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In the first stirrings of life of Autumn, Shadow would gaze at a crimson fallen leaf, the color matching his eyes. Blue bright skies guided him to his destination, but the air that swarmed around him as he drove his motorcycle down Montecito Avenue bit and stung his fur and eyes, small droplets of rain gathering on the leather skin of his jacket. Or were they tears? Shadow didn’t want to answer that question at the moment.
Nothing else really mattered to him, even if he curled his head as much into his body as he could standing up, attempting to hide vulnerable parts of his body underneath his jacket and quills as he shivered slightly, staring at the entrance of the facility he was told to go to.
Shielding the sun’s rays with his hand, Shadow could only think the brilliantly white halo in the daylit sky was attempting to hide away the silhouette of the imposing building in front of him. They called it a building of healing, yet there was something about it that made Shadow want to hide his eyes away in pain. Even against the heavenly facade of the world he was greeted by, there was almost nothing cheery about the structure, nothing that could’ve foretold him a brighter future, free of anguish, with a murder of ravens often flying by and the architecture seeming as if it was built in the 1930’s. A time where they believed the correct and scientific path to healing was simply driving an icepick into the frontal lobe of the brain.
Times have changed, Shadow said. Or, at least, that’s what Sonic told me before. He always kept me up-to-date on what happened on this planet since the fifty or so years I was sealed away.
Times have changed, Shadow soon had to remind himself, as the years went by. Now Sonic wasn’t on the pulse on what was going on as much as he used to be.
The interior of the building luckily didn’t look as rustic and foreboding as it did when Shadow attempted to leer at it through the sun’s burning glare. It was professional, clean, welcoming, exactly like she promised them. There were times where Shadow couldn’t help but think he was foolish in even believing he could trust someone like her. She was a doctor. And for all Sonic and Shadow may as well have been concerned, doctors were nothing more than harbingers of pain and misery. And there was nothing but misery flowing through his body, pain shooting through his brain as sharp as the proverbial ice pick they may as well be driving through his brain as soon as he walked up to the receptionist, visible behind a thin sheet of ice inside this formidable fortress.
“I’m… here, to see someone,” Shadow said.
“To ‘see someone’? Do you mean a patient?”
Shadow palmed his face slowly, attempting to ignore her embittered tone. “Yes. A patient. Who else do you think I’d be seeing here?”
“Okay, patient’s name?”
“What do you mean, you do know who I am, yes?”
“What, are you the patient?”
Shadow seemingly knew people of her type, no matter wherever he seemed to go. Those who always found themselves in positions where people desperately needed help, and they were always content to waste everyone else’s time, wishing they didn’t need to work this job that required empathy at all. Shadow could only wonder if there was a hiring facility that required at least one bitch to work in these types of jobs.
“I need to know the patient’s name in order to clear you to visit them. Who are you supposed to be seeing?”
His hands clasped the surface of the desk as much as it could. Arching his fiery eyes behind him, many other eyes stared back at him, both in frustration and confusion. There was no reason they needed to know. No one needed to know. Shadow could only wish that these things could only be between him and whatever higher power was supposed to be watching them anymore, if his faith was still alive after the human race attempted to blow the last candles until he could no longer believe in anything.
“I…I was here before. I told the doctor who I was and who I was here for. Just…please go ahead and clear me.”
“Sir, I can’t just do that. I actually don’t know who you are and who you’re supposed to be seeing. Now if all you’re planning on doing is just standing here and wasting everyone’s time…”
Shadow did nothing but close his eyes as his shoulders slackened. He briefly relented into the back of his mind, allowing a gentler voice to whisper from his lips. He knew that there was no point in arguing with some of these bitches and let them play their game for five minutes just so he could get what he needed.
“Sonic. I’m here to see a patient named Sonic.”
He wasn’t the one who was supposed to be in this hospital, yet there was something that hurt Shadow in saying his name. His heart bled a little bit, realizing. He knew, but every time he realized, all over again, it would only hurt him more and more.
Like Shadow, the receptionist would finally relent too. “Ah, yes. You’re Shadow, his partner.”
His partner. It barely felt long ago when they both spoke their own vows unto each other, Sonic knowing he didn’t need a dead god to acknowledge that they both loved each other and were heavily devoted to the other, through sickness and health. Or more accurately, Sonic’s. Shadow had the hidden luxury of being an alien hybrid and granted near godlike abilities, including immortality.
