Chapter Text
Sonic was sitting on the roof of the newly fixed Wachowski house staring at the moon. The blue blur enjoyed the nightly breeze in his quills as he just looked up at the sky with both disappointment and some sadness. If only he’d just lasted a bit longer as super then maybe, Just maybe! Shadow would still be alive living with them. They’d all be one big happy family.
The Idea of Shadow living with them put a smile on the hedgehog's face. He can imagine how cramped the attic would be adding another child and it made him giggle. Shadow’s face would be angry at having to share such a small space with him and the other two. The fighting that would ensue between Shadow and Knuckles would have almost definitely put Maddie and Tom into debt. Sonic sighed. The idea was never going to happen. Shadow was gone now and it was all Sonic’s fault.
After looking at the stars for what seemed like an eternity, The tired hedgehog finally headed off to bed. Morning rolled around and Sonic was licked awake by Ozzy as usual. Knuckles had been awake for hours Training, for what? No clue? And Tails was up fast(probably excited about the new thing he was inventing and wanting to get to it fast).
Sonic grumbled and sat awake. The constant late nights were starting to catch up with him. After finally finding the motivation, he managed to drag himself outta bed and downstairs for breakfast.
“Hey bud, how are you doing?” Tom asked, sitting on the couch. His arm was in a cast and his ribs were still bruised but he was doing better since the accident(though Tom was still a little salty about the attack).
Sonic stretched to wake himself up just enough to seem normal. “Great, now what's for breakfast?” he quickly sped over to the kitchen where Knuckles and Maddie had just started cooking. Knuckles was a surprisingly good cook for some reason.
“Eggs, french toast, and some grapes,” Maddie explained. Her and Knuckles had matching aprons that Maddie had made for them. Cooking was their mother-Alien son thing, Also it helped keep Knuckles from destroying property.
Sonic nodded and somehow managed to sneak some caffeine into his decaf coffee, then sat down by Tails who was tweaking something at the table.
“Whatcha workin on?” The hedgehog asked, startling the little fox.
“Well since I was so easily able to hack into their system's, GUN wanted to see if I'd make the digital defenses stronger so something like what happened a few months ago doesn't happen again,” The two-tailed fox hadn't even looked up at Sonic, being that he was really focused on what he was doing.
Sonic nodded in acknowledgement. Tom joined the rest in the kitchen and breakfast was served.
Breakfast was as eventful as usual, it took almost grounding Tails to put down his lap-top and Maddie and Knuckles got much praise for the taste of their food (which made knuckles ego a bit inflated). After breakfast people started to leave the table. The first to leave was Tails. The little fox had his own little lab area attached to the shack(because Maddie still wanted the storage space). Next, Knuckles Went to drag Wade somewhere to meditate and train. Lastly Sonic excused himself from the table and went for his morning (to sometimes afternoon)run.
The run was accompanied by some headphones because background noise was always nice on a quiet run or for anytime of the day. Tails always scolded Sonic for how much he listened to music, Always telling him how he’ll go deaf if he keeps blasting music in his eardrums. Sonic chuckled at the foxes warnings. I mean it’s not like he listened to music when talking to people or when he was by water so his ears got a break every once and awhile.
While Trapped in thought and running just slow enough he didn’t break the sound barrier Sonic gets pulled away from his own little world and ends up getting a mouth-full of dirt as his face skids across the ground.
“Plet! Plet! Gross!” He grumbles out loud as he wipes the dirt off his face. “What the heck did I even trip over?!” The annoyed hedgehog looks over and sees something just barley shining out of the ground. It’s golden and sparkles almost like Amy's bracelets. Is it possible she accidentally left one here? She had only been here for a short time to help with the cosplay issue. It is possible that they were lost, but then again, he remembers her leaving with both on.
After recovering from the damage that hard fall did to his face Sonic crawled over to the gold thing and with a small tug attempted to get it out. He failed because the thing was stuck in there pretty hard. It must have been there awhile. He tugged harder and it finally popped out of the earth. The hedgehog grumbled with slight annoyance as he tugged it out then he began to inspect it. He wiped off some remaining dirt and after closer examination it seemed to be one of the bracelets Shadow was wearing when they first met and it was one of the ones he clipped off when he turned super. Sonic was mesmerized by it and decided to shove it into his quills for safe keeping. It’s not like Shadow would mind, he’s dead.
Sonic cut his run a little short and headed home. When he arrived home Maddie had gone to work, Knuckles was still gone and he had seen Tails in his little lab testing new stuff for Tom’s arm with Tom. He ran upstairs to his and the others room then shoved the shiny golden bracelet into his junk drawer and for extra precaution he buried it under stuff since his brothers (mostly Tails), liked looking through his stuff in search of parts.
Sonic had come back downstairs to see Tom and Tails were back in the living room.
“That was quick,” The blue blur looked at the two curiously.
Tails looked at him and nodded, “Yeah we saw you were home and decided to put a pause on the experiments. Plus Tom needed a break.”
Sonic Smiled and jumped onto the couch in between them(luckily not smashing Tom's arm). “What are you guys watching?” He looked up to see Bluey, Tails's latest favorite show and if you ever said anything about his favorite show then get ready for him to argue why it deserves it the #1 spot on disney plus. Maddie and Tom also seemed highly infatuated with it. Sonic and Knuckles didn't see the appeal but they would sit down and watch it not wanting to hear Tails' hour-long rants about why it's the greatest show ever.
After some time Knuckles arrived home and Tom decided he and Knuckles were going to have dinner ready before Maddie got home. That left Tails and Sonic binging more Bluey. When Maddie walked through the door Sonic was woken up from his boredom sleep. A sleep he often did whenever he wanted to get past something long. kinda like a power nap. Dinner was being finished up and was about to be served.
