My Arms Were Always Around You

It was dark. A darkness so complete and total, so suffocating and endless, it was inescapable and unbearable. It was empty. It was nothing. And with every moment he existed in this prison’s void, Shadow could feel the light inside him being eaten away, bleeding out of him to satisfy an unquantifiable balance. Soon, he thought, he’d become just like the nothing around him. Dark. Inside and out.

It’d been nearly a week since he’d last been allowed to see his only friend, the slight blonde haired girl whose smile he clung to on nights like this. The other inhabitants of the orbiting military lab were sometimes kind to him in the same way that a scientist may be kind to a lab rat, but he was nothing more to them than an experiment. Never mind that he had thoughts and feelings. Never mind that he could and did feel pain, that he could communicate that pain. Never mind that leaving him here, locked in dark isolation, was torture he wasn’t sure his sanity could surive.

But this was his punishment. He’d fought back against scientists who’d been tightening straps around his arms and legs while searing white light from above effectively blinded his sensitive eyes. They’d been about to take his arm. They’d taken fingers before, and toes, all in an attempt to try and assess just how far his regenerative capabilities could go, but this time they’d wanted more.

And he didn’t think. He just… fought. He broke through the straps, launching chaos spears at the edges of white lab coats, and darted across the room, desperate for escape. Maybe they wouldn’t have locked him in here for quite so long if he hadn’t inadvertently injured Dr. Gerald Robotnik. Maria’s grandfather. The source of nearly every degrading and painful act carried out against him.

So this was his punishment. To lie on this small, thin mattress thrown haphazardly into a corner of the room, curled into a ball while the blackness tore at him. There was no break in the silence, no sound of laughter, not even the soft whir of machines. There wasn’t even the momentary respite resulting from an exchange of food trays. Why would they? He didn’t need to eat, or drink, or even sleep. He had no bodily needs. The perfect soldier. The perfect weapon. The Ultimate Lifeform.

In the end, they would make him long for it. They would make him miss the poking and prodding, the cutting and the breaking. He’d let them slice him open again and again and never even scream if it meant he would never be here again.

And they knew it. They just had to wait for him to break.

It wouldn’t be much longer now.

Pulling his crimson striped arms around himself, he hugged his knees to the fluff of white on his chest and stared out into the nothing. In his mind, he brought up the image of Maria, her blue eyes bright with the joy of youth, her infectious smile chasing away the tinges of darkness encroaching on his heart.

He closed his eyes and clung to the memory, trying desperately to hold on to it, wishing more than ever that he could just sleep like Maria did and lose himself in dreams. Any break from this nightmarish reality. But he couldn’t. As he felt the image in his mind’s eyes slip away, he felt the loneliness building inside him, threatening to swallow him whole. The pain was so intense, overwhelming him, making him want to wail in anguish and--

“Shadow! Hey! Shads, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here....”

The voice came from somewhere, seemingly far away, and Shadow clung to it, using it as a lifeline, pulling himself from the depths of despair and into warm peach arms.

“Shadow,” Sonic murmured over and over, holding him tightly from behind, the position in which they had fallen asleep in their shared bed. It took Shadow a moment to realize where he was, when he was. He wasn’t on the ARK, he wasn’t locked in that lifeless room. He was home. The home he’d built with the Hero of Mobius, one they shared together. It took the hybrid a moment to realize he was shaking from the effects of the dream, and he swallowed harshly as tears silently slipped from his eyes and soaked into his pillow.

Sonic peered over at his partner, brows furrowed in concern, wishing more than anything that there was something physical he could chase away and crush to bits for making Shadow cry. But there wasn’t. And Sonic knew it. He kissed an ebony shoulder before resting his chin there. “Will you tell me about it?” he asked softly.

In the dim light provided by the full moon outside, Sonic could see crimson eyes flicker toward him before focusing once again straight ahead. This wasn’t the first time Shadow had woken up like this, or the second, or the third, but the dark agent never wanted to talk about it, and Sonic never pushed. Instead, he would hold the ebony male until his silent sobs ceased and the hybrid returned to sleep or got up to make coffee and go about his day.

