Chapter Text
This is the first New Year’s Eve that Shadow will get to experience properly. Last year he had been too busy fighting to really think about it and what the holiday entailed, and the many years before that he had been frozen in cryostasis.
The biohog is in the middle of putting away the clean dishes when the fireworks start. Shadow hadn’t known about the existence of the pyrotechnics that night. No one had told him about them.
The first one isn’t too bad, it’s a bit further away and therefore isn’t all that loud, even with Shadow’s enhanced hearing. The second one, on the other hand, is much louder. It had to be less than two city blocks away. The second one is worse.
They is no longer standing in the kitchen of his and Sonic’s apartment, now he’s back on the ARK watching as Maria’s body falls to the ground in slow motion as blood sprays outwards in a gruesome arc.
The glass that is in his hand slips out and smashes against the tile floor. The sudden noise doesn’t help his current predicament at all.
Shadow is no longer standing frozen in the middle of the space, they is sitting squished in a corner with the handle from one of the cabinets digging into his side. They doesn’t feel it.
In his mind’s eye, he watches the G.U.N agent shoot Maria over and over again. Until it changes. Now the blonde’s body is sprawled out across the metal floor. Said floor is slowly being stained red by her blood.
It changes again, they is now kneeling beside Maria, and some of her blood has gotten onto their gloves from their attempt to save her. The fur of his knees is in a similar state from him kneeling in the surrounding blood. It’s so sticky and faintly he realises that he probably looks like a monster. They is a monster.
Sonic is on his way back from picking up dinner from a takeaway place down the street. He enters the apartment to be greeted by someone’s heavy breathing. It sounded like they are failing to draw in a full breath.
The speedster zooms across the apartment to the kitchen. There are glass shards all over the floor and Shadow is pressed into a corner. The other hedgehog is staring unblinkingly at the mess.
The only thing that Sonic can think of at that moment is “oh crap”. He should have expected this to happen at some point tonight.
The fireworks are still exploding outside, he can still clearly hear the booms and whizzing noises even this far inside.
Before Sonic enters the kitchen proper, he backtracks to Shadow’s bedroom to grab their noise-cancelling earbuds. Without these earbuds, any progress that he could possibly help the biohog to make would be undone within minutes.
With earbuds in hand, the azure hedgehog returns to the kitchen. Shadow hasn’t moved a muscle. Carefully, Sonic stepped over the glass to kneel in front of the dark hedgehog.
“Shadow,” he says, carefully. “You’re safe. Whatever you’re seeing right now isn’t real,”
A moment passes when neither of them says anything but Shadow’s eyes lose a little of their glazed look and focus more on the speedster.
While they is more present Sonic holds out the earbuds towards them. The hedgehog accepts it and puts it in his ears.
With the noise dampened somewhat, he is able to relax a bit more. He’s still far too tense.
The worst part is that Sonic isn’t sure if it’s safe, for either of them, for him to be touching the other hedgehog right now; or if he’ll make it worse by touching them. Either option is equally likely and neither was good.
But he needs to do something soon — even if it doesn’t involve touching Shadow — because the longer he waits, the longer Shadow will be stuck in his head. They both know that is worse than hell.