Chapter Text
Sonic dreamed of red eyes and sad expressions and someone so utterly tired of carrying so much rage inside.
He dreamed of races that will never happen, and a friendship that’ll never be and a do-over that was impossible.
His brain must hate him, showing him Shadow in his dreams night after night. But Shadow was also so, so easy to dream of. And Sonic replayed their races and fights against each other and the final battle side by side with near perfect recall. That’s how it starts anyway, with memories, and that’s easy to tell his family about. And he does, in return they give him this sad, pitying look that he really doesn’t need the weight of, not with everything else, not Shadow already dead.
But it’s easy to tell them, so when he’s downstairs at 3am, watching Mork & Mindy and Tom comes down, they both already know why he’s there.
“Shadow again?” Tom asked quietly as he sat next to the hedgehog who was curled up with a blanket around him.
The hedgehog eyed his dad and the careful breaths the human was still taking, the deliberate action due to pain caused by the very guy Sonic can’t get out of his head. Five fractured ribs, internal bleeding and a broken collarbone, it had taken months for him to get back to somewhat normal. And still Tom is recovering, sometimes wincing when he laughs too hard or moves a little too fast. Humans are more delicate than mobians, Sonic has come to learn.
So yeah, it feels weird to mourn the guy that sent your dad to the ER. But he still does. He’s still awake and haunted by the memories of someone now making up stardust.
“I just… can’t get him out of my head.” Sonic sighed quietly.
“You’re in mourning, Sonic, it’s normal.”
“Yeah, yeah I guess.” He concedes, but hesitantly adds: “But something about this feels… different. I don’t know.”
“Talk to me buddy, how?” Tom was always so open, so understanding, but Sonic wonders if he can really understand something that Sonic’s tongue can’t really put into words.
“I can’t stop seeing his face, not just before… you know. But in general, I can’t stop thinking about him, it feels different than– than Longclaw. She was like a mom to me but Shadow… Gah!" Frustration spilled into his voice. "I don’t know how to talk about it! It’s like this feeling in my chest I can’t– ugh!”
By the time Sonic calmed down, he looked over at Tom, and the man had that look on his face. It’s a very particular look, one that Sonic has only seen sparingly, but it can only mean one thing: Tom knows something that Sonic doesn’t, and he’s probably not going to tell Sonic what it is.
So the blue blur just huffed quietly and leaned against his dad’s side, and at least for that night, the rest of his sleep was dreamless.
It went on like that for a while, fitful nights of sleep, memories of someone that could have been something more than just a brief ally. It went on for about another week like that, and it was almost becoming a routine that Sonic could somewhat work around.
But things got… complicated when he stops dreaming of just memories.
At some point, his brain decided that what already happened wasn’t enough, and somehow the recollections of how Shadow had been morphed into who Shadow could have become.
Sonic was still working through how he felt about this development.
Green Hill has a small carnival that they hold every year, it’s a fundraiser for the local schools, and also an absolute blast, Sonic was especially a fan of the chili dogs sold here. It was late one night at the carnival, really it’s just a tiny fair, but he’s stopped in front of one of those shooting fake ducks games and is weighing how many tickets he has against the fact he wants that really cool looking bird plushie, the thing is huge, but he’d have to hit every target…
“Either of you boys wanna try?” Mr. Hesse asked, he was one of the art teachers at the local school and the man running the booth.
Sonic scrunched up his eyebrows. “Either…?”
“We both will.” A low voice said behind him and Sonic nearly jumped out of his fur.
“Shadow?!” He exclaimed, and had about a million follow up questions on the tip of his tongue.
“Yes, that’s my name.” Shadow rolled his eyes. “You said you wanted to compete but you were taking forever to pick a game. Is this good enough for you? Or are you worried you’ll lose?”
Sonic gave a laugh and cracked his knuckles, “Oh, you wish, Hot Topic.”
As both of them are handed fake rifles Shadow snorted. “You still have to explain that nickname to me sometime.”
“We can go to the mall and I’ll show you, you'll love it there.”
“It’s a date.”
Sonic nearly dropped the fake rifle at the innocent comment, but looking over to Shadow he saw the other hedgehog was already taking out ducks with every shot, so Sonic just focused on the competition. It’s not Shadow actually meant anything by that, anyway.
A minute later and Sonic was regretting picking this game, in the end he’d only hit half the targets and Shadow got every single one. Because of course he did. Congratulating him, Mr. Hesse handed Shadow the large bird plushie and Sonic gaped a bit when the other hedgehog immediately handed it to him.
“I saw you looking at it, figured you’d care more about it than me.” Shadow shrugged.
“O-oh!” He exclaimed. “Cool, coolcoolcool. Um, thanks, man. Did you… I bet I can beat you at bobbing for apples.”
