Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Somebody had left the window unlocked.

Tom frowned slightly at the open window, wondering who hadn’t bothered to close it. (Honestly, it could have been any one of the kids; they could be little adults at times and ridiculously immature at other times.) He reached up his good arm, grabbing the top of the lifted window with his left hand. It slid closed easily.

Maddie and the kids were gone. His wife was out shopping, Knuckles was training with Wade in the “Cave of Wade” (or so Knuckles had called it), and Tails was timing Sonic’s speed running across the lake vs his speed on land. The little yellow genius had stumbled out the door after Sonic, loudly insisting that “water is conductive, and because your energy largely takes an electrical form then it is highly likely that running across water siphons off layers of your energy as you run and slows you down.” Sonic disagreed, claiming that “yes, I’m a little slower on water but that’s just because it’s slippery” while Tails squawked that “the lessened traction certainly has an overall impact, but it is still highly likely that your reduced level of chaos energy has an impact on your velocity” while Sonic protested that his speed was 100% natural and not really affected by his chaos energy…

Tom was sure that they’d work it out.

He stepped to the fridge, pulled out a pre-made sandwich in a Ziplock bag, then closed the fridge door. There were three other sandwiches in little bags in the fridge, put together for him by Maddie so that he wouldn’t have to struggle through the challenge of sandwich making until he got his cast off in two more weeks. (Little gestures like that ensured that he never forgot how much she loved him.) He slid open the Ziplock with his teeth, wiggled out the sandwich, and put it on a paper plate.

It was almost 10:00 (AM), so Holiday Wars was about to be on!

(From the living room, Ozzy whimpered once.)

Tom picked up his plate and made his way to the living room, the sandwich in his mouth just long enough to take a bite before he let it drop back onto the plate.

“Hey, Ozzy, you ready for some Holiday Wars?” he grinned, rounding the corner and…

And Ozzy was sitting on the floor, nosing a limp, dark lump on the couch. A dark lump lying on his stomach with black quills, red highlights, and charred metal shoes. Shadow shifted, turning his head just enough to stare Tom in the face with a piercingly red eye.

Tom was frozen. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away.

Then Shadow shifted again, tucking his face down into the couch cushion.

Tom was freed. He struggled to take in a breath and debated on bolting to the kitchen. He couldn’t call 911, that was for certain. GUN would swoop in, and Shadow would be on ice or worse. Sonic had explained to him what had happened, how in the end the black hedgehog had saved them all and sacrificed himself to do so.

Except that he very obviously didn’t sacrifice himself because he was lying on Tom’s couch.

He was torn between calling Maddie and running to the kitchen to grab the tranq-gun. After a minute, he decided that the former was probably the best course of action. Tom set his plate with the sandwich down on the floor. Fighting his phone out of his pocket, he backed as far away from the prone hedgehog as possible without taking his eyes off him.

She picked up almost immediately. “Hey, baby, what’s up?”

He cleared his throat. “There’s a hedgehog on the couch.”

“What?”

He had trouble breathing again for a second but got the words out. “Shadow’s- Shadow’s on the couch. He looked at me, but now he’s not moving.”

The undercurrent of fear in her tone was hard to miss. If he had to guess, he’d say that she was scared for him, not the hedgehog who had punched his lights out weeks prior. “Honey, don’t move. I can get Knuckles to you in under a minute.”

Shadow moved again. He twisted to stare at Tom, and once again the human couldn’t breathe.

“Tom?” Maddie said, her voice tinny through the phone. “Tom, baby, you still there?”

He managed a wheeze.

Shadow’s visible eye was half lidded, likely in exhaustion rather than aggression. He curled onto his side, his right arm clutched to his chest. Both of his eyes were visible now. 

But Tom still couldn’t get air in. His legs gave way, and he slid awkwardly to the floor with his back pressed against the wall. Maddie’s voice was distant.

“Tom! Tom, honey, hold on! Tom, can you hear me?”

Knuckles exploded through the front door. (Not literally; the door was still intact. He just threw it open aggressively and ran inside.) He skidded into the living room and saw Tom.

(Somewhere during that time, Tom had accidentally hung up on Maddie.)

“Lord of the Donuts!” he exclaimed, his body directly in Tom’s field of vision.

The echidna blocked Shadow’s gaze, and Tom gasped out, “Behind you, Knuckles. On the couch.”

“But-” Knuckles began, clearly concerned for the primary male human in his life. He turned halfway, and his gaze locked onto the body on the couch. His eyes popped open wide and for a moment he seemed painfully unsure.

There was nobody to punch.

Nothing to hit.

What was he supposed to do?!

“Pretzel Woman will arrive momentarily,” he finally assured Tom, frozen with uncertainty between the two. “How… how can I be of assistance?”

Maddie had called Wade and had him send Knuckles over in case Shadow tried to hurt Tom. Seeing as this was clearly not the case, there was little the echidna knew to do in order to improve the difficult situation. His face scrunched when Tom didn’t answer right away.

“I’m okay, Knuckles,” Tom gasped. “I-I’m okay.”

“No, you are not,” Knuckles said, alarmed and confused and painfully, painfully unsure of what exactly he was supposed to be doing here at this moment.

Tom gasped out a laugh. “Okay, yeah, you’ve got me there. But I’ll be okay, Knuckles. My body panicked, and it’ll pass.”

“I do not understand.”

Tom closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

Shadow coughed, and Tom stiffened.

Knuckles decided that Shadow was clearly the cause of this disaster, and a solution presented itself. He tromped over to Tom, looped the human’s good arm over his shoulders, and helped him into the kitchen. Tom sat on the floor as Knuckles padded away, got him a glass of water, then returned to the living room.

“Rest, Lord of Donuts,” he called from around the corner. “The hedgehog has not moved since we departed. I will monitor him until Pretzel Woman arrives.”

Tom sipped his water quietly and silently thought about just how much he loved his kids.   

Chapter Text

Maddie wasn’t freaking out. No, nope, no sir. She just dumped all the food she was about to buy onto the confused cashier and bolted out of Walmart.

The drive home was excruciatingly long. Knuckles was home by now, that much was certain, but she was still afraid for Tom. Over the phone he sounded like he was in the throes of an anxiety attack, and rightfully so. If it really was Shadow in their home (and not, say, Sonic snoozing after getting dunked in black paint) then he had every reason to be having a hard time right now.

(Tom had almost died. Every day she treasured the fact that he was still there with them. She very nearly became a widow, a single mom of three kids, and that thought shook her to the core.)

So she might have been freaking out a little bit.

She veered into the driveway, sprang from the vehicle without locking it, and ran to the front door.

The front door was wide open.

Entering further, she found Tom sitting on the kitchen floor and drinking water. He looked up, and his eyes locked with hers. He smiled softly, and she sat down on the floor to his left and side-hugged him. Looking ahead, she noticed Knuckles sitting on the floor, an air of firm, diligent authority in his posture.

Oh.

Knuckles was sitting in the space where the kitchen met the living room, deliberately in Tom’s line of sight, but also in direct view of Shadow. He was keeping an eye on both of them at the same time.

Maddie’s heart melted.

“I’m okay, babe,” he said softly.

She squeezed him. Fear’s grip over her chest loosened and slipped away.

Tom said, “Shadow hasn’t moved since Knuckles came in.”

“Except to turn his head once, several minutes ago,” Knuckles called from down the hall.

Tom chuckled. “We don’t know if he’s sick, or hurt, or just, I dunno, being weird, but he hasn’t tried to do anything.”

“Do… you… want me to look him over?”

Tom swallowed. “Uh, I’d feel better if you had Knuckles right there with you, but… yeah. Just to make sure he’s okay.”

She kissed his cheek. “Thomas Michael Wachowski, you have a heart of gold.”

Tom was okay. He would be okay. She gathered her legs under herself, stood, and tugged the first aid kit out from under the sink. She walked to where Knuckles still diligently sat (though now that Maddie was here and had confirmed Tom’s wellbeing, he faced his full focus onto the intruder). She smiled down at him, and he looked up at her. His stare at Shadow had been narrowed, but when he looked up at her his gaze went wide.

“Hey, big guy,” she said.

Knuckles climbed to his feet. “I will assist you,” he declared, and plodded in front of her as he led the way to the couch.

He marched to Shadow, his fists balled by his sides and expression stoic. Maddie was slightly more timid. This was not unlike walking up to a wounded lion. And even then, this particular metaphorical lion had deliberately killed dozens of people with his bare hands and was capable of beating all three of her kids into the pavement with barely a thought.

She crouched down and spoke in a low voice. “Shadow? Shadow, can you hear me?”

He was lying on his side, knees pulled to his chest, arms hugging his stomach, and eyes closed. His red highlights were nearly invisible, soot hiding the telling markings. His gloves were gone, his shoes were charred, half-melted chunks, and the gold rings on his wrists and ankles were scratched. There was a tenseness to his every muscle that she recognized as thinly veiled pain.

When Maddie spoke, his eyes opened halfway. The deep redness was paralyzing. No creature or person alive had eyes as red as the ones that peered into hers at this very moment. He stared around Knuckles’s legs and looked at her face, searching. There was something oddly vulnerable about his strange stillness.  

“We’re not going to hurt you,” she soothed, dropping from her crouch to a kneeling position, “but we need to know what you’re doing here. How are you feeling?”

His mouth opened slightly, then he closed it, hesitating. Choosing his words with care. “I am damaged,” he finally said softly. His voice sent chills up her spine. Deeply baritone, like Knuckles, but eloquent in a way that surprised her. Slow, almost gentle, but careful and deliberate. His eyes slipped closed.

“Okay,” she breathed, sliding forwards until she could almost touch her knees to the couch. Knuckles didn’t seem comfortable with her being so close to the dark hedgehog. His quills prickled discreetly, and Shadow was not oblivious to the unspoken hostility. As she neared Shadow, Knuckles prickled. And as Knuckles prickled, so did Shadow.

Ah. Shadow didn’t see her as a threat. She was human, and a female one at that. It was strong, male Knuckles that made him feel threatened.

“It’s okay, Knuckles,” she whispered, reaching a hand up and touching the echidna’s shoulder. His quills relaxed the tiniest of bits, but she could feel how tense he was. He didn’t want her to get hurt, but she wasn’t afraid. He needed to see that she wasn’t afraid, and she would show him. The sooner Knuckles relaxed, the sooner Shadow would too.

She squeezed his shoulder lightly, then let go to open the first aid kit.

Addressing the hedgehog once more, she said, “Okay. Shadow, I can help you best if I know what’s wrong. Would you mind describing to me whatever is bothering you?”

His eyelids lifted, and the impossible redness returned to meet her gaze. “You are asking where I feel pain?” He spoke so strangely slowly, at least compared to the hyper tongues of two of her kids. Even Knuckles talked more quickly than this, though.

She nodded, managing a small encouraging smile.

He exhaled softly. A sliver of a wince creased his face, and he closed his eyes again.

“Everywhere.”

Ah.

“Shadow,” she said, and again his eyes opened. He seemed exhausted of showing her that he was listening, and his eyelids barely lifted enough for him to see her and make eye contact. “In order to do an examination, I’m going to need to touch you.”

She saw his breath hitch, and for a moment she was afraid that she was asking too much. Maybe he just wanted to lie there and melt into the couch cushions forever.

His eyes were tiny crimson slivers as he responded, “Do what you need to.” And his eyes closed again.

Maddie looked at Knuckles, and he looked at her.

She exhaled slightly though her mouth, then set her expression determinedly. Knuckles saw this and mirrored her. Her attention shifted back to her patient, and she whispered,

“It’s all going to be okay. I’m going to touch you now. If we make you uncomfortable, please tell us and we’ll stop.”

Start small.

She would check his pulse first, but both his arms were gripped snugly down by his stomach so that would be a poor first move. Heaven knows she wasn’t about to try touching his throat, at least not yet. Her hand hovered over his head for a moment before descending ever so slowly over one of his eyes.

Shadow seemed to turn to stone.

Knuckles had the first aid kit in his hands, and she murmured, “Flashlight, please.” Her assistant slipped into her hand an instant later. Her thumb brushed over one of his eyes, lifting the lid gently as she clicked the flashlight on.

He stared into her as she checked pupil dilation.

No concussion, thank heavens.

Her knowledge of how to take care of small animals and children was colliding heavily at the moment, leaving her with more hesitations than she would normally allow. If she were caring for a wounded animal (like a dog) then the obvious first step would be to muzzle the animal for her own safety, then get it comfortable and assess the injury. But a wounded child usually required soft, reassuring words, delicately and pleasantly taking stock of the injury, then very likely calling 911.

Shadow was not a dog or a child. He was an anthropomorphic hedgehog who had been alive for over fifty years and was supposed to be dead.

“Okay, honey,” she made her voice as calm, professional, and sincere as possible, “can we get you sitting up?”

His eyes scrunched more tightly closed, then he shifted onto his stomach and pushed (shakily) up with his left hand.

His right arm stayed gripped to his chest, and Maddie got a sinking feeling in her stomach.

Sitting upright seemed to wake Shadow up, and he stared at her with his eyes fully open. Maddie couldn’t help but wonder if the motion itself had caused this higher level of focus, or if the pain from doing so had.

“I’m going to check your pulse,” she said, and gently took his wrist in her hand.

His pulse was frighteningly quick, but a little slower than Sonic’s.

Shadow stared into her soul the entire time.

“Good,” she smiled, and gave his wrist the slightest of squeezes before letting go.

Now onto the big question:

“Can you describe to me how your right arm is feeling?”

He blinked, then his gaze dropped to take note of said right arm. His jaw shifted back. “I think it’s broken. Or sprained.”

She held out her left hand, and he tentatively (but obediently) surrendered the limb to her. He wasn’t as stiff as she thought he’d be. With every breath, some of the tense tightness gripping his form slowly bled out. It was as though, somehow, he was used to sitting still while a person took stock of him and performed variou-

Maddie pushed that thought to the side. She needed to focus on her patient.

Her fingers were delicately analytical as she brushed the damaged limb. Yup, the swelling suggested that there was at the very least a sprained wrist.

“Okay, very good. Can you copy me?” She bent her elbow and wrist forward then back, rotating and straightening.

He spoke softly. “Yes, doctor.” His face pulled tight, but he did everything she asked.

“That was really good,” she praised. “It’s not broken, just a bad sprain.” Her attention shifted to her assistant. “Knuckles, could you grab a bag of peas from the freezer for me?”

Knuckles did not move. He didn’t want to leave her alone here with Shadow, and she understood why.

She changed her question. “Okay, could you go close to the kitchen and ask Tom to grab a bag of peas, then bring it here to me?”

Maddie could have grabbed the peas for herself, but that would either leave Knuckles alone with Shadow, or if she brought Knuckles with her then that would leave Shadow alone. Each was a potential recipe for disaster, so she found a narrow compromise.

Knuckles got up slowly, backed away, then called, “Lord of Donuts, Pretzel Woman has requested a bag of peas.”

“From the freezer?” Tom clarified.

“That is correct.”

Maddie heard the sound of the freezer opening, some rustling, the sound of the freezer closing, then Tom appeared in the doorway just long enough to hand the bag to Knuckles before retreating.

