN – and soon learned of how most of them had been forced to work here. One by one, the woman had discovered all of Towers' illegal actions and she had let the President know about those. As a reward, she had been promoted to a higher rank and had become the new Commander. She had immediately, after starting her new job, released all of the forced mobian workers and given those, who wanted to stay, better jobs.