Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He’d been right next to her. Right next to her. And yet only Maria ended up dead.

Even thinking about it years later, all Shadow could think of was how? Had it been his quills? His abilities? Pure luck– or, perhaps, a lack of luck? A cruel trick of the universe?

Did it even really matter anymore? Shadow personally didn’t think so – nothing mattered at all now. Even as he kept his eyes on Maria’s lifeless face, her once-beautiful hair splayed beneath her, filthy with dirt and soot and broken glass.

He didn’t even notice as the G.U.N. soldiers slowly edged in on them. Even a child’s death couldn’t delay these monsters' goals; no wonder the Professor had complained of them as he tested on Shadow. The two often spoke on important matters between themselves, to test Shadow’s emotional intelligence. Everything from a strange Russian novel about men and women called Anna Karenina to a singer Maria loved called Albert Hammond who sang about success and fame.

“No, no, get off me.”

Shadow thought he heard the Professor speak from somewhere far, far away, his words distant fuzzy as ringing took their place in Shadow’s head. He saw the G.U.N. soldiers grabbing the man opposite him, shoving handcuffs on him as two others restrained him despite his attempts to remain close to his granddaughter.

Smoke burnt around the hedgehog, who grabbed at Maria’s ashy arms desperately. He couldn’t leave her – she needed a doctor; someone to help her. Why could they not see this? Shadow tried to tell the closest G.U.N. soldier, a dark-skinned man who had wide, horrified eyes as he stared at Maria on the floor, broken glass and bits of burnt machinery around her limp body. The words wouldn’t leave his mouth, and his throat felt heavy.

A hand grabbed Shadow’s filthy forearm, and Shadow snapped out of his daze. He spun round and bit wildly, his mouth getting a taste of dust and cloth as his teeth sunk in. He’d bitten a scientist once before – Dr. Ramirez, the kindly woman who had simply pulled a wrong quill on Shadow’s first day at the lab – and had regretted it almost immediately after when he saw pain flash across her face. But this person wasn’t a scientist. This person had helped murder– hurt Maria.

“Get off me, alien freak,” hissed a blurry voice that was tinged with a tad of pain, and Shadow felt the arm he had bitten shake, so he assumed it was the same person. His teeth remained dug into the human’s sleeve, and he felt wet blood well up in his mouth beneath it. But Shadow did not – he could not let this monster take him from his Maria.

And yet his senses were soon overcrowded. As the G.U.N. soldiers pulled the Professor away from the pair, Shadow felt a sudden yet distinct pain on his back, like a quill had just been pulled. No one else seemed to notice, however, so he deemed it unworthy of his time. It was only when yet another human grabbed him did Shadow finally snap out of it.

Maria…oh. Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no.

His world cracked like shards of glass, right down the middle, shattering everything he knew into a million tiny pieces. Before the hedgehog even knew it, red electricity had sparked up on his quills, and he blasted the two G.U.N. soldiers away from him. The response was immediate; they raised their weapons to him, those pointed guns that had shot the container and caused that energy to explode that had murdered –

“Shadow!”

It was Captain Walters, stood across the room, his kind, handsome face twisted in a mixture of grief, fury and yet perseverance as ash stained his face and clothes.

“Shadow, stand down, please! Just stand down, and– and we’ll figure out what to do next, together!”

But Shadow was done listening. Perhaps in a past time – the Shadow who had looked up at the stars with Maria, the Shadow who had stood still for hours while she painted a messy yet perfect picture of him to giggle at later, the Shadow who had helped her catch the butterflies that sometimes got into the lab and release them back outside – would have listened. Maybe he would have stood down, and sat with Captain Walters, and spoken through the lump of grief in his throat.

And yet this Shadow would not. Instead, he clenched his fists, his eyes glowing a fierce colour that made even the bravest, most hardened soldiers step back from this force of chaos cautiously. Wildly, he slammed his fist into the ground, and let screeched. He screeched for Maria, for her stolen, innocent life. For the unlived moments, the hopes and dreams they had spoken of in her blanket fort, when Maria was meant to be asleep and Shadow back in his lab container.

Years later, Shadow would not know how it happened. Did not know how, as everyone else dealt with the aftermath of Shadow’s mini earthquake, he had somehow managed to get himself out of the destroyed lab. Had his legs done it? They must have. Yet Shadow could not feel any tiredness in them; perhaps pure energy alone had carried them, or locked out any pain he may feel.

Did it matter, really, in the end? No. All that mattered was, somehow, Shadow found himself out the lab, away from the military vehicles they had brought, even the one that had brought just for the three of them to escape in.

Only halfway across the country, drenched, cold, and in pure, numb shock, did Shadow manage to stop himself. He collapsed headfirst in a puddle of filthy water, feeling his quills dampen unpleasantly. But he couldn’t focus on that. His gloved hands scrambled at something, anything, to keep him grounded. Keep him here, right here. All he could find, other than the same dirty liquid, was mud and pebbles that felt more like bird crumbs as his fingers brushed them weakly.

Shadow finally found the strength to open his eyes, face inches from the water surface, and was both horrified and relieved to discover he had been holding tears in with them. He choked on them, before allowing them to fall freely down his already wet, ashed-up face. It was almost nice – like when Maria had given him his first bath ever, yet now the water was cold and she wasn’t here.

I was right next to her. Why her? Why not me? I was next to her – I should have- could have –

All Shadow could do was wail weakly. He didn’t want G.U.N. to find him, or any other human for that matter, but it felt like he had swallowed and held in those wails and moans and sobs and groans and tears for centuries, for all the fierceness they fell, plopping into the water below and around him dimly. Oh, this injustice. Oh, this unfairness. Oh, pure, evil cruelness.

He had only felt Maria. Felt her as she brushed against him, sucking in a sharp, terrified breath as the energy containers splintered and crackled seconds before they exploded. Had she only felt him, or her grandfather as well? Maria’s hand had been clenched in the Professor’s as well as his own, so in some twisted, dark way, her last moments she had known only comfort from those who loved her the most.

Yet was it comfort for Shadow, as he hunched in the shallow water, weeping for her? Was it any sort of comfort as his fury creates a shockwave, small rifts opening up in the earth from his pure, utter, raw grief?

Perhaps not. But she had felt him. And Shadow could still feel her – a piece of sweetness stirred just right with fear.

Still feel her. Her warmth

Chapter Text

For the rest of the night, Shadow travelled north west. He had no idea why he went that particular direction, and he didn’t even really acknowledge that he had. He simply went.

His mind was a maze of everything he had always felt, yet amplified to be worse. So much worse. Maria was dead. The thought felt poisonous and wrong, yet it was true. Horribly, unfairly true. And now she was nothing more than a casualty to G.U.N., the organization that had snuffed out the innocent flame of her life.

A casualty. The very idea that Maria was nothing more than a number, a statistic, infuriated Shadow beyond anything else. His Maria, the kind-hearted mischief-maker, a number in G.U.N.’s files.

“Humankind is an interesting concept, isn’t it, Shadow? I hope someday to perfect it. Make it beautiful. You can help us.”

The Professor had spoken those words to him during one of their late-night experimentation sessions while Maria slept soundly down the hall. Shadow thought highly of the man; he indulged and adored his beloved granddaughter while treating Shadow like his own son, and all he wanted to do was help humanity and the Earth. He had even made promises of allowing Maria to take him to all the places the pair wanted to visit, when Shadow was eventually trusted to be out of the lab.

Yet he had been foolish, the hedgehog now realised. All his talk on humanity and morals had led to Maria’s death by the very humans he spoke so highly of.

But…that wasn’t exactly true. The soldier hadn’t shot Maria herself; the bullet had hit containers of…Shadow’s energy. Shadow’s own energy that had been collected for experimentational purposes, to see what power currents it could sustain.

Shadow’s energy Shadow had killed her. He had killed Maria, heard her scream as the flames went up and smoke choked Shadow’s lungs. Had Maria’s last moments been on smoke filling her mouth and eyes, betrayal stabbing into her? Had she blamed him? Did the Professor blame him? Shadow wouldn’t blame him if he did – he could hardly stop the feelings of guilt that swelled in his own stomach and mind now.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered faintly into the air. He didn’t know what he was specifically apologising for; bringing G.U.N. right to their doorstep? Giving up his energy that killed Maria? Landing on Earth at all, even though he’d had no control over it? “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

But words and tears wouldn’t fix anything. They wouldn’t resurrect the innocent girl Shadow had murdered. He still remembered how the Professor had brushed aside the tears that dripped down his face during a blood extraction, soothing him in a way that felt more patronizing than anything.

Shadow continued travelling north west.

***

He must have eventually passed out, for the next morning Shadow awoke to find himself on the top of a mountain in a landscape he hadn’t ever seen before.

Initially, he scrambled to feel Maria’s sleeping bag beside him, wondering why his own blankets fell so hard and scraggled and why wind rushed past his quilled ears. And when his hands felt nothing, Shadow couldn’t find the energy to get up. He buried his face in his left arm, right arm tossed over his face.

What was he meant to do? Where was he meant to go? He couldn’t ever bring himself to go home – it wasn’t even home anymore. G.U.N. had stolen everything from him, including his home. And the Professor had been taken somewhere unknown – prison, perhaps? Even if Shadow knew where he was and managed to break him out, the two could do nothing. They’d just be two freshly grieving souls, both blaming Shadow for Maria’s death.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there. Minutes, maybe, or possibly days. Shadow had learned to steel himself against the cold long ago – sometimes he would be put into these things called ‘sensory deprivation’ tanks to see what would happen if he tried to use his abilities in them, and they were always chilly and sometimes made him vomit afterwards. But this was a different kind of cold: an empty, dark, foreboding sense of coldness that washed over him, consuming him like an unforgiving cocoon.

As much as Shadow would have liked to lie there forever, he eventually forced himself to move. He stumbled to his feet, which were as shaky as a newborn fawn’s, and peered out to study where he was.

The mountain seemed to hang over a vast forest. There were multiple cliffs and stone mounds in the uneven terrain, and even a massive lake with a wooden dock protruding into it. Shadow hardened a little – if there were buildings, that must mean humans were close by. And humans, he had silently resolved, were to be avoided at all costs. But the forest itself seemed mostly undisturbed, and perhaps the dock had been built years ago.

Moving slowly, so as not to attract any unnecessary attraction or cause an accident, Shadow moved down from the steep mountain, aiming for the shelter of the trees. The entire landscape smelt so strange – in the lab, everything was sterile and metallic. But here, everything was so…earthy.