Shadow’s attentive gaze had softened back to half lidded eyes. His breathing was slow, deep, and even. As though he had lulled himself into a hollow state of relaxation. He startled slightly when Maddie touched his arm, then spaced out again as she wrapped his wrist and applied the bag of peas to reduce the swelling and pain. He stayed mentally distant, and she respected that by not vocally addressing him. Shadow wasn’t concussed, so he could go to sleep if he wanted, but she wanted to keep his wrist elevated either way.

The doctoral observation continued, and she was dismayed to discover that in addition to his sprained wrist, he had deep extensive bruising across his entire body, a large cut across his side (it had closed on its own by some miracle, but she still needed to clean it), and she was literally incapable of getting his shoes off his feet because some of the metal had fused together.

She also deduced that he was likely low on blood sugar, suffering from mild blood loss, and being sustained by chaos energy alone.

The examination was concluded with Shadow wrapped in a blanket and sitting at the far right corner of the couch with his arm propped up on the armrest as Knuckles pried the broken rocket skates off his feet. After Knuckles got the stubborn, malformed footwear off Shadow, Maddie treated the burns on his feet, made him drink a glass of water, and finally left him alone to sleep. Knuckles sat on the opposite end of the couch and watched the hedgehog like a hawk. Maddie packed up her first aid kit, slipped out to the kitchen, and placed the kit onto the counter so that it could be used later if necessary.

Tom was eating a sandwich by the fridge, looking like his usual self but a little more anxious than normal. He swallowed and said, “So, what’s the verdict?”

She sighed. “Sprained wrist, full body bruising, a… big laceration on his side, uh, bad burns on his feet to go with bruising because somehow his shoes were half melted, and that is pretty much it.”

Her husband whistled in disbelief. “Sooo… what now?”

“We let him rest. We help him heal.”

Tom chuckled. “Maddie, you know we’re probably going to end up keeping him, right?”

She didn’t respond, her eyes searching his face.

He set the sandwich down, walked a few steps, and put his arms around her. “He came to us,” he whispered, “and if you’re okay with trying to help him then so am I. Knuckles was a little rough around the edges too, but that turned out okay and now I can’t imagine life without him.”

She inhaled a shuddering breath. “But you…”

“I can deal. I’ve got some healing of my own to work though, but that’s okay. Everything’s going to turn out okay.”

Maddie believed him and hugged him back.

Chapter Text

Knuckles had been doing some thinking. The entire house had been entirely silent for the duration of the three hours that the hedgehog had been sleeping, so it had been a very good opportunity for thinking.

He came to the conclusion that it was his fault that the hedgehog had attacked them.

It made sense, really. Knuckles had struck first, and the hedgehog’s first action of violence had been in retaliation. Of course, there was no way that Knuckles could know what would have happened otherwise. Perhaps Sonic would have been able to talk to the hedgehog and they could have figured it all out and nobody would have gotten hurt. Or perhaps the hedgehog would have ended up assaulting them anyways, and Knuckles had merely hastened the inevitable.

He would never know.

The hedgehog shifted, his pattern of breathing unbalancing for a moment as he moved. Knuckles observed silently. He was familiar with the subtle mannerisms of a warrior concealing pain, both from the members of his previous tribe and from his own personal experiences. Sonic was often obnoxiously vocal about any and all wounds while the fox was transparent without being repetitively so.

This hedgehog was more like Knuckles. He did not show pain easily. Knuckles could respect that.

The hedgehog’s feet were completely wrapped in clean, white bandages. His burns had been impressive. Knuckles wondered what had happened to fuse his shoes together. He also wondered why the hedgehog had come here, to this house, in his moment of need.

Did he intend to destroy them as they slept? Was he playing what was known as a “long con” in order to gain their trust and then damage them all the more ruthlessly?!

Or was it merely that he was wounded more deeply than he could handle alone and knew that they were the only ones with whom he could seek help?  

All these important questions were unsettling. Knuckles hoped that he would get his answers sooner rather than later.

The hedgehog’s eyes flew open, staring without seeing in the general direction of the television. His intake of breath was sharp and loud in the undisturbed silence. For several moments he stared ahead, and Knuckles wondered what he saw. Then the hedgehog’s gaze focused, and narrowed eyes turned onto Knuckles.

Knuckles did his very best to look as unthreatening as possible. He stared right back at the hedgehog, his palms flat on his knees, his legs crossed on the couch cushions, and his facial expression carefully neutral.

The hedgehog did not seem to appreciate his efforts. Dark lips lifted over pointed, white teeth, and his sharp gaze did not relinquish in intensity. An attempt at intimidation. 

Knuckles supposed he would have reacted similarly, waking up in the strange home of the enemy while weakened and stripped of all weaponry other than his own natural defenses. He steeled himself and resolved to avoid a fight at all costs. The hedgehog was already hurt, and it was dishonorable to engage in combat with a wounded foe. Also, it would be entirely to his disadvantage if his home was damaged in the process.

“Greetings,” Knuckles said solemnly. “Fear not, for you are safe within these walls.”

The hedgehog did not seem reassured, and replied in his slow, deliberate tongue, “I… fear… nothing.”

“Oh, ah, yes. Indeed, I was not attempting to infer any manner of terror on your part. It was a figure of speech intended to put you at ease.” Knuckles hastily added, “I apologize if my words came across offensively.”

That seemed to unbalance the hedgehog. He blinked and looked away from Knuckles, lips lowering to conceal his teeth, though he still kept the echidna in his peripheral.

“I see,” the hedgehog murmured. He frowned faintly and subtly took stock of his various body parts under the blanket. Upon seeing his bandaged feet, his mouth pressed into a firm line. The state of his arm seemed to elevate his mood, however barely, and he straightened from leaning on the pillow-stacked armrest to sitting up straight with his arm still propped up.

The hedgehog went still once more, his ears twisting. After several moments he spoke in a deep, carrying whisper. “Such silence.”

Knuckles kept his laugh quiet. “Yes. Sonic and the fox have yet to return, and Lord of Donuts and Pretzel Woman have taken the wolf to the outside front of the house.”

“The wolf?”

“Indeed. Though he is not truly a wolf but is in fact a hairy yellow dog, he has the nobility and poise of a wolf, and thus I call him as such.”

“Huh. Do you have a nickname for everybody you know?”

It took Knuckles a moment to understand the question, because no, he did not have a nickname for everybody he knew! How could the hedgehog have possibly gotten that idea? Then he realized, and he chuckled aloud.

“No, hedgehog, it is not I who does the ‘nicknaming.’ Sonic is often the one who assigns alternative names to people. As he often introduces others by their nicknames, I grow accustomed to them and see no reason to change the numerous titles as long as my companions bear no ill will towards them.”

The hedgehog hummed quietly, seeming to understand. A deeper state of sobriety settled over his face, and he looked off in the direction of the tv again. He asked a simple question.

“How long will I be permitted to be here before I must leave?”

Knuckles blinked, more than a little stunned. Before he could respond, the hedgehog continued, speaking slightly more quickly.

“I am aware that I am not wanted here. The damage that I have caused to this family is irredeemable, and I am aware of the other members of this household’s opinion of me. I simply wish to know if there is any particular day that-” he cut himself off and went back to speaking more slowly. “I would like to be prepared. I can leave at this very moment if that is what is wished.”

Knuckles decided that he needed to be very careful what he said next to the hedgehog, or else he might teleport out of the house and perish in the woods somewhere.

So he hummed, as though thinking very deeply. “Indeed. So, hedgehog, what do I think about you?”

The hedgehog’s head turned, and he stared at Knuckles for a moment. “What?”

“You said that you are ‘aware of the other members of this household’s opinion on you.’ So, what is mine?”

Knuckles counted the hedgehog’s momentary speechlessness as a brief victory. Finally, the hedgehog replied.

“I suspect,” the hedgehog said cautiously, “that you despise me. That my very existence has been cursed by you and that you would rather I not be alive.”

“I despise you?” Knuckles said, folding his arms across his chest. “I handed Pretzel Woman medical supplies to aid with your healing. I would not do that if I despised you and wanted you dead.”

“No,” the hedgehog said impassively. “But I know that you err on the side of honor, and it is dishonorable to attack a wounded opponent.” His speaking sped up again and increased in intensity. “You wish me health only that you may end me without tarnishing your honor.”

Knuckles pondered this reasoning and found it to have threads of truth but to ultimately be incorrect if not slightly insulting. “I do not wish to fight you. It was… it was not right of me to have assaulted you when we first met. We may have fought regardless, but I should not have struck first. I wonder what would have gone differently if I had not.”

The hedgehog was staring off into space again as he responded darkly, “You’re wrong. You were entirely justified when you attacked first. I had just killed dozens of soldiers. You were well within your right to attack me. You had no reason to believe that I wouldn’t have gone and done the same to more people.”

“This… your words are not entirely incorrect. But, hedgehog, consider this. Sonic had been speaking to you before I attempted to hit you. It was his hope that he could reason with you peacefully and fully understand what was going on from your side. I attacked not out of fear that you would leave to hurt others, but from a love of battle and a desire to engage with a worthy opponent. I am aware that you wreaked havoc on many a soldier of GUN, but permit me this question: why did you attack the soldiers?”

A glimmer of uncertainty flickered across the hedgehog’s face, and Knuckles waited patiently. The reply finally came, and it was worded like a well-considered speech that the speaker was not too sure about making.

“I had just been freed from my containment pod. The last thing I could recall was being sealed in against my will and all the events that led to that point. I fought because I knew that if I didn’t, I would be forced back in. And after I escaped to the city, they attempted to detain me once more. I destroyed them all.”

“Indeed,” Knuckles said neutrally. “So, what happened was that they captured you and locked you up for fifty years. You escaped and destroyed them out of self-defense. They tried to capture you again, and you destroyed them again. They panicked and called Sonic, Tails, and myself in to detain you. I struck first, and you destroyed us.  Afterwards, you escaped to your old home, and someone you trusted promised you the ultimate revenge against the world who took away the most precious thing in the world to you.”

The hedgehog spoke again, “I hit and almost killed that man, the one who the hedgehog calls ‘Tom,’ and-”

“The Lord of Donuts informed us of what happened. He had an illusion that made him look like the man who locked you away for fifty years.”

“Yes, but-”

“What you did was wrong,” Knuckles said firmly. “Trying to destroy the planet is horrible. When you hit the Lord of Donuts, you almost took away a member of my family, and you hurt Sonic, and you especially hurt the Lord of Donuts. I am just saying that I understand why. You made mistakes and did many wrong things. But those people hurt you. They did horrible things to you, and you should not have been trapped when you had done nothing wrong. You were in a pain that is greater than physical wounds. Your heart bled, and that is the cause for your mistakes. You are not a bad person, hedgehog. You have just done some bad things.”

The room dropped back into silence, and Knuckles didn’t know how to break it. So he sat very still and breathed, hoping that the hedgehog had heard every word and understood what Knuckles had been trying to say.

The hedgehog had heard what Knuckles had been trying to say. He just didn’t know how to break the silence either. So they sat in the quiet. Eventually, the hedgehog hunkered back against the armrest, pulled the big blanket (it was a normal human sized blanket, but it was big compared to him) up over himself, and slept noiselessly.

Knuckles sat, ever diligently, and took the time to himself to think and wonder about every big question he could muster in his mind. The hedgehog would not be alone. Knuckles would make sure of it.

After some time, there was a little bit of ruckus outside. It sounded non-threatening, so he ignored it.

Knuckles was very busy.

Chapter Text

“Excuse me, what?! Shadow is WHERE?!” Sure, his voice kind of pitched up pretty high at the word ‘where’ but honestly the day had gone from normal to absolutely insane in five seconds, so really, who cared anymore?!

Maddie hurried to explain. “He’s on the couch, inside. Knuckles is watching him. He’s hurt, Sonic, and there’s nowhere else for him to go.”

Nowhe- nowhere else for him to go?!?! Then they could build Shadow somewhere else to go, a treehouse or underground bunker or something but he couldn’t be in Sonic’s house! With Sonic!! With Sonic’s FAMILY!!! (With Tom, but he didn’t want to mentally acknowledge that thought right now.)

“Okay, yes, yes, yes, but why is the edgy, broody embodiment of darkness camping out on the couch? How did he get in? What does he want?”

His mom seemed kind of tired for some reason.

Ozzy whined and plonked his head onto her knee.

Tom spoke up. “We don’t have any definite answers to either question, kiddo. But like Maddie said, he’s really hurt right now so it might just be that he needs a place to crash until he gets better.”

His brain froze, then backtracked. “He’s hurt? Like, hurt how bad exactly?” (Yes, he’d heard Maddie say it, but it had more or less gone in one ear and out the other.)

“He…” Maddie spoke up, then hesitated. “He needs some time. From what I can tell, he’s in a lot of pain right now so the best thing for him to be doing is sleeping.”

That… Sonic didn’t know how to feel about that. He didn’t want Shadow to be in pain, obviously, but he also didn’t want Shadow to be in the same house as Tom because REASONS but really, how much damage could he do if he was hurt and just sleeping peacefully (no, no, he could probably still do a lot of damage) but Knuckles was watching him (but he beat Knuckles into the concrete in two seconds flat) so CLEARLY Shadow must be either planning something or maybe he really, really needed help but thinking that thought made his brain want to EXPLODE-

“Sonic?” Tails spoke, knocking him out of his thoughts. The little fox had been smug the entire walk home (turns out his theory had been correct after all, and he was oh-so happy to have been proven right after a day of data collecting) but now his ears drooped and he peered up at his big brother’s face with concern. “Aaaarrre… you okay?”

Sonic blinked. Once. Twice. He shook his head to shake all the thoughts away, then snapped his attention back to his parents. “I want to see him.”

Tom blinked, then looked at his wife. They exchanged some silent conversation through their eyeballs alone.

Finally, Tom looked back at him. “Okay. But you guys need to be careful not to wake him up. If you have to talk, don’t make it louder than a whisper. A really, really quiet whisper.”

He needed to see Shadow for himself. He needed to stare his weird, dark doppelganger in the face and ask him why he came here.

Sonic had mourned Shadow, in a quiet, subdued sort of way. Yes, he had nearly taken away Sonic’s very best friend in the whole galaxy and Sonic honestly didn’t know what he would have done if Tom had died (what would he have become? Who would he have become?) and that thought scared him. Losing people was horrible. Awful. Painful. And it was even worse if their death came BECAUSE OF YOU. (Sonic knew. He wasn’t stupid. He could see the connections, the patterns. Longclaw died for him to live, and the only reason Tom was there was because Sonic had asked him to be. Not to mention how Tails was knocked out for hours and wouldn’t wake up because Sonic dragged him off to find the master emerald- and Tails hadn’t even WANTED to come then. And then there was Shadow. Yet another person who had fought next to Sonic… and then he had died.)

But apparently Shadow was alive.

And now all of Sonic’s emotions and thoughts and everythings were going bananas.

“Can I come too?” Tails asked quietly, hopefully.

Maddie gave her youngest a smile and nodded. Tails could be very quiet and sneaky when he wanted to be, and honestly he had a lower chance of waking up Shadow than Sonic did.

Tom opened the front door, and they slipped in and went through the kitchen. Maddie led them into the living room. Sonic and Tails followed like ducklings, and they peered around her legs from either side. (Tom stayed in the kitchen with Ozzy. Sonic was glad about that.)

