Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was another evening where they were just together at home.  Major traffic at the university had been put on halt for the summer, renovations were dying down, and things were peacefully quiet in Shadow and Maria’s little corner of the Space Colony.

But almost too quiet. Shadow’s ears perked up as he realized he hadn’t heard any movement from his fiancee in a while.  He knew she’d wandered off a while ago and wasn’t back yet.  He didn’t think she would have left the house, so where was she?

Shadow rose from his book and wandered out into their living room. No sign of Maria here either. That meant she was probably…

Shadow creaked open the door to Maria’s old room. There he found Maria splayed out on the floor, dozens of diaries all open beside her.  His heart momentarily stopped, and his limbs poised themselves to action. If it wasn’t for the fact she was a hedgehog, he would have thought she was having a NIDS attack.

But no, his fiancee was instead staring blankly up at the ceiling, arms and legs spread out wide like she had been making a snow angel with the books and pages all strewn around her.  It looked like she had been crying.  Still alarming, but much more manageable.

Shadow hurried to the ground beside her. 

“Maria, what’s wrong?!”

Maria sat up and wiped her eyes.  It was a familiar scene: Shadow expressing distress and concern for her as she tried to downplay her pain.

“Nothing, I just…” she laughed. “I had a NIDS attack.”

Shadows' heart dropped, but she had to be joking. There was not a shred of NIDS left in her body.  Still, not a very funny trick to play.

“Don’t joke about that, please.”

“Sorry,” Maria said.  “It just felt familiar. Me, being here… you asking me what’s wrong…”

“Maria, are you… okay?” Shadow asked. She still seemed dazed.  “Do you need water?”

“I’m fine Shadow. Just… Emotional.”

“So, water.”

Shadow reappeared in an instant with a glass of water in his hands. Maria laughed and took it.

“Thanks.”

A silence fell between them as Maria took a sip and gazed off in the direction of her old window.  Shadow wrapped his arms around her, but allowed her to be silent.  She nestled into him in return.  They sat together like that a moment longer.  It was odd Maria wasn’t talking.

“Maria, what happened? Normally reading your diaries doesn’t make you like this,” he said. “You’re usually laughing.”

Maria drew away from him a bit. Huddling into herself over her cup of water. Shadow allowed her the space.  She took another sip and then set it down beside her. 

“I know. But this time I started… feeling things.”

“Feeling things?”

Maria suddenly turned to Shadow, eyes not frantic, but wide.  Pressing, but not quite urgent.  She placed her hand over his.

“Shadow, do you understand the amount of universes there are where I die?”

Shadow coiled back slightly, as it was an odd and unpleasant thing to be asked head-on–and certainly not something he knew the answer to.  He found himself gripping to the basely obvious answer, the one he knew she wasn’t getting at…

“I mean. Well. Technically in all of them you’d–”

Maria rolled her eyes. “You knew what I meant, Shadow. Yes, in all universes I’m sure I die. But the amount of universes where I die for you…”

Maria laid back down on the floor and spread out again, staring up at her ceiling. She began to wonder why she had so long ago insisted on putting glow-in-the-dark stars there when there were real stars all around them.  To make it homey, she guessed.

Shadow laid down on the floor beside her.

“It’s not fair, Shadow.”

Shadow furrowed his brow and looked to her. “What do you mean?”

Maria was growing more frantic now, emotional. She sat up and tugged on him.

“Why are you built to have gaps in your existence? How come so many of your stories hinge on my loss? Why couldn’t it have been me–?!”

And just like that, as Maria’s voice cracked, her tight-wound grip on his fur vanished. Shadow jolted up.  She swooned back, and he caught her head before it plopped down to the floor. Thankfully, she hadn’t had a long way to fall.  He made sure she was in a neutral position and started fanning her and dabbing water on her forehead, nudging her shoulder every now and then to check her state of consciousness.  She had a pulse, she was breathing. She had just… worked herself up again and fainted.

Oddly.  After all these years…

Shadow was beginning to wonder if she actually was having a NIDS attack.

“Mariya?” he said, tapping her shoulder again, and switching into Russian.  “Can you hear me?  Mariya?”

Maria rustled and brought her hand to her forehead, and Shadow heaved a sigh of relief. Though, her eyes were still closed, and she was murmuring in Russian,

“Mariya, can you move this hand for me? Mariya, follow mama… Repeat after mama Mariya…”

Something was really wrong.