Sonic he knew had plenty of years ahead of him, spry and as lively as the silvered sun outside the chain-link windows. He wasn’t at all worried if he could still run.
What he was worried about, Shadow once said, was Sonic thinking that running was the only coping skill he had, until, at least, he met his friends, and later, him. He was only attempting to run to where his emotions were blurred together and unrecognizable anymore, and before Sonic could recognize where he was again and ground himself… it would only eventually catch up to him.
Shadow knew this better than anyone, and he also knew Sonic better than anyone. He initially was never going to listen to him; he was always a stubborn ass. Sonic never learned anyone else’s truth until he would eventually mess everything up himself and learn that his way actually wasn’t always the correct way. It was why sparring with him was one of Shadow’s favorite past times: there was almost nothing more satisfying than belting a solid punch to Sonic’s jaw after he’d inevitably let his recklessness take control and need someone like him to tell him how wrong a smartass like him was after he’d dress and pretty their wounds up as if nothing happened.
Times soon changed, and sparring was no longer fun, satisfying, or a learning experience for either of them. Sonic hid so many rotting wounds underneath his skin that adding more violent-shaded bruises would only remind him, and there were enough reminders of how ugly the world can be to him. None of it seemed right to Shadow. It would be akin to screaming at him to get over the lingering pain he still held inside him of Maria’s passing. None of these things ever worked because they were both things that Sonic and Shadow have done in order to attempt to forget.
And that, ultimately, led him to this gothic, drab and crumbling piece of architecture that allegedly was a hospital, where they promised to keep Sonic until they felt he was stabilized. Lobotomies and straitjackets were now outlawed, yet staring at the building still gave him flashes of the lives of other patients hundreds of years ago that possibly once roamed the same halls the both of them set their paws on, being recommended to have parts of their brains picked apart because they didn’t behave in a way society approved of. Shadow was now walking through the same halls that countless brain dead patients once ambled inside desperately searching for their lost selves, all while an important looking and sounding doctor was attempting to tell him that this hospital’s trauma unit was the closest place to Shadow’s home that could best treat Sonic. He was thankful that he wasn’t schizophrenic. The sad irony of the entire situation was almost too surreal for even him to believe.
“...the trauma unit was made to deal with conditions like Sonic’s,” the white coated man said. “We try to send the disruptive, aggressive patients into other wings and allow our patients that are dealing with particularly severe trauma to stabilize here. His therapist is also on call 24/7, so we know how best to approach his condition.”
His condition. It felt odd, just reducing his entire state, almost his surefire strategy to survive in this cold gray world, into nothing more but a condition . Yet, Shadow didn’t deny that, at times, he found himself doing much of the same. It was difficult, admitting that sometimes the man you swore you loved and married sometimes wakes up as a different man, or even woman, that you never knew before.
Shadow sat with the wing’s main doctor and discussed his notes and progress over a cup of lukewarm, terribly filtered coffee he knew didn’t deserve to be graced by his lips. There was something he always found wholly unnerving about hospital decor. Sunlit colors dazzling the patients’ eyes on the glossy, eggshell-like walls, slowly fading away from natural wear and tear and from them anxiously picking at the flaking chipped paint around the edges, faint and faded from the sun. An encompassing, mosaic glass window exposed them to the liveliness and vivacity of the life they no longer believed they had a control of, but they were often promised to breathe in air that was freshly constructed from the trees and sky and not stale and cold like the oxygen that seemed to float inside the facility’s hallways. Dappling sunlight would overshadow the courtyard as the russet trees shivered against the brisk wind, letting their dew-dropped hair drift down. It was as if they handed one of their patients a paintbrush bigger than their building and allowed them to paint in front of Shadow; a tundra of gleaming apple red leaves along with ones that gleamed prettily against the approaching sunlight. For a moment, all the dreariness of the building’s ancient architecture was forgotten as a nostalgic sense of warmth was felt inside Shadow as he gazed out at the other patients huddled in a circle around the therapist instructing them. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but it didn’t seem to matter much to him.
The doctor eventually left Shadow be, instructed to remain sitting in the center of the wing while they looked in Sonic’s room to tell him he had a visitor. Against his better, and more refined judgment, Shadow kept his styrofoam cup of coffee with granulated beans floating on the surface, hoping that at least they weren’t attempting to torture Sonic with this substance they claimed was “coffee” that was only more alien than him.