Shadow blinked before a small smirk took over his face. “You’re on.”
And Sonic woke up that morning, for the first time in a month, to the sound of his alarm clock, and not his own mind jarring him awake hours early.
It went on like this, dreaming of Shadow in new, yet familiar place. The new dreams were odd, they were so vivid, and he could recall them almost perfectly upon waking. He’d asked Knuckles about it, and the echidna said something about exposure to the Master Emerald causing a keener mind or something.
Though annoyingly, Sonic would lose much of the memories by the end of the day, so now he had a dream journal. When he wasn’t sleeping, or with his family or doing other stuff, he was writing in it or reading it again and again, almost like a new obsession. Almost. But he wasn’t obsessed, he was simply trying to find meaning in these dreams, naturally.
There must be something wrong with him, dreaming so often of a dead guy.
But he also was finding himself not too keen on stopping.
They were racing across the Himalayan mountains tonight, and Sonic’s laugh rang through the mountainside as he gave a playful nudge to the guy he was competing against. Shadow scoffed and rolled his eyes but Sonic also didn’t miss the small smile on his face as he nudged the blue blur back before pulling ahead.
“Hey, no fair!” Sonic yelled out before starting to really book it and close their distance again, this time being really underhanded and trying to stick his foot out to trip up his opponent.
“I’ll show you no fair.” Was all Shadow said before completely tackling Sonic down, yelping as they tumbled a bit down the mountain before landing on a flat section still rather high up. Sonic spit out a mouthful of snow as he finally came to a stop, glaring at the hedgehog who sent them both careening down the mountain. Shadow was lying in the snow, limbs spread out, starfish style, and the only other thing Sonic could see from his angle was the jittery motions Shadow’s chest made. Oh no– was he hurt–?
The blue blur rushed to Shadow’s side only to see that he was shaking not from pain or anger, but mirth. It looked almost foreign on his face, the eyes squeezed shut with that large smile, but it also looked good. He looked good.
Shadow sat up, shaking the snow from his quills, and when he made eye contact with Sonic, that smile became a bit more mischievous.
He was gonna run for it.
Sonic wouldn’t let him.
So he tackled Shadow back down, the two of them tumbling right into the powdery snow. But Shadow was always a fighter, so they wrestled for a while before he got lucky and pinned Sonic, his bright, sharp teeth flashing in victory as he held down the blue rodent.
“Good one, Emo Quills, but you won’t hold me long–”
“Do you ever stop talking?” Shadow muttered, but it wasn’t irritation this time, there was an obvious fondness in his tone that traveled to his eyes, the red of his irises soft and open.
“Nah, that’s just the Sonic Special.”
“Hm… I think I can get you to shut up…” And he leaned down, lips a hair from Sonic’s own, only a bit more and they’d be–
“Sonic! Time to wake up!”
Sonic woke up to Tails’ voice in his ears and some new personal revelations rattling in his brain.
Okay, so. So. It wasn’t that Sonic was uninterested in romance, more so that it wasn’t something that he thought was in the cards for him. Sure, he was a bit of a sap for a good romance, like really, who wouldn’t swoon at the love story in The Mummy (the good one , with Brendan Frasier, not the other one)? But for those first ten years on Earth he’d been desperate for that family connection that any kid would need. Then he got that, and next he got friends who kinda became brothers, he had other mobians to relate to, ones around his age. Still, the idea of romance for him personally wasn’t something he thought of, like, ever.
When he’d first met Shadow, he really thought the soft woah that left his lips and the way that he couldn’t stop looking at him… well, it was just because Shadow was the first hedgehog he’d ever seen. Now, he’s not so sure.
Because really, a dream like that doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Yeah, he was kinda sorta maybe a bit obsessed with how cool Shadow looked, but he didn’t know quills could be styled that way! Or that hedgehogs could have highlights like that. And yeah, he kept thinking about Shadow’s eyes, that vibrant red with flecks of gold. Not to mention that voice that made Sonic’s heart beat a bit faster–
But Sonic had never spent the time thinking about romantic stuff, much less any labels for himself. Was he gay? Bi? He didn’t spend enough of his life growing up in his own culture to know if mobians even used those terms. Everything about himself was kinda just filtered through this human lens. He’d never even considered that he could be interested in men.
Though looking back on it, this made his fixation on Keanu Reeves make a bit more sense.
The next time he saw Shadow they were sitting in a field of lavender.
Apparently his brain was done being subtle with him.
And Shadow looked at him as he sat right up against Sonic, his eyes soft and his smile small but so sincere.
But this was just a dream, right? Maybe a little bit of indulging wouldn’t hurt anyone. Nobody had to know what went on in his sleeping mind.
