Through the Looking Glass: Epilogue
A Month Later...
Vanilla sat alone in her home, looking over the mail. When her fingers thumbed over a postcard, however, she smiled softly.
It had been nearly a month since Sonic's funeral. It was that night that Vanilla would learn that Cream had decided to follow Tails around the world with only a picture to help her out. She said she was going to find Tails and try to bring him back, while also trying to figure out where Cheese had gone to after she had freed him from the trap that had started the whole incident. She had announced this intention to everybody, but when most everybody objected to her going out lone, she stood her ground. Vanilla had had the hardest time letting Cream go; it was her own daughter she was entrusting to the world, and she was not sure it would be such a good idea to find him on her own.
Vanilla would have been worried to death in any other situation. However, Cream was a good girl; she often sent post-cards to Vanilla whenever she found an outlet for them, and when she could help it she also posted a picture of herself that she would sometimes take to show her mother that everything was going all right.
Turning it over from the picture of the tropical paradise that Vanilla did not know so well, she found a huge gob of written text. Glancing over it, she found it was detailing everything she had done in the past four days since the last postcard had arrived. Seeing a fractured heart right next to Cream's name, the adult rabbit's eyes brightened.
Looking at the postcard, her day had been made. She read the text that Cream had written down with the smile staying on her face.
Knuckles looked out onto the sky, Shade sitting by the echidna as he looked out into the night. The Master Emerald was on the pedestal behind them, and the both of them were admiring the stars from where Shadow had moved the island away from Station Square.
"Everything's changed so much," said Knuckles as he gazed out into the sky.
"Indeed it has," said Shade softly as she nodded in agreement. "I'm just glad nobody will try to steal this thing anymore."
"That depends," said Knuckles with a slight shrug as he sat down next to Shade. "That depends on whether Rouge steals it or not."
Shade looked at him incredulously. "When she's got a bear to love?" she asked. "No. That's not going to happen."
"I know," he said as he looked out. "But still, you get my point."
The Nocturnus echidna nodded before tuning to face the red-furred echidna. "Knuckles?" she asked.
"Yeah?" asked the echidna.
"What do you think's going to happen to us?"
The male echidna turned, glancing at Shade briefly with his amethyst eyes before the female was able to notice the smirk that had come to his face. "Well, we're all alone here, with nobody to stop us. Who knows?"
A little flustered by this, the echidna looked down, blushing madly before getting the heart to look back at her counterpart. "Are you sure it's a good idea?" she asked.
"Oh, come on, Shade!" said Knuckles as he inched closer and left a kiss on her forehead. "We've known each other for a while!"
"But..." said the female echidna. "I'm just so nervous about that..."
The red echidna nodded as they took each other's hands. "I'll go slow," he said, rubbing the quills on the back of Shade's head tenderly. "That good enough?"
The female echidna looked down, pondering for a second. She then looked at the echidna and nodded, planting a kiss on Knuckles' nose.
Knuckles took this as a cue; tackling Shade to the ground, they both kissed quite passionately with Shade's back against the hard stone of the temple that they were on.
Showdown Town had been in better shape than it had in a while. The Jiggoseum was still reduced to rubble and the reconstruction of L.O.G.'s gaming factory was only a quarter done, but otherwise the town was habitable. In fact, most of the denizens of the town were now in a comfortable living space.
It was on this day that Silver and Tooy were walking around the town a little hurriedly. The cast that had been on Silver's foot had been taken off a week before, and he was ever thankful for getting what he saw as something overly restrictive off. He was free to go wherever at that time, and going wherever was just what he had intended.
Tooty and Silver had both moved into Showdown Town around the same time that he had gotten his cast off. Banjo and Rouge were coming in that day, and so the hedgehog and the she-bear had both decided to vacate the house so that Banjo and Rouge could have a little room to themselves when they started living there. The two of them were heading off to a party that was taking place at Mumbo's warehouse, smiles on both of their faces as Silver recounted some of the times that he had spent in the future before the timeline had changed.