Nervously glancing at his paws as he splayed them out openly on the table, he would only succumb to his own worrisome thoughts again as he was forced to endure more tedious and mind-numbing waiting and red tape just to see his lover was okay and well. He didn’t expect happy. He knew Sonic would never be happy being stuck in a place like this, no matter if the design of the facility was modern and up to code. But healthy, and realizing that there were those who loved him and would do all they can to make him happy again? That was what Shadow hoped to see.
“There seems to be a lot of natural light here,” Shadow said, noting how the unit seemed to scintillate all around him as the building drank in more of the sunlight. Watching the other patients drift on by through the courtyard as if they were forgotten ghosts in another life, the trees radiated a brilliant golden hue as their branches stretched onwards towards the horizon, their long slender fingers scratching at the iron bars that separated their world from the outside. He could only think of the trees beckoning them to be free, to join them with the rest of the beauty that sparkled and awaited for them once they were freed. Freed from a literal prison, or from drowning from their own mind, was a question that would only be left for Shadow to find out for himself.
“Sonic. Someone is here to see you. Come on up.”
Shadow faintly heard a whispering feminine voice call for him. Once more shifting his eyes back to his paws, a hollowed sigh would escape from his dried, chapped lips. Since Sonic was admitted, while he knew he didn’t need much nutrition to survive on, he still could barely stomach anything. Even imagining more than a sip of water whenever his paws began to shake when his mind would inevitably drift about Sonic only made a rush of singing bile rise to his throat, and he despised feeling nauseous. Sonic was supposedly the patient, yet he was the one wishing he could hide his own head in fear of the nurses’ eyes that always carried a pang of judgment whenever he walked past them.
Sonic was the one who was scared, alone, having to sleep on a cold stiff bed that he knew wasn’t his own for over a week, yet Shadow was afraid to have him see his partner who proclaimed himself to be the ultimate lifeform, shatter apart in front of him, even if he already knew Sonic was too busy attempting to piece together himself inside his own head to even notice a few tears slipping from Shadow’s hardened eyes. These things shouldn’t have mattered to Shadow, yet they still did.
Underneath the arctic glare of the hospital’s lights, he would notice Sonic’s quills were sleek and gleamed prettily as he meekly walked in through the office door, almost seeming too heavy for him to shut completely from the watchful eyes of the staff. Wearing only a faded baby blue hospital gown with a paper bracelet around his wrist, he would’ve melted into the background, unnoticeable by anyone from the freer, more dangerous outside world if he wasn’t possibly the only Mobian currently in their unit. Mobians rarely come to this hospital, Sonic’s therapist once told him. But I told them of everything they can do to make Sonic feel safe even when surrounded by many patients bigger than himself.
Replaying the events that eventually led to him sweating heavily underneath his palms as Sonic just innocuously walked to his seat, gazing up at his lover with noticeable confusion, as if he never saw his lover before in his life. Shadow wasn’t the one hospitalized here, but he hearkened back to the bitch in her frozen fortress who asked him if he was supposed to be the one seeing a doctor to get admitted here, believing that maybe she was right. Everything that happened almost seemed entirely unreal to him that he questioned if these things even happened at all.
He knew nothing of what he told his therapist. He wouldn’t learn of these gnawing wounds that tore Sonic’s heart asunder ever since he was possibly born until after the phone call, the imposing white coated men carting Sonic off to some crazy house because she told him it was for the best. Shadow couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t help but brew a deep-seated vitriol for this woman who claimed she wanted to help him. Maybe it was because he thought she locked him away in this medieval castle full of lunatics and village idiots against his own will, but Sonic actually consented for treatment here. He was looking better than he did the last few months he saw him, most likely eating better from the diet they were providing him and his quills looking straighter and less scattered and shattered; no doubt his head being able to focus on taking better care of himself.
Maybe he hated her, only because Sonic told her of these things, and no one else, not even someone who he swore to spend the rest of his life with.
Did he truly not trust his husband-to-be enough to discard the smiling, artificial face he constructed to tell him that something was wrong? That there were always more faces peering at him behind his mask, and he never considered any one of his friends might want to understand each and every fragmented pane of his splintered self?
Why did he tell her, some doctor that supposedly Robotnik of all people recommended for him to see, and not him?
“Hi.”