“Ah, hedgehog! Fox! You have returned!” Knuckles stage-whispered brightly.

Maddie, Sonic, and Tails winced collectively. One of Shadow’s ears twitched- but he did not awaken.

“Maybe a little quieter next time, buddy, okay?” Sonic said softly, a sheepish grin on his face.

Knuckles bit his lip and nodded apologetically. If Sonic had to guess, he was resigning himself to not-talking.

Maddie motioned to Knuckles with one hand, and he slipped off the couch and plodded over to her. They backed off to the corner of the living room and exchanged whispers. Probably about doctory stuff like how “did he wake up” and “has he been breathing okay” and “did he blow up while I was gone.” Stuff like that.

So Sonic was free to give Shadow his full attention.

And wow. He really did look hurt.

There was a big blanket on him, but it was human sized so it completely dwarfed him. Sonic could only see his head, which was leaning on the armrest, and Shadow’s thickly wrapped right arm propped up on pillows on the same armrest. He looked weirdly peaceful. Still a little tense, sure (was that normal?), but his eyeridges weren’t knit in tight, deep creases and his mouth wasn’t bent into a stiff scowl.

It was kind of surreal. 

Sonic knew that he himself was hard to kill. He wasn’t sure if it was just him, or if the durability extended to all hedgehogs, but the fact that he was pretty hard to damage was a constant that let him be more of a daredevil than his parents probably approved of. There had been the time just over a year ago when Eggman had hurt him pretty bad (read: almost killed him), but it hadn’t been anything a good jolt of chaos energy couldn’t fix. 

He could sense Shadow’s chaos energy. When they had fought before, it had been a rabid, pulsing supernova of anarchic light. When he was calm, it lay dormant. (Sonic remembered when Knuckles had sprung at Shadow the first time, how Shadow’s energy went from one to eleven in half an instant. It was the difference between holding an unlit firework in your hands, then having it still in your hands when it exploded. Big difference.)

But now he was calm. And the chaos energy was sleeping as its master did the same. But it was sleeping too deeply. Sonic took another small step closer and peered at the dark hedgehog’s face. (Stiff even in sleep.) The energy was… was…

It was leaking?

He shuffled a little closer, closing his eyes and focusing on the energy currents in the other hedgehog’s body.

Something was wrong.

“Hey, Knuckles?” he whispered loudly.

Tails shushed him immediately.

He huffed, then darted across the carpet. “C’mere.” He grabbed Knuckles’s wrist and pulled him over to Shadow. Knuckles stumbled at first but was steady by the moment they reached the couch.

“Okay, so like, tell me I’m not the only one who feels that. It’s almost like his energy is bleeding.”

Knuckles bit his lip, then held one big, mitted hand over Shadow’s head (not touching, but an inch or so away) and moved his hand along the sleeping hedgehog’s form. He cocked his head to the side frowning. Sonic was naturally good at picking up on energy (the best at it, if he did say so himself), and Knuckles was good at it too from years of experience. Knuckles’s hand paused, hesitating.

His violet eyes went wide, and Knuckles backed up over to Maddie. He turned to her and motioned downward with one hand while the other cupped by the side of his mouth. She crouched, and he whispered loudly into her ear. “Pretzel Woman, where is the damaged footwear that we removed from the hedgehog?”

“Dude,” Sonic whispered properly, “you are terrible at whispering.”

Tails shushed Sonic, then proceeded to scrutinize the sleeping hedgehog’s face on his tip toes. Sonic watched and resisted the urge to yank Tails away because Tails breathing on Shadow’s face could wake him up.

Sonic did not want to imagine what Shadow would do if he woke up and found Tails’s nose three inches from his own.

Maddie and Knuckles scurried out of the room, leaving Sonic to watch over Tails and their wounded guest/ex-enemy/Sonic didn’t really know WHAT he was anymore.

‘Wow,’ Tails mouthed, his blue eyes ginormous as he studied the dark face before him. He stepped away from Shadow (Sonic visibly slumped in relief) and faced his older brother. Tails held up his hands and began doing sign language.

Unfortunately, Sonic was not very good at sign language so he had no idea what Tails could possibly be saying.

The yellow fox sighed. He grabbed Sonic’s wrist and pulled him down to eye level. “He’s so cool!” he whispered.

That’s what he had wanted to say? Sonic almost laughed.

Sonic turned his head away, then cupped his hands up by one of Tails’s big ears. He whispered breathily (this was deliberate, because breathy whispers were more tickly in Tails’s furry ear than normal whispers), “Not as cool as me!”

Clapping both hands over his own mouth, Tails suppressed his giggles.

Somewhere off in another room, Knuckles bellowed, “I have found them!” His footsteps tromped loudly in the distance, then through the kitchen, and finally into the living area.

In his mitted hands were two golden rings that looked like someone had dipped them into lava and hung them out to dry.

Maddie darted into the room in hot pursuit of her eldest, the first-aid kit in hand.

Sonic hazarded to guess that something was definitely, definitely wrong. He grabbed Tails and pulled him off to the side.

Setting the first-aid kit swiftly onto the floor, Maddie reached out like she was about to touch Shadow’s shoulder. Her hand froze, pulled away, and she began speaking softly. “Shadow? Shadow, honey, wake up. Shadow?”

The sleeping hedgehog’s eyeridges creased, pulling tight. He swallowed, then his eyes opened halfway.

Sonic was astonished at how exhausted he looked. Crimson irises stared, almost unseeing at Maddie, and his eyelids started to close again.

“No, honey, wait please. I need you to look at me.”

Shadow struggled to open his eyes again. Like he felt that he needed to open his eyes fully for her, or else. (Or else what? Sonic didn’t know the answer to that question.) Shadow’s gaze was hazy, and Sonic could see how worried Maddie was in the tenseness of her posture.

“That’s very good,” she affirmed. (She was scared. She was too professional to show it, but Sonic could tell. He knew her too well to not notice. And the fact that she was scared was starting to scare him too.)

Knuckles held out the deformed rings, and Shadow’s eyes went wide. He forced himself into a fully upright position, pulled his hurt arm to his chest, and extended a hand towards the rings. 

“Those are necessary. Please, give them to me.” The rings were handed over quickly, and the dark hedgehog gripped them tightly in his available hand. Then he shook the blanket off.

(Tails inhaled sharply when the bandaging on Shadow’s side came into view. There was dust and grime thinly matted into the hedgehog’s fur in places, and Sonic couldn’t help but wonder what it had been like trying to survive for the two weeks since Sonic had last seen him.)

Shadow squeezed the side of the ring, pulling with the fingers of his hand. Sonic guessed that there was a clasp on the side that would normally let him open them up. Nothing happened to the ring- it was probably too messed up to open or do what it was supposed to do. A flitter of something akin to panic appeared in Shadow’s eyes, and he moved his hurt arm to grab the ring with both hands. His face squished, teeth baring in effort as he pulled.

The ring did not do anything.

“Shadow,” Maddie asked (his attention snapped up to her), “what are those?”

“Energy regulators,” he answered immediately. He sounded kind of like he was out of breath.

When he didn’t say anything else, Maddie prompted, “What do you need us to do to help you?”

Shadow’s expression creased slightly, like for some reason that was a weird question for someone to ask. He finally said, “These need to be opened.” And he held out the rings.

Knuckles took hold of them, and after a bit of grunting he wrenched it open. As Shadow gingerly clipped it around one ankle, Knuckles pried apart the other one. Neither ring would close properly, but (now that he was looking for it) Sonic could taste the difference in the air when both rings were back in their proper place. The ribbons of energy that had been dripping free caught in the regulators and looped back to Shadow. The energy nested all over his skin, around the spot by his side, and especially in his arm. A quiet, red-orange crackle rippled on the tips of his quills and fur before dispersing.

“Shadow?” Maddie began. She sounded a little strained. “I need you to tell me what happened, please.”

The dark hedgehog stiffened, but he immediately replied in a deep, deliberate tone that sent ice chunks swirling up Sonic’s spine. “I exist in a state of high volatility. My instability caused me to require training in order to control the innate anarchic energy within me, and it is necessary for me to utilize the capabilities of these inhibitors to be less of a risk to myself and others around me.” There wasn’t a single hesitation or pause when he spoke; every word rolled out fluidly.

Maddie blinked.

Shadow continued but was suddenly back to hesitating every couple words. “I didn’t realize that the rings had come off with the shoes. I felt a difference, but it didn’t occur to me that that was the cause. My negligence caused this issue, doctor. I will be careful that it doesn’t happen again.”

Maddie inhaled slowly, then put a hand on Shadow’s knee. He stiffened. When she started speaking, her tone was soft and relaxed, so the tension slowly bled out of Shadow with it. “I don’t blame you for what happened. I was just… worried, and now that I know what caused your energy to have trouble then we can make sure that the same mistake isn’t made twice. I was the one who asked Knuckles to pry your shoes off. The rings were partially fused with them, so they came off too. Now that I know about this, it won’t happen again. Like I said, Shadow, I don’t blame you; you were barely awake while we were working by that point. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me.” His red (so very red) eyes hadn’t broken their stare into hers the entire time she had spoken. Now his eyes widened.

“But-” he began, but Maddie cut him off gently.

“I’m going to rewrap the bandages on your burns now and get you fresh ones, okay? Tell me if anything bothers you.”

Sonic and Tails watched, still frozen in place, as Maddie gently unwound the bandages (the burns underneath looked awful).

“Sonic?” Maddie said. “Could you please grab a bowl from the kitchen and fill it with water for me?”

Bowl? Water? Yes, yes, yes he could do this to help!

Sonic saluted, smirked, and darted off to the kitchen. Doing what his mom asked was easy, and he carefully brought it to her without sloshing any over the side.

“Thank you,” she whispered to him, smiling.

“Sure thing, Mom,” he said back, winking. He stepped away and watched as she cleaned the burns, put on some shiny ointment things, and rewrapped them.

Shadow stared resolutely at his knees during the entire process, weirdly motionless and blank.

Sonic wondered if having him and Tails watching made him uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Soooo… s’there anything else I can do?”

After a moment’s thought, Maddie replied, “Yes. Can you grab a can of chicken noodle soup from the pantry and give it to Tom, please?”

He saluted again. “On it! C’mon, Tails!”

“But-!” Tails protested. But it was too late. Sonic grabbed him by an arm, bolted away to grab the soup can, then skidded into the kitchen to Tom. And then he tripped spectacularly over Ozzy, who was lying on the floor while Tom ate a sandwich. But he had the soup, and his and Tails’s bodies cushioned its fall so it didn’t explode all over the floor.

Once he was sure that Sonic and Tails were okay, Tom laughed, took the can, and set to work heating it up in a pot on the stove.

Tom stirred the pot, and steam began to curl up from the soup in thin whorls. “So, how’s he doing?” he said, his tone cheery but almost hesitant.

Sonic hopped up to sit on the counter (Tails was sitting on the floor petting Ozzy) and said casually, “Aw, y’know. The guy apparently has issues with his chaos energy and needs these weird rings because it was bleeding out of him, but don’t worry! We got him his rings back, and everything’s totally cool now. Maddie’s just checking on his burns and stuff while he’s awake. And I guess she’s going to make him eat soup or something because, y’know. Food.”

His dad snorted and nodded his head. “Well, I’m glad you guys got it all figured out. Hey, hun?” Tom raised his voice as he addressed Maddie from across the house. “You want this in a bowl or a mug?”

Maddie called back, “A bowl will be fine, thanks!”

Her husband complied easily, ladling a couple scoops of soup into a plastic bowl that fit nicely in two hands. Sonic hopped off the counter and carefully delivered it to Maddie.

“Thanks, kiddo,” she smiled.

Sonic beamed.

Maddie’s attention turned back to her patient. “I know you’re probably not up to eating a lot of food yet. But I want you to try, okay? Drink at least half the bowl, then you can go back to sleep.”

She held out the bowl, and Shadow obediently, gingerly, took it into his own hands. Only then did Sonic notice that Shadow’s gloves were missing. His fingers were all black furred except for his little finger, which was red. Since it was connected to his arm stripes, it looked pretty sick.

Sonic backed off to lean against the wall. He was content to watch, to observe.

Maddie watched Shadow drink the soup, noticing quickly that he intended to drink it all. She didn’t have to encourage him to try to finish; rather she ended up gently reminding him that he didn’t have to eat it all if he didn’t want to.

Shadow finished all of it.

On the other end of the couch, Knuckles was back at his post. He was not looking at Shadow, but he was very obviously keeping the dark hedgehog in his peripheral. Sonic wondered if he was trying to keep an eye on Shadow but not stare. With Knuckles, anything was possible.

When Shadow was done, Maddie had Sonic dart the bowl back to Tom in the kitchen. His dad (who could reach the sink without standing on a chair or the countertop) rinsed it off then put it in the dishwasher. Tails seemed to be dozing lightly, lying on the floor with Ozzy and his head resting on the dog like a big, firm pillow.

When Sonic poked his head back into the living room, he saw Maddie standing up and Shadow hunkering back down against the couch’s armrest. Knuckles now looked at Shadow directly as Maddie walked past Sonic and back into the kitchen.

“Hey, Knucklehead?” Sonic whispered. “You need anything?”

Knuckles’s eyeridges furrowed at first in response to the nickname, then in thought. “A blanket,” he said at last. “If that would be permittable.”

“You got it, big guy!”

Sonic was gone and back in a blink, blanket in his arms. He deposited it onto Knuckles, and the echidna settled down more comfortably. He wouldn’t fall asleep if he didn’t want to, Sonic knew that much. He could be comfy without accidentally dozing. It seemed, though, that he might be camping out there for the night.

Which was a weird thought.

Knuckles usually either slept in the yard or up in a spot in the attic with him and Tails.

Sonic trusted Knuckles. Yeah, he could be a bad judge of character when it came to people like Eggman, but for the most part he knew what he was doing, and if he wanted to camp out on the couch because he thought Shadow was a threat then he wouldn’t ask for a blanket because would just sit and STARE, fully prepared for an attack, so this was closer to his behavior when Tom had finally been able to come home after his stay in the hospital. Knuckles was watching the other’s breathing. Cautiously observant. Dedicated. Strong, because he felt like he needed to be.

Sonic got the sneaking suspicion that Shadow wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. The other hedgehog needed help, and Sonic and his family would give it. Not because they felt like they had to, but because they knew they needed to.

There was nobody else who could.

Chapter Text

The dark fluffy was sleeping again. It was always sleeping. It was hurt too. Smelled like blood and chemical medicines and burnt now. Now it made sense to be sleeping, though. Dark times were for sleeping. And it was deep into the dark time, so his entire pack slept.

Ozzy didn’t like how his man was scared around the dark fluffy. Not only that, but his woman got a little scared too. His hoomans should never be afraid. Ozzy would protect them. Ozzy was strong and powerful. Nothing would hurt his hoomans as long as he was around.

