A/N: Wow. Last official chapter. This thing is officially finished . . .

To be honest, I'm exhausted. Forty-six chapters in less than a year was not exactly on my radar. But it was a fun time! Maybe I'll attempt a really long story again someday . . . definitely going to pre-write more of it first, though.

Thank you ever so much to everyone who's read, reviewed, faved, and followed! Seriously, I don't think I could've done it without all of you guys' support. ^_^ Hope you had as much fun reading as I did writing it; enjoy the epilogue!

Final Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic and Co..

"Heads up! Heads up!" the cry came through the golden-gilded late-afternoon. "Loose load!"

There was a flurry of scrambling and shouting back and forth; a payload of metal girders was swinging dangerously, the hoist rope lengthening and falling slack erratically. The winch lifting the load had broken, and the whole lot would have crashed several stories to the ground if someone hadn't caught the loose end of the rope.

"A little help?!" gritted Shadow, digging in his heels as best he could as the several tons of metal dragged him forwards.

Mobians zigzagged every which way, popping up from behind stacks of pipes, scrambling down from the jungle gym of bare beams, grasping extra ropes and fetching counterweights. Several of them latched onto the rope beside Shadow, digging in grimly as well.

In less than a minute, the load had been hoisted up to its correct level, and Silver gave a flick of psychokinesis to swing it safely onto the platform where it belonged.

"Nice save!" he called down.

"Would've been nicer if you'd helped out," Shadow called back drily, spitting on his rope-burned palms.

Contrary to what you see in the movies, being a hero doesn't just involve beating up the bad guys, trashing a city or two in the process, then sailing off to do your own thing; Sonic and the others had been stuck helping with the clean-up job afterwards more times than they could count. It wasn't much fun, but they felt it was the responsible thing to do.

And besides, they did do a pretty impressive job, especially for their size—G.U.N. headquarters was rising again at a crackling pace, and the Mobians were contributing as much as the whole crew of human workers. The kids were kept away from the more intense construction areas, but they puttered about cheerfully near the outskirts, doing odd jobs or just watching the building's framework growing taller by the day.

Now, though, it was getting too dark to see. A soft bustle of packing-up and putting-away hummed through the worksite, oddly subdued and dreamy. Mundane reality had just started to catch up to them all, and they were still unusually quiet, got along unusually well, tried to spend a little more time in each others' company. It was going to wear off pretty soon and they'd all go their usual separate ways, but for now they just let it run its course.

"So," said Amy, wiping her hands on a rag. "Anyone want to go out for dinner or something?"

There were some vague murmurs in that regard, but nobody seemed willing to make any concrete statements.

"We should check on Chaos," said Silver, hopping down from his perch in the girders and heading off.

"Wait for us, mate!" called Marine, as the kids scurried after him. The others exchanged looks, and were mildly surprised to realize that it was actually a pretty decent proposal. At any rate, nobody could think of an objection.

When they got to the swimming hole, the soft darkness of the trees chilled the air and made the nighttime seem even closer. Despite the fact that it was technically too cold to mess around swimming, some of the younger set splashed into the shallows anyway, and the rest of the Mobians lurked near the edges, dangling their feet in the water. Chaos oozed up slightly onto one steep bank and seemed to keep a vaguely mistrustful watch on everyone. The water spirit, still lacking a Master Emerald to call home, had chosen to take up residence in the swimming hole instead of its native island; perhaps Angel Island without its Emerald felt wrong. Either way, nobody was about to tell that kind of a critter what to do, even in Chaos 0 form.

The darkness grew thicker. Not much conversation went on; everyone was slightly tired but overall content.

"Ooh look, a frog!" called Marine. "Catch it!"

"No, wait, no," scolded Tails. "It'll just jump into the water. If we hold very still and don't scare it, we can look at it and maybe it'll sing!"

Marine grumbled a little, but took the advice; she and Charmy inched safari-style on their stomachs to study the little amphibian perched on the bank.

"He looks awful slippery," remarked Charmy, chin on one hand. The other children wriggled their way closer as well, exchanging muffled protests about elbows and someone being on someone else's foot. Shadow watched from a distance, one eyebrow raised, as Tails pointed out various features of frog physiology, gesturing with a blade of grass. Maria was in the circle too, and her attention was fixed quietly on Tails as he spoke, her expression one of simple interest.

It was good she could be with other children for a while before they all went back to routine, reflected Shadow. She was slowly learning to go on normally with life. Still, it was too often that she looked up at Shadow with something lost and helpless in her eyes, her smile too old for her years; times like those he cursed Eggman and G.U.N. and himself most of all.

Oh, there was probably some poetic justice to the whole mess, he figured. Creature of pure evil brought down by its own machinations, meeting its end at the hands of the most innocent and all. Probably some irony in there too. He couldn't bring himself to care; it cost too much.