Sonic’s eyes shifted slightly; his pupils dilated as his voice barely rose above a wisp in the wind. His stature slouched, kicking his legs playfully underneath the table as his hands gripped onto the seat of the chair, as if he was afraid he would float away from Shadow and everyone else that willingly entered in his world. Briefly he would place his palms onto the surface of the table, to have Shadow’s fingers enter through the open crevices of his hands, Shadow listening to his heartbeats through their touches. It was almost as if each and every alter ego Sonic had carried a different rhythm inside of their hearts, and after a while, Shadow could tell who it was from Sonic’s body singing their own songs.
“Hi there, Daniel. How are you doing today?” Shadow’s grip was firm, but gentle, with only enough force to keep them anchored to the earth. He even made sure to lower his voice into a soothing whisper, to ease their worries and anxieties over possibly meeting someone they never truly knew, even if he was involved in their lives for years. Nothing more but a literal shadow inside of the abyssal depths that existed within Sonic’s mind.
“I’m good, I’m good. I drew lots of pretty pictures today! Do you wanna see ‘em?”
Daniel loves to draw, his therapist said. I always have to have several packs of crayons for him whenever I think he might appear in my office. He goes through so many of them whenever we decide to do some therapeutic arts and crafts!
Shadow smiled, and when he did, he thought a little bit more light was beginning to filter through the many numerous windows in the unit.
“Of course. I’d love to see them sometime, Daniel. But is it okay if I talk to Sonic a little bit? I promise you can come back if he gets too overwhelmed.”
Daniel’s eyes would close themselves off from the outside world, Sonic’s heart beginning to thrum a familiar tune. Shadow’s fingers held onto him as he jerked his hand suddenly, the paper bracelet rattling as his wrists shook, as if he was prepping him for impact as soon as Sonic’s consciousness was throttled back into reality, the world he always attempted to run away from.
Shadow took comfort in the sounds of Sonic’s own heartbeat amidst all the others he listened to. It was a lovely song that he knew by the admission of his own heart. Like a music box, the inner world inside of Sonic still strummed among his heartstrings, softly tinkling whenever they both knew his life was still strong. No longer fearing the fall that came with returning after running away for so long.
“I’m sorry Shadow,” Sonic said softly.
His shoulders rising higher than his head, Sonic immediately wanted to sink to the bottom of his seat, turning small enough to where Shadow could no longer stare his bloody daggers into his perforated soul.
Having Shadow see him like this, the alleged hero of Mobius, unable to even eat properly or do simple hygiene that everyone did everyday without even having to think, appearing so weak, frail, his quills always poised to strike and shred anyone who came into close contact with him. He could only think of his friends learning about him having to stay at a looney bin for a week or two and losing their faith and respect in him. Why would they want to depend on someone like him now, someone who wasn’t even allowed to eat with proper utensils and instead only with short plastic spoons and forks that couldn’t even cut into the meat of the hospital chicken? How could they believe that there was always someone out there who would rescue and save them within a blink of an eye when that supposed blue savior of theirs wasn’t even allowed to run within his four walls that were essentially baby proofed? Even if he wanted some danger in his life, he couldn’t count on the corners of their walls to be able to actually give him an honorary adventurer’s concussion.
Times have changed. Times have changed way too much, even to Sonic. Even Eggman didn’t want to fight with him anymore. He could only imagine it was because he was so shattered, there was virtually nothing his robots could do to tear him apart any further. Yet, Eggman never considered this a victory. It only seemed to accentuate further that he was now nothing more but a broken toy of the doctor’s, being recommended to get some professional help, then over time, he slipped away from Sonic and his friend’s lives with barely a word. Not even Rouge or GUN knew anything about his current whereabouts. Almost as suddenly as he thrust himself into Sonic’s life, the earliest he could remember of his past, he vanished abruptly too.
He could only wonder to himself if Eggman went to his own crazy castle floating in the sky just like Angel Island, swallowing pastel colored pills in a fluted white cup and eating cold canned peaches with a plastic spork just like him. They couldn’t resist thinking it all was plausible, with how the mad doctor could easily fit in with some of the other patients in the men’s wards.
“You have nothing to be sorry about, Sonic.”
Shadow’s paws would interlock with Sonic’s, his husband’s warmth seeping and emanating through their bodies. Affirming his statement further, he squeezed each of his digital pads, listening further to the marching drumbeat of his heart. Like the rush of the wind, it moved on and on and on and on.