A soft sound came from the couch room. Ozzy lifted his head. It was the dark time, so both of his hoomans were sleeping. The Sonic was sleeping in the roof room with Fox Fluffy. They had both been very tired. The Sonic in particular had been a little stressed and a little scared (Ozzy could smell these things), but Fox Fluffy hadn’t really been scared. More energetic, and a normal amount of sleepiness, but not really scared. Fox Fluffy was often afraid when he had first come to Ozzy’s man’s home. Fox Fluffy hid with Ozzy under his hoomans’ bed during many thunderstorms and did not like loud noises. But Fox Fluffy spent a lot of time with the Sonic, so he wasn’t easily afraid anymore. The Sonic would protect Fox Fluffy. So would Ozzy. So would Grey Scruffy (he was the strongest in the whole pack). So would his hoomans. So Fox Fluffy was not afraid anymore. Except during thunderstorms, but Ozzy protected him then, so it was okay.

“Wolf?” Grey Scruffy was calling him. The name was wrong, but Ozzy knew that Grey Scruffy meant Ozzy, so Ozzy got up, shook himself, and trotted out into the couch room. (His hoomans always left the door to their room cracked. Ozzy was a good dog. He could be trusted.)

Entering the couch room, he saw Grey Scruffy peering over the back of the couch. “Ah, there you are, Wolf. I require hydration and a moment to relieve myself. You may take my post until my return.”

What?

Grey Scruffy slid off the couch and motioned to Ozzy. Ozzy came, because he was a good dog. When Grey Scruffy patted the warm spot on the couch with a blanket, Ozzy quickly realized that this was a very good place to be, and he hopped up onto the couch and settled down.

“Many thanks. I shall return presently.” And so, Grey Scruffy sneaked away on his big, shuffly feet.

Ah. This was nice. Ozzy stretched out on the couch, enjoying the blanket and the nice cozy place where Grey Scruffy had been sitting. The dark fluffy was sleeping, so Ozzy ignored it.

Life was good. The universe was warm. Ozzy had a full tummy, and Grey Scruffy had gifted him a wonderful spot on the couch. Nobody in his man’s house was afraid, so Ozzy could rest because all was right with the world.

At least, it was until the dark fluffy twitched. Ozzy heard it gasp softly, and he lifted his head and felt a washing sensation of ‘ppaaaaiiinnn’ flow over him. Ozzy was not in pain. Dark fluffy was in pain. Ozzy sat up, concerned. 

Dark fluffy bent over, clutching its tummy. It gasped, its eyes opening, and it bent over.

Ozzy whined and walked over the cushions to sniff Dark fluffy. It twisted away (‘fffeeeeaaarrr ppaaaaiiinnn’) and kept gasping, gripping its tummy.

Ozzy whined even more loudly, keening into the air. He couldn’t leave dark fluffy like this. But somebody, either Grey Scruffy or one of his hoomans, needed to come help because Ozzy did not have hands.

“Wolf?” The door of the toilet room banged open, and Grey Scruffy ran into the room.

Then dark fluffy leaned over the edge of the couch and threw up.

A hurricane of wild emotions whizzed around Grey Scruffy, but he did not go crazy. He froze for only a moment, then quickly stepped around the delicious barf and climbed onto the couch to crouch next to dark fluffy. Ozzy was pushed off to the side.

That was fine. Ozzy fled the room, his nails clacking on the floor as he reentered his hoomans’ sleeping room.

Everything was going very wrong, so desperate times called for desperate measures.

Ozzy let out two loud barks.  

POV SWAP (YES, I SAID THAT IT WOULD BE CLEARLY MARKED SO HERE IT IS, CLEARLY MARKED 😊)

When Maddie woke up, it was to one of the worst possible scenarios that she ever experienced as a parent.

#1 of the worst ones is (of course) when a kid isn’t coming home, and nobody knows where your kid is, and you are running around frantically trying to find your baby and there’s nobody who can help you so all you can do is random, desperate things as you pray that nothing happened to him.

#2 is probably hearing a “BANG,” rushing into the room, and the kid fell off of something and hit his head on the floor.

Maddie has had the good fortune of never having to really worry about #1 and #2 because all of her kids are pretty indestructible.

But, as was mentioned before, she was finally getting the pleasure of one of the non-deathly (but still pretty bad) ones. If the brief, distant retch from the living room was any indication, one of her kids was throwing up in the middle of the night.

“Lord of Donuts?! Pretzel Woman?!” Knuckles was calling, a note of desperation in his tone.

Maddie threw the covers off the bed (Tom, who could sleep through the apocalypse, finally stirred confusedly), and she ran out of the bedroom to assess the damage. Her socks were soft on the floor, and the sparce nightlights that speckled the halls were enough to make her little trip a safe one as she slid through the dark. 

Tails, who had been woken by Ozzy’s barking, yelled in a dazed, bleary voice, “Whaz going on?”

“Pretzel Woman?! I require assistance!” Knuckles called again, struggling to stay calm.

She heard another retch.

Slipping around the corner (almost to the living room) she called, “Tails, honey, stay up where you are. Everything’s okay.” Still calling, but a little quieter, “Knuckles, I’m almost there.”

Maddie finally arrived in the living room, her heart breaking as she saw Shadow sitting bent over on the couch, shaking violently, as Knuckles rubbed his back. A puddle of soup and stomach acids was soaking into the rug.

She froze only for a moment, then swept in like a protective hurricane to whisk Shadow away from poor, poor Knuckles.

“Shadow? Nod if you can hear me, honey.”

He nodded, his eyes scrunched shut as his head bobbed up and down.

“Knuckles, there’s a small, grey plastic trash can in the pantry. I need you to run and grab it for me, please. It should be just on your right as you go in.”

The echidna peeled himself away from Shadow, flopping off the back of the couch. His body hit the floor loudly, then he scurried away in a mad dash for the pantry.

Shadow pulled his knees to his chest, breathing heavily and still shaking as he pressed his face onto his kneecaps.

“May I touch you?” she asked softly.

He shrugged.

Maddie sat down next to him on the couch (careful to avoid stepping in the puddle) and put a hand on his back between the two prominent clumps of back quills. She had plenty of experience with the safest ways to touch and hug hedgehogs. (His skin shivered under her hand.) She rubbed his back tentatively and hummed a pleasant song she heard on the radio.

He sat very still.

Knuckles skidded back in, the small trashcan clutched between both mitted hands. He paused in the middle of the room, suddenly unsure. Maddie motioned him over, took the trashcan with her free hand, then kissed him on the not-prickly spot between his eyes and the quills on his head

Knuckles ducked his head down.

They switched places, Knuckles sitting by Shadow as Maddie knelt in front of the dark hedgehog and softly told him that everything was going to be okay, but if he felt like he had to throw up again then he could use this trashcan. Shadow nodded wordlessly. Maddie left the trashcan by the base of the couch, then went into the kitchen to grab some paper towels and baking soda.

“Babe?” Tom sounded tired. He was standing in the doorway, just outside of the living room. “Everything okay?”

Her arms full of paper towels and baking soda in hand, she grinned weakly and motioned him into the kitchen so that the pair on the couch couldn’t hear. Now that she had taken command, Knuckles had calmed down completely and was focusing solely on supporting the hedgehog shivering on the couch. “Shadow threw up.”

Tom was startled. “Why?”

She winced slightly and confessed, “I think it might have something to do with the soup I gave him earlier. I thought that it would be light enough to not bother him but… Actually, I don’t think that it was the soup exactly, but how much soup.” She kept talking, thinking out loud. “That was an entire can of soup, and if he really hasn’t eaten anything in two weeks then it might have been too much.” She sighed. “I’ll ask him once all this is taken care of.”

“Anything I can do to help?” he offered weakly.

“Think of somewhere we can put him until I get the rug cleaned up.”

“Got it.”

Maddie slipped back out to Knuckles and Shadow, offering an encouraging smile. Tom peeked out at them, and something in his expression shifted.

Maddie wasn’t stupid. She knew that having Shadow in the house was unsettling to Tom. At the very least it was making him anxious, and she noticed how he avoided being in the same room as Shadow and how he had a harder time falling asleep. But when Tom’s eyes locked onto the dark hedgehog trembling on the couch, Knuckles awkwardly rubbing his prickly back, then a weird look crossed Tom’s face.

She opened her mouth, about to speak, but Tom surprised her.

He stepped into the living room.

“Hey, big guy.” Tom said. Knuckles looked up, familiar with the loose nickname. “Think you can help me move him to my room?”

Turns out “help me move him” meant Tom led the way as Shadow stubbornly walked (with one hand gripped on Knuckles’s shoulder for support) to the bedroom. (Knuckles carried the trash can.) Tom kept his distance. He never got closer than three feet. But Maddie knew a change when she saw one.

Twenty minutes later she packed up the cleaning supplies, put away the baking soda, and threw away the trash bag with the wet paper towels. The spot didn’t really smell that bad anymore, but she sprayed a little citrus scent to mask the scent a little more. Satisfied, she washed her hands and checked the time.

3:27 in the morning.

She sighed, only then realizing that she should be tired. Maddie crept back to her room and found Tom standing just outside the closed door, leaning against the doorframe. He looked half asleep.

“What’s-” she began, but Tom interrupted.

“He’s on the bed. Knuckles is sitting with his back against the door. I think they’re both knocked out.”

She huffed out a soft laugh. “Well, it’s been an exciting night, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“Sooo…?”

“Yeah.”

They both slept on the couch that night.

Chapter Text

Twin barks from downstairs echoed up into the attic. The sleeping fox jerked awake.

“Sooooniiiic,” Tails whispered, sitting up in his blue airplane bed. The blue hedgehog was burrowed deeply under the blankets, but Tails saw one of his legs kick as he called his name. Tails wasn’t sure if the kick was because he heard him, or if he was dreaming about running.

So he tried again.

“Sooooniiiic,” he said, a little louder this time.

“Mpphhhnn,” Sonic mumbled incomprehensibly into a pillow.

Tails decided that Sonic was no help, so he clambered out of his warm bed, pattered across the wooden floor, and crouched down by the mouth of the stairs. He took a deep breath, then cried out as loudly as his sleepy self could manage. “Whaz going on?”

He heard Knuckles distantly crying, “Pretzel Woman?! I require assistance!” What? Knuckles needed help?! Then Tails had better go help him!

He was halfway down the wooden staircase when his mom called, “Tails, honey, stay up where you are. Everything’s okay.” Tails froze with the toe of one foot barely touching the next step down. He couldn’t help? Maddie spoke again, but not to Tails. “Knuckles, I’m almost there.”

Tails prided himself on being a good kid. He always followed the law to the letter. His mom said that he “had to stay up where he was.” So Tails sat down, because that was technically “staying up where he was” because he was on the step. His tails poked out between the slats behind him, and the wood was hard where he sat. Tails had sat on harder places before though, so it was fine.

Ten minutes passed.

Then more than twenty minutes.

Tails could hear his adoptive parents rustling around in the living room. There had been all kinds of different sounds earlier, from quiet conversation to faint footfalls corresponding with the two humans and Knuckles. Now it was just his mom and dad. Tails bit his lip, feeling indecisive. He wanted to know what had happened. But he also didn’t want to bother anybody. Something had gone wrong down there, and curiosity was eating him alive.

His need to know won out, and Tails called out, “Hey?”

The rustling in the living room stopped completely.

Tom’s heavier footfalls stepped to the bottom of the solid, carpeted stairs, and he looked up at Tails. He looked tired, his brown hair mussed and his sleeping clothes wrinkled. “Hey, bud,” Tom called up, his voice quieter to disturb the silence of the hushed house as little as possible. “Everything okay?”

Tails snorted. “That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering.” What would the answer be? Tails’s mind had considered every conceivable possibility. Was there a busted pipe leaking through the walls or the roof? Had Knuckles started sleepwalking, and he had broken something or stepped on Ozzy? (Hence the barking.) Did a raccoon break in and steal some dishes? Was Maddie unexpectedly menstruating?! Was Shadow dying?!? Did Tom fall out of bed and dislocate his other arm?!?!

That last one was probably unlikely considering that the man was standing down at the foot of the stairs, but STILL! The rest of them were still possible.

“Well, everything’s doing a-okay now,” Tom smiled tiredly. “You should probably get some slee-”

“Even if everything is great now, then there still must have been some cause for the problematic occurrences that transpired over the past half hour.”

“It’s been a half-hour?” Tom said, surprised.

Tails was not amused at his poor attempt at misdirection.

“Alright, alright,” he chuckled. “Look, kiddo, Shadow wasn’t feeling very well. He threw up, and we’ve been taking care of it. That’s all that happened, honest.”

Earlier, when he had been considering possible causes for the trouble downstairs, Tails had very briefly wondered if somebody had puked, but he hadn’t been confident enough in the hypothesis to ponder over who could have done it. So he was a little surprised to learn that it had been Shadow.

Tails bit the inside of his cheek. “Well, is he okay now?”

Tom’s sleepy face softened. “Yeah. He’s sleeping right now, and you should be asleep too.”

Tails huffed. He felt too awake to go to sleep.

Tom continued, “We can talk some more in the morning-”

“Well, technically it is the morning. Any time after midnight is-”

“Na-ah-ah-ah, we are not doing this right now.” Tom interrupted him. “Bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”

In a last ditch effort to avoid going to bed, Tails tumbled down the stairs to give Tom a hug goodnight. He fell for it, and hugged Tails back. (Okay, so maybe Tails also just liked hugs. Cuddly hugs, warm hugs, playful hugs, happy hugs, and especially goodnight hugs. There was just something very wonderful about being hugged.) So he squished his fluffy body tight against Tom’s rumpled self, holding on as long as was considered normal. Then he bounced off, beginning his ascent back up to his and Sonic (and Knuckles)’s room.

“Night, buddy,” Tom grinned, giving Tails a little wave before he turned and shuffled back to the living room.

“Night,” Tails yawned.

By the time he was all the way up and climbing into bed, another yawn forced its way out. His jaw popped. Tails cuddled deep down under the blankets and listened to Sonic’s loud breathing. He yawned again.

Maybe he was a little tired.

….

Tails was a morning person. Unlike Sonic, who dripped out of bed like a shell-less, terrestrial Gastropod, Tails awoke with a smile and a bounce. He had a special brush called a “wet brush” that Maddie got for him to best brush his thick fur each morning, so he grabbed it out of its spot by his bed and set to work on his twin tails.

He was all the way done with the left one and had just started on the right when Sonic started rolling. The warped wad of blankets and quills turned over and over until he tipped right off the bed and hit the floor.

Tails didn’t bother asking Sonic if he was okay. This happened pretty often, so he said instead, “Good morning, Sonic!”

Snarky even in his state of being barely awake, Sonic responded through the blanket. “No such thing, Tails. Uugghhff.”

He was done with his second tail and was brushing the hair on his head by the time Sonic stood up off the floor. The blue hedgehog straightened, shook himself (the blanket whumped when it hit the floor), then shot off down the stairs.

Finally satisfied with his fur, Tails trotted to the first staircase, stepped down each of the wooden planks, then jumped down each step of the sturdy staircase one by one. He ran to the bathroom, and Sonic was spitting in the sink when he arrived.

“All yours!” Sonic said, winking and darting off to presumably start on breakfast.

As Tails brushed his teeth, he wondered how Shadow was feeling. Throwing up was horrible. He hated throwing up. It hurt his throat, made his mouth taste bad, and it was a waste of food. Tails could never afford to waste food before coming here, so that made it all especially awful. When his mom and dad were still alive, they gave him ice cream after he threw up. But after they died, nobody gave him ice cream anymore. His budgeting was too careful to afford such luxuries. All extra money went towards rarer parts for his inventions. After deciding to stay with Sonic and his parents, he got to have ice cream again. He easily remembered his first ice cream in years; he ate it with Sonic, Knuckles, and his new parents after their first baseball game.

