Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lancelot had been riding ahead pretty slowly for some time before he gently tugged on his horse’s reins and brought them to a halt at the top of a moonlit grassy hill they both knew very well.

Sonic spent his childhood here as Prince Arthur, heir to Camelot’s throne and successor to his father, who’d passed when Sonic was a mere fourteen. A table of knights was chosen to help the young king rule, with Sir Lancelot appointed the head of them as his black knight. He still remembered the bolt of adrenaline when he first saw Lancelot— the visceral knowledge that they had met before, the raw magnetism like Sonic was a planet he would always orbit.

A prince’s knights were not recruited, but born into the position— which is to say that it was fate, not choice, that had once again reunited them as teenagers, while their destinies were knotted at this very pivotal point.

“Lance,” Sonic started, since he’d always hated an uncomfortable silence. “Do you remember, when we were kids, we used to climb up here and hide from everyone?” he gestured upwards, eyes gazing fondly into the canopy of stars between the familiar branches.

The black knight had stopped his horse just shy of the hill’s edge, the eye slit of his closed helmet fixed on something indiscernible in stoic silence.

“Just me and you. Us against the world,” Sonic continued, perpetually unphased by his counterpart’s nonchalance.

“I was only there to serve you,” corrected Lancelot, his gruff voice reverberating off the metallic grates of his headpiece.

Sonic smirked to himself, dangling the bait some more. “Oh, please. Even before you were appointed head knight we were inseparable,” he went on again, still undeterred by the coldness of the other’s response.

The black knight said nothing as he dismounted, gracefully swinging one leg over and landing softly in the dry, thick strands of faded green grass. It was a warm summer night, just about the solstice.

Like it always was when they died.

“You know why we’re here. You know who I really am.” His voice croaked, like he’d been choking on the words the entire time they’d been riding quietly, his demeanor grim as he held his hand up for his king to grasp.

Sonic took it, and with a sad smile, allowed himself to be helped off his own horse by his trusted knight. “I’ve always known. I thought I might change your mind this time.”

Lancelot scoffed, pulling his helmet off at last to reveal the familiar brooding face that haunted Sonic’s afterlife, or whatever this was. “So you admit to vying for my affections as a ploy to save your skin?”

“You don’t believe that for a second.”

Sonic’s hands were quick to cup the cheeks he only longed to hold forever, if not for their wretched curse. Rough black arms wrapped tenderly around his waist and up his back in eager reciprocation, skin and souls ablaze where there was contact like static electricity.

“I want to know why,” Sonic muttered after he caught his breath, hoping to sound as authoritative as he’d trained to be as King. “Don’t I deserve to know?”

Lancelot peered up at the sky, as though searching for solace in the infinite stars above them. “It’ll hurt you more to know.”

“Did I… do something to you? In some other universe, or some life I can’t remember that you can? Is this about revenge?”

“It’ll hurt you more to know,” he repeated rigidly before pulling out of their embrace and turning towards the tree, bracing against it with one hand.

Sonic felt frustration sting his eyes, heart swimming in confusion. “I wish I could remember, Shads. You don’t think I spend every day of every life mentally combing through the last dozen lives? Everything’s starting to blur together, like sometimes I can catch a sound, or sight, or feeling, but it’s gone before I can pull it out of the periphery. I don’t know where I began. Where we began.”

Silence settled around them, pulling the air taut. When they were kids, they played a macabre war game appropriately called cemetery sweeper, where the objective was to bury the fallen without accidentally uncovering a buried mine. This conversation felt like that; digging a grave, made infinitely worse by the threat of detonation.

Lancelot— no, Shadow— turned around and looked at Sonic suddenly, almost desperately, especially with the way tears brimmed in his eyes, which they rarely did. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Sonic. I’m not strong enough.” His voice cracked, and Sonic’s heart fissured with it.

Deciding to take his chance, Sonic grabbed him by both shoulders, forcing him to face him head on as he held his gaze hostage. “So don’t. What happens if you just… don’t? What if you don’t kill me, and I don’t kill you, and we can be free?”

He’d given it a lot of thought, of course; he could see exactly what kind of life they could have. A life where they could be together as equals and not rivals, where they were free to age; free to live for something and know it meant something, rather than this limbo of reincarnation. He wanted it more than anything.

If not for the heavy metal plates fastened to his armor and the leather of his own gloves, Sonic’s fingernails would have likely dug crescents into the ridges of Shadow’s shoulders as he gripped them desperately.

“Why can’t we just… be?”

Regret played out like a silent movie across his knight’s face, and Sonic’s heart couldn’t help but swell at the chance that he might finally convince Shadow to imagine breaking their curse.

With a pained grimace, he gestured to Sonic’s drinking water flask. “It’s too late.”

Oh. That was probably why he’d been walking them so slowly, Sonic realized. He must’ve timed it out so the poison would hit at their childhood spot.

All the stubborn hope in Sonic withered, like one of the thirsty blades beneath their feet faded from the harsh summer sunlight. Harsh as the truth that soon Sonic would fade, too.

“I knew my willpower would falter at the last minute,” Shadow muttered, every word a puncture wound. “But it’s almost too late. You turn twenty tomorrow.”

“Why?” Sonic breathed, the question escaping on an exhale as he searched for the answer in crimson eyes. “Not even the big why, but why twenty?”

“We can’t… you can’t. It would ruin you.”

Sonic felt heavy from sleep already moving into his limbs as he fought to keep himself mentally awake enough to hear more, cryptic as it may be. “What does that mean? Have I lived to twenty before?”

Shadow shook his head once, firmly. “No.”