"...and then we pretty much got into a mudfight after that," said the grey-furred hedgehog with a gesture of his hands. "I don't think I've ever had as much fun with anyone after that."
"Oh, dear..." said Tooty, chuckling nervously as she heard this. "I'll bet your mother was pissed!"
"She wasn't," replied the hedgehog morosely. "My mom was already starting to fall ill when it happened. She wasn't in the mood to scold me."
The she-bear nodded. "I would think that would be pretty extreme..."
Silver simply nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I miss all the people I knew from the future."
"Well, why didn't you go back?" asked Tooty inqusitively. "I mean, you told everyone else, but you haven't told me. So, why stay here?"
The hedgehog shrugged as he moved along. "Well, to be honest?" asked the hedgehog. "I think it was for the best. Think about it for a second; if I changed the timeline, things would be for the better, yeah? But that means nobody that I knew there would recognize me since I did things all that time ago. I don't think I'd belong to the new future."
Tooty nodded. "Hey, you got friends here!" she said.
"That's why I stayed here in the present," said the silver hedgehog with a content smile as his amber eyes glanced down to Tooty's blonde hair. "You guys are just really good to me. Especially you, Tooty. It would be hard to find a person in the future I came from that's as cheery as you are. And that's with everything that happened, too!"
The bear nodded. "Yeah," she said. "It was really hard at first; there were so many times where I lost hope. And there was that stretch of time where I didn't even remember Banjo or what had happened either. But, I guess everything turned out all right in the end."
The hedgehog looked on the street in Showdown Town that they were walking down. "Yeah," he said. "I think that that's what matters most when we think about life; deal with the punches and hope everything ends okay."
"Yeah," said Tooty, suddenly noticing how slowly they were moving. "Still, I wish L.O.G. hadn't died. And Klungo dying means he's got no successor now..."
"Bah, we'll find something else to replace them," said the hedgehog non-chalantly. "Now let's get to Mumbo's place before we're late for their party!"
"Ah, right!" said the bear, looking at the wristwatch Silver had given her as a present and raising her eyebrows quickly.
The two of them then moved quickly through Showdown Town, Silver grabbing Tooty's hand as they rushed to Mumbo's warehouse.
Amy glanced at the pregnancy test she held in her hand. Glancing from the box back to the test itself, she was unsure what to think.
The pink hedgehog had been having several bouts of rather horrible morning sickness the week before. She was still mourning Sonic, and the fact that Shadow had been extraordinarily nice to her as of late was the only reason she had not killed herself by then. But when she found herself vomiting constantly in the past few weeks, she knew something had to have been happening.
After getting a tip from Rouge about it, the pink hedgehog had gone over to the corner store and bought a few pregnancy tests.
And looking at the results, she could not believe her eyes.
She was pregnant. She had also never had sex with anybody after she had engaged in it to comfort Sonic. Therefore, she was pregnant with Sonic's baby.
A wide grin spread across the rose-colored hedgehog's face, and then she jumped up in joy. The fact that she still had something that could remind her of the blue hedgehog she had loved so much was great in and of itself, but the fact that it was a life was even more glorifying to her.
Excitedly, she ran out of the bathroom of the small apartment that she lived in and grabbed her cell phone from where it had been charging until that moment. Quickly going through her contacts, she settled on Shadow's number and hit call. The phone rang twice, the hedgehog shaking in anticipation as she waited for the black hedgehog to pick up the phone.
"Hey, Amy," said Shadow softly after those two rings. "Are you okay right now?"
"Oh my God!" exclaimed Amy, unable to contain her excitement. "Shadow, you won't believe it! I'm pregnant! And I think it's with Sonic's baby!"
There was quite a lengthy silence as Amy got silence on her phone. Nervously waiting for Shadow's answer, she twiddled her fingers in excitement.