Tails spit into the sink, lost in his thoughts about ice cream.

When he looked up, Knuckles was standing behind him in the mirror.

“AAH!” he yelped, spinning to face Knuckles. “Don’t DO that!”

The echidna blinked, surprised at Tails’s surprise. “My apologies,” he said, stepping to the side as Tails squeezed past him. Knuckles was not very sneaky. Tails must have been pretty deep in thought if he missed him.

Or maybe Knuckles was like that big guy from Guardians of the Galaxy who was just unexpectedly sneaky at random times. Tails pondered the idea briefly then discarded the thought.

He rinsed off his toothbrush and stepped to the side. “That’s okay, Knuckles. But next time we have ice cream then you owe me your sprinkles.”

Violet eyes widened. “I do not find that to be an acceptable trade, Fox,” he said quickly, but Tails quickly ran out of the bathroom.

“FOX!” he cried, taking chase.

Having successfully alarmed Knuckles, Tails fled laughing. He skidded around several corners, tore across the kitchen, and threw himself onto Tom’s back.

“Dad!” he wailed, latching on tight. Tom tipped but did not topple over.

Knuckles expertly skidded to a stop, barely keeping from smashing onto Tom’s legs.

“Lord of Donuts,” Knuckles hurried to explain, “the Fox has accused me of owing him my future sprinkles, but I do not believe that I-”

“Knuckles was chasing me!” he exclaimed. He knew Knuckles wouldn’t get in trouble, and he couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease.

Sonic droned from the dining room, “Knuckles, how COULD you? Chasing your littlest brother around the house. The SHAAAME.” Apparently Sonic couldn’t resist the chance to tease either.

Knuckles, a baffled, slightly betrayed expression on his face, looked back and forth between Sonic’s general direction and Tails.

“But I have done no deliberate wrongs!” he said, distressed. “I am guilty only of startling the fox, and it was accidentally!”

Tom, the innocent bystander, was confused.

Sonic appeared in a blink of blue. His jaw hung wide open, an expression of utter horror plastered across his face. “Dude,” he said in a hushed, mortified whisper, “you scared Tails?” He closed his eyes and pointed his face downwards as he shook his head in apparent disappointment. “The greatest of crimes. Knucklehead, you have committed the very greatest of crimes.”

Tails could practically see the little, swirling loading symbol turning over Knuckles’s head. Realization visibly dawned on his features.

The echidna cleared his throat. “No,” he said carefully, “I have not committed the greatest of crimes. For, you see, the greatest of crimes would be to eliminate grapes from the earth. That would be a truly horrible crime.”

“More horrible than scaring Tails?” Sonic gasped. “How dare you.”

Knuckles propped his fists on his hips. “I do indeed ‘dare.’ For I am always correct about matters such as these. Furthermore, I can eat grapes. I cannot eat the fox.”

Nodding solemnly, Sonic agreed. “Yeah, you make a fair argument.”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough of that,” Tom said, rolling his eyes fondly as he turned back to gingerly pouring orange juice. Tails’s arms looped around his neck and his furry chin rested on Tom’s shoulder. “Sonic, I need you to help me with making breakfast. Knuckles, Maddie should be done checking Shadow now, so can you go see if she needs help with anything?”

“You got it!” Sonic chirped, darting over to Tom with a salute.

Knuckles nodded solemnly, easily discarding the “argument.” He responded, “As you wish, Lord of Donuts.” He turned and trotted away.

He was going to go see Shadow? Tails wanted to go see Shadow too!

He dropped off Tom and ran after Knuckles.

The echidna did not stop him. Not that he thought Knuckles would stop him, but it was good to consider every possibility, however unlikely.

“Tom said that Shadow thew up last night,” Tails said conversationally. “Is that why you were yelling?”

“Yes,” the echidna said shortly. Knuckles was hard to read, his body language all solid edges and ceremonial posture. But Tails was slowly picking up on his small tells, like when he closed his fists or his eyeridges twitched or his vocal tone tightened. It was easy to be fooled into thinking that Knuckles was always totally straightforward and honest with his emotions. But only to an extent. When Knuckles was fearless and angry and pleased and solemn then he projected his emotions loudly to everybody nearby. The less desirable feelings like uncertainty, discomfort, and (Chaos forbid) fear were probably considered silly, unhelpful emotions so they dripped out of Knuckles as subtly as possible. Maybe he thought that it made him weak. Tails really didn’t know.

To Tails’s surprise, Knuckles led him to Tom and Maddie’s room. The door was already open when he got there, and Knuckles went in first. Shadow was sitting the bed inside, his legs hanging over the side as Maddie wrapped his feet. There was a little bowl of ice sitting on the bed next to him, and Tails watched as Shadow picked up a cube and put it into his mouth. He crunched quietly as Maddie finished. She smiled gently at her patient.

“You’re doing a lot better, honey. I’m going to go get you some light foods, and you can rest some more after you eat.”

Shadow nodded, watching her attentively. Tails could see a distinct difference in Shadow now and Shadow yesterday. His eyes were clearer. The dark hedgehog watched everything more easily where before he had fought to keep his eyes open. He seemed more present, more aware. His gaze settled on Knuckles, then lifted to lock onto Tails.

Tails froze. Red eyes almost cemented him to the floor, but Tails pushed through the fleeting snatch of uncertainty to finish the last few steps to the bed. He wasn’t afraid of Shadow. The dark hedgehog was weakened and hurt. Besides, Knuckles would protect him, and Tails could maybe protect himself from a hurt Shadow after Knuckles fought with him. Plus, all he needed to do was scream and Sonic would come running so… he could feel safe. It was easier to feel safe with an older brother in the room.

He looked Shadow up and down. He had Sonic’s thin “I burn calories really fast” look when they first met in the middle of the burning street, but somehow he was even slimmer than before.

Knuckles sat down beside the door, and Tails felt like he needed to say something. He thought about it for a moment before deciding to try being nice.

“Sorry about your skates,” he settled on. “They were really cool. It’s too bad that they got all messed up.” A thought occurred to him. “How’d that happen, anyway?”

Shadow picked up another ice cube and crunched it. His red gaze finally dropped away from Tails, flickering off to the side of the bed. He grabbed a blanket with his good hand and dragged it over to drape over the lower half of his body. Covering everything from his waist to his feet.

(Tails wondered if Shadow didn’t want him to see his feet.)

The ice was swallowed. “It was the explosion. I escaped through chaos control, but my feet were closest to the blast. The extreme temperatures melted the metals in my shoes.”

“Wow,” Tails said, fidgeting with his hands. “That must have hurt.”

Shadow didn’t respond.

“How did you walk?” Tails asked.

Shadow didn’t respond to that either.

Maddie walked in, and Tails backed away to Knuckles as she gave Shadow a very small bowl of apple sauce, a spoon, and three Ritz crackers on a plastic plate. (“We have plenty more, but for right now we’re starting small.”)

Tails plopped down next to Knuckles, settling against the echidna’s side. He fought to keep his brain from spinning out and stitching together a hundred possibilities. He didn’t want to wonder how Shadow walked with half-melted skates on his feet. He didn’t want to imagine it. He didn’t want to consider the pain, because he could cry and that would be embarrassing to do in front of Knuckles.

 Tails was tough.

So he rested his head on Knuckles shoulder and didn’t cry and didn’t think about Shadow, limping along with molten shoes.

Chapter Text

Tails felt a little stuck. He wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be helpful. Appreciated. Useful. And he had just now figured out a really great way to do that, but he wasn’t sure if he should do it.

He wanted to fix Shadow’s pyro-propulsion rollerblades.

Basic probability suggested that Shadow liked the shoes. There probably wasn’t another pair like it in the world (or the universe?), and the only reason he took them off was because they were broken and hurting his feet.

After breakfast, Tails had gone hunting for the shoes. Sure, he probably could have asked someone where they were but then he wouldn’t get to find them. Finding things was fun! And he did find them. They were by the trash can in the kitchen.

Well, they had been by the trash can.

Now they were both in Tails’s hands, and he was sneaking them upstairs to his bed.

Why would someone throw them away? Everybody knew that he was good at fixing stuff. So two possibilities were the most likely:

1) His family didn’t think that he could fix them.

2) His family didn’t want Shadow to get his shoes back, even if Tails could fix them.

Both of which were weird thoughts. The first one made him sad. The second one made him feel stuck. But either way, the shoes were in his hands, and he had successfully snuck all the way up into his room. He buried himself under a blanket, couching down in his little tent.

He wanted to fix the ruined skates. The weird metals were badly, badly twisted and bent out of shape, but he knew how to work with them. They were alien metals, foreign to Earth. But Tails was an alien too. Some of the bits inside the Miles-Electric were made out of the same stuff as the skates. He easily recognized a metal with similar composition to Earth’s tungsten carbide and another that had a chemical makeup like an Inconel and chromium hybrid. Not too uncommon where he was from, but notoriously difficult to work with.

They were strong metals with high melting points. Designed to withstand the heat and friction from Shadow’s energy and high speeds. (Sonic had burned through eight pairs of shoes by this point, so maybe Tails needed to make his older brother some fancy, metal shoes too. It was certainly something to think about.) The shoes had been designed for Shadow, and Shadow alone. They had to be perfect, or he could get hurt.

But why had the shoes been by the trashcan?

He hid them under his pillow, then crept back downstairs. Whenever he had a question, the solution was always to bother everybody else with a plethora of other questions.

His first target was Knuckles.

He looked in the living room. No Knuckles. He looked in the kitchen. No Knuckles. He looked in the bathroom. No Knuckles. He peeked into Tom and Maddie’s room. He saw Shadow’s vague outline under a blanket and Sonic camping in the corner with a sketchbook, a box of colored pencils, and a bowl of chocolate raisins. No Knuckles.

Tails trekked outside. Tom and Maddie were sitting on the front porch, their one arm around the other. The weird silence after he opened the door made him think that he probably interrupted a conversation, but he plowed on regardless.

“Have you guys seen Knuckles?” he asked, shutting the door behind himself. The afternoon was cool, warning of an approaching autumn. His home planet had a thin spectrum of temperature, usually cool enough that his thick coat was comfortable but never cold enough to make what Earth people called “snow.” Going to the mountains with Sonic had been an absolute biome whiplash.

Tails dragged himself from his thoughts and looked at his adoptive parents.

Tom’s face furrowed into his thinking expression. Maddie pursed her lips.

“You know what?” she said. “I think we have.”

“Really?! Where?” He bounced over to them. Searching for stuff was really fun, but he spent all his hunting energy looking for Shadow’s shoes and fruitlessly searching across the entire house.

“On the roof,” Tom grinned, “but you didn’t hear it from us. I kinda got the impression that he was tired, so if he’s asleep then try not to wake him up.”

On the roof. Hah. That was SO Knuckles.

Tails promised to be careful, took off running, and leapt off the porch. His tails spun into motion, and he whirled upwards. Air rushed through his neat fur, stirring it around as he rose above the height of the house.

Aha! There was Knuckles! The big echidna was sitting by the chimney in a stoney lotus pose, his face grim. He was meditating. Tails never really saw the appeal of the practice, but Knuckles liked it a lot so it must be cool somehow. Maybe he could ask Knuckles why he liked meditating after Tails asked Knuckles the thing he came to ask.

Wait.

What had he come to ask?

…

Then Tails remembered.

He floated over to his biggest of big brothers and dropped down onto the roof tiles. With Knuckles, there was no need to be tricky. He was honest and blunt, and Tails loved him for it.

“Hi, Knuckles!” he chirped, plodding over.

Violet eyes opened slowly, a deeper purple than the grapes he so enjoyed. Knuckles seemed troubled.

“Greetings, fox,” he said shortly.

 Definitely troubled.

“So!” he began, plopping down to sit next to Knuckles, “I have a question. Are you busy?”

Knuckles looked at him silently, studying Tails’s face. Tails wondered what he was looking for. What he saw. Tails kicked his feet up and down, waiting.

The echidna shifted slightly, his legs scraping against the roof tiles. “No. Not exactly. Do you have any further questions?”

Oh, ha. Tails realized that ‘are you busy?’ was technically a question, so really he had already done what he was asking for. Except that he hadn’t meant to, so he pushed onwards.

“What do you think of Shadow?” Fire in the hole.

Knuckles’s face softened from faintly troubled into thoughtful. After several moments:

“I sense a great pain within him. And emptiness.” He stared off into the horizon. “The hedgehog is a fearsome warrior, but he is also a wounded warrior. He greatly requires our assistance, and I do not believe that he will attack us.” He went silent for several moments. “He reminds me of myself,” he admitted quietly. “Happier times at the beginning of life, then pain. You must not repeat these words to anyone, fox, but… the hedgehog carries himself like one who has suffered the loss of a friend. Or perhaps of family.”

Tails, intrigued but skeptical, tried to interject “So-?” Knuckles cut him off, speaking more loudly.

“I have no evidence to support my claim. Only personal experience, and the words of the Commander. If you recall, he informed us of how-”

Tails knew exactly what Commander Walters had said, and this time he interrupted Knuckles. “He said that Shadow’s powers were too dangerous, and an accident happened that killed some people at the lab. After that, he said he locked Shadow away. You think that one of the people who died was someone close to Shadow?”

“No,” Knuckles growled. “I don’t know.” He was getting frustrated. His lotus position shuffled into a normal cross-legged position, and he folded his arms across his chest. “The hedgehog is very confusing. He seems to have experienced loss. The way he looks at people, Pretzel Woman especially, is greatly like the gaze of a member of my village when his sister, a young female named Tikal, departed to the great battlefield in the sky. He would look so strangely at all females from then on. I see that in the hedgehog, but I see many other things too that I do NOT recognize, and it is all very confusing.”

Knuckles appeared thoroughly grumpy, his face squished up and arms folded tight across his chest. This must have been bothering him for a while.

Tails waited, hoping Knuckles would continue. He had a way of seeing things that other people would miss, and Tails hoped that maybe there would be one more nugget of knowledge the echidna would willingly surrender.

Knuckles worked his jaw furiously, mind clearly running a mile a minute. Finally, he continued. “The hedgehog respects Pretzel Woman, but in a strange way that I do not understand. It is as though he is not seeing her, but is seeing another whom he respects. And he addresses her as ‘doctor.’ And he does strange things like drink too much soup and force stiffness from his body, and he is VERY confusing.” He uncrossed his arms and shook his fists a little. He froze, and he inhaled a very, very deep breath that puffed his chest and lifted his chin high. Knuckles remained puffy with air for several moments, then deflated.

“Farewell, fox.” He slid down the roof suddenly and hopped down to crouch on the ground.

Tails felt like he hadn’t done what he had come to do. What had he come to do again? OH YEAH!! He was going to ask Knuckles what he thought about Shadow and lead the conversation to asking about his skates. But the conversation had derailed, and while Tails successfully learned Knuckles’s thoughts about Shadow, he didn’t know anything about the broken skates yet.

“Wait!” he called, leaping off the roof and helicoptering down to the ground.