“So you don’t know what happens, then.” Sonic fires back immediately, in spite of himself.

“I do know what happens,” retorted Shadow with a grimace as if imagining the alleged cataclysm.

“And?”

The dark hedgehog looked contemplative in the terse silence, staring upwards into the neverending cosmos of a world he was soon to depart. He looked beautiful in the moonlight, his dark grey fur glowing navy blue in a way that explained why people thought they looked alike, save for the signature magenta highlights that distinguished them. The lovesick teenager in Sonic wanted nothing more than to just fling his arms around the other and spend his last few minutes of this life pressed against his body before being wretched apart once again.

Instead he mumbled, “You piss me off sometimes, you know that?”

Reflexively, Shadow lowered his head, taking to one knee to bow. “Apologies, my lord.”

Sonic looked away to hide the scarlet blooming on his cheeks. “You don’t have to do that anymore,” he chuckled bitterly, letting himself down to the ground to gently take a seat beside his kneeling knight, who followed him with sad eyes begging for his king’s forgiveness.

“…I’m sorry, Sonic.” Shadow settled into his new sitting position on both knees, as if in atonement for what he was about to say. “For what it’s worth, I hate doing this. Especially when I…” He swallowed the next words, but they stubbornly demanded to be heard. “…love you.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it might have been the last time in this life as Sonic smiled weakly, knowing they had maybe a few minutes left.

“…Even after Babylon Gardens?” Sonic teased softly, a smirk growing on his lips. Even in the moments before his demise, he craved their back and forth banter.

“Even after Babylon Gardens. I’ll admit, a nine caliber right through the eye was impressive. Couldn’t do it again if you tried.” Shadow challenged, a competitive fire igniting in his eyes— the exact look Sonic was chasing.

“Do you have a nine caliber?” It was supposed to be a joke, but Shadow’s face folded into a pained grimace and he collapsed into his hands.

“This is wrong. You are my king. What am I doing??” Panic seemed to have taken over his cognition as he clasped at his head, eyes wide as dinner plates in apparent shock. Whether it was his training as Lancelot that hard-wired him for loyalty or his genuine feelings as the supernatural assassin bound to his soul that made him doubt his resolve, Sonic couldn’t tell. Either way, it was new.

“Damned if I know,” Sonic laughed, but nothing had ever felt less funny. It was just sad.

Shadow started shaking his head, mumbling mostly to himself and verbally pacing between options. “No. No, no, no. I need to undo this. No, I won’t let you die this time. We’ll… we’ll figure something out.”

Sonic’s heart bucked excitedly. They’d fallen in love in every universe so far, but this was the first time he could remember Shadow changing his mind about killing him. The first time he’d ever changed his mind, period. More stubborn than a mule, one of his core personality traits was his determination and unwillingness to alter a course that’s been set.

And yet, it was too late. The knowledge felt standing like a burning bridge, waiting to drop.

“There’s no antidote?” Sonic coughed, a few speckles of blood painting his white leather glove, earning a sympathetic look from the other.

“Can you make yourself vomit? I can hold your quills back,” Shadow clasped him with both hands, his face wild with despair.

Sonic smiled weakly through the dizziness, his vision swooping and diving as the edges blurred and nausea crept up his throat. “What a gentleman… but I think it’s too late. Everything’s going…”

He teetered as Shadow caught him in his arms, no strength left in his body to keep himself upright while the dark hedgehog cradled him and shook with silent sobs.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” he choked, eyes glassy from the unfallen tears threatening to break the dam any moment— an expression foreign to his usually stoic features.

“Why… this time? Why did you change your mind?” Sonic whispered, suppressing a chill from the fever taking over his body. Maybe if he revealed what convinced him this time, he could be convinced again in the next life.

“Last night… Before we got up this morning, I remember waking up in bed beside you, seeing the peace in your expression, knowing… I can’t explain. All I know is that I’d do anything to lie in that bed with you again and not have to think about how I’m going to have to kill you soon,” Shadow spoke carefully, like every word was a stitch in a wound he could never heal. “That’s all I want. You. Alive. With me. I’m just so tired of this, Sonic. I’m so tired.”

Frustration throbbed in Sonic’s temples in response to the expertly vague explanation. Not to mention, he made it sound like he was the victim in all this when it was his choice to kill them over and over again.

“I’m tired too, on account of you poisoning me,” Sonic remarked bitterly, when he really meant to say he loved him back. Maybe in the next life, if Shadow granted them the opportunity. “Lay with me?”

They lay quietly under the dim, sprinkled lights of a thousand dying stars shining long after their demise, and Sonic couldn’t help but feel envious that at least they had an end in sight. There could be no lasting purpose in this kind of immortality.

“What if… you’re wrong?” Sonic coughed hard, his voice breathy and nearly gone as he tried for a final time to learn more about their mysterious shared curse.

Shadow didn’t miss a beat. “The risk is not worth finding out,” he stated firmly, but softly. His fingers laced themselves into Sonic’s hand to grip it tightly, sorely, like he might fall off the skin of the planet into space and take his place among the dying stars.

“You make it sound… caff… like the world would end,” Sonic managed to squeeze out one more joke, with one of his dying breaths no less. But Shadow turned to face him gravely, completely serious.

“Because in a way, it would.”

A single fat tear rolled silently over the apple of Shadow’s cheek, daring to breach the floodgates that even Sonic himself had only ever seen break once before.

“What do you…”

Mean, what do you mean. He begged his mouth to finish the question, but he was slipping into the grave, holding the one he’d loved in all lives, and lost in every one.

They quietly took their last breaths together under indifferent stars.