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The first color Shadow saw had been white.
And gray, and black, and red, and it was all blurry, but the color that immediately caught his attention was the lingering blue by the doorway.
From there, blue became his everything.
Shadow’s always known blue.
It’s the first color he’s ever loved.
Because blue was Maria.
Her dress, her eyes, her nails whenever she decided to paint them.
Blue was her color.
It was the color of love, the color of kindness, the color of laughter.
It was the color of the planet she loved so much, the planet she wanted to return to, the planet she wanted him to see.
It was the color of space, as the two of them sat in the ARK’s observatory and Maria told him about stars and stories and myths about heroes long gone.
It was the color of the lamplight that sat in the corner of Maria’s room as the two of them sat in her bed reading when Maria was too weak to run around the ARK as she would like to do.
But then blue was stained by red, her expression soft as she bled out, her blue eyes losing the light in them, the shine and life in them that Shadow adored and admired so much, as she remained stubbornly clinging to the lever she had managed to pull to expel him to the blue planet below them.
He only watched as his sister’s blue dress was stained in red, as he hurled down through the blue expanse of space, as he plummeted to the blue planet below, as he was captured and put in a blue sleep.
The first color Shadow saw was red.
The man looks vaguely familiar, before it clicks and he realizes he’s looking at a copy of what the Professor had probably looked like when he was younger.
A mech flies into the room, and Shadow takes it down with no trouble at all.
From there, red became his everything.
Because now red was all he knew.
It’s the first color he’s ever hated.
Red was the color that had stained Maria.
His mission had become clear.
And so on a red bridge, surrounded by red and b̶l̶u̶e̶ lights, blinded by red rage and deafened by the blaring of alarms sounding in tandem with flashing red as he runs down a corridor when he closes his eyes, he swore he’d have his vengeance.
The first color Shadow saw was purple.
And then red, and for some reason he feels protective of the bat in front of him, so he leaps and saves her, and then lounges at the red robot that had been firing at them, only for the bat to stop him.
For whatever reason, he feels compelled to listen to her, even as she announces that the three of them are now a team.
Maybe he decides to stick to her because he can’t remember.
Maybe because she feels familiar.
The thing is, he stays.
And red and purple become a staple as the three of them run around chasing after ‘Eggman’.
It’s kinda funny.
The red robot -Omega, he tells himself- is seeking the man for revenge.
(For some reason red and revenge seem like an ironic combination to him, but he has no idea as to why.)
The bat in the purple outfit -Rouge. And her name also feels familiar- is looking for treasure.
(For some reason, her chasing after treasure brings a smirk to his face.)
And then there’s him.
Who has no idea who he is, who Eggman is, and why some things feel familiar while others don’t.
(He sees blue in the forest, and he stills at the sight.
Blue is important.
Why?
Blue on gold, blue on red, blue on gold again, but this last one was a different blue and a different gold.
But blue also hurts, so he falls into unfamiliarly familiar banter, before Rouge drags him away from the fight and away from blue.)
(Later, he sees blue turn into gold, and it feels familiar, it makes him freeze, because he’s suddenly cold, and he feels like he’s falling but he’s not, he feels like he’s floating but he’s not, he feels like he’s in space but he’s not and why does he even know what it would feel like to be in space.)
Blue haunts him.
He closes his eyes, and he’s running down a gray hallway, and he’s dragging along a girl in blue, and his heart aches whenever he thinks about her.
Red haunts him.
He closes his eyes, and he’s watching it stain her dress, fall from her lips, splatter on the ground and on the glass of-
Of?
He can’t remember.
And then red haunts him in the waking world as well, as a vaguely familiar creature appears before him and demands he hand over the seven Chaos Emeralds.
He sees red splattered on the streets of Westopolis as soldiers desperately try to hold their ground against the red and black creatures.
(Blue follows him through the streets of Westopolis as well, but Shadow doesn’t pay him any mind.)
He sees red all over, in the sky turning to it, in the disgustingly familiar red larvae crawling around, in his mind’s eye as he imagines what it would be like to do nothing and watch the world be engulfed in red flames, to turn against the creatures and see their red forms pathetically grovel around, to turn against humanity and watch them bleed for what he’s slowly realizing they’ve done.
Instead, Shadow turns on the one who claims to be his creator, the one he owes his life to, and dispels the red from the sky, from the world, from his mind as he finally lets go of it.
Blue is much harder to let go of.
It takes some time to accept, because he wanted to move on, but he realizes that moving on doesn’t mean letting go of her blue, not in the same way letting go of red had meant.
Instead, he holds her blue close to his heart, and carries on with his life.
Blue starts to take on another meaning.
He becomes startlingly aware of it one day, surrounded by green, as he watches the blue hedgehog laugh and laugh and laugh as leaves and sticks and flowers stick to his blue quills after Shadow had shoved him off when their race had turned into a spar which turned into a brawl.
And he realizes just how many shades of blue there are.
Maria’s blue was a light blue, pure and almost ethereal in it’s nature.
Sonic’s blue is wild, deep, unbound, a rich royal shade that screams look at me and watch me and see what I can and will do.
Sonic’s blue is calm, is free, is caring, is nice and nurturing, is the gentle wind as it sweeps the meadows as the two of them lay in the grass and look at stars after an intense race.
Sonic’s blue is the fierce love he carries for those he cares about, a wild wind that can turn into a violent storm from one moment to the next if it means protecting those he’s come to call his family.
Sonic’s blue is so different from Maria’s blue, and yet so similar.
Sonic is so different from Maria, and yet they’re so similar.
They both value freedom above all else, love this planet of ungratefuls much more than it ever deserved to be loved, wanting nothing but the best for it and for its inhabitants.
They both love nature and Shadow knows that had she been able to Maria would have explored every knook and cranny of this planet just like Sonic has done.
He feels like if they had met, they would have gotten along far too well.
Maria’s blue is the first color he ever loved.
Sonic’s blue is the color he is now learning to love again after thinking he would never love again.
(Sonic’s blue is the last color he will ever love, the curse of immortality a heavy cross to bear as he outlives every single person he had come to care about, even Sonic himself. But now, after losing his blue again, he does not give into the red like he did the first time. No, Sonic’s blue changed him far too much for that. As did Rouge’s purple. And Amy’s pink, and Miles’ yellow and Omega’s red and Cream's orange and so many others he’s learned to care about again. They’re all gone, yes, but their colors all remain with him, held close to his heart, right next to her blue and his blue.)