During Tails’s descent, the echidna had tunneled down into the backyard, filling up the hole behind himself as he went.

Tails sighed.

He listened for the faint sound of rumbling earth, following it across the yard and into the woods until the top bit of Knuckles finally popped back up like a big, red gopher.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Knuckles answered a little uncertainly. “I informed the Lord of Donuts once that punching various objects is excellent for removing frustration. He suggested that I should not assault things, and that I should instead partake in a different physical activity. He stated that digging might be a healthier alternative. I am attempting to take his advice.”

“Oh,” Tails said. “Did it work?”

Only Knuckles’s shoulders and head was visible, and his face furrowed. After a moment, his expression cleared pleasantly. “Yes! It seems that my frustration had diminished. To be entirely certain, I will continue digging. Farew-”

“Wait, wait, wait, real quick I have one more last question. Shadow’s shoes. Why were they by the trash?”

Knuckles’s face scrunched up again in thought. “I believe that Pretzel Woman set them in a vicinity near the can of trash. Is that all, fox?”

Relieved, Tails nodded.

“Farewell!” With a spray of dirt, Knuckles disappeared.

 Tails sighed, brushing earth out of his fur as he walked back to the house.

His adoptive parents were still outside, but they had moved from the porch to the wooden patio. Tails jumped up off the ground and helicoptered to the table where they were sitting.

Tom grinned widely. “I saw you found Knuckles. I’m guessing he was awake?”

“Yup,” he chirped, landing on top of the wooden table. There was a plant on the table, but he was careful not to knock it off. “I have a question. Where are Shadow’s shoes?”

Their eyebrows shot up. That was fair; the question had been a bit out of the blue.

Maddie pursed her lips. “I think I left them in the kitchen.”

Tom frowned. “You mean the messed-up metal shoes? Oh, I put ‘em by the trash.”

Maddie turned in her seat to look at him. “You what?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, they were ruined. It’s not like anyone could use them anymore. They were cracked down the middle from Knuckles prying them off.”

Tails cleared his throat.

Both adults looked at him.

Tom bit his lip. “Ah. Did yooouuu… want to fix ‘em, Tails?”

Tails swallowed. His two theories were colliding heavily at the moment. “So… you didn’t think that I could fix them?” He didn’t mean for his voice to sound as hurt as it did, but it came out pretty hurt so that kind of went out the window.

“No,” Tom was very quick to deny, his face hardening. “That-that’s not it at all, kiddo. I genuinely just didn’t think that anyone would want them anymore, so I moved them to be by the trash. Honestly, if anyone could fix them then it’d be you. I-” he glanced at his wife, “-I should have asked before moving them over there.” He turned to look at Tails again. “I’m sorry you felt that way, Tails. If you wanna try fixing the shoes then I can go get them right now.”

Tails thought that he might cry from relief.

Instead, he threw himself at his adoptive dad and pressed his face tight into Tom’s chest. He felt Tom immediately hug back, wrapping his good arm tightly around him.

Tails felt good. He squeezed his eyes shut. His chest felt like it might melt and explode at the same time. He wiggled as close to the bigger, warmer body of Tom as he could and wished that he could bury himself deep inside the feeling of this hug forever.

He felt relieved.

AND NOW HE COULD FIX THE SHOES FOR SHADOW!!!

Tom’s arm loosened and Tails slipped out, the need to CREATE, to FIX, to do all manner of tinkering and mending and pushing his talents and brainpower to the limit overflowing out of him.

“I’mgonnagofixtheskatesnow,bye!” he cried as he fled back into the house, up the stairs, and into his bed. He grabbed the skates out from under his pillows and cheered.

He raced down to the garage, the shoes clutched tightly in his hands.

After a scan from the Miles-Electric, he put on some music and started grabbing supplies. This would be a challenge. It would definitely be hard. But really, anything easy just wasn’t worth doing! It was the effort that gave him the gift of satisfaction, of pride.

And he was certain that this, after all his efforts, was going to be awesome!

Chapter Text

The chocolate covered raisin arced into the air, then dropped with the grace and accuracy of a teeny, tiny Olympic diver. Sonic happily caught the teeny, tiny chocolate Olympic diver in his mouth and ate it. Chewing happily, he dragged the pencil in big, sketchy strokes all along the base of the page. The bedsheets in the picture were supposed to look super rumpled, and Sonic thought that he was doing a pretty good job of it so far.

He bounced up to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, stared at the Shadow lump under the blanket on his parents’ bed, SQUIIIIINNNTTTEEEDD at it, then plopped back down to draw the bit where Shadow’s leg probably was for as long as he could remember what it looked like.

Olympic chocolate raisin #19 soared into the air, then was snatched up and eaten. Sonic wiggled, bouncing a little as he drew and chewed and wiggled some more.

Out of the blue, the door flew open and Tails’s fluffy head poked in.

Sonic froze.

“Hey,” the sneaky fox whispered like he was trying to sell him drugs, “have you seen Knuckles?”

Sonic shook his head. (He didn’t want drugs. He had chocolate raisins!) “Uhhh… no? Ask Dad or Mom.”

“Thanks!” Tails zipped out, the door clopping shut behind him.

Aw man. Now he couldn’t remember what Shadow looked like. Sonic hopped up again to get a look and keep working on his picture.

But Shadow had moved. His body was very obviously turned the other way under the blanket, and all the rumples and wrinkles that Sonic had been trying to get just right were all wrong. Tom and Maddie were trusting him to watch Shadow while they took a break, and waking up Shadow by rolling him back to the position he was in before would not be very responsible.

Sonic seriously considered being irresponsible for a long time (a minute) before sighing and deciding that he shouldn’t do that.

If Sonic had been drawing Knuckles, and Knuckles had rolled over into a new position that ruined Sonic’s picture then Sonic would definitely have gone up and shoved his biggest bro back to where he was supposed to be. But that was mostly because Knuckles was a pretty heavy sleeper, and Shadow was…

Well

Actually

Shadow was a pretty heavy sleeper too, cause he was sick n’ stuff, and everybody knows that sick people are pretty heavy sleepers; the only sick person Sonic knew was the time Donut Lord had gotten sick, and he had been out like a dead tree.

So

Actually

Sonic could roll Shadow right over and it’d be fine! Shadow wouldn’t be bothered, Sonic’s picture would be okay, and everything would be great. HURT people are light sleepers, which was why Sonic had needed to be quiet before, but now Shadow was SICK, so he would sleep deeply. Satisfied in his well thought out line of logic, Sonic strolled up to the lump and gave it a careful nudge with his hands.

Everything was fine.

Shadow didn’t go quite to exactly where he was supposed to go, so Sonic zipped to the other side of the bed and tugged the blanket a little. Pushed Shadow’s head a little. Slid a pillow a hair to the right.

Perfect!

Then Shadow exploded into a sitting-up position, and everything was a great deal less fine than it had been a minute ago. The blanket did not slide off Shadow’s head as he sat up, so Sonic leaped back three feet and stared as Shadow tore at the blanket with one, scrabbling hand until it flew down to lie on the bed like a ghost that had been run over by a semi.

Shadow panted. His eyes were huge, blown wide and staring at the mattress. He looked really freaked out, and Sonic started feeling really bad really fast. Clearly sick people were not always deep sleepers, or at the very least Shadow was an exception.

He held his hands up, taking a step or two closer to the bed. “Oh, dude, I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I can get my mom- do you want me to get my mom?”

Shadow wheezed.

Sonic didn’t know if that was supposed to mean something to him, of if Shadow was just dealing with something and Sonic was supposed to just watch or if Sonic should go RIGHT NOW and grab Pretzel Woman cause she was SO much better at knowing this stuff than he was.

The dark hedgehog’s unfocused gaze suddenly sharpened, and he gasped, “The trash can.” His gaze ripped across the room, and Sonic suddenly had something he could do to help.

He snagged the plastic thing in both hands, pushing it into Shadow’s lap in an instant.

Shadow did not throw up. But he hugged the plastic trash can in both arms, his forehead resting on the rim and his face tilted down and literally partially into it with his eyes closed. Sonic listened to Shadow breathe thickly like his tongue was in the way.

Poor Shadow.

Sonic hopped up onto the bed. (This was his home; he could do as he pleased as long as it didn’t bother anybody or break anything.) Shadow didn’t seem bothered. He just breathed deeply with his face in the trashcan because that was fine and normal.

Sonic had lived entirely alone for years. His definition of “fine” was a little funky.

Sonic was an alien hedgehog. His definition of “normal” was a little funky too.

(But he knew that this wasn’t exactly fine. And compared to Shadow’s usual pattern of behavior, this wasn’t exactly normal. So he wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to do, because, uh… then Sonic ran out of thoughts that could be expressed in words, so he let his brain run around with every one of the millions of inexpressible thoughts because Tom had said that it was okay if sometimes his brain did that because that’s just the way Sonic was, and he loved Sonic and Sonic’s brain was a part of Sonic so he loved Sonic’s brain too. Sonic fought the urge to make the thoughts more spread and understandable by talking to himself, but Shadow might think that it was super weird so he didn’t. Sonic wasn’t alone anymore, so he very rarely went back to talking to himself buuuuuut there was a rare time or to when it had happened, and he had definitely seen the slightly confused looks on his parents’ faces when they caught him. If he needed someone to talk to, they said, he could go find them. He wanted to go find them now, but he was watching Shadow, so really he wasn’t TECHNICALLY alone but did Shadow really count as company?

Yes. Yes, he did.)

He had been kicking his legs quietly, but now pulled them into a neat criss-cross, rested the elbow farthest away from Shadow onto a knee, and plunked his cheek into that hand.

Sonic took a really deep breath.

“Sorry I woke you up.” There, that was a good place to start. Should he explain? “I was trying to draw a picture of you, but you moved so it got messed up and I thought that since you were, y’know, sick then you wouldn’t be bothered if I moved you a little but obviously, I was kinda wrong, so again, I’m sorry Shadow.” He ran out of air.

Shadow didn’t respond. He just breathed, his inhales and exhales more pronounced because of the plastic.

Why wasn’t he responding? Was he so upset with Sonic that he didn’t even want to look at him or even TALK to him, so he was just going to ignore him? Should Sonic try talking again? Would that be annoying, or was it just a misunderstanding and Shadow didn’t hear him, so talking again would be the right thing to do cause it would get Shadow’s attention? Did Shadow hate him now? Had Shadow always hated him, but didn’t show it because he needed help and it wasn’t smart to be mean to people who were trying to help you?

After all, he had almost died because he fought alongside Sonic.

Shadow had obviously been suffering, so maybe he blamed Sonic for it.

If only Sonic had realized that there might have been a chance that Shadow would be alive (what chance? How could he possibly have realized that?), then he could have gone looking for him (and looked where?) and he could have found him and spared Shadow the suffering (but would Shadow have wanted to be found?).

Sonic squeezed his eyes shut, propping both elbows onto each knee, grasping the sides of his head in his hands as he whispered, “shut up, shut up, shut up.”

Talking helped. It always helped.

But then someone else talked, and it surprised all the bad thoughts right out of Sonic’s head.

“But I didn’t say anything.”

Sonic’s head snapped up. Shadow was looking at him, a distinctly wary (yet slightly confused) expression on the darker hedgehog’s face. He was still hugging the trashcan, but he sat erect and very obviously did not have his face in the trashcan.

“What?” Sonic replied intelligently. He blinked. “I didn’t say you did.”

Shadow’s right ear shifted forwards slightly, not an aggressive pin or exasperated droop, but a subtle tell of curiosity. Sonic would know, because he did the same thing himself.

“Then who were you talking to?”

That was a good question. And it had an easy answer. But for some reason he felt like he might want to keep that information to himself and yet honesty always worked for him in the past sooooo…

“Me.” He felt like he should clarify, so he added, “I was talking to myself.”

“Oh. Why?”

OOOOHHHH that was a question too big for him to wrestle with right now, so he just shrugged. Another apology climbed up out of his lungs and sat down heavily on the back of his tongue.

“Sorry I didn’t find you.” He felt all clenched up, hot and cold at the same time, hoping that Shadow wasn’t mad but at the same time totally getting it if Shadow was mad because of all the reasons.

“I don’t understand.”

Sonic let a little laugh slip out, and maybe it was a tiny bit weird sounding but it was justified so yeah it was fine. (Because everybody knew that his definition of “fine” was 100% solid and dependable and perfect.)

“Dude, I’m sorry, okay?! I let you down!” All the thoughts that were supposed to stay in his head and only be spoken to himself started getting slick and slippery, and suddenly they didn’t stay all the way up in his head like they were supposed to do. “You’ve been out there! All this time! And I didn’t do anything to help you. I saw the explosion, but, I-I never saw your body so I should have just kept looking and maybe I could have found you and it would have been better but now all this happened and I just can’t-”

Sonic cut himself off. Too much.

Definitely too much.

He looked up for Shadow’s judging stare and instead found wide, red confusion. The confusion broke open into hesitant understanding and Shadow’s jaw shifted a little to the right.

Shadow talked funny. Like he was thinking over it all as he was saying it, which kudos to him, because the dude clearly had all his thoughts under control. “So, why were you talking to yourself?” said Shadow.

OOOOHHHH there was that question again. 

So he shrugged again. He propped his head up in his hands and tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t require much thinking. “Uh, I dunno, it just sorta happens. I’m like my own narrator!” Immediately loving the idea, he bounced a little in his seat. “Thinking through stuff is just waaaaay easier when you’ve got someone to talk to, so I talk to myself and BOOM” (Shadow startled slightly) “I can think through it waaaaaay better! Y’know?”

“I see.” Something about Shadow’s tone kind of sounded like he didn’t see, but that was okay and Sonic didn’t bother calling him out on it.

Time to change the subject.

“So! What’s your favorite movie?” An excellent way to change the subject, if he did say so himself!

Sonic shuffled around, turning so that he would face Shadow, while Shadow’s side was to him. The dark hedgehog finally loosened his grip on the plastic trashcan but hadn’t made a move to set it down.

“While you’re thinking, want me to take that?” he offered, gesturing with a gloved hand at the trashcan.

A hesitation. “I can do it.” Shadow slid forwards, setting the plastic thing down onto the floor by the base of the side of the bed. Then he slid back, using one hand to awkwardly lift the blanket to wrap around his shoulders.

Ha ha; now Shadow looked kind of like Gandalf!

“Alright, favorite movies, go!”

Shadow seemed unsure, but after a moment he spoke. “The Professor was usually careful about what he let Maria watch, and I only saw movies when I watched them with her. We both liked The Sound of Music, and her favorite was a movie called You Can’t Take It With You. I don’t know why. But I think perhaps she was fond of the main male character, though… I still think that the main character should have taken the sign off the girl’s back before anyone saw it. We also watched almost half of The Birds, but Maria asked for it to be turned off and we never finished it.”

Sonic loosely knew The Sound of Music (doe a deer a female deer?) but he had no idea what You Can’t Take It With You and The Birds were.

“Cool! But what’s your favorite?” he prompted.

“Maybe Around the World in 80 Days. I enjoyed that one a great deal. But she and I only watched one movie with the Professor, and it was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington so that one could be my favorite too.” A long pause. Then a hesitant: “What’s your favorite?”