So he didn’t even say anything before leaning in and kissing Shadow right on the lips. But panic worked its way through his body just as quickly and he jerked back, staring with wide, anxious eyes at Shadow. The other hedgehog didn’t say anything, he just grabbed the sides of the blue mobian’s face and dove right back in, kissing him hard. And they tumbled back into the flowers then, laughing softly in the warm afternoon sun.
Sonic didn’t write about that dream in his dream journal. He couldn’t risk his family finding it.
They wouldn’t get it. Didn’t get it. At first, they were happy that he was finally sleeping longer again, but that grew back to worrying when he’d sleep in constantly. His family just wouldn’t get it. This was different. Shadow was different.
He loved his family, he really did, and he still spent plenty of time with them, but he also couldn’t get him out of his head. Especially after figuring out his feelings. Especially after his felt the ghost of Shadow’s lips against his own.
Sonic had never felt a connection like this, he almost wanted to call Shadow his soulmate.
The next time Sonic saw him, they’re in their super forms, racing across the moon, with only the stars as witness. Because this was the thing, nobody else could share this with him. This speed, this power. Only Shadow, only ever Shadow.
The other hedgehog tugs him close then, and Shadow’s lips feel electric against his own.
He's out of the house today, alone, as he's been spending more time that way when awake. Currently, he's skipping stones at the lake, this would be a fun place to take Shadow, they could compete over who could get the most skips, Sonic was sure they’d find a way to make everything a competition…
“Hey, buddy.”
“Woah!” Sonic jolted and turned around, Tom standing there with a slightly worried expression on his face. “I mean uhhhh…. Heyyy dad figure who totally didn’t sneak up on me, what’s up?”
“You seem a bit spaced out there, everything alright?”
“Alright? Things are great! Better than great, really.” Sonic said with a strained laugh. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you seem distant lately, sleeping a lot more… I don’t know, maybe it’s just a teenager thing, but if something’s the matter, you know you can talk to us, right?”
“What? Yeah, of course I know that!" Sonic's smiled faltered, maybe... even if Tom didn't get him in the same way Shadow did, Tom always found ways of making senseless things make sense. Maybe he should ask for help. Just this once. "I just– um– do you ever think about how things could’ve gone differently?”
“Different how?”
“Just differently.”
Tom was quiet for a long moment, and Sonic skipped another stone across the water, looking out at the ripples his rock formed. Only his rock, alone.
“I think that wondering about the what-ifs is normal," Tom said, voice gentle, "but if you spend too much time doing that… well, you could miss out on the what-is. And maybe the what-is isn’t quite the same, or what you wanted, but there’s still something to be found there, y’know?”
The mobian frowned and looked toward the lake. It was calm today, barely a ripple in sight, until a stone skated across the water’s surface, startling him. Sonic turned around to see Tom picking up another rock to throw.
“Bet I can get it farther than you.”
And Sonic smiled wider than he had in a while. At least, while awake.
“You’re on.”
Best. Family. Ever.
“What’s wrong?” Shadow asked him. Tonight they were sitting atop the Sydney Opera House, watching the sunset, Shadow’s warm hand on his own.
It was picturesque.
Romantic.
Fake.
Tom’s words echoed in his head, and he thinks about how he’d been behaving lately. Neglecting his family for what? This? This was nice, but…
“...This isn’t real. It’ll never be real.” Sonic muttered, taking his hand out from under the other hedgehog’s.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Hoping and yearning for something that’d never happen.
“What?”
“You’re dead, Shadow. And I need… I need to let you go.” Sonic’s voice cracked through the words. “This’ll never happen. I can’t keep dreaming that it’s real.”
Shadow placed a gentle hand on Sonic’s shoulder, Shadow’s hands had never been gentle with Sonic in real life, firm at best, but never gentle, not like this.
“I’m so stupid.” Sonic curled into himself, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. “This isn’t even you. This is who I want you to be, how I want you to act. Please, Shadow, you need to leave.”
By the time he looked back over to where Shadow was, the other hedgehog was gone.
Sonic woke up with tears in his eyes.
He didn't dream of Shadow again.
And he slowly rebuilt his life, and things went somewhat back to normal. He spent more time with his family, with the townsfolk. But that ache in his chest at the thought of Shadow still had yet to go away, but that was fine, he was used to losing people by now. Every day made it easier and easier, and he knew he'd be fine in the end.
And later, much later, he’d run into that same hedgehog again, and his breath would catch and his heart would somehow find it in itself to race even faster than normal, and he’d call out to Shadow, so very desperate for anything from the hedgehog. And Shadow would look at him with those intense eyes that made Sonic’s knees weak and he’d have an unreadable expression on his face before finally opening his mouth and saying in that low voice that Sonic missed so much:
“Who are you?”