“You shouldn’t feel bad about coming into a place like this asking for help. You shouldn’t feel bad for opening up to your treatment team either. You…”
Clasping his hand tighter, Shadow turned his head away, even if he knew Sonic wasn’t looking directly at him. He continued to speak, a few raindrops collecting beneath his muzzle on the table. He was convinced there were raindrops, with the vast valleys of clouds from the iron windows beginning to drift inside the hospital wing.
“...You shouldn’t feel sorry for feeling the way that you do, Sonic. If anything…I’m sorry that…everything led to this.”
Shadow breathed in yet more of the citrus-tasting sunlight, wanting to keep himself together. Sonic was the one who slunk back in his seat, watching as the clouds were parted by God’s hands as if he was ripping apart tufts of cotton, drifting back away from the ominous world he wished to avoid for a few minutes longer, yet Shadow couldn’t witness him in the state he found himself in, lost and believing he failed in the one mission that he sworn himself to accomplish, to protect all those he loved. A rose he allowed to wither and crumble away because he wouldn’t let it drink in enough water. Not enough beautiful, shimmering sunlight, which he was only selfishly swallowing for himself.
“It’s okay, Shadow. I…acted out, obviously, even if I felt like it came from someone else with a different name, but none of that was because of you. Don’t…blame yourself for any of this, alright?”
Shadow allowed a temporary lapse of silence between them, the only words needing to be spoken was between their paw pads, kneading them gently as he could feel Sonic following along with the sea of clouds above them and wishing to drift back to the sun, where the air around him felt sweeter. And he knew he asked Daniel to show him one of his many pieces in his small gallery he made with the help of other sympathetic nurses. But he knew he couldn’t let him leave, not just yet.
“I know it’s getting really overwhelming for you Sonic, but before you leave…can I ask you… one favour?”
Sonic would once more set his paws at his sides, clutching onto his seat in a vain hope that he could somehow keep himself flying away from Shadow again, fearing coming to and discovering that he was away from him, again, for over weeks and months at a time, never knowing when he could find his face again among all the other ones inside his head he truly never wished to see. His emerald eyes, those same eyes that Shadow knew were unmistakably his husband’s, with the rolling green hills he loved to run in in his youth always ingrained deeply into his soul, were affixed entirely on him. Shadow could almost see his own reflection as he summoned what inner strength he could to keep himself in the same world Shadow was in for a minute longer, almost as if he was pleading with his own mind to at least wait before, like a crashing wave, Sonic would succumb and drift down into the vast depths of his consciousness, unable to determine when he could touch his lover’s paws like this again.
“I’m…I’m not sure if I can do it for you, Shadow…”
Shadow shook his head, not accepting his answer, knowing it wasn’t true. “Don’t worry about if you can or can’t do it, Sonic, because I know who you are, and even if you can’t find it in yourself today to do so, that’s okay. Just try your personal best, and I know you will get there.”
“But what if my personal best…isn’t good enough? What if I’m…not good enou-...”
“No,” Shadow sharply interrupted. “Don’t even waste your time worrying about that because we know the answer. You are good enough, Sonic. We all believe that. And all of us back outside just want you to focus on yourself and not worry about what we might think, because we know whatever you’re thinking right now isn’t true.”
“Wait, does…everyone…know about this, Shads? About me…being here?”
Once more, Shadow sighed. A pang of guilt struck him momentarily. Remembering moments after the initial phone call, he felt he had no choice. Shadow believed this ultimately didn’t matter, as he knew Knuckles, Amy, and Tails would notice him disappearing for a few weeks, and if Shadow didn’t tell them, he was sure Tails would’ve found it out for himself. Tails was too smart to keep these kinds of secrets from him anyways, Sonic. It was a discussion that Shadow had to initiate with him when Tails casually mentioned them dating back when they had to keep their relationship behind the curtains, though he had no doubt in his mind that the rest of Sonic’s companions could plainly see their tall shadowy silhouettes converging together behind them.
“What was I supposed to do, Sonic? Your therapist thought it was right that I was the one to know about your condition, and I was the last one you saw before you disappeared. You think it would be right if I let Tails, Amy, everyone else in your life who loves you worry themselves sick over not knowing what happened to you? Just wanting to make sure that you’re safe and you’re not thinking about possibly harming yourself? You know I couldn’t do that, even if everything you believe about yourself is true.”
Shadow looked back at his styrofoam cup, his grainy coffee as algid as the hospital unit. Small goosebumps would form on his rough skin underneath his fur, shivering slightly as the crisp sanitized air struck him abruptly.