Sonic grinned widely. “Okay, so I loooove the Avengers movies but my all-time favorite’s gotta be Speed. Basically any movie with Keanu in it’s GOTTA be good though. Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure! And The Matrix movies! Mom fast forwarded some of the scenes from the Matrix though, and Knuckles doesn’t like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I think he doesn’t like ghosts.” That last bit was sort of an understatement, but Shadow didn’t need to know about Knuckles’s fear of ghosts.

Suddenly a loud thought popped into his head and out his mouth. “Oh! You’ve only seen OLD movies! Awww, dude we’ve gotta have a movie night, pronto! There’s sooo many movies that you gotta catch up on! You know, Knuckles hasn’t seen any of the Avengers movies either, and I’ve been looking for a reason to see em all again!”

The doorknob suddenly started turning. The heads of both hedgehogs turned to watch as the door carefully eased open and Pretzel Lady’s head poked in.

She looked surprised. “Hey, guys! Well, Sonic, how’s my number one patient doing?”

Oooooh he had a good funny answer for that question! Popping to his feet, Sonic replied in his funny therapist voice, “He’s doing good, Doc, but he’s severely movie deprived. I prescribe a bowl of popcorn and three movies every hour.”

Maddie laughed, and Shadow looked confused.

Now that she was here then Sonic was free to do whatever, so he hopped off the bed and began gathering up all his colored pencils.

Pretzel Lady stepped up to the bed and knelt in front of Shadow. “How’re you feeling?”

Shadow’s gaze clicked from looking at her to looking at Sonic. Like Sonic was supposed to have the answer to how Shadow was feeling. Sonic didn’t know what to do, but he honestly felt like Shadow expected him to say something.

But he didn’t know what to do.

Finally Shadow looked back at Maddie. “I feel better.”

Maddie smiled softly, and for some reason Shadow became very, very still. She asked for him to take the blanket off his feet, and he surrendered with a passive willingness that made Sonic feel puzzled.

Very puzzled. And filled with wordless thoughts.

Maddie hummed in a pleased sort of way after she took the bandages off, telling him how much better he was doing and how nicely his accelerated healing was taking care of him, and as how long as he was careful with his feet for a little longer then he would have no permanent side affects from his injuries.

“In a little bit,” Maddie said casually (Sonic knew when she was being casual on purpose; her smile quirked and her head tilted a little to the side), “what do you think about getting a little cleaned up? It’s all up to you, but I was just wondering if you… might enjoy a bath or shower, or maybe a rag bath if that’d be better? Whatever you think would be good for right now.”

She rewrapped Shadow’s feet as he thought it over.

“Would I be allowed to be alone?” Shadow finally asked.

Maddie paused, then she tenderly taped down the tail end of the last bandage.

“I want you to be comfortable, of course, but I’d feel better, personally, if someone else was in the room. You’re doing so, so much better, Shadow, but just in case there’s an accident or soap gets in your eyes or just anything then it’d make it easier if there was someone there. If you’re not comfortable with that then it’s fine. We can figure something out.”

(Shadow had been going to the bathroom by himself all this time OBVIOUSLY but that was just because he was quick and basically just a small human with bad bruising and hurt feet. But a whole bath was different. Sonic understood why Pretzel Lady was worried, and he hoped that Shadow understood too.)

“Whatever you wish, I will do.”

(HaHA he sounded like the Genie from Aladdin!!)

Maddie sort of paused, and Sonic could see in her eyes that she was thinking many thoughts. Maybe almost as many as Sonic would thinking from time to time. Or maybe not… Pretzel Lady was usually so calm and collected, so her thoughts were probably as neat as a pack of colored pencils.

She sighed.

“Alright, honey, we’ll figure something out.”

Cool, cool, cool. Sonic gathered up all his paper and pencils and bowl of chocolate covered raisins into his arms, feeling awesome as he managed to hold absolutely everything. As he wobbled out the door, a little tube on Maddie’s dresser caught his eye.

Noone was looking. Surely she wouldn’t mind, right?

Quick as a wink, he snagged the little plastic thing between two free fingers and darted out of the room.

After dumping his load onto his bedroom floor, Sonic hopped down each step with both feet and made a beeline for the bathroom.

This would be fun!!

Chapter Text

The home was not normally still. More often than not it was like a busy birdbath, filled with moving bodies and laughing voices. Ever since the dark fluffy came, his home had become softer. Quieter. It would burst back into motion unexpectedly, like when the dark fluffy produced all the delicious barf and Fox Fluffy went running around with things that smelled like burnt feet and the Sonic threw things all over the living room before running away.

The Sonic had left a bowl full of delicious forbidden things behind, so Ozzy had gone right over to eat them before someone else could be bothered by them. Unfortunately, Ozzy was too late. His man came over and took the forbidden things and began eating them. Ozzy whined. His man balanced the bowl of forbidden things on his not-good arm, patted Ozzy’s head, and said,

“Nope, sorry bud. No chocolate covered raisins for you.”

His man tossed one into the sky, then caught in his teeth.

“B’sides, I hear that chocolate lowers your blood pressure.” He moved his shoulders up and down and went away to the kitchen.

Oh well. Even though Ozzy couldn’t have the delicious forbidden things, it made his man happy to have them so it was okay.

Ozzy hopped up onto the couch, plopped down, and snoozed (not sleeping, but snoozing) until his home began to stir again.

After time, his woman went into the living room all quiet and gentle. The dark fluffy had its left hand holding onto his woman’s hand, timid as it shuffled in beside her. Poor dark fluffy. Still smelling burnt and like chemical medicines. Ozzy watched his woman lead dark fluffy over to the couch where Ozzy was. Dark fluffy climbed up slowly, oozing little whispers of ‘pppaaaaaaiiiinnnn’ out through its pores but not making any noises. Ozzy’s woman wrapped a fluffy blanket around the dark fluffy and then turned to Ozzy, patting Ozzy’s head.

She did not pat dark fluffy on the head. But she touched it. One nice hand resting for a moment on the head of dark fluffy before she went away.

Dark fluffy shivered.

Oh dear. Was dark fluffy cold? No… that was not it.

Sad.

Dark fluffy was sad.

Oh dear. That simply would not do.

Ozzy could not make sadness go away, but he would help because he was a good dog.

Ozzy got up, got a little closer (dark fluffy right away looked at him and watched with nervous eyes), and then Ozzy put his head down onto the blanket on top of dark fluffy’s thigh.

Then dark fluffy shivered again. A careful hand slowly lowered down on top of Ozzy’s head. The hand tentatively rubbed the very top of his head, then his ears, then slid down to card through the thick fur on Ozzy’s neck. The hand shot away, grabbed a bit of the blanket, and dark fluffy pulled the blanket over its head. Then the hand was back, and dark fluffy wrapped an arm snug around Ozzy’s neck and bent over to rub its face into the fur on Ozzy’s neck. Hugging very tight, but not too tight so it was okay. It kept rubbing its face into Ozzy’s furry fur and being sad.

Ozzy’s woman had feet that made a quiet noise, and when her feet got closer then dark fluffy became very still but did not let go of Ozzy. She came to the front of the couch, stopped moving, then went a little farther away. Ozzy heard paper moving: the sounds of a book.

Now that his woman had gone back to being farther away, dark fluffy went back to rubbing its face gently against Ozzy’s fur. There were soft, sad sounds. So soft, and so very, very sad. 

Ozzy sighed. His breath was warm. Dark fluffy began to rock a little bit, holding very tight to Ozzy.

After time, dark fluffy fell asleep. Its arm went loose around Ozzy’s neck even though its looser hand did not let go. So very strange to sleep when there was still so much light, but maybe dark fluffy had only been trying to be snoozing but it had not worked out.

Oh well. Ozzy let himself be snoozing too. They could snooze together, and maybe once dark fluffy woke up then it would not be feeling quite so sad. Snoozing helped all things be better.

After time, dark fluffy stirred. The sun was lower now, and there was not so much light. The hand went back to petting him, stroking the fur all thick on Ozzy’s neck.

 A hum, deep and not so sad as before (but still sad) rumbled through dark fluffy and went into Ozzy.

Ozzy’s woman came to them and crouched down. Dark fluffy looked up at her. Ozzy did not move.

“May I bathe?” whispered dark fluffy.

“Of course, baby. Right now?”

“Yes. May I bring the dog?”

His woman was quiet a moment. She said, “Okay.”

Ozzy had to get up when the dark fluffy moved, but the three of them all went to the bathroom.

His woman started the water running, and the dark fluffy sat quietly on the edge of the bathtub as she did all her normal things for a bath. During the very cold months then Ozzy sometimes had baths in here instead of out in the yard with a hose, so he knew all of what was going on.

He looked at dark fluffy. All black and grey with grey-white fur on its chest. Shiny yellow by its hands and feet. Bright white wrappings on hurt parts. All the parts of dark fluffy with color were added on, pretend. Not things that dark fluffy had been born with. All the parts that were naturally part of dark fluffy were shaded and grey. Dark fluffy was a thing of black smoke and ashy dust. The bright colors were not meant to be there.

Ozzy’s woman gently took the bright white wraps off dark fluffy. The shiny yellow bits stayed, but all else was wound away.

Dark fluffy’s feet did not look perfect but were not terrible. Ozzy’s woman helped dark fluffy into the bathtub, and Ozzy rested his head on the edge.

Ozzy sighed and hoped that dark fluffy would never feel sad again.

--POV SWAP THAT IS SOOOOO CLEARLY MARKED :) –

Maddie knew the moment that Shadow’s body sank into the warm, shallow water that this was what he needed. Poor baby, having gone for so long with grime and blood matted into his fur. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he hunched over with his eyes closed. His entire posture seemed to sigh. To melt.

He didn’t feel threatened here, and she was proud of that.

She retrieved a washcloth and an unused bar of soap from the counter under the sink and faced back to the tub. While her back had been turned, Shadow had flattened all the way out on the bottom of the tub. She could only see the ends of his head quills poking up; all the rest of him was submerged.

Maddie let him lie under the water for sixty seconds before she started getting nervous.

“Shadow?” She crouched down by the tub, set down the washcloth and soap, and only then realized her mistake. Up to this point, she had always been careful to keep one of her boys with her whenever she was with Shadow so that she wouldn’t ever be alone with him. Yes, she had Ozzy with her, but Ozzy wouldn’t be able to help her if Shadow unexpectedly lashed out.

But she couldn’t leave Shadow under the water.

“Shadow?” She said louder, fighting the urge to grab him by the shoulder and pull him up.

“SHADOW?” She cried out, and finally he responded.

His head jerked up out of the water, rivulets pouring down around his ears and eyes and quills and dripping down his chin and off the ends of his quills. He pushed up with his left hand, the other carefully positioned in a way that wouldn’t put any pressure on it.

His eye ridges creased, but his eyes stayed quite open. Piercingly red. He stared into Maddie and searched her face.

She struggled to release a calm breath and relax her tense shoulders.

“Is everything alright?” he asked softly.

She almost wanted to cry because no! She was not “alright”! She thought he was drowning!

Instead she managed an unsteady smile and spoke in a volume that matched Shadow’s.

“I got… worried when you didn’t come up right away. Please, don’t do that again.”

He seemed genuinely confused. “Don’t do what again?”

“Like, you know, stay underwater for more than a minute.”

It looked like he wanted to ask ‘why not’ but he didn’t, and Shadow just nodded his head dutifully before sitting up fully.

His unspoken question nipped at the back of her mind, and a question rolled out onto her tongue like a glass marble. “Shadow? How long can you hold your breath?”

Shadow blinked. “I don’t need to breathe.”

He. He. He what?

She parroted plainly, “You don’t need to breathe.”

He shook his head. Bit gently on the inside of his cheek. Spoke softly. “It’s not a necessity. I can survive for an unidentified quantity of time without oxygen.”

A weird feeling was pooling up in the pit of Maddie’s stomach. It spread up to her lungs and tugged at the surrounding muscle systems. There were implications here. Bad, bad implications and she wanted to be wrong. Another question slowly rolled out of her mouth.

“How… how do you know that?”

Shadow didn’t respond right away. “I am a test subject. I was tested for oxygen efficiency.”

Am. Maddie wanted to cry. Am.

“How.” She forced the word out but made sure that it sounded kind. Inquiring. Only a hint of the extreme surge of protectiveness that she was feeling slipped through. Her next sentence sounded colder than she wanted it to, but she needed to make sure that she asked it plainly or Shadow would probably ask her to specify anyway. “How did they test you for oxygen efficiency?”

Shadow spoke so slowly. Every word was push against a knife between her ribs. “There was a vat. Transparent. There was a clock on the wall with red letters, and several doctors who monitored me. I remained in the vat for 121 hours before I was extracted.”

He paused like he expected her to say something. But she couldn’t. Maddie was silent, processing what she had learned. Shadow took this as a command to elaborate.

“The experiment was given multiple attempts. The first time, the vat was full of water. It was discovered that I cannot breathe water. This was tested for four minutes and thirty seconds. The second time the vat was still full of water, but I was left in for thirty minutes, and I adapted more quickly. My adaption time improved with each attempt.”

He looked down at the water in the tub and swished his good hand back and forth. The surface above his fingertips rippled.

“By the eighth attempt, my adaption time was nigh instantaneous. I remained for the full 121 hours.”

Maddie wanted to grab his left hand, kiss his head, assure him that he wasn’t a test subject, and promise him that he would never be one ever, ever again.

But Shadow saw what the scientists had done to him as normal. Acceptable. He likely wouldn’t understand or accept reassurance because he felt he did not need to be reassured.

So Maddie nodded, reached up a hand to grip the edge of the tub, and stared him right in the eyes.

No one would touch him ever again.

No one. Not on her life.

Shadow looked at her hand on the edge of the tub for a moment, then tentatively reached up his left hand and set it on top of hers. He stared right back into her eyes, and it took every bit of willpower that Maddie possessed to not break down right then and there. Regardless, her eyes misted. But that couldn’t be helped.

“Nobody will make you leave here.” Her voice was wet, but she didn’t care. “As long as you want, as long as you need, you can stay.”

She wanted to say please, please stay here and don’t leave because I can’t let them find you and I can’t let you go through anything like that ever again

But she wanted him to stay because he WANTED to. Not because she TOLD him to. Maddie wasn’t stupid; she saw how quietly obedient he was to nearly everything she ever asked of him. So she wouldn’t take advantage of that, not if she could help it.

Shadow peered into her soul. Then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you, doctor.”

The words ‘call me Maddie’ were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them and gingerly reformed the request into a statement.

“I’m a vet, not technically a doctor. Most people call me Maddie.”

Shadow processed the information, staring down at the water for a moment. Then he looked back up at her.

“Thank you, Maddie.”

Chapter Text

Tom watched as his wife ushered a damp, dark hedgehog out of the bathroom. Shadow always complied so, so easily to whatever Maddie asked of him. It honestly amazed Tom. He could only imagine why the odd little critter acted the way he did. Sonic and Knuckles assured him that Shadow was traumatized, and they had a few good guesses of what the traumatic event in question might be. Assuming, that is, that it could be nailed down to one, specific incident.

Tom wasn’t stupid. He had watched the GUN agents ensnare his son in an electrical net and haul him (and poor, wounded Tails) away in cages. Shadow had likely been the first alien species they had come across, and Tom had seen enough movies to know that aliens in the hands of the government were rarely treated well.