But this time the blue hedgehog felt his partner shift in his arms, rolling to face the surprised hero. A peach thumb brushed away the tracks of tears trailing over Shadow’s cheeks, but he said nothing, just watched those crimson eyes as they stared into his own.

When Shadow spoke, his voice was deeper than normal, thick with yet unshed tears. “I… I don’t like to talk about it…. It makes it feel more real.”

“It’s not,” Sonic whispered, reaching for an ebony hand. “But I am.” He brought their joined hands up between them. “This is.”

Shadow closed his eyes and kissed the back of the cobalt hero’s hand but said nothing as he lay his head back down on his pillow. Sonic shuffled over slightly and opened his arms. “Come here,” he said, motioning for the hybrid to snuggle close. Reluctantly, Shadow complied, nestling under the outstretched peach arm and laying his head on the firmness of Sonic’s shoulder while his arm moved to rest across a peach chest. The blue hedgehog moved his free arm to the agent’s side, fully encompassing Shadow in his embrace.

They lay like that together for several minutes in silence, Shadow focusing solely on the calming serenade of his lover’s heartbeat and slowly gathering the courage to speak his nightmare out loud….

“They used to lock me alone in a room for days, sometimes weeks, without any contact, no light, no… anything,” Shadow finally murmured into the soft peach fur on Sonic’s chest. “That was the most effective punishment they’d discovered for me. I wasn’t a person… just an… experiment that happened to be capable of speech. Sometimes… I dream I’m back there. In that room, alone in the dark. There’s no window, nothing around. I don’t require food, so there wasn’t even any momentary contact for the exchange of meals. There was… absolutely nothing.”

“Shadow….”

“I was so alone….”

Sonic closed his eyes, heart breaking for the hedgehog in his arms. Finally, he took a deep breath. “Can you do me a favor?”

A slight nod was the only answer.

“Try and picture yourself there again, in that room, just like your dream.” Sonic felt the warm body curled next to him tense, and he doubted himself for a moment but pushed forward. “It’ll be ok, I’m right here. Trust me.”

Shadow felt his body start to tremble again as he closed his eyes and brought up the pained reality of his past and imagined himself back on that bed, curled up and alone.

“Now,” Sonic whispered against the short black fur atop Shadow’s head, “I want you to feel me there with you. You’re not alone, Shadow. Not even then. Time… space… it doesn’t matter. My arms were always around you.”

The hybrid listened to the warm voice of his partner, felt those solid arms so securely wrapped around his body and in his mind, that sad, younger version of himself was joined on the bed. In the memory, the bed creaked, and the hard mattress sank just a little as the familiar warmth and comfort of his love pressed firmly against his back. Peach arms wrapped around him and held him so tight he could feel each breath, hear every heartbeat. And… he felt the pain fade. There was still the memory of it… he would always know what it felt to be that alone, but… it was no longer threatening to destroy the little flame of light still burning inside him. The one Sonic continued to fan and feed, so insistent that it never go out. And if it did? He’d just share his own until Shadow’s burned again.

The darkness had been chased away, maybe not forever, but if the threat of it ever returned, he knew he could call to mind this moment, this feeling of security with all of Sonic’s love, joy, and optimism spilling out and into him.

And suddenly he wasn’t trembling anymore. Instead, it felt like he’d been lost in some wild, dark place and stumbled upon the light and safety of a fire. His body relaxed, and Sonic tilted his head to see his face. “Are you okay?”

Shadow kissed the slightly damp fur of Sonic’s chest and looked up into soft emerald eyes. “I am now.”

The hero smiled softly and cupped a tan muzzle lovingly. He kissed the black hedgehog gently and settled back into his pillow as the agent sighed and nuzzled into him, breaths slowly evening out and deepening as he fell back into a deep, dreamless slumber.