Shadow hopped to his feet and pressed a voice command on his watch. There was no time to waste anymore. “Rouge, I need backup. Now.”

“What in the–”

“I'M FINE!!!! I’M FINE!!!!” Maria yelled, sitting up and praying she was loud enough for Rouge to hear.  “SHADOW, DO NOT GET ROUGE.”

She heard Rouge’s peal of laughter ring out on the other end of the line.

“Shadow, don’t tell me you thought she was dying again?”

“Something like that,” Shadow grumbled and angrily jammed his thumb on the button to end the conversation.  “What the hell was that?!  You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

But when he saw Maria’s wide blue eyes and ears turned guiltily backward, he realized he had inadvertently directed the stress that manifested as fury back toward her. He softened.

“I’m sorry. Just… are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry, Shadow…. I’m sorry I’ve scared you. I’ve just… had memories,” she said, putting her head in her hand.  Shadow scooted closer to her again and wrapped his arms around her.

“Memories?”

“Not just of our past.  I think of all pasts.” 

Oh.

“I thought it ended when I got out of the soup,” Maria said.  “You know, the Maria-Soup. Wherever my soul was floating around before I came back.  I had mixed memories for a while, piled in with all the Marias in timelines across the universe, but I thought they settled when Amelia helped get the right ones back in me. But I guess now that we’re back in our zone, on our Earth… or rather, Space Colony… maybe I’m still a bit unstable.”

She curled into him tighter, hanging her arms around his neck.  She buried her face in his chest.

“I don’t want to live in a world where you keep losing me.”

Shadow took her hand and steadied her face, bringing it to his and wiping a tear from her eye.  “You won’t, Maria. I’m not letting you go ever again.”

“And who am I to deserve coming back to you? Of all universes…”

Shadow held her tighter.  She was right that it was an undeserved miracle, but wrong about who held the blame.  Who was he to deserve her coming back?  He stroked down her quills and rocked her by his side.

“It’s taken me a while, Maria, but we don’t need to ask why good things happen,” Shadow said.  “We just need to appreciate when they do.”

“This goes beyond ‘good things,’ Shadow. This is…” she sat up and turned slightly away from him.  “This defies probability.  This spits in the face of infinite universes…”

“Well, if there are infinite universes, it had to happen in one of them, right?” Shadow asked.

“How did it get to being ours?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know the answer to that,” Shadow said.  “And I haven’t seen the other side like you have, but even then, I know I love you in every one.”

“Well, I’m sure there are some of them where you don’t…”

“Is now really the time to be a pedantic ass?”

“I need it to survive,” Maria said.  “It’s helping ground me, at least.”

“Do you need me to state a few more inaccuracies?”

“Go for it,” she said. “Just what I need right now.”

“I love you like the sister I never had.”

Maria burst out laughing so hard it was almost a snort.  “Did you read Abe’s diary or what?”

“I might have peeked.”

“Do another.”

“I love you like…” Shadow stopped for a moment and thought. He wanted to wax badly poetic so there was the most opportunity for her to rip him to shreds.  “I love you like a blade of grass loves the rain.”

Maria snorted again.  “A singular blade of grass? Among the trillions that exist? What’s to give that little raindrop the time of day?”

“Because mine is the one your raindrop landed on, out of all the others on Earth,” Shadow said, giving her nose a playful boop.  Maria laughed and turned away.

“Fuck, Shadow. Stop being cute. I need to be more evil.”

“I can punch you if you want?”

“You wouldn’t do that, and I’m not Mephiles. Though I appreciate the offer.”

“Now we’re on the right path,” Shadow smirked.  He rose and offered his hand to her.  “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, I think I’m ready,” she said, taking his hand and rising.  The two of them stood there holding hands for a moment amid her diaries that were still strewn open around the floor, and under the little glow in the dark stars on her ceiling above them.  “Sorry I scared you,” she said.  “It’s just a lot.”

Shadow nodded.  “Believe me. I know intimately well what it’s like to have memory problems.”

She squeezed his hand.  “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”

Shadow pulled her in to his arms and held her.  He rocked her slightly back and forth and gave a long, tender kiss on her forehead.  “You were.”

After another moment, he started to break from her, still holding her hand and beginning to head out of the room.  “We can clean all of this up later.  Bed?”

“Bed,” Maria said, and followed him out the door.

And she tried not to think about how the raindrop was a blip in time in the life of the grass that melted away into nothing, being absorbed by the soil to become nutrients that strengthened the grass, and its near-eternal life on Earth.