"What?" asked the male hedgehog from the other end of the line. "But... When did you two have sex?"
"I... it was the night before he died," said Amy as she shook her head. "I... I wanted to comfort him... and somehow... that happened..."
Amy could almost see the hedgehog blink before shaking his head. "Amy, please tell me--"
"We kept as quiet as we could, I swear!" said the pink hedgehog. "But... But Shadow! I'm pregnant with Sonic's child! I have something of his now!"
"I see..." said the black hedgehog from the other end of the line. "That's... That's wonderful, Amy. But... are you sure you're ready?"
"Of course I am!" protested the pink hedgehog passionately. "I wanna be there for my child! And I'm gonna be there where Sonic never was going to be!"
There was a short silence before Shadow continued. "I dunno, Amy," he said. "From what I hear, being a single parent is a little hard. Are you sure you want to do it alone?"
The pink hedgehog realized Shadow's point. Nodding slowly, she continued. "I guess that's right..." she said. "You want to talk it over later?"
"...Don't see why not," said the black hedgehog. "But still, I'm glad you found something good out of this."
"Are you kidding?" cried Amy loudly. "This isn't just good! This is incredible! I know Sonic's going to be smiling at me from the eyes of his son, I know it!"
Shadow chuckled on the other end of the line. "I'll see you tonight, then," he said.
"All right!" said Amy. "Bye!"
And when Shadow hung up shortly after, Amy Rose began dancing around her room in pure glee, still unable to get over the joy she felt upon learning of her pregnancy.
"Wow, you were right. This place really is quite nice."
"Yeah. And to think I used to have most of my adventures with Kazooie here..."
"Yeah, things were pretty crazy back then."
Rouge nodded at this.
Banjo and Rouge had arrived at Spiral Mountain earlier that morning thanks to Shadow. The two of them were now sitting on the mountain, Kazooie outside of the backpack as they all sat with their legs dangling over the edge.
"Can't be any crazier than what we had to deal with in your club," said Banjo. "Those people liked to party, I tell you!"
Rouge chuckled softly. "Yep," she said. "And those few drunk people are really, really hard to deal with."
"Indeed," said Banjo with a shrug. "I still can't believe you resigned from G.U.N. after the funeral."
The bat shrugged. "It was beginning to get rather tiresome anyways," she said. "I mean, between managing the club, stealing emeralds, and working for G.U.N... Yeah..." Rouge's hand then placed itself over Banjo's hand. "Plus, I wouldn't be able to get away with staying with you if I did."
Banjo blushed slightly, Kazooie shaking her head at how crummy she thought that sounded. "That's... true..." he said. "I just wanna live my life in peace."
"And being in a government agency won't help that sentiment, that much is for sure," said Rouge as she looked out onto the landscape of Spiral Mountain.
"Yep," said Banjo, looking up. "It's still so hard to believe everything that's happened."
"That's exactly how I feel," she said, looking up at the daylight sky as they both layed back on the mountain. "I think we got really lucky here."
Banjo shrugged as Kazooie sat down on the mountain. "Well, you know, Rouge?" asked the bear. "I really think that's understating it."
"Yeah," said the breegull as the bat looked to them confused. "I remember back when all this started... we had just gotten the emerald... and I asked him what he wanted to do with it... I wasn't sure why he didn't just throw it out..."
Rouge frowned slightly at this revelation. But when Banjo grasped her hand softly. "I told her I wanted to hold on to it, though," he said. "Thinking about it now, I think I definitely made the right choice."
The bat giggled, blushing softly as bear and bat turned to each other with smiles on their faces. "All things considered?" she said softly. "I'm glad I got to meet you... Even if... well, you know."
Banjo inched closer to Rouge, leaving a soft kiss on the bat's nose as his smile intensified. "Same here, Rouge," he said.
Kazooie then simply watched as Banjo pulled Rouge into his arms, the two of them whispering intimate sayings to each other throughout most of the rest of the day.
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