Maria had shown him books of different plants, either in books or old documentaries she had saved the tapes to. Oak, willow, maple (Maria loved that one specifically because she adored syrup on her pancakes), sycamore, evergreens…the fact there were names for various trees but not for him both puzzled and disappointed Shadow.

A loud, sudden buzzing above alerted Shadow to retreat under an evergreen, hugging the bark tightly to his face as a caterpillar crawled by, unbothered. There was a helicopter far above him, but a red-and-black hedgehog would probably stand out in an ocean of green. Shadow sucked in a sharp breath and waited until it passed.

As it did, Shadow recognised the large black words printed on the side of it:

GUARDIAN UNITS OF NATIONS (G.U.N.)

His grip tightened on the bark, orangish-red electricity sparking at his fingertips and blazing his eyes. He had fled what he guessed miles across Earth, and yet these blasted government agents pursued him still. What had the Professor seen in them to trust them with funding his research?

Even minutes after the helicopter moved on, Shadow remained tucked against the bark. He felt tears of frustration and grief fighting to spill down his face, but he forced himself not to.

Instead, he kept moving. Perhaps there would be something to eat here. Shadow had been fed regular food, like hotdogs and oddly shaped snacks called tacos, but there would be nothing like that out here. According to Maria, regular hedgehogs ate small bugs and insects, but he wasn’t a regular hedgehog, and the idea of eating snails didn’t sound too appealing — Maria had laughed herself silly when Shadow tried eating a worm and gagged it out.

Stop. Stop thinking about her. You’re making it worse.

His answer came in the form of a berry bush sprouted near the lake he had seen up in the mountain. It had small, squishy blue berries on it. Maria had– some people in the lab had eaten them as quick snacks. Shadow sniffed one cautiously before picking it and popping it in his mouth, blue juice staining his white gloves. It tasted…alright. There were worse things he’d eaten, but Shadow couldn’t imagine living on a diet of these for the rest of his days.

Despite his reservations, the hedgehog ended up eating the rest of the berries. He was starving, having not eaten or drunk since yesterday afternoon, and that was the same reason he dunked his head under the lake surface after eating all the berries on the bush, grateful for the water that filled his mouth and nose. Maybe if he sat here long enough, head under the water–

When he gagged, Shadow rose to his feet, shaking water off his face and quills and rubbing his eyes weakly. A long, cracking sigh slipped from his mouth, drawing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs, a myriad of thoughts racing through his exhausted mind to win his attention. He could go anywhere – he wouldn’t stay here, in this strange forest in the middle of nowhere. He’d find what to do.

A loud, sharp noise cut through his mind like a butter knife, and Shadow got up immediately. Another helicopter? G.U.N. agents? A human? A wild animal? The sound came again…and it was a laugh, followed by many cheers and whoops by louder, older voices. A fierce, childish laugh from perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Shadow teleported over to where he’d heard the noise, the energy in his hands crackling and spitting a bit. He took care to teleport into bushes, unable to be detected by anyone who may be there, before peering out cautiously, absorbing everything in front of him like a sponge.

It was an oddly shaped field. A pinkish stone track had been made into a square, with white squares on it and a singular pink square in the center. Large metal, silver structures were to the right side, and there were…humans. Instinctively, Shadow backed into the bushes, quills rising as energy thrummed beneath him.

But the humans didn’t look threatening. There were young ones, maybe around Maria– her age, though they were all boys. They wore large hats and had massive sticks, sometimes they were hitting balls that the others threw. Adults stood off to the side, cheering at uncertain times, usually when children made strikes.

Hadn’t the Professor said humanity was intelligent? Could they really find nothing more entertaining than having children hit balls with sticks? Shadow would have felt disappointed if he wasn’t more curious about the ‘game’; perhaps it was like rollerskating, where it was more about having fun than winning.

“You look so funny wearing rollerskates, Shadow…c’mon, I wanna show you how to bunny hop.”

Maria–

As quick as a lightning bolt, Shadow whirled round and raced across the air, not caring for any stray energy he may let out. Harsh pants escaped his mouth, and it felt like his lungs were sealing over as he felt his shoulders shake from emotions. He was going so, so, so fast, Shadow feared he might cause the Earth to blow up should he stop at all, not even caring as he scaled a smaller mountain in seconds.

MariaohnoMariarollerskatingdancingnonononononoImissyouplease–

“AGH!”

Was all Shadow screamed as he suddenly fell, headfirst, right through a hole in the ground. A few roots and branches were pushed out of the way, knotting onto his face and around his ears like a muzzle as he fell flat on his face. His hands scrambled to pull them off, but they simply disintegrated from the energy that remained on them that was now slowly dying.

Shadow was in a cave. Not a creepy one, like what Dracula’s castle looked like from a movie he had watched, but just an undiscovered one. Roots were hanging out the top, presumably from trees above it, and soil was packed everywhere. The only light was from the hole above, which emitted a thin beam of sunlight.

Staggering to his feet, the hedgehog fumbled to the side, setting a hand over his chest, feeling his thumping heart as his head rested weakly on his shoulder, eyes barely cracked open from exhaustion as they surveyed his new shelter.

He’d keep moving. Soon.

***

Thirty-nine years later, Shadow would have to confess he most certainly had not moved.

He simply hadn’t had the energy for it. His mind was a mess, even over a decade later – thoughts dilated constantly, never being able to focus on more than one thing, always as heavy as the boulders Shadow could usually lift without breaking a single sweat. It's not like he had anywhere to go, so why should he bother trying to move?

The little cave had become his home. He’d cleaned away all the dirt and roots and rocks of the hollow underground space, leaving only a dusty cave that Shadow called his own. A pile of musty, torn blankets that he’d found in a tipped over trash can served as his bed, and he’d similarly found an old armchair seat without the legs that he used as a chair. They were the only things he kept as ‘furniture’.

Shadow himself had adapted to becoming nocturnal, in a sense. He almost never left the cave during the day, and if he did it was never for more than half an hour. G.U.N. had probably stopped looking for him years ago, either assuming he’d died some way or deciding not to waste anymore resources on finding him. But it wasn’t even about that; Shadow simply couldn’t bring himself to be around anyone else, even the creatures of the wilderness, certainly not humans, who would just scream and run away, or try and dissect him like some sort of common lab rat. He stole thrown-away food from human trash or food carts when they were shut down at night, often surviving a week on old Chinese takeaway or chili dogs alongside half-filled Coke bottles to drink and then chew into shreds. Sometimes Shadow didn’t eat at all, instead just curling up on his blankets and thinking numbly until he either passed out or hit something, usually himself, in frustration.

His thoughts went round and round in circles every night as his fists clenched at his blankets, quills flaring up with his energy as fury, grief, anger, hatred…all of his fiercest emotions mixing together to tear his mind down, and Shadow let them. What else was he meant to think about whenever he couldn't sleep, which was most nights?

One such night, however, Shadow brought himself out of his cave for the first time in a month. He’d run out of old, powdery pasta and tasteless gatorade, but it was another night he simply couldn’t bring himself to eat. Instead, the hedgehog had decided to go digging around the junkyard to find another old blanket. He’d disintegrated another one due to a particularly bad energy spike.

He tossed an old wheel over his back as he dug through a stack. Humans really were so wasteful – most of this stuff was perfectly usable still. An old VCR, a rusted metal pole, six old car gears, a…a rollerskate…

Shadow paused as he saw the rollerskate. It had some faded, sparkly pony stickers on it, cracked silver and purple glitter that barely shone in the moonlight, only one wheel still attached, and mud coated it until you could only barely make out the original pink under. Weakly, he pressed his forehead against it, feeling its dead chill run through him.

It wasn’t hers. Wasn’t hers. Wasn’t hers.

Forget the blanket; the ground was more than comfortable. Shadow set the skate down with trembling hands, both wanting to never touch it again and to grip it forever. A shaky noise escaping his mouth, he just started the way back to his little underground cave. Another night of reflection ahead of him, it seemed.

However, fate apparently had other plans. Shadow was just crossing over a fallen pine tree when he saw it. A large, sudden blast of golden light below. Shadow’s eyes widened, and he summoned some energy into his hands defensively. If it was a trap, or some sort of trick…

As he neared, Shadow became dimly aware of voices. Or, more accurately, a single voice. Maternal, soothing, affectionate, yet pressed as she gave instructions to whoever was with her. A dull, whirring sound was coming from the golden glow.

Shadow peered down when he was close enough, remaining hidden from sight. The golden glow was coming from a massive ring that was in the air, and he stared at it in confusion. Through the ring was a green landscape…how was that even possible?

What was more shocking was when Shadow saw who the voice belonged to. A massive, towering female owl with turquoise eyes, wearing something over her chest, speaking hurriedly but lovingly to a…a…a hedgehog. Not a regular hedgehog. One like Shadow.

His defensive energy completely fizzled out as he sucked in a sharp, confused breath. He had assumed he was the only one like this, as had everyone else at home.

This hedgehog was only a child. No older than four or five, perhaps. His quills were a deep blue, like the still water of the lake that Shadow sometimes forced himself to bathe in every other month. He was also clutching something to his tiny chest, a small brown bag made of a strange material.

The owl shoved him through the golden ring, and the child ran forward hurriedly. However, he turned round, and his eyes – Shadow caught a quick view of them in the darkness, noticing how green they were – widened as he saw strange creatures racing towards the owl, which Shadow had also just noticed.

For a split second, he wondered if he should intervene. Before he could even consider the idea, the child raced forward, shouting.

“Longclaw!”

His voice was so horribly young, and it struck Shadow like a mallet as he watched the child race towards his…guardian? Certainly not his mother, but then again, Shadow’s family had been humans, so perhaps not too far off.

The owl said something faint that sounded like a farewell, glancing back once, eyes round with maternal affection towards her ward.

“NO!” screeched the child, racing back towards the golden ring. Shadow itched to race forward and stop him, but he had no need to; the ring faded just as the child tried to cross over, the bag forgotten on the ground as the child blinked dumbly at the dark forest in front of him, trembling like a newborn.

Unnoticed, Shadow slunk forward and picked up the bag, peering inside. Miniature gold rings, not unlike the massive one that had just served as a portal. In the back of his mind, he wondered if perhaps he’d come to Earth through a similar portal.

A gasp of sudden fear snapped Shadow out of it, and he looked back up, then down a little. The child had just noticed him, blinking fearfully at him as all his quills bushed up in an attempt to either scare him off or make himself appear bigger.