But just now, Maria's eyes were clear and untroubled, and the soft smile that whispered across her face was the same as the old one. There was still hope, normality, still a chance now and then to forget. All would become the distant past eventually.

Meanwhile, the frog currently being studied from all sides seemed unmoved by all the attention. It sat with its round bulging eyes trained on the tree canopy, its head nodding and its throat pulsing ever so slightly in and out with each breath.

"Can't you make it sing?" asked Charmy. "It's boring just sitting there."

"I don't think frogs sing on-demand," said Tails amusedly.

"Awwwh," muttered Charmy, and reached out to poke the little creature.

"Charmy, n—" Tails' admonition was cut off by a flurry of screams and exclamations as the frog suddenly lost patience and jumped straight at Marine.

"Help!" yowled Marine, which Charmy apparently took as a request to tackle her. The frog sprang unconcernedly away from the ensuing melee, and despite some yells of "gah, catch it!" most of the youngsters seemed to be too tangled up in the mayhem to make any chase attempts.

"I've got it!" called one voice suddenly, and a little navy-blue form broke from the pack. "Almost got—yiiii!"

Omega swung one claw and scooped Bokkun up before he could tumble into the pond after the frog.

"Awww, it got away," sighed Bokkun, surveying the spreading ripples where his quarry had disappeared.

"You," said Omega gruffly, "are not waterproofed."

He wasn't, at that. They'd had quite a job patching Bokkun back together after the fiasco; he was still missing a fair bit of his memory and the use of his rocket boosters, but his personality seemed largely unchanged, if a little mellower. Cream and Cheese looked out for him most assiduously, and by some strange madness Omega was starting to grow fond of the little robo as well. Any robot who turned against Eggman was a friend of his.

Meanwhile, the youngsters attempted to sort themselves out and pick themselves up, giggling. Suddenly there was a bout of silence, a gasp, then a howl of "KNUCKLES!" and a general stampede in that direction.

"Wh-what the—" spluttered Knuckles, struggling not to get bowled over. "Geez! You'd think I'd been away three years!"

"Three weeks is long enough, mate!" exalted Marine, bouncing up and down. "Didja bring candy? Didja? Didja? Didja?!"

"Marine!" scolded Blaze from a distance. "That's not polite."

"Oh . . . sorry mate." Marine dropped her gaze sheepishly, then immediately looked up again with hopeful eyes. "But didja?"

". . . No."

There was a barely-stifled "Awwwww!" and some disappointed faces; Knuckles laughed and fished out a little paper-wrapped packet of Chun-nan sweets.

"Split these up evenly, you little rugrats, y'hear?"

Amidst the squealing and shredding of paper that followed, Knuckles detached himself from the group and went over to soak his travel-weary feet in the water as well. A small orb of light danced at his shoulder—Tikal, also currently homeless, alternated between keeping an eye on Chaos at the swimming hole and bobbing at Knuckles' side as he traveled the world.

"Any luck, Knux?" called Sonic.

"Yeah, the hunt's been really good, actually," said Knuckles with a tired smile. "I found one fragment in Chun-nan and another in Mazuri. Only five or so to go!" He stretched. "I gotta say, it's really nice being able to hunt for some of the Master Emerald fragments without having to worry about what's happening to the rest of 'em." He smirked in Rouge's direction.

"You're real funny," grumbled Rouge, rolling her eyes. Knuckles had been leaving the collected Master Emerald pieces at the shrine as he found them, and for once Rouge wasn't making any advances upon them—she didn't want to get on the Emeralds' bad side, because she had taken it upon herself to learn Chaos Control if it killed her.

"How's the learning been going, by the way?" asked Knuckles idly.

"Nowhere," retorted Rouge, pulling out the green Chaos Emerald and surveying it grumpily. "Shads says I'm hopeless."

"She is hopeless," agreed Shadow, opening one eye.

"Or she has a bad teacher," said Knuckles, raising one eyebrow in mock innocence.

"Psh." Shadow closed his eyes again, uninterested in the bait. "I can still swim faster than you."

"I can still dive deeper," retorted Knuckles good-naturedly.

For a moment a surreal silence threatened to roll in, as everyone suddenly remembered when they were last here. Nobody had even once given a thought to that diving contest since it had happened, but now that they were in the same place the contrast between the past and present became suddenly, bitterly sharp.

Before the mood could get melancholy, though, Knuckles swept it away with a casual "Ahh, anyway," and clambered to his feet.

"Let's see how you handle that Chaos Emerald, Rouge. Maybe I can help out."

"If you've got anything better than Shadow's 'feel the energy' mumbo-jumbo, I'm all ears."