There had been a time when Tom had hated Shadow. That time had been punched full of bleeding internal organs, his memory littered with broken bones and bleak recollections of his family crying over him as he smiled weakly through the suffocating pain meds and plastic breathing mask.

But with every minute Shadow was in Tom’s house, it was getting harder to hate him. A week after Tom had been able to come home, Sonic had bravely called a family meeting to talk over everything that had happened from the GUN helicopter whisking them away, to their little family being reunited in the hospital. It had been a sort of group therapy session, and it had done them all a lot of good. During that little meeting, Tom had mentioned being in the guise of the late Commander Walters. All three of Tom’s kids had immediately blanched. They all began talking over each other, trying to explain to Tom a very important thing that would change the way he viewed that traumatic memory from then on. Sonic was nominated as spokesperson after Maddie informed them that no one could understand what they were trying to say.

And Sonic had told him.

And now Tom understood.

That simple explanation had hacked off a good chunk of Tom’s muted hate for the little alien who had hurt him and his family so badly. His anxiety/panic attack when he unexpectedly discovered Shadow had been bad, but Knuckles had helped him out of it. It wasn’t something he could really control, so he could only cope as well as he could manage and ride it out. But unless Shadow exploded out of Tom’s closet when he wasn’t expecting it, Tom didn’t really think that another one would happen.

Seeing the dark hedgehog curled up on the couch, nestled down in a blanket and cuddled up close with Tom’s dog, hacked off another gigantic chunk of Tom’s dying hate. At this point, it wasn’t even hate anymore. Mostly just some stale anger and the phantoms of trauma dragging him down.

Maddie brushed a light hand over the top of the dark hedgehog’s head, then stepped away. She made a swift beeline for Tom, and he was dragged away to the front porch. Something had obviously upset her, and that worried him immensely.

She closed the front door behind them, and Tom went to sit down on the edge of the porch. She approached him, and tears started to gather in her eyes.

Maddie was one of the strongest people he knew. Something must be really, really wrong.

“Hun,” he started, “What’s-?”

She interrupted him, her voice wet. “They drowned him, Tom.”

He didn’t understand. But as she sat down, he put an arm around her.

Maddie repeated herself, a sob in the middle of the sentence. “They drowned him.”

“Hey, hey,” he said soothingly, genuinely worried but still not exactly sure what she was talking about. “Breathe.” He realized that he would have to ask a really weird question in order to understand, but he plowed on and asked anyway.

“Who was drowned?”

She took a deep, shivery breath and started to explain. “Shadow. The scientists drowned him eight times to find out how long he could hold his breath.”

Oh.

That… that was really bad. He felt his body stiffen involuntarily.

Maddie kept talking. “And-and he doesn’t even realize that it was bad! He thinks that what they did to him was totally fine.” She was becoming progressively more upset, and Tom began rubbing his good hand up and down the side of her arm. She turned suddenly and looked up at him.

“Do you know what he told me?”

Tom did not know, but he didn’t answer the question because she was about to tell him.

“He said ‘I am a subject.’ Tom,” she sobbed, “he thinks that he’s just a-a test subject that we can do whatever we want with! Like he’s just gone out of one lab and into the next! That’s why he kept calling me ‘doctor,’ Tom. He lived most of his life being abused, got locked away for fifty years, and now he’s just totally fine with going right back to being abused because it’s normal.”

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into a hug. Maddie let him, and she leaned against his body. Her breathing shook, and Tom struggled to fully comprehend what she had just told him.

The hate was gone. Finally. Totally. Tom Wachowski felt only pity for the wounded alien sleeping quietly on his couch. The wounded alien who had endured what no fully sentient being should have to endure.

Dehumanization. Heartless experimentation. Unforgiving pain.

(And a frightened, frightened little part of Tom was screaming at the top of its lungs because what would those agents have done to Sonic if Maddie hadn’t broken in and stolen their son back? What would have happened? Very likely, it would have been similar things to what had happened to Shadow. But Tom’s brain started to burn in many ways as the idea entered his mind, so he quickly diverted his thoughts as best as he could manage. It was hard to suffocate such a pungent thought as that one.)

“Maddie,” he said softly, fiercely. “No one will take him away. Okay? No one. I’ll run them over with my car before I let them take him away.”

Maddie sort of almost laughed at the threat of running someone over with a car, but she sobbed instead and gripped him more tightly with her fingers.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay?” he said.

His wife sniffed. “I’m just afraid that he’s going to want to leave. And I won’t be able to stop him.”

Tom’s chest hurt, but he knew what he needed to say. “If he feels like he’s gotta go, he’s gotta go. Nothing we can really do about it. All we can do is spend the time we have with him wisely and just… try not to mess him up even more than he already is.”

Maddie choked.

Tom managed an almost-laugh and rubbed her back.

“I wouldn’t have said it exactly like that,” she said, “but yeah. You’re right, Tom.” A moment passed. “Thank you, honey.”

She eased back, and they sat side by side while holding hands.

The world had been saved. His three kids all made it out alive and relatively unscathed. For once, the adventure didn’t end with his house needing extensive repairs. And yet, the universe found yet another way to keep Tom’s life from getting too stagnant.

A hurt, dark little murder hedgehog with red stripes. Sure. Why not? He already had a hyperactive, electric blue baseball player who lived completely alone for ten years after witnessing the murder of his sole caretaker, a stoic warrior who lost his entire family when he was six and basically had to raise himself in a jungle, and an orphan fox who was shunned on his home planet because of his extra tail and spied on Tom’s first adoptive kid for eight months before coming to Earth and stealing a car. Why not add one more mild to severely traumatized kid to their family?

Well.

Tom certainly wasn’t planning on putting a stop to the inevitable.

He squeezed Maddie’s hand gently. Smirked at her. Enjoyed the slightly confused crinkle between her eyebrows as she stared at him and rubbed away traces of tears with the heel of her other hand.

“We’re doing it again,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“What?”

“I estimate that by the time we turn fifty, we’ll have about thirty-six multicolored kids running around the house.”

Maddie choked on her laugh. She bumped her shoulder against his, smiling.

“You know what?” she said softly. “I think that’d be fun. A lot of work, but fun. I guess spontaneous adoption is going to just be a normal part of our lives now.”

Tom snorted. “Fine by me!”

Chapter Text

Everything was dark, snug, and earthy smelling. Soil gave way under Knuckles’s powerful hands as he tunneled back and forth under the surface. There were thin roots tangled in his dreadlocks, dirt scratching in his shoes, and dust caked around his eyes. His chest heaved as he pushed himself. The echidna curled up a little, tucking his knees close as he prepared to surface. Pushing upwards, he scooped at the roof of his burrow until he broke through into the sun.

Light flooded into his hole and washed over his head. The air was warm, a welcome contrast to the cool dirt matted against his body. The echidna climbed out of the hole and brushed himself off as he walked towards the house. Knuckles’s frustration had diminished several hours before, but he had kept digging because exertion was good for him (and it made him happy).

Knuckles rubbed earth out of his fur and quills as he trucked through the woods and up to the front porch. He plopped down on the wooden steps, took off his shoes and socks, and shook them out. Particles rained down. Next came the gloves: he wiggled his hands out of the thick mitts and brushed the grime off the white fabric. Pretzel Woman did not approve when he dirtied the house, so he would remove as much of his external grime as he possibly could before returning indoors.

Scooping his shoes, socks, and gloves into his arms, Knuckles eased indoors and plodded noiselessly across the floor. His bare feet were heavy on the cool tile. He heard soft, friendly laughter from the Lord of Donuts and Pretzel Woman in the kitchen. Ceramic clinks and metallic clatters led the echidna to guess that they were preparing the evening meal. As he entered the living room, he noticed the hedgehog curled up on the couch with the wolf. When Knuckles passed through, the hedgehog’s eyes opened and he stared at Knuckles. Knuckles stopped walking and stared back, purple meeting red.

The hedgehog looked clean. That was different, but it was certainly a good thing. Knuckles nodded at the hedgehog then continued on his way to the bathroom. Soon Knuckles too would be clean, and he could join the hedgehog on the opposite end of the couch.

The echidna warrior discarded his soiled clothing and footwear in a pile by the bathroom door, then he entered and shut the door behind him.

There were black quills in the little trashcan by the toilet. He reached a hand in and picked one up. Red-orange hummed in the hard, skinny thing, and Knuckles’s red-white crackled back at it. The fire embedded in his bones huffed, shifting as a little of the hedgehog’s excess energy surfaced in the quill.

Knuckles dropped the quill back in among the used tissues and toilet paper tubes.

He pulled the shower curtain closed and carefully cranked the shower handle (he didn’t want to accidentally pull it off again). There were towels under the sink, so he got one out and put it on the closed toilet seat. A second, coarser towel was spread on the floor so that when he got out of the shower, the floor wouldn’t get wet. Tiny bits of dirt were on the ground now, having fallen from his fur without his noticing.

Knuckles climbed over the shower ledge and into the downpour. The controlled rainfall within his roofed home never ceased to delight a smaller, younger part of him. He closed his eyes and tilted his face up into it, enough to drench him entirely but not enough to pour down his nose.

A little later he turned the flow off, feeling wet but pleasantly dirt free. Before becoming a member of the Wachowski tribe, he did not often have the pleasure of total cleanliness. But here, consistent hygiene was practically required. While Knuckles did not exactly believe that he would be punished for refusing to bathe as frequently, it would certainly displease the Lord of Donuts and Pretzel Woman and he did not want to be the cause of such feelings. They had given him so much, and he would seize every presented chance to return their kindness.

Knuckles returned the bathroom to its former undisturbed state and exited. He was surprised to find that his gloves and socks had vanished from where they were previously discarded by the door, but his shoes were unmoved. 

He shuffled out into the living room and saw the hedgehog still resting with the wolf. The hedgehog’s eyes opened immediately as Knuckles neared.

“Greetings, hedgehog,” he began. The hedgehog had been nearest to the bathroom while Knuckles had been otherwise occupied, so he assumed that he would be the one most likely to have seen what happened to his gloves and socks. “Someone has taken my clothing. Have you perhaps seen-”

The hedgehog interrupted, seeming tired and perhaps wanted Knuckles to go away. “Maddie.”

“I do not understand.”

“I saw her walk by with a set of socks and gloves with spikes on them. I assume they were yours.”

“Ah! Yes, thank you, hedgehog. Your assistance is much appreciated.” With that, Knuckles turned and strode off to find Pretzel Woman.

He checked the kitchen first, recalling hearing her and the Lord of Donuts preparing the evening meal earlier. Aha! There she was!

“Greetings, Pretzel Woman!”

She turned to him with a smile, and he saw that she was holding a prepared plate of mashed potatoes, beans, and some manner of casserole in each hand. Was she taking them to the table for the evening meal?

He asked the question, and she nodded. “Well then, I shall assist you!” Knuckles proclaimed, holding his hands up to her to take the plates of food. He could ask about his clothes after he helped her.

“Why thank you, Knuckles,” she said, willing to be relieved of her burden. The plates were transferred to his raised hands. “Those two are for Sonic and Tom.”

“I shall return momentarily!” he assured her, striding to the dining room and putting each plate at its predetermined setting. He found the Lord of Donuts already at the table, distributing silverware. True to his word, Knuckles returned to the kitchen immediately after and helped transfer each and every plate. Only after that was done did he say:

“I have an inquiry.”

Pretzel Woman slid the casserole dish back into the oven to keep warm, then knelt. “Shoot.”

Knuckles shot. (Metaphorically.) “My socks and gloves were removed from where I left them as I bathed. I asked the hedgehog, and he informed me that you relocated them. May I have them back?”

“Oh of course, honey,” she said, surprised but smiling in her wonderful way. “I put your stuff in the wash that way it would be clean for when you came out. It’s all in the dryer right now, but it’ll be done soon.”

What a kind thing Pretzel Woman had done for him! The novelty of machines of washing and drying were yet another delight to Knuckles, and it was easy to forget that such conveniences were available to him.

“You have my thanks,” he said, returning her smile as genuinely and with as much warmth as he could possibly convey.

“Of course, kiddo,” she said softly. She held her arms out a little bit, and Knuckles eagerly stepped into the embrace.

Such displays of affection were more than a gift to Knuckles. It was a treasure, and he valued every moment with his entire being. She squeezed him gently, like Knuckles was something she treasured as much as he treasured her back. It made his heart feel warm and full.

The embrace ended slowly, and when Pretzel Woman stood up, she assured him that the dryer’s beep should notify him of when his clothing was done.

Knuckles had more socks upstairs of course, but what he truly wanted was his gloves. They were of great value to him, but he could certainly wait a little longer.

“What do you say we go check on Shadow and see if he’s hungry?” Pretzel Woman asked.

Knuckles nodded and followed her to the living room.

The hedgehog was still resting with the wolf but seemed fully awake now. It was then that Knuckles recalled how he had hoped to rest on the couch after he was clean, but it was too late for that now. The evening meal was prepared, and the Wachowski tribe’s custom was that the evening meal was a time to gather and enjoy one another’s presence.

He briefly wondered if Shadow was going to be another constant occupant at the evening table.

“Hey, honey,” Pretzel Woman said as she knelt before the hedgehog. “How’re you feeling?”

“I like the dog a lot,” the hedgehog said softly, eyeing Knuckles for only a moment before focusing fully on Pretzel Woman.

“That’s good,” she said, matching his volume and smiling gently. “I’m sure Ozzy loves having your company. How’s your wrist doing?”

The hedgehog’s eyes were round and solemn as he replied, “I feel… good.” He tentatively held his right arm out to her and rotated it slowly. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Well of course it didn’t. “Certainly,” Knuckles said. Two sets of eyes fastened onto him. It gave Knuckles pause, but he pushed on. “Such is the nature of the hedgehog’s energy. It heals.” Surely they knew this. There was an echidna in Knuckles’ old tribe that had such a gift through his chaos energy, so it wasn’t anything especially unusual. “Chaos energy manifests itself differently in different people, and the hedgehog’s has the capability to mend and sustain. That is likely why he was able to live so long without proper nourishment until he came to us for assistance.”

The hedgehog seemed to be searching Knuckles’s face, but Knuckles didn’t know what he was looking for. “How-” The hedgehog began but didn’t seem to know how to proceed. “The scientists said that my power could be used as a form of hyper-powerful electricity. They didn’t mention any manner of healing properties.”

“It seems they did not realize the full potential of your power, hedgehog,” Knuckles said, internally amused and disgusted by the fleeting image of many men in white coats electrocuting an injured person to see if it would bring healing. “However, I can assure you that I am familiar with energy such as yours. You could have learned much from my old tribe. I remember a man with such abilities, and he was a powerful warrior revered for his prowess in battle and respected by the many he returned from certain death.”

It was like Knuckles had told the hedgehog something shocking, wonderful, and horrifying all at once. His dark face seemed unfocused and in deep thought.

Pretzel Woman spoke up quickly. “Now that, that is amazing. How about we discuss it after dinner and give you some time to think about it. Is that okay with you, Shadow?”

The hedgehog nodded mutely, then slid off the couch.

The wolf yawned, then followed the hedgehog as Pretzel Woman led the hedgehog to the dining room. Knuckles followed them all and wondered if this evening meal would be much different from the others.