“...what’s your name, baby blue?”

Chapter Text

Getting the child back to the cave turned out to be the easiest part of the night. Sure, he immediately started stammering and pleading for Shadow not to take his powers (did he really look like he needed his power?), but one stern look later, the child was pacified – or perhaps just scared – enough to follow Shadow back to the cave without any further complaints.

The cave wasn’t exactly suited for children, but Shadow hadn’t had time to plan for guests, surprisingly enough. It was a chilly space, lit only by one of Shadow’s own quills that he had stuck into a little fishing wire from the wall, in an old plastic bottle thrown out by those wasteful, foolish humans. As Shadow dug through old roots and a few mounds of dirt he had neglected to clean up despite occupying the space for over two decades, he noticed the child giving the glowing plastic bottle a wide-eyed look of fascination. Had he not known there were others like him?

It seemed the two were equally enchanted by one another, both having assumed to be the only members of their kind. Wherever this little hedgehog had come from, had Shadow come from there too? The scientists at home had never been able to figure out where he had come from, to both their frustration and Shadow’s great disappointment.

Yet this child seemed to have a thousand unspoken questions. He seemed too petrified to speak, and hadn’t protested as Shadow wrapped him in one of the blankets he had. It was stained and thin, but considering it was either that or freeze, who was he to complain? He also didn’t complain as Shadow managed to dig up some weeks old noodles from a takeaway, still covered in those fancy spices and sauces that the humans always put on them; the closest that came to a complaint was the child wrinkling his small black nose and mumbling something about weird food on this new planet.

‘The child’...Shadow really had to find out the kid’s name. He at least had the courtesy to wait until he’d finished licking up the last of the noodles, which Shadow thought should at least be appreciated, given he hadn’t spoken to anyone other than himself in thirty-nine years. And even then, he didn’t seem to like himself very much when they did speak.

“...I asked your name, baby blue,” Shadow said after taking away the papery dish that the noodles had been on. It had some leftover sauce on it that would probably work for breakfast, if he found it himself to get up the next morning. “Do you have one?”

For a long moment, he feared the little blue hedgehog wouldn’t answer his repeated question. Little green eyes slipped to the ground beneath the two of them, and he clutched at the little brown bag he had demanded back from Shadow, to which the older hedgehog had indulged him. The golden rings inside meant nothing to him, after all, and he wasn’t about to deprive a child of something he very much needed, the same way he had been.

“...Sonic.”

Ah. There was the answer to his inquiry. ‘Sonic’...Shadow ran the name over in his mind a few times, testing it in a sense. He’d heard stranger names; Maria– a girl he knew had chosen his, and her grandfather had deemed it ‘perfect’ and officially named him that.

Testing the waters, Shadow probed further. Despite a fierce desire to be gentle to his new wayward caveman, he still asked, “Did– did your, uh, parents name you that?”

Sonic visibly flinched, as though stung by a wasp, and for a moment Shadow wondered if he’d have to think up an apology. Before he could even begin vocalising any words, a few tears rolled down Sonic’s pale muzzle and onto the dirt ground, and the smaller hedgehog managed to murmur out, “Don’t know my parents...only Longclaw.”

“The owl?” Shadow checked, a million questions running through him like a train; why was this hedgehog being looked after by an owl? Where was his family? His friends? Did he not have family or friends? Studying the little hedgehog like he held the answers to everything Shadow had always wanted to know about himself, he felt a rush of gratitude that he had stumbled across Sonic that particular night. “Was that Longclaw? Was she your caretaker? Your friend?”

Without answering a single question, Sonic burst into fierce tears, eyes like large, round tennis balls as waterfalls leaked out of them. Shadow stared at him awkwardly and silently, trying to work out how to tend to this wayward child. He’d experienced tears before, like that one time Maria– a friend had badly cut herself on the scissors, and tears himself, but never grieving sobs like these.

Eventually, Shadow reached over and patted Sonic’s head slowly, voice quietening down to what he desperately hoped was a soothing tone. “Hey, hey, baby blue, don’t…don’t cry, that’s not going to help anything here…just calm down, okay?”

For the next few minutes, the only sound in the cave was Sonic’s weak sobs. When patting didn’t work, Shadow scooped the kid up in his blanket and set him near the rock he was sitting on. Shadow froze when Sonic latched around his thin legs, weakly crying into the quills there. His ears were on either side of the appendage, bent and focused towards the ground. Shadow continued stroking him, alternating between the space between his tiny ears and the back of his head, where the quills were all pulled back, not unlike his own, but neater, in a way. Maybe he should consider doing that with his own quills.

To Shadow’s immense relief, Sonic eventually quietened down enough, and it was only when he went limp against both Shadow and the rock did he realise he’d sobbed himself into exhaustion and an uneasy sleep. Sighing, he scooped Sonic up by the blanket and set him on the second blanket. It was almost as old and ratty as the one Sonic had already been wrapped in, but at least it would offer some semblance of warmth for him. The kid needed it, after everything he’d gone through in just one night.

Often, Shadow caught himself wishing that someone had been there to wrap him in a blanket. The Professor, perhaps. Or just someone in general, to pick him up out of the deep, dark hole that Shadow still remained trapped in, even thirty-nine years after that night at the lab. He never thought about it now – what would be the point in causing himself further agony than he already constantly felt, day in and day out?

Back to the priorities. Now that Sonic wasn’t squirming around, Shadow got a better look at him. Cobalt quills, sandy face and belly, little brown shoes, one hanging off his foot from all the squirming he’d done on the way over. So very different from Shadow, with his black-and-red quills that buzzed with red energy when angry. Maybe Sonic’s buzzed with blue energy, assuming he had the same or similar powers to Shadow.

No use lying awake with Sonic passed out, Shadow thought after a moment. Leaving Sonic to curl up on the tattered blankets, Shadow himself got off the rock and lay on the chilly ground that Sonic had previously occupied, feeling a deep chill run through his quills all the way to his already long-frozen heart. The first other being he had spoken to in thirty-nine years, and it was a hedgehog who looked like he might be mistaken for a fluffy blue rock if he stayed still for long enough.

For the first time in nearly two weeks, Shadow almost immediately dropped into a somewhat easy sleep.

***

Waking up with his power still within him was a bonus, Sonic supposed, but he had no desire as he studied this strange hedgehog in front of him. Black, upward-facing quills, red markings, white fur near his neck, and strange golden rings around his wrists and ankles, like bigger versions of the tiny rings that Longclaw had given Sonic himself.

Longclaw.

A stab of longing shot through his tiny body. He couldn’t believe it – all because of him. If he hadn’t been running so fast to give her that stupid flower – if he had just listened to her for once, like she had pleaded and begged him to do…

I need to get home. To find Longclaw. Make sure she’s okay.

Right. That’s what Sonic needed to do. By now, Longclaw would have finished getting rid of the bad hunters, and she was probably waiting for him back home. The Bad Tribe, she’d called them one day in an attempt to teach Sonic about the dangers of overexerting his powers too much. But he hadn’t listened, and now Longclaw might be injured.

Or–

No. No…Sonic just had to get back home. But first he had to get out of the cave that the mean hedgehog had taken him to. He probably should have asked for his name last night, so he could tell Longclaw the name of the one who had kept him safe when she couldn’t.

Digging in the little bag she’d given him, Sonic took out one of the tiny gold rings. Okay, okay, how had Longclaw done it? Just throw it, maybe…think of where he wanted to go.

The first attempt didn’t go too well. He tossed the ring and it didn’t turn big or glow like it had last night; it just landed with a little ‘dink’ on the ground. Sonic turned fearfully back to the other hedgehog, who thankfully remained sleeping, head pressed against his arm like he was having a really bad headache. Like the ones Longclaw got whenever she ate too many toasted coconut bits, where her face feathers got all scrunched up and she had to curl up in her nest for a day afterwards.

Remembering the last time that had happened, a small smile almost came to Sonic’s tiny face. He squashed it down immediately, though, instead speeding over, getting the ring, and speeding back over.

Unfortunately, three more tries brought about the same results, all of which just brought the rings falling dully to the ground like gold coins. It was only after the fourth one did Sonic actually realise that the other hedgehog was awake, staring at him with dulled yet curious red eyes.

Squeaking like a newborn mouse, Sonic backed away from him. That, of all things, cracked a smile out of the other hedgehog. He sat up more, his eyes downcast as he studied Sonic like he was an interestingly-shaped plant.

“...don’t look so jumpy, baby blue,” he spoke, voice seemingly an attempt to sound reassuring but failing miserably. “You can throw your rings about. This space is a mess anyway.”

“If you try to take my power, I’ll electrocute you.” Sonic warned, voice cracking. He blinked, clutching his little bag to his chest, feeling even smaller than he usually did. A faint buzz alerted him to the fact that his quills had faintly turned a bright blue, electricity of the same shade appearing on them.

Another small, quick smile on this weird, faker hedgehog’s face. In an attempt to compete, almost, the older hedgehog shut his eyes, and some reddish-orange buzzed onto his own quills. All fear and caution was tossed to the side, and instantly Sonic’s eyes became wide pools of green curiosity and awe of this hedgehog who seemed to have the same powers as he did. He had never imagined there could be another. Longclaw had never mentioned anyone else who might have Sonic's powers.

Forgetting himself, Sonic set the bag and stepped closer, reaching a tiny hand out to brush against the older hedgehog’s quills. To his enormous disappointment, no sort of electric power channeled into his own fingertips. Pouting a tad, Sonic whined, “I can’t feel anything. I can only feel you.”

“...maybe that's not such a bad thing,” offered the other hedgehog with a shrug, looking supremely uncomfortable at the contact from Sonic. He stepped back, and the younger hedgehog became consciously aware of how strange it must be to just have someone touch your quills without even asking, and Sonic’s hand immediately removed itself from his quills.

Silence stretched between the two for a long, long moment, and it seemed both were waiting for the other to speak first.

“Do you have a name?” Sonic asked after the long moment was up, voice a little curious. Until he got his rings perfected, he wouldn’t be able to go home to Longclaw, so he wanted to know if this older hedgehog would let him crash at his for a little bit. To his relief, the older hedgehog nodded, though he seemed extremely hesitant.

“Yes, I– I do. It’s Shadow.”

Huh. Sonic and Shadow. Shadow and Sonic. S&S. No, that just sounded very, very, very weird, and Sonic didn’t dare vocalise it, in case it sounded even weirder put into words. Instead, he rocked back and forth on his feet, something Shadow watched blankly.