For a while things settled down again. The conversation rose and fell in a lazy melody, backed by the soft rumble of Knuckles' instruction and punctuated by the occasional staccato retort from Rouge or twinkle of advice from Tikal. The kids munched happily on way more sweets than the recommended daily dosage, but nobody could summon the heart to stop them. Sonic yawned and lay back against a rock, then opened one eye as Amy crowded in next to him.

"Were you planning to go somewhere?" she asked sweetly. Sonic blew out a rueful breath and ruffled her hair resignedly, letting his arm drape over her shoulders when it fell.

Presently the drowsy atmosphere seemed to sharpen all at once. Shadow felt his skin prickle in warning, and Knuckles' voice rose to a tense note.

"Easy, don't—"

Too late; a sudden wail of misaligned Chaos waves, a sharp pow!, and Rouge and Knuckles were both thrown backwards by a bright snap of deep green energy.

"You guys?!"

Knuckles scrambled upright at the same moment Rouge did, both of them startled but unhurt.

"You've got to stop thinking of them as just jewels, Rouge!" said Knuckles, impatience replacing his anxiety as soon as he saw she was all right. "They're not just pretty shiny things—you've got to respect their power if you want to use them!"

Rouge opened her mouth to make some cutting retort, but suddenly seemed to notice something else.

"Where'd the Emerald go? . . . "

"Straight to the bottom of the pond," called Sonic glumly.

"It . . . didn't fall into the deepest part, did it?"

"It did."

There was a chorus of groans.

"You've got to be kidding," protested Rouge, regarding the dark, faintly rippling surface of the water as if it had insulted her personally. "Now what?"

"Guess we'll have to go down for it," shrugged Knuckles, starting to pull off his socks.

"Knuckles, no," scolded Blaze. "No, not you either, Shadow. It's practically nighttime out here, you won't have any light to guide you back to the surface! Besides, there must be a safer way to get the Emerald back—it can stay down there for a while until we think of something."

"A submersible!" piped Tails. "A couple years back I started building a little deep-water submersible, and I think I still have it lying around half-finished somewhere. That'll work! It'll be a fun project to finish it too."

"Waste of time," said Shadow scornfully. "Just give me fifteen minutes and—"

"Shadow. Just drop it, okay? It'll be fine down there." Amy shuddered. "Besides, no reason to risk history repeating itself."

"Yeah," said Silver quietly. "The last time you tried going down there, look what happened."

Shadow rolled his eyes, but feigned acquiesance, sitting back down.

But yes, look what happened last time, he thought. He watched the others go back to their conversation, Amy snuggling against Sonic again, the kids starting to sing "Goodnight Irene," Silver (feeling merciful) pulling out his harmonica.

Look what happened last time. But that was, in his mind, all the reason to try it again. To separate the deed from the aftermath. To tempt fate, because fate needed to be shown it wasn't the boss of him or anyone else. He had control over little enough in life; over this, at least, he did.

He bided his time. The others wandered off homewards in twos and threes, or simply fell asleep right in the grass, despite the faint chill of ending summer. Sonic disentangled himself gently from Amy's dozing form and disappeared with a sharp whisper of slicing air, already restless, already chasing the horizon. Gradually silence fell.

Shadow got up and Chaos Controlled softly away. When he returned moments later with a length of rope from the worksite, Rouge was sitting up and blinking drowsily, evidently broken out of her doze by the hum of Chaos. Shadow said nothing, but went to work tying one end of the rope to the trunk of a nearby tree. Then he started searching for the other end.

Rouge watched through hooded eyes. She had an idea of what Shadow was up to, but she made no comment. She didn't like other people telling her what to do and what not to do, fussing over her when she wanted to try something dangerous, and she wasn't about to do that to someone else.

"You sure you won't drown?" she murmured at last.

"I can't." An ironic snort. "If I'm not back in twenty minutes, haul me back up."

Rouge nodded and lay back again.

Seething with anticipation, Shadow fastened the other end of the rope to his ankle and sat down on the bank. For a second he hesitated; then he bent over to yank off his shoes. Off with everything.

The water felt freezing. He set his teeth and ducked under all at once, stroking rapidly beneath the surface to let his body heat overtake the urge to curl up tightly and shiver. Once he and the water reached some kind of uneasy equilibrium, he surfaced, rolled onto his back, and began to breathe deeply, expanding his lungs. Something brushed against his leg; Chaos was inspecting this intruder, or perhaps just ensuring he was all right. Briefly he wondered why the water spirit hadn't just gobbled the Emerald the minute it fell in, but perhaps it had been snoozing. Perhaps even it didn't want to venture down that deep.

Breathe a little deeper, just a little deeper. Twenty minutes was a long time . . .

The water didn't feel so cold anymore. If he closed his eyes, he could almost convince himself nothing had changed; that it was still that summer afternoon. That all the blood and tears and fury and brokenness had never been, would never be, and that time would take pity and hang perfectly still for eternity in this one moment.

Drawing in one final breath, he let the water close over his head.