“And we all know it isn’t, so don’t even bother trying to argue with me,” Shadow said.
Closing their eyes, both hedgehogs would allow the silence to laconically emanate inside their room and almost cleanse their minds, Shadow’s ears fully erect as he caught the whispering breaths of the wind as it trickled through the fingertips of the surrounding trees, their golden locks of amber hair cascading and dripping onto the earth that seemed far below them. The wine and champagne coloured leaves rustled as another brisk breeze blew past the foreboding granite structure, the raucous laughter of the crows perched atop their pillars as their blackened wings scarred the aerial view of the ward, flying off unnoticed to everyone but Shadow, who said nothing, letting the small flit of beauty that Mother Earth sighed out of herself briefly wash over them.
Sonic’s verdant irises remained intently on Shadow shortly after he blinked, knowing he wasn’t finished as a noticeably large lump still throbbed within the pit of his throat. As he finally revealed what he wished for from Sonic, the lump would unravel, sinking into the grooves of his blackened fur and flesh, swallowing every painful emotion he’s felt since he received that phone call. It tore and almost serrated through his throat like searing hot barbed wire.
“I only want you to do one thing for me while you’re here, Sonic. I don’t want you to worry about anything that’s happening outside of here. Focus on yourself…and focus on getting to know everyone else inside you too. They’re…there for a good reason, Sonic.”
Sonic shook his head slowly, a few of his quills falling onto the floor as he did so. His voice reflected his crushing mental exhaustion over everything and anything that life offered him.
“What good reason? All they’ve done is take me away from the people I love, the ones I’m actually supposed to spend my time with. They make everyone not want to rely on me anymore. They scare people away. They…they…”
“...and they protected you when no one else could, so you should be thankful. You are alive, and you can still spend time with the people you love because of them.”
Sonic couldn’t help but glance again at his scarred hands, worn and torn over the many battles he experienced, both outside and inside his mind. Pupils expanding slightly, his body shrinking down to where his splayed hands almost stretched across the entire canvas of the table, he scrambled desperately to the surface before he thought he would sink further into the gray sea of dissociation, wanting to take a good hard look remembering his lover’s face before he’d inevitably forget, all over again, the static-coloured waves taking him deep underneath.
If you’re still there…Sonic…even if you’re far away, I want you to hear this. Please look at the trees. Please look at everything, when you decide to go out of the courtyard. Admire the resplendent beauty of fall, all around you. Life will always have its ups and downs. So it goes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still look up and see how pretty the sunset is when the world inside you might get dark. Even when everything is dark, there are still things that will light up your path. Fireflies, the candlelit stars at night, the milky white moon smiling down at all of you. Just like all of the little ones that hide quietly upstairs inside your mind, I truly believe that they’re there for you, your guiding fireflies lighting up your path when everything is too dark, even for someone as strong as Sonic the hedgehog to get through.
“Hi,” the small red bug said as it flew and flickered its phosphorous light on Sonic’s paw.
Even as Sonic stood in the stark darkness, deep within the stygian depths of the ocean, the little red bug still glowed a brilliantly golden light, the vast inner world inside of him not seeming as scary as it once used to be.
“Do you want to play?” the firefly later asked.
I want you to do one thing for me and one thing for me only while you’re still here, Sonic…I want you to admire all the beauty life still has to offer you. When you’re discharged, we can look into enjoying the leaves falling around us, together, while I serve you something better than this sorry excuse of coffee they probably give out here…we can enjoy some homemade apple cider, while we gaze at the golden trees with their leaves decorated with the drippings of the twinkling starlight. I want to do these things because not only do I love you and everyone that’s made you into who you truly are, but I want you to fall in love with life again, and know it’s always been worth fighting for.
Sonic smiled, caressing the bug gently into the opened palm of his paw, its incandescent glow absorbed into his warm flesh and grooving down to where his heart still beat his effervescent song, brightening up his world around him.
“Yeah. Let’s go ahead and play. And we can play for as long as we want, without those pesky grown ups around to stop us.”
With his heart guiding him, Sonic waltzed down his starlit path, glittering like wet tears and shattered glass. Shadow’s voice echoed on as he disappeared, with another smaller blue hedgehog in hand, whispering excitedly as they discussed all the fun things they could do now that Sonic wasn’t as afraid.
Like the rush of the wind, he wanted to keep moving on and on and on and on and on…