Tails and Sonic helped set the table and Dinner was as lively as breakfast (lunch is often skipped by most of everyone except for Knuckles and Maddie). They all talked about their days one at a Time. Maddie talked about the animals that she got to nurse back to health, Knuckles Talked about his and Wades ‘beating of the Susie on the battlefield’ which recently he learned ment get completely and utterly humiliated by a 9 year old child at bowling(and normally ended with Wade close to tears), And Tom and Tails talked about their day of being the scientist and patient then Tails continued nit-picking Bluey like he was Matpat. It was both annoying and adorable.
After Dinner everyone who didn’t cook helped clean up the kitchen, then they all took spots in the living room (Three of them had to sit on the floor because Ozzy was taking up almost the entire couch), and they finally got to choose a different movie, which? was of course the family favorite, Speed.
The movie credits rolled around and Knuckles Carried the sleeping fox up to their room. The echidna then went to his own bed and fell asleep.
After Sonic was absolutely sure everyone was asleep the hedgehog went on the roof to stare up at the stars. Of course he grabbed the newly acquired Shadow collectable and brought it up to the roof with him. Staring up at the moon he felt this weird urge to run. Normally he'd never run when he was on the roof, he'd risk waking Knuckles with his oddly good hearing. Tonight though, Tonight felt different. It felt like if he'd left he'd be safe from the wrath of a worried family. In a burst of confidence and a sudden stupid Idea he put the Shadow collectable into his quills then pushed off the roof into a nearby tree. Sonic barely made it onto the thick branch and scratched his arm slightly in the process, but he made it. The hedgehog climbed down the tree and then started to run to who knows where? He was just running with no destination in mind; the blur just felt as though he had to run. Like if he didn’t run he would explode.
So focused on the run at hand and whatever his brain was thinking Sonic fell into a familiar hole in the ground, His old cave! After dusting himself off he looked around his cave. Before even getting a full look he saw the painting on the wall he'd done one his first day on earth and he smiled slightly. It was both a painful reminder of his lost family and a fond memory of the day he found out Donut lord and Pretzel lady existed. Sonic didn't get to think of that memory for long though because he was promptly shoved against a wall and began to be choked by someone he thought he'd never see again.
“S-Shado- Ehg!” Shadow's grip tightened as Sonic began to speak his name. “What do you want, hedgehog !” Shadow's voice was laced with a thick defensive venom.
Sonic put his hands up in surrender and Shadow let his grip off Blue just enough so he could breath. “Shadow! You're alive!” Sonic grinned which annoyed the ebony hedgehog slightly.
“Of course I am?” He rolled his eyes and let go, realizing Sonic wasn't a threat, “I am the ultimate life form!”
The blue blur looked Shadow up and down, making sure the other was real, and noticed his arm was missing a bracelet. “Oh, wait! I have something for you!” He dug around his quills for a moment then pulled out Shadow's cool bracelet, “I have your bracelet!”
“Inhibitor ring,” Shadow grumbled, snatching the ring from a grinning blue.
“Yeah inhbb- inhibb- INHBB- ok I'm not saying that.” Shadow gave a slight grunt to that. “So wait, Where have you been first off, second off are you living here?” Sonic finally got a full view of his cave and it looked…Cleaner than last time.
Shadow scowled, “Why would I tell you that?!”
“Because I've been worried about you!” Shadow's ears perked up and for a moment a hint of surprise crossed his face but then it disappeared. “You don't need to worry about me, hedgehog. I'm the ultimate life form, I was built to withstand anything,” Shadow's tone was bitter and annoyed.
“Well unfortunately for you I care enough about you as my friend to not want to abandon you out in the woods so why don't you just-” Sonic tried to grab Shadow's arm but failed, not expecting him to teleport, and lost his balance. He face planted for the second time today! and got another mouth full of dirt.
Once he sat back up and looked around, Shadow was gone. “Great now how am I going to track him down!” Sonic complained out loud. He decided to go home and try again tomorrow, it was already getting a little late anyways.
Sonic arrived home and snuck back into the window onto his bed and fell asleep.
The next morning at breakfast he was woken by his morning Ozzy kisses and then struggled to get up. He trudged his way downstairs for breakfast. It was surprisingly only Knuckles cooking this time with his little apron that said ‘1000% muscle!’ in huge letters and in tiny letters ‘10% chef.’
“What's for breakfast, Knucks?” Sonic asked.
“We are having the pancakes with toppings of your choice!” The echidna said pridefully.
Sonic grinned and nodded then he went over to sneak some caffeine into his coffee. He wondered if Shadow might like some pancakes. Maybe he'd bring some after breakfast.
“Hey can I take some for my run after breakfast? as a snack?” to be fair this statement had only been a partial lie. He did in fact like having snacks on his runs; he normally just didn’t voice it.
Knuckle's nodded and signaled over to Tails, “Now help the fox set the table.”
After the very delicious and not at all nutritious breakfast Sonic grabbed a small container of pancakes and a small bottle of water then ran back over to the cave. He had no idea if Shadow would still be there or if he would move but part of him hoped that Shadow would stay (especially since these pancakes were really good).
Once at the cave Sonic looked around and spotted the red of the hedgehog curled up in a corner asleep. He looked peaceful. Sonic smiled and just set the food and water right above his head then sat in front of him and watched him sleep for a moment.
Just as Sonic was about to stand up to walk away his arm got grabbed and Shadow was talking in his sleep. “Maria, Don't leave,” The ebony hedgehog mumbled and with surprising strength he pulled down Sonic and snuggled up against Sonic's back. When the now embarrassed blue hedgehog would try to pull away Shadow's grip would just tighten around him so the blur decided he would just stay until Shadow woke up.