After another long moment, Sonic decided he might as well ask. “Can I stay here for a little, Shadow? Until I can go back home?”

Hearing that, a strange look came into Shadow’s gaze. Pity, perhaps, or even something Longclaw had called empathy when teaching Sonic to recognise good expressions from bad ones. Sonic felt an urge to ask Shadow why he felt pity or empathy, but he didn’t get the chance to.

“If you…if you want, baby blue, not too long. But don’t leave the cave – too dangerous out there. Bad humans.”

Not too long. That doesn’t sound too bad.

Only a day. One day. Then I’ll go back home.

Chapter Text

One day had soon turned into three days. No matter how Sonic tried to tell himself to leave, he just…couldn’t. Shadow was less scary than he’d initially thought – he didn’t take his power, for one, and mostly just left him to his own devices.

Such devices mainly consisted of Sonic trying to master how to use the rings. Longclaw had done it so smoothly, so calmly, so easily, that the tiny blue hedgehog almost envied her ability to do it as though it was nothing. She had had years of practice, granted, and Sonic had never even thought he’d need to use them. He wasn’t ever meant to leave home, and he didn’t want to; he liked the planet that was just his and Longclaw’s, and he didn’t want to leave, or stay on this strange, weird new planet that smelt like when he’d thrown up that one time.

“You gonna sleep or stare at the wall all evening, baby blue?” called Shadow. The larger, older hedgehog was curled on a little rock, a tattered blanket the only thing offering any semblance of warmth. Sonic paused, glancing over to him; out of boredom the previous day, he’d drawn a sketch of him and Longclaw to show Shadow. Okay, Longclaw’s wings were two different sizes, and Sonic needed more practice drawing head sizes, but it was practically picture-perfect accuracy, if you asked him.

Eventually, Sonic remembered Shadow was still waiting for an answer (he thought so, at least; Shadow hadn’t made much sense in the few words he’d spoken to him), so all he said was, “I’m not tired…but why are you so tired? You don’t do anything all day – you sent me to refill your bottles from the lake, and you didn’t even say ‘thanks’. You just grunted a bunch and made a weird face and then went back to setting up that bell thing outside.”

It was true. Shadow had shown Sonic his little ‘alarm’ outside, whatever that meant; a thin rope was set up along the nearby tree line, covered in moss and bushes and leaves that looked extremely fake, at least according to Sonic. There was a bell connected to the far end of the rope, which was tied up in a tree, and would instantly ring if anyone came near the perimeter and tripped on the clearly visible rope. Sonic could have sworn Shadow didn’t have this a few days ago, and he insisted it was because he didn’t want Sonic drawing extra attention to the fact that two aliens were living up in the mountains around a human village, and it was just so the two would have a chance to hide themselves should any humans trek this far-up, though apparently none ever did.

“They’re unpredictable,” Shadow had told him as he did this, Sonic returning with three, water-filled bottles that had faded, scratched writing on the side that said Pepsi. “Humans can be wonderful one day, and then the next day they’re…they’re horrible, baby blue, and they take everything you love. You can’t be gullible. You can’t.”

That was similar to something Longclaw had once told Sonic while teaching him about the different worlds and planets and species on them. At the time, Sonic had hardly paid attention, skipping through the scrolls Longclaw showed him so he could go out and play on the hills and beaches. But now, Shadow seemed to realise his mind had gaping holes in it, as if mice had come and taken massive bites out of it for a snack, so he made an effort to explain humans and their strange habits.

When the fourth day dawned over the mountainous landscape, Sonic finally admitted to himself he had to get back home before Longclaw properly began to worry. He told Shadow – who was still half asleep, and Sonic wasn’t even sure if he’d heard all of it, much less acknowledged it – that he had to leave now, but he promised to tell Longclaw that there was another hedgehog like him, and then maybe he could come live on Mobius with them. Shadow looked doubtful, but he simply nodded and rolled over on his other side without another word.

Sonic spent the rest of the morning finally being able to throw the tiny gold ring right. He did it outside of the cave, the dewdrops wetting his soft quills as he aimed the ring toward a bush of strange, small blue fruits near one of the trees that held the trap rope. He practically squealed as it finally turned into a massive golden ring, similar golden energy swirling around it, and he was greeted to a sight of lush green plants on the other side, nothing like the dulled yellow-green bushes of these mountains that Sonic had to admit he wouldn’t miss too much. He also wouldn’t miss the dusty packets of weird smelling food Shadow offered to him for snacks; something called ‘ramen’ that had a stringy shape.

Without another thought to the planet he was leaving behind, Sonic raced through the portal. He glanced back at the glowing portal, considering – he probably should close it…but he was scared he wouldn’t be able to open it again, and he really wanted to introduce Longclaw to Shadow soon.

Nothing’s gonna go through it. Shadow’s weird alarm will scare them off if they go near it. It’s fine.

Instead, Sonic focused on finding his way back to the treehouse they’d inhabited since Sonic was a little hoglet, as Longclaw called him, although he was offended by that term. He wasn’t a pig. Granted, he was a hedgehog, but still; of all the terms, really.

Thankfully, Sonic’s memory hadn’t failed him. He could have made it back to that treehouse in the dark while blindfolded; he knew it like his own quill formation. Longclaw had lived there before her order, all massive alien owls like her, fell protecting Mobius, and then she had opened it to Sonic a few years ago when she found him, orphaned and alone, according to her. Sonic never cared for who his ‘real’ parents were; he already had a mother. He didn’t need a second one.

But…Longclaw wasn’t there when Sonic rolled in excitedly. Her perch was there, the one Longclaw always took her afternoon naps on, and so were the remains of the flower Sonic had wanted to give to her as an affectionate gift, lying on the floor, tramped and ruined with its petals scattered around it.

“Longclaw! Longclaw, I’m back!” Sonic called excitedly, going over to one of the circle windows; maybe she was out meditating on the highest branches like she sometimes did, so as to ‘align herself more properly’ with the spirits of those she wished to communicate with. “Longclaw? C’mon, Longclaw, I’m home!”

Yet there was still no answer, even as Sonic climbed onto the roof. Longclaw wasn’t up there; he saw no hulking shape of her, no noise as her wings swooped above him playfully, to welcome him home. That was strange. Longclaw would never leave him calling if Sonic called for her; she just wouldn’t. She would be at his side in seconds for whatever reason, ready to run her feathers along his back to calm and soothe him from whatever had upset him, no matter how small and silly.

Maybe she was just out looking for him. That made sense. She’d probably be anxiously searching everywhere on the island for her wayward ward after escaping those strange tribe warriors with weapons and showing them that this was their island. Sonic could make it round the entire island in a matter of seconds, but for a being without super speed…yeah, Longclaw would probably take at least a day or two. Now Sonic just felt bad for leaving her to stew with worry.

However, no matter how far Sonic checked, he simply couldn’t find her. She wasn’t on her favourite beach, where her favourite fish could be caught without much trouble. She wasn't by the tallest cliff, where Longclaw would sit and meditate for hours on end, to Sonic's enormous annoyance. She wasn’t by the fruit grove, either, where different coloured fruits blossomed and she helped Sonic pick for breakfast. Strange fruit that were purple on the outside and red on the inside, with green seeds. Even Longclaw wasn’t sure of how that happened, but at least the amazing taste made up for the strange exterior.

Abruptly, Sonic paused, causing dirt to fly up from how suddenly he stopped. He tasted the air again, a knot slowly forming in the pit of his stomach as he recognised the smell.

Once, a strange animal had found its way onto the island, and Longclaw had first tried to simply send it back to its home. But it had kept clawing, and biting, and snarling at everything, and eventually it went for Sonic, who had only been three at the time, yet remembered the moment vividly. Spurred on by her ward being attacked, Longclaw had reluctantly snapped the creature’s neck, ensuring it had a quick and painless death. She’d gotten the body out of there immediately and spent the rest of the evening soothing Sonic and explaining death as a concept to the terrified little hedgehog, how sometimes it was a mercy and you had to make the hardest decisions to protect the ones you loved.

That hadn’t stopped the island from smelling for two days after…and Sonic could taste it all over again.

No. No. No. No.

Not even finding the patience to stop himself, Sonic raced ahead, skidding out into a small grove of coconut trees that he’d first been taught to play basketball in by Longclaw. A human game, she’d told him as the two laughed together as yet another coconut broke into two, dribbling out onto the grass.

But…but…but…Sonic wanted to cover his eyes, yet he couldn’t bring himself to all at the exact same time. Lying only a few feet away was Longclaw, but so horribly, horribly wrecked. Her shining blue eyes, so different from Sonic’s quills, had been reduced to dull cerulean windows, absolutely no life behind them. Her glistening golden armour, which she prided on cleaning three times a day, was splattered with blood from a broken spear sticking out from her chest. Two more spears were stuck elsewhere through her body; one through her left wing, which was horribly torn up and looked broken, and one through her forehead, right above her eyes. She lay there, dead, flies always feasting on her body.

"Goodbye, Sonic."

“Get off her! Get off of her!” Sonic yipped weakly, rushing over and batting away at the flies, who had seventeen legs and buzzed horribly. He clutched her stomach, grimacing as he felt the flesh beneath her feathers, some of it sticky while other parts almost rubbery. Blood had already dried and was crusting off by the broken spear through her chest; it was a small spear, but had a wicked blade to it, clearly sharpened for a purpose. And it had fulfilled its purpose, to Sonic’s complete and utter horror.

“I came back! I came back, Longclaw, I didn’t leave! I’m back now! You can take me home! Come and take me home, Longclaw!”

How long Sonic stayed there at his mother’s side, weeping like he’d never wept before, he had no idea. He wanted to stay there forever; maybe until the warriors came back. But that would put Longclaw’s death in vain; she hadn’t died for nothing. She’d died to protect him, even though Sonic really didn’t deserve it. It was his fault she died, after all. If he had just been a bit more careful– if he’d been there to help her fight, Sonic could have stopped –

Sonic choked on more, seemingly endless tears as he felt a hand on his shoulder and a shaky flinch from whoever was touching him. Every instinct in him screeched for him to hit, or fight, or get them off, whoever they were, but Sonic was completely spent and could find none of the strength required to do any of those desired actions, so he instead remained by Longclaw’s limp, rotting side. To his enormous relief, the hand didn’t try to get him to stand or pull him up or anything. But the voice attached to it soon spoke, and Sonic immediately knew who it was.

“...wasn’t your fault, baby blue.”

