He is My Master

60: There And Back Again

                 *******EXCLAIMER*******
I DO NOT OWN THIS NOVEL IM MERELY TRANSFERRING IT TO WATTPAD CHECK OUT THE ORIGINAL AND GIVE KUDOS TO AUTHOR Chiisai Kitsune ON FF.NET HERE

     https://m.fanfiction.net/s/4256772/62/

Rouge was actually crying. Or, well. At least still sniffling a little, her face pressed into the crook of Shadow's shoulder, her arms wrapped around him like she needed the confirmation that he was really there. Shadow simply stood still and held her, in truth actually also feeling moved a bit. He wondered whether that had anything to do with what he had been through in the other dimension – he remembered how Sonic had thought of Knuckles, Amy and Tails when he had thought he was about to die. And Shadow also remembered that even if he hadn't voiced it aloud back then, he, too, had just faintly been wondering whether a certain bat might still think of him occasionally if he had never come home...

"You made it. You saved the world again," Rouge said at that, finally stepping back, her hands still resting on his shoulders. She was giving him one of her familiar, sharp-toothed smiles, only slightly differing from those of the past by the moisture in her eyes letting them shine just a little bit too brightly. "I mean, I guess maybe I should have expected it from you," she said, wiping the last traces of tears away and crossing her arms again, obviously just a tid bit embarrassed by her earlier outburst and trying to regain her usual playful and confident tone. "Ultimate Lifeform and all that. Of course you managed to pull yourself together in the end..."

"I always keep myself together," Shadow replied automatically with a slight frown, not sure what Rouge was even referring to. And then some other bits and pieces of the conversation started nudging certain cogwheels and gears in his mind, all of it slowly starting to turn now...

Shadow blinked.

"...wait. How do you know I just saved a world?"

xxx

"Um...so...that in there isn't you? You're the real Sonic?" Tails asked with wide eyes as he pointed at the laboratory door behind his older brother that the blue hedgehog was still pressing his back against.

"Well..." Sonic rubbed the back of his head a bit awkwardly, "It's a bit complicated. Me and Shadow screwed up a Chaos Control and wound up in an alternate dimension. Everyone had a doppelganger there, and it was all medieval and totally bonkers. Uh." Sonic glanced from Tails and Knuckles on the staircase back at the closed lab door. "That one in there is their Sonic, I think. I switched places with him when I arrived in the other dimension. But I definitely belong here!" He gave them both a lopsided grin. "Man, you must have thought I'd lost it, huh?"

Knuckles looked at him a bit funnily.

"Yeah...you might phrase it like that."

The echidna's expression let Sonic involuntarily swallow, already knowing that nothing good could possibly come out of this conversation. But at least he didn't have to argue to make his friends believe his story, since with all of Mobius' different Zones and pocket dimensions and alternate futures the concept of parallel universes wasn't even that that weird any more.

Knuckles frowned. "But if that's true and now you're back, then why isn't he gone?"

Sonic shrugged. "Beats me. Though by now I'm basically convinced that this alternate dimension for some reason just hates my guts "

"Yeah, you look really bad..." Tails said with a sympathetic grimace, his eyes now also visibly trailing over all the minor injuries currently decorating his older brother's body, not to mention all the dirt and grime. "That other universe must really have been horrible... and you just ended up there because of a Chaos Control accident?"