What was Shadow, a mind reader? Sonic didn’t look up from where his tears had made a damp pool on Longclaw’s beautiful tawny wing, instead just letting out a weak, choked sound of despair in response to the older hedgehog. Shadow’s hand pulled, but it wasn’t forceful. More of an urge, to have him stand.

“Cry if you need to. It won’t fix anything, but it’ll make you feel better.”

Unfortunately for Shadow, Sonic’s tears had all spilled, although a deep wailing sound clawed its way out of his throat and into the open air. It took him a moment to even realise it came from him, but Sonic found himself unable to finish what he’d started, and he just let out sharp, short gasps of these wailing screeches. Shadow pressed his other hand over his mouth, and his hushing noise was firm but not cruel, his spikes lighting up like the sun.

“Shh, shh…the creatures who did this might find us, baby blue. C’mon, kid, we need to bury her quick and go.”

Bury Longclaw. Yes, that sounded like a good idea to Sonic. He somehow found the strength to stumble up, clutching at Shadow’s tensed up leg, before flopping down again and curling up. A hand ghosted over him briefly, but Shadow found himself focused on Longclaw, and soon the sounds of swift digging took over, flakes of old dirt and tiny pebbles hitting Sonic’s back as his breathing hitched and choked weakly.

Soon, although the wretched stench remained, Longclaw had been set in the ground. Shadow put a few rocks around it awkwardly, apparently having no idea of what to really do, and let Sonic sit by the freshly dug spot for a few minutes, his crying having slowed down and reduced to silence, which somehow seemed worse than the tears. Sonic sat there, thoughts and memories flitting in and out as his mind seemed to rush to find a solution to this problem. His mind had always been ‘wired’ differently, likely due to his own species physiology. A part of him, dimly, wondered if Shadow’s brain worked the same. Sonic wanted to ask Longclaw about that later.

Except I can’t because she’s dead and I killed her–

Without another word being spoken, Shadow picked Sonic up and placed him so he could stare at the impromptu grave as Shadow sped away from the place, though he barely got more than a split-second last look as the older hedgehog made it back to the still-open Ring portal. Forever faster than Sonic, it seemed, but he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed or have a wish to outdo Shadow. Not now. Maybe never, now he thought about it, as Shadow took him back down to the cave silently.

Neither saying anything for a long moment, Sonic let Shadow clumsily tuck him into the musty, hole-ridden blankets, but he shook his head weakly as Shadow offered him a piece of half-eaten vegetable burger he’d scavenged the evening before. Shadow continued to push it against his mouth until Sonic complied, chewing slowly and grimacing a little at the strange, bitter taste.

They were both pointedly ignoring what they knew was inevitable to speak on now: Sonic had no one to go home to, and he could hardly look after himself. And he’d already made himself at home with Shadow, though Sonic had never intended on doing such.

Mobius had been his home for the first four years of his life. But now, it never would be again. Could never could be again. Nothing would be the same again, now, no matter how much Sonic lamented this in his mind, although he only vocalised one of the thoughts running through his mind at lightning speed.

“...thanks for- for gettin’ me, Shadow.”

“Anytime, Sonic.”

Chapter Text

The next few days passed in a blur for Sonic. His mind seemed warped and ruined from the fierce feelings of grief and sadness; part of him would wonder, years later, how he ever recovered from the pit he’d dug himself into.

Sonic mainly lay on the ground, wrapped up in those similar, musty, dusty blankets, riddled with holes and dirty seams. He didn’t want to move, because if he moved it meant he had to face a universe where Longclaw wasn’t alive. And that was a horrible, cruel, unfair universe that Sonic didn’t want to live in.

Eventually, however, the little hedgehog found himself coaxed out by the sunlight streaming in from the massive hole in the ceiling. He was thirsty, and his stomach rumbled no matter what position he tried to sleep in, and the ground wasn’t exactly relaxing.

Shadow was outside too, which made Sonic all the more hesitant to go out in the first place. So, he observed instead, studying what Shadow did: the older hedgehog was walking around a nearby tree, holding something in his left hand while his right hand dug around the roots and leaves every few seconds.

Watching for nearly a full minute, Sonic eventually pulled himself up, out of the hole completely, and sped over to him to watch closer. Shadow looked up as the flash of blue approached, and he now saw that Shadow was holding a bunch of fuzzy, almost spiky, green balls. When Sonic glanced up at the massive tree above, he saw some were hanging from the elongated branches, and looked back at the ones in the curve of Shadow’s arm, face quizzical and confused.

Answering the unasked question, Shadow turned and walked back to the hole, Sonic following along eagerly. “I got some- some, uh, chestnuts…you were talking in your sleep, said you like roasted stuff…you can roast these, so I thought…”

He trailed off, but Sonic already felt a little more joyful. Longclaw used to roast watermelons and all sorts of strange fruits over a small cooking fire, and although Sonic had never heard of ‘chestnuts’, he already felt his mouth beginning to water at the very thought. Shadow noticed, and a small, almost invisible smile cracked onto his mouth as he dumped the ‘chestnuts’ by the hole.

“Here – let me show you how to open,” he offered, tossing one to Sonic, who caught it with his gloved hands but still yelped at the spiky touch. Granted, he should have seen that coming, but it was still startling and new. “So, you just pull them apart, watch? Grip them firm, okay? And then pull…there, there, you’re doing it.”

It took a few tries, but eventually a smooth, round, dark brown thing fell out of the ‘shell’ around it, and Sonic grinned a little at the ‘plopping’ noise as it rolled on the ground. He helped Shadow do the rest, starting an imaginary competition with himself to see who could do it fastest; Sonic won, but that might have just been because he was the only one aware it was actually happening.

But, as all children eventually do, Sonic tired of it, and excused himself to go down to the lake with the plastic Pepsi bottles they’d been using to get water. He could go and be back with them in two minutes, but today Sonic purposefully went slowly, wanting to look around the forest more. It seemed to stretch on forever, from when he’d climbed a tree five days before to look around at what this strange, exciting planet looked like.

It looked utterly boring, if Sonic was completely honest with himself, although he almost never was, and never really would be again.

“What’s the town like?” he asked Shadow when he got back, clutching six plastic bottles filled to the brim with water that he clearly hadn’t spilled halfway up the hill, thank you very much. “The human one? Beyond the lake?”

At first, Shadow didn’t respond. He’d said it wasn’t safe to make a fire until night, when no humans could see the smoke it would produce, so was instead in the middle of digging a small hole for the pit later. Eventually, he stuck his head back up, Sonic repeated the question, and Shadow’s face went from confused and occupied to something more haunted that made him suddenly look older than his years.

“...you can’t go there, Sonic. Ever. It’s dangerous and it’s bad and it’s wicked.”

Sonic absorbed all of Shadow’s warnings like a sponge, and after dumping the bottles in the cave below, listened as Shadow explained why humans were so dangerous as he helped him dig, brushing old root tangles and clumps of dirt and woodlouse out of the way. It was easier than it looked, with Sonic using his speed, and they didn’t need it to be very deep, or else the fire would be too far away.

Later that evening, both of them admitted (but never to each other) it was worth it, though. Shadow showed Sonic how to roast them properly, then to peel open the shell and eat the nutty filling while it was hot and fresh.

Mouth filled with warm chestnut, body heated by the licking orange flames, and not alone as Shadow sat beside him, silent but there, Sonic came to a small realization.

I think I’ll be okay here.

***

A few months later, Shadow would begrudgingly admit (to himself) he found Sonic’s presence not as annoying or irritable as he would have assumed he would. The child actually appeared useful for certain things that Shadow had no interest or need for; he collected wood for the small fires they now had every night, would dump massive piles of collected berries by the cave hole, and made sure he never went beyond the lake.

But Shadow soon noticed how the child kept bringing back different things from the junkyard every time Shadow reluctantly brought him along after nearly half an hour of negotiating and pleading. He knew Sonic would tag along anyway, so better to keep him where he knew he was instead of letting the little idiot get lost or caught in a thorn bush.

Every single time they went for something like a blanket or some more plastic bottles, Sonic would always find an excuse to bring something that they didn’t need along: old, cracked yellow-orb lights that flickered, some of them not even turning on at all, or the time he dragged along a circular carpet that had a dozen holes and looked like it had been dragged through a river and back. Or when Sonic found a bunch of things called ‘comics’ and snuck them back to the cave the next day, taking delight in each and every one of them despite the fact most of the pages were missing.

Deep down, Shadow knew why. You can’t entertain a kid for long without giving them something to do, so he let him slowly ‘decorate’ their little cave with these objects. Sonic set the carpet below the cave hole, so that they had something mildly soft to land on. He strung the lights up all around the cave and used Shadow’s quill that he’d taken out on the first night there to power them up. The comics earned their place by the collection of roots, Sonic rereading them over and over in his boredom. Soon, more items cluttered their space, but Shadow didn’t really mind; it made the entire place feel less empty, at the end of the day.

And soon Sonic grew bored with rereading and filling the void, and so tried finding new things to fulfill his boredom. He drew on the walls more, of his island, of his home planet, of him and Longclaw. Sonic didn’t want to forget any of it, so he drew it as a way of documenting ‘history’, like the characters in his comics did. When he eventually tired of that, he tried doing all sorts of mismatched activities: spending hours over puzzles with pieces missing that he found in the junkyard, taking time to hang up all the old gears like trophies from war, or sorting old license plates against the wall.

Eventually, Shadow started bringing back things to occupy the curious little mind Sonic possessed. He never mentioned them, or said anything, but Sonic would wake up with some cooking book published two years next to him, the author’s name scratched out but mostly intact. Or sometimes it would be two new comics he’d found – one was written in another language, but the other at least had most of the pages still in it. Sonic pored over them, making sure to only read one page a day and not read them in seconds, as he usually did. When he was finished, he reread them over and over until he could recite how to make a perfect lasagna and what line had been said on what page by which character. And then Shadow brought some more at night; half-finished knitting projects he found shoved in cars. Sonic didn’t know the first thing about ‘knitting’, but he enjoyed the patterns the humans had made, often wondering how something so ‘cruel’ could make something so gorgeous.

One night, when Sonic accompanied Shadow, they brought back a sort of ‘video machine’. According to Shadow, it could play moving pictures with sound and colour when you put them in, and he found a bunch of cracked old ‘tapes’ to go along with it; most of them were pretty weird, and Sonic didn’t get most of what happened in them, although his favourite was a moving picture called Speed, mainly because one of the main characters sounded loads like Shadow, although the older hedgehog denied it. But, at the end of the day, Shadow still struggled to keep Sonic occupied. So he let the kid keep drawing all over the walls, trying to make them more intricate, with all sorts of details from the island that he could remember. Soon the drawings involved from just Sonic and Longclaw to Sonic and Shadow mixed in there too.

Shadow never commented on it.

***

Longclaw never prepared Sonic for how cold the first winter on Earth would be, and neither had Shadow.

Winter wasn’t really a thing on Mobius, but seasons as a whole didn’t exist on Sonic’s planet, so he’d been very startled when all the leaves turned golden-brown and died, leaving the trees looking as bare as Sonic often felt nowadays. Shadow explained it as they sat together one night, sharing the last of the poppadoms they’d smuggled out of a driveway’s trash can the night before, Sonic lathering them in some sort of delicious, tangy sauce.

“So, everything dies…then comes back? Then dies again?” Sonic checked again through a mouthful of the crunchy meal, instinctively leaning closer to Shadow, who shifted back a bit as the two sat near the ridge of the hill they were perched on, overlooking the lake, which was dark and still in the night, reflecting the moon and stars on the glittering surface.

Nodding, Shadow hit the back of Sonic’s body when he coughed and choked a little, resting his head on his knees as he stared beyond the lake. “Yeah, something…something like that, baby blue. And then it gets all cold again, then warm, then cold.”

It really made no sense to the tiny blue hedgehog, but Sonic reminded himself that if Earth ever started not making too much sense, he could take the rings and leave. Go to the mushroom planet Longclaw had circled for him. He’d hidden the stash and the map beneath his stacks of cooking books – Sonic felt rather proud that he could now recite every apple cultivar and could probably make a five course dinner in his sleep.

When the two hedgehogs awoke to Shadow covered in a thick sheet of white snow from sleeping right beneath the cave entrance, they realised they might need some sort of ‘covering’ for the hole. As Shadow refused to go out in ‘broad daylight’ (in reality, the sun was only just peaking over the horizon), Sonic had to drag a log across to stop ‘snowflakes’ from finding their way into the cave every two minutes, turning on the video player so he could rewatch Happy Feet, another one of the films Shadow had recently brought back for him from the junkyard, until Shadow made him turn it off due to trying to sleep. Sonic always agonized at being kept inside the cave like a caged bird, a metaphor he had learnt from a newspaper last week. No humans ever even went up that far into the mountains, so really, what was the harm in going out during the day every once and a while?

Shaking those bad thoughts off, like burs that had stuck to his quills, Sonic spent the rest of the day playing chess with himself using a board that had split in half ages ago and had most of the pieces missing, sorting their rubberband collection from biggest to smallest, rereading all his comics and books for nearly the eightieth time, or drawing on the walls more with chalk that Shadow had found him. He’d nearly run out of space on the left wall, and Shadow hadn’t said anything about them yet, so he considered continuing to draw on the right one.

Eventually, when Sonic peeked up and saw the sun vanish beyond the hills, he shouted down to Shadow that he couldn’t avoid it now. His older companion grumbled and grouched all the way up, but he pushed the log out of the way, allowing Sonic to properly look around the nearly unrecognisable place he’d called his home for the last six months.

Everything was covered in a thick white coating that crunched when Sonic stood on it. There were no leaves, and if there were, they were all shriveled up and twisted, dead. Something Shadow called frost was licking its way up all the bark, which was cracked and harder than normal. The hole they always had a fire in was filled with snow, and even when Sonic dug all the dead wood up, it was freezing to the touch. Immediately, he snuggled closer to Shadow for warmth, and although he wasn’t exactly pushed off, he felt Shadow tense beneath his touch.

“Kid, it’s– it’s fine. Gets better soon, y’know? I mean, it’s cold still, but not too cold.”

That was Shadow’s way of reassuring someone, from what Sonic had gathered in the last twenty-six weeks, but Sonic didn’t find himself too soothed, if he was completely honest with himself. Still, it was more than what had been said when Sonic got scared of a slug; Shadow had just looked at him irritably, flicked the slug somewhere else, and went back to the cave.

Sonic soon found himself more excited by what happened next, as Shadow tried to cheer him up in a bizarre way. He lay on the ground, spread his arms and legs, and began looking like he was trying to be a worm; not exactly kicking, more brushing the snow to one side. Sonic cocked his head, wondering if Shadow needed to get himself looked at. But he soon saw why he was doing such a thing: the snow had all been brushed to the side, leaving a place for Shadow to make an angelic like shape. Wanting to do the same, Sonic leapt beside him and began hurriedly doing the same, quills glowing blue from his excitement.

For a moment, the pair giggled, and Shadow actually smiled. And yet it was only for a moment, as his laugh then died in his throat, and his eyes flickered with something unreadable. Of a ghost, it appeared, lost many, many years ago. Abruptly he sat up, quills drenched in snow that clung fierce and fast, and his breathing quickened in short, laboured gasps, like he couldn’t breathe. Sonic blinked at him in concern, and, scared, he crept back a little.

Without a word, Shadow got up and vanished back into the cave. He never came back outside, so eventually, Sonic crept after him and found one of his books torn to pieces and Shadow curled on his side, clearly not asleep but not speaking to him either.

There wasn’t anymore snow fun for the rest of winter, but Shadow brought back three more new comics to make up for the wrecked book.

***

If you asked Sonic, eight years old was plenty grown up. Not according to Shadow, who still insisted he remain inside the cave and not go squirreling his way outside every chance he got.

But the cave no longer held the same charm it had three years ago. Sonic was no longer content to curl up and watch whatever old tape Shadow could scrounge from the junkyard of Green Hills. He wanted to see – to explore more things. The mountain range had grown boring, as Sonic had explored all of it within minutes; no ridge, burrow, or gap of bushes was hidden from his knowledge, and Sonic was sure he could run around the entire landscape in his sleep without tripping or falling once.

So, when Sonic came back from the junkyard one early dawn dragging a CD player behind him, barely able to even lift the blaring thing, Shadow really did not think he should have been surprised. He watched, unimpressed, as Sonic set a collection of CDs on the ground before him, the covers all cracked and images peeled untidily: ‘Stitches’ (what a ridiculous name, in Shadow’s opinion), ‘Creep’ (didn’t look too bad, Shadow might consider), ‘Shut Up and Dance’ (rather rude, but Sonic insisted it was meant nicely, whatever that meant), and ‘The Night We Met’ (Shadow didn’t want to know what that was meant to be about).

Eventually, after multiple arguments, they compromised: one CD a day, and only in the evening, so Shadow wouldn’t get annoyed by ‘that foolish noise’, in his own words. Sonic chose to put in the last CD at that moment, as he was practically vibrating in excitement, and Shadow wasn’t that cruel to stop the kid from listening.

‘I am not the only traveler who has not repaid his debt’

Giggling like a stream, Sonic immediately began to dance, or at least, Shadow believed it was meant to be dancing. The kid was twisting around, making strange motions with his arms up to the ceiling, mumbling along to the song even though he knew absolutely none of the words. It might have been cute, if Shadow could focus on anything but the lyrics.

‘I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you’

Shadow dimly became aware, like remembering another life, of a familiar path once danced like this. A young girl, no older than fourteen, long blonde hair, a sort of pastel jumper. Giggling the same as Sonic now was, bright green eyes wide with excitement, so similar yet so different to this girl’s one pale green eye.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you’

Now Sonic was trying to do some move on his head, making his quills become filthy with dust and small bits of grit that he hadn’t swept up earlier. It was always Sonic who did the looking after – the sweeping, the roasting of the chestnuts or other fruit they were able to find, the one making sure the trapdoor covering the cave entrance they’d made from a desk drawer last year wasn’t too squeaky when it opened. Sonic was the one who figured out that you shouldn’t eat raw chicken and insisted on cooking the pair of chickens Shadow once caught over their small fire, on a stick. Sonic was the one who wrapped blankets around Shadow when he was too tired to get up and wrap one around himself, even in the middle of bone-chilling winter that made the cave freezing. Sonic was the one who never questioned the clumps of roughly torn quills under Shadow’s little sleeping ledge, or the bits of roughly chewed flesh on his chest or arms, instead just helping pour water over them and nervously apologising when Shadow hissed in discomfort.

“Baby blue, turn it off,” muttered Shadow, only now realising how hard he’d been clenching his left, gloved fist. He didn’t care why – he just needed the stupid, ridiculous, wretched thing off already and Sonic wasn’t turning it off and why was his mind hurting and why why why why why why–

Crackle.

The quill that had been powering the player fizzled and lit up. Eyes wide again, but with fear now, Sonic hurriedly scuttled forward and switched the player off, eyes dropping to the floor as he listened to Shadow’s laboured breaths and slumped onto the ground, shakiness turning to a form of sadness.

Without a word, Sonic slid close to him and pressed his soft little head to Shadow’s white patch on his chest, feeling his quills instinctively wrap around his tiny blue head. Allowing their chests to breathe in time, Shadow’s hand came and patted Sonic’s quills, resting his head on Sonic’s own soft spindly ears.

“...I can save you too, sometimes. I want to always save you.” Sonic murmured up to him, remembering a time when it used to be Longclaw who would envelop him in her massive, typhoon-sized wings, soft brown feathers smelling like the forest and books and secrets.

“Where do you think you’ve learned that from, baby blue?”

***

Granted, red quills weren’t ‘required’, but Sonic thought he’d look much cooler with them than Shadow seemed to think.

The argument had started over something very stupid; Sonic had been begging for the last week for Shadow to ‘dye’ his quills red, just like his. It was a fad that all the kids were doing, from what Sonic had seen when he definitely hadn’t snuck into the local town at night that Shadow needed to know absolutely nothing about. Fine, it wouldn’t be real dye, but red paint was easy enough to steal from the arts-and-craft store that Sonic certainly didn’t know was on Trinity Way.

“It’s a silly idea, baby blue, so you can drop it.”

Biting his lip in irritation, piling sliced vegetables and fruits into their winter stash in the essence of a squirrel, Sonic protested. “But I just wanna look like you, Shads. I like your highlights.”

Tossing the ten year old hedgehog another stolen, hardly-peeled carrot, Shadow responded without even gracing him with a glance. “One, don’t call me ‘Shads’. And two, they aren’t ‘highlights’. Only foolish children have them.”

Sonic glared over at Shadow’s back and kept the matter going despite Shadow’s continuous attempts to shut it down. The two had fallen into a sort of ‘routine’ over the last five years, and Sonic found himself adept at catching things at the same as multitasking with six other activities, such as rereading the newest comic book Shadow had brought him as an apology for the last argument, but they’d grown closer due to it. Now, they almost never spent any time away from each other – never further from one another than twenty feet in the last two years, and Sonic was happy with their little arrangement.

Yet, he kept asking the exact same question every opportunity he got. Sonic would have done it himself, but he wasn’t exactly too eager to look foolish for the rest of his life, or however long paint lasted. And he wanted to look exactly like Shadow, not some cheap imitation, like the celebrity impersonators that sometimes showed up to parties in town.

It took almost another week of convincing, but Shadow eventually agreed to an ultimatum: a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, a human game that he had once played, long, long ago, according to what he had told Sonic, although he went oddly quiet after such.

Truly, he knew nothing of where Shadow had come from. He imagined a strange, other planet like Mobius, perhaps. But Shadow always seemed too sad for that to have been the case; perhaps it was something far more sad and twisted, but Sonic didn’t want to imagine that, as it seemed to be the worst possibility, and instead played the game without any sort of further protest.

To Sonic’s delight, he won. It seemed one of Shadow’s many, yet strange abilities wasn’t mind reading, and he could just see the way his eyes rolled into the back of his head as Sonic whooped thrillingly, doing a celebratory dance near the CD player, which they still sometimes used.

“Alright, alright, fine…I still think it’s a stupid idea, but you won, so I’ll do it. I suppose.”

Not daring to do it that night, by light of nothing but the shining moonlight through the trees that were slowly losing their leaves in the autumn wind, Shadow instead managed to steal some old crimson paint that had been left outside a decaying wooden hut belonging to some crazy old farmer; no need for any brushes, doing it by hand seemed easy enough, at least to Shadow.

It happened the very next morning, in front of their cracked ‘mirror’, which was just a collection of cracked glass pieces set up against one of the few cave walls that hadn’t been intricately drawn on. Shadow forced Sonic to sit still in front of him, gloved hands covering his eyes, while he painted the upward-facing quill ridges as Sonic giggled, sounding far happier than he had in months. The paint stained the white material of his gloves, but they had been filthy for years from the lack of any way to properly wash them. A few extra splatters and specks of crimson on his gloves wouldn’t hurt too badly.

“Is it done yet!?” Sonic asked eagerly, tilting his head up, gaze still covered by his tiny hands, resisting the urge to peek a look in the cracked, maze-like reflection. Shadow pushed his head back down firmly but with a kind of gentleness, using a sort of brush to spread the red paint around in a mockery of attempting to be even.

“Nearly, nearly…”

As it turned out, ‘nearly’ was ten more minutes during which he had to hold the vibrating ten year old still so as not to smudge the paint too badly. Shadow glanced over the blue-and-red quills, eyes narrowed as though designing a magazine cover, and then nodded to himself approvingly, setting the brush to the side and putting his own hands over Sonic’s own gloved ones, which were far more clean from being washed in the lake every other week.

“Ta-da.”

It was a dryly spoken word, but it didn’t stop Sonic’s delighted gasp as he looked himself over in the cracked, uneven reflection, tilting his body this way and that so he could admire every single part of his new, unbelievable new look. All ten of his quill-spine-ridge-thingies were bathed in crimson; there were gaps and holes, sure, but Sonic was completely delighted, and made a ‘pew’ noise similar to what Shadow’s quills often made then they spiked up with red energy.

Cracking a smile, the older black-and-red hedgehog watched his mini copy pose in front of the glass reflection. Forgetting himself, Shadow found himself, nostalgia drifting in and out in soft tones, speaking quietly. “Consider yourself lucky, baby blue…I never really did this stuff with my family.”

Sonic’s eyes flitted from his own, melted together reflection to stare up at Shadow, green eyes soft and innocent with curiosity as he heard him speak of his past for the first time in five years.

“My sister, she…liked to get out more.” Turning away from Sonic, Shadow studied himself in the warped glass, unsure whether to admire himself or shy away. Casting a glance down to his wayward child, what hardness remained in Shadow’s heart melted in those tennis ball-like eyes. “You sort of remind me of her…she was called Maria, she…”

Sonic wanted to hear more about this mysterious sister – this mysterious ‘Maria’ that he had sometimes heard Shadow muttering about in his sleep. But Shadow seemed to snap back into sense, and he turned away once more, and all those walls were rebuilt up yet again.

Neither of them spoke much after that, but Shadow later found a tin of hard candy tucked beneath his blanket pile that afternoon: a peace offering.

***

Often, it was Sonic who had to keep Shadow from straying too far, but that night, it was Shadow, and he still had no idea how to feel about it all.

Seven years on since Longclaw’s death, Sonic seemed to have moved on. Yes, he still drew the great owl on the walls that were slowly losing room to be colored on, but other than that, Sonic hardly ever mentioned her, and if he did, it was always only in passing.

But he’d heard the kid whimpering and moaning in his sleep, sounding like he was close to sleep. Shadow would have gone to him if he wasn’t scared of messing it all up again, so he just tossed a blanket over his head and rolled to face the poster that Sonic had taken from the junkyard two months before.

Yet tonight was much, much different. Shadow woke up sleepily, eyes heavily lidded with sleep, but immediately alerted by Sonic’s yell into the stillness of the night. Without even thinking, Shadow groped beneath his blanket pile for the shard of the glass. It was G.U.N.’s stupid soldiers, here for another person – no, not this time. Never again.

Feeling his hand close around the glass shard, Shadow got up, alert and ready to attack however many intruders there were. But there were no soldiers yelling or pointing weapons at innocents; there was Sonic, twitching and whimpering on his much bigger pile of blankets that Shadow had insisted on, red quills touched up on every month like always. His eyes were not quite open, but he seemed awake, so Shadow dropped the shard, so as not to frighten him any further, instead creeping forward and touching Sonic’s head, but that made the hedgehog thrash around further.

Had Sonic really grown that big? Shadow swore that he was only the size of a seven year old, yet here lay his thirteen year old, almost as large as Shadow himself; he didn’t know whether to feel relieved or irritated that Sonic had moved on, both physically and in his own mind.

“Hey, hey, shhh…baby blue, c’mon, wake up. It’s just a nightmare.”

Sonic whimpered and thrashed further, so Shadow tightened his grip and hit his face lightly. Not the best strategy, he was sure, but Shadow didn’t need to be gentle, he had to wake Sonic up and snap him out of this the kindest way he knew possible, so he murmured to him more firmly.

“Baby blue, it’s me. Wake up and sit up.”

“Longclaw– LONGCLAW! NO, NO, NO– LONGCLAW!”

“No– no, no one’s here but me and you, baby blue. Just us, kid.”

More tossing and turning, whimpered pleas and soft cries slipping from Sonic’s lips as he clung to Shadow’s arm to keep still. His eyes, looking so, so, so small in the thin crack of moonlight from the hole in the trapdoor that was poking through, were wet with unfallen tears. Not wanting him to choke on sobs, Shadow tugged him up and sat him against his legs as he wept with silent sobs, slightly comforted by Shadow’s presence.

“Longclaw– s’my fault, she– she died ‘cause of me, Shadow. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –”

Shadow let him apologise further, keeping him tucked against his legs and petting his painted quills so none of them went askew. Most of his baby quills had fallen out years ago, but they’d placed them in those round bulb lights to make the entire cave glow a soft, warm blue.

“It’s okay, baby blue, it’s okay…neither of us are ever leaving our cave. Not really. Not me, not you. I’m gonna make sure of that.”

No one said anything else for the rest of the night, but Sonic remained tucked close to Shadow, almost sat in his lap, like he had when he was younger, until he dozed off again. Sonic likely wouldn’t remember it in the morning, but perhaps that was best, because Shadow had meant what he said.

He had what he wanted again, after so many years, and Shadow would die before he let anyone take it from him again.

Chapter Text

In earnest, Sonic hadn’t meant to start the argument, and he was still trying to push blame off of him months later, although Shadow refused to hear anything about it. Granted, maybe he had pushed Shadow’s buttons just a little too far, but Sonic really needed his side heard.

It had all just started regularly, with Shadow fixing sonic’s spines (were they quills or spines? His biology book was no help, no matter how many times Sonic reread it out of pure boredom). Shadow often braided them, as well as he could, by putting small bullet casings through multiple quills at once and clasping them round; other times he used abandoned hair ties found dropped around the baseball field or old ones littered in the junkyard.

“You’re old enough to be doing this yourself, baby blue,” the older hedgehog grunted, sliding another tie to pin down a longer braid from the side of Sonic’s head. Shadow always wetted them with water, pulling the spines out of their proper shape to make them into softer quills that he could tie properly. Sure, they had to reapply all the red paint, but it was a small price to pay.

Rolling his eyes as he read a new geology book that was propped in his lap – most of it was in Chinese and had pages torn out, but Sonic enjoyed it regardless – Sonic glared up at him through the new, mostly unbroken mirror. They’d replaced it since last month, when the shards had finally all fallen out of the mirror casing and left just a blank piece of propped up black metal against the drawn cave walls. “If I’m old enough to do it myself, I’m too old for you to call me that. I’m not six.”

All that got Sonic was Shadow narrowing his eyes and tugging on the braid he was holding, making Sonic snap at him a little in faint pain. They’d both been on edge a lot, although Sonic didn’t really know why, although part of him suspected he knew what Sonic had really been up to during those late night ‘snack runs’ that happened almost every other evening nowadays.

Focusing back on the braids in his gloved hands, Shadow added a bit more red to the edge of one particular braid. They’d ‘borrowed’ the fresh pint of paint from some crazy old guy who lived on the edge of town, although Sonic had explicitly been forbidden from going – didn’t exactly stop him from following, but he suspected Shadow was trying to find some other reason to break something. It was why he’d hidden everything of real value under his blanket nest, where Shadow never really touched unless he had a particularly bad moment.

“Could you make ‘em tighter?” Sonic asked after a moment, and from the way Shadow paused with another snatch of quills, he could immediately tell that the older hedgehog was assessing whether his charge was being sarcastic or genuine. Sonic rather enjoyed keeping him guessing, so he deliberately kept his words vague and elusive enough to never be too clear which side he was leaning on. “I need them pulled properly or they’ll fall loose immediately, Shads.”

Ruffled by the nickname, Shadow muttered something about ungrateful whelps before pulling tight on the braids. Gripping the edge of the sedimentary page in his hands, Sonic nodded before brushing him off with more force than either of them liked; Shadow seemed like he was about to pull the quills out himself, either from frustration or lack of realisation of his own, far superior, yet forever frustrating strength.

Sonic pulled his head free and inspected the braids in the filthy reflection that stared back, echoing emerald eyes scrutinizing and judging every aspect of his appearance. So different from that first night in the forest.

Stop doing that. Don’t let the bad thoughts in. Focus on the moment.

His face must have twisted up – Sonic hadn’t noticed, having screwed his eyes up to stop staring at himself – because Shadow pressed himself against the teenager and pulled Sonic to sit on the edge of his hip a little, hugging him gently, taking great care to make sure his blood-soaked, bandaged arms didn’t press into any part of his child’s already delicate blue-and-red braids too hard. He also didn’t want to wipe any of the fresh paint off, even if it really did look awful due to Sonic insisting on doing it himself, rebuffing any attempts for help, and a lot of, ‘I’m not five, Shadow, I can do things alone now’.

“...I can smell your brain melting,” Sonic muttered after a long time, completely wrecking whatever sort of moment the pair were having. He pushed Shadow off again and shifted away, to the edge of the cave where he’d found some undrawn space to sketch on with the new chalk they’d borrowed from an old playhouse the other week. “It stinks – I told you to take more baths, but you don’t listen.”

A long ago emptied mustard bottle hit the back of Sonic’s head, and in return he chucked a piece of chalk that he wasn’t too fond of back in the direction, unsure if it even hit Shadow. His mind was busy, however, making calculations: two more hours until sunset. Two more hours until Sonic could make another emergency ‘snack run’ down to the local human village. Green Hills, the sign had told him it was called. Shadow didn’t care what it was called, he only cared that Sonic never, ever went near it. Of course, that only made the ‘teenager’ want to do it even more (humans had such strange names for ‘adolescents’, as his books called them). Any rebellion he could use to irk his loving guardian thrilled him to no end.

Busying himself in sketching on the walls – nothing in particular, just a lot of dark purple, red, and black so dark it could offend even Shadow’s complexion – he pretended not to notice the thin rays of sunlight pointing through the trapdoor in the ceiling slowly fading into more relaxed, apricot-coloured beams. The entire time, Sonic felt Shadow watching him from his own corner that he had relocated to a month ago, already littered in granola bar wrappers and half-filled tins of hard candy that Sonic usually got him as peace offerings after they had a particularly bad spat or disagreement, often over some menial, unremarkable incident.

“If you’re gonna go on a snack thing tonight,” Shadow finally spoke up after maybe half an hour as he started to look like he was actually cleaning up, but all he was actually doing was spreading the mess around unhelpfully, “remember the rules.”

The rules. How could Sonic forget? They had them chalked on one side of the wall that Shadow had claimed as the ‘rule wall’ before the child could draw on it at all. Big, uneven, loopy white letters were scrawled on the jutting out rocks and dirt and roots in words that they had to keep writing over every few weeks.

CAVE RULES

1. Be home before morning

2. Don’t go near any humans

3. Don’t take too much at a time or they'll know

4. Stay hidden, stay safe

Stay hidden. Stay safe. Shadow seemed determined to drill that specific mantra into Sonic’s irritable, already rule-infested mind. It was the first rule he’d actually established, yet strangely the last one written on there. Apparently, it was because it was so obviously important, it shouldn’t have to even be written, so it being spelt out at all was an extra-safe precautionary measure, whatever that was supposed to mean. Sonic had tried to protest once; all that got him was a whack on the head and being told they could add an extra rule on silence in the cave between certain hours, so he didn’t push any further on the rules again.

But staying hidden and staying safe had grown boring. Yes, it meant they got to keep living their happy, peaceful life together, but it soon got boring running around the same forest and mountains for ten entire years of your life, or being stuck in the same, damp cave that was hardly ever cleaned out until Sonic grew old enough to learn about what actual hygiene was (he’d been horrified when he finally had, to be honest, but at the same time surprisingly found he quite liked how he lived).

After all, their life was simple. No busy assassin work or having to save the world while spies like in the movies, just making sure your fruit stash was healthy and ripe for when winter came and scraping old leaves, snow, and disgusting animal feces off the fire pit grate they had covered by old pine branches whenever they didn’t use it. Sonic didn’t want a single thing to change if they didn’t have to, and he certainly wasn’t about to help things shift unnecessarily.

“Thanks, Dad,” was all he muttered back, instead of what he actually wanted to respond. To Sonic’s complete and utter excitement, he saw Shadow immediately begin to bristle, and a tin of hard candy was thrown his way, narrowly missing his head and landing on the ground with a clatter beside Sonic. “Sounds real fair.”

Without responding, Sonic heard Shadow begin to start ‘organizing’ again, and his ears twitched a little at the sound. Evidently, he had won this round, for once; it all felt a little thrilling, all things considered.

Just another hour. That’s all.

***

Granted, Shadow probably would have preferred Sonic to leave in the actual evening, but early evening was something he let slip. Maybe he’d even benefit from it, if that made any sense.

Really, how hard was it to just stay put? Shadow managed to do it himself every single day, yet Sonic seemed like an uncontrollable amount of energy, bursting at the seams as he waited for any sort of release from this ‘prison’, as he called it.

‘Prison’. The word almost made Shadow scoff at the melodramaticness of it. It was safe. Safe from humans. Safe from everything that might hurt them. Safe from G.U.N., especially. Sonic didn’t even know about G.U.N., but Shadow had no intention of telling him about it. Perhaps it would make him more cautious, but then Sonic would ask questions. Invasive questions. About how Shadow knew about G.U.N. and why they’d try to capture him, and then about where he came from for the billionth time, and then if he found out about that he’d find out about her–

Another tin snapped shut around his gloved fingers, making Shadow hiss involuntarily. He pried it off and dumped it into the pile with the other emptied tins and wrappers from other snacks Sonic had given him over the last few weeks from his various ‘raids’ on the human town only a few miles away, beyond the lake.

When Sonic was younger, Shadow had forbidden him to go any further than the lake without him. Of course, Sonic hadn’t obeyed, but Shadow had acted like he didn’t care for a full five minutes before going to find him and dragging him back by the quills. The rule had faded as Sonic got older, partially due to Shadow being forced to begrudgingly admit he could defend himself if it came to it and partially due to the fact Sonic hardly left his side at all now for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

I don’t even know why I bother. He’s not my kid. I don’t care what happens to him.

Finally, his mind made sense. Sonic wasn’t his child – just a stray he had picked up one night and took in out of pity and some semblance of empathy. He was nothing to him. Absolutely nothing except someone to stop him from going crazy by having another being to actually communicate with. He could never be like…like…

Why did he even keep thinking of her? It had been nearly fifty years since that dreadful night, and Shadow’s life was far more busy now, between looking after Sonic and pretending to look after himself. Of course, it didn’t change how much it stung and dug into him like a wound that would never heal, but wounds healed. Not all, but a lot.

Then again, the idea of Sonic leaving made Shadow want to physically be sick. He could never leave – the world was dangerous and cruel to innocent people and creatures, and he needed Shadow. Sonic needed him more than anything else in the entire world, and the idea of him out there, alone, leaving Shadow alone…that made Shadow want to teleport straight to wherever he’d scurried off to and bring him right back.

No. Let him get into his trouble, then he can come crying back.

***

Whatever was happening in Green Hills was very exciting, that was for sure. Even if Sonic didn’t know what it was, the mood of the weird creatures in the town thrilled him just as much as it did them.

Humans celebrated a lot, but today it seemed like a ‘sad’ celebration. Sonic hid himself on the roof of a hardware store, but he doubted anyone would have seen him amongst the decorations and confetti that littered the entire town square. A type of street party, it seemed – they had similar ones every July, although Shadow had explicitly forbidden Sonic going down to see them. His orders hadn’t ever been obeyed, though, and for good reason, if you asked Sonic; why should he miss out on all the fun just because Shadow preferred being a strange little hermit?

From what he was able to gather from all the chatter and the massive banner hanging on the Sheriff Department building, the sheriff and his wife were leaving town, which Sonic personally thought was a shame. He’d watched them a few times, the woman bending her body unnaturally and the man helping small animals across the street while eating donuts in the most drawn-out way Sonic had ever seen.

The massive banner could have been nicer, though. It had multiple crossed out words and letters, apparently because the person writing hadn’t been able to work out how the name ‘Maddie’ was written, as there were three variants behind it. But, still, it was the thought that counted, supposedly.

I’ll never understand how such horrible creatures can be so…thoughtful.

Perhaps Shadow didn’t know everything there was to know, despite the taboo that the very idea seemed to bring. Sonic had never truly thought of Shadow as ‘not knowing’ anything in his life. Of course, he was wrong about things – who wasn’t? But Shadow had never been directly unaware of things, except what Sonic had deliberately kept from him.

Later on, Sonic would wish he had never even entertained the thought.

The humans had their party for the rest of the evening, food and drinks – noticeably a lack of alcohol, due to all the children running wild – being passed round freely, music playing from a speaker someone had set up, and the same crazy old man telling anyone who would listen about the blue devil and its demonic master with electric red highlights (then again, Sonic likely would have found Shadow far more interesting if he was actually like that). Most people laughed at the joke, while the man who spoke to donuts simply patted his shoulder and muttered about not having to put up with this anymore. It was all plainly boring, and Sonic didn’t bother to watch the entire thing as the sun set over the claw-like mountains to the west. He instead retreated to the baseball field, his little sanctuary over the last year.

Finding himself at the field within seconds – Shadow claimed Sonic’s speed was a nuisance, the teenager said it was a blessing to get away from his yammering every now and then – he immediately dropped the little bag he always wore onto the grass, beginning to stretch. Sonic had taken to wearing a little knapsack everywhere he went in the last few months. Sure, it had about six different holes in and was the colour of something Sonic had vomited up a few nights before, but it was handy for carrying things in and hiding them away from Shadow’s watchful gaze.

For example – a tiny bulb containing one of Shadow’s ripped out quills. The glass had cracks in and pulsed faintly with reddish-orange, but thankfully the quill remained contained inside. Shadow claimed it had ‘fallen out’ a few weeks before, but if he really thought Sonic was that stupid, then Sonic had a genuine right to be offended by such an assumption.

The very reason Sonic had taken it? Well, to be quite honest, even he wasn’t exactly sure why. All he wanted was a closer look at the power Shadow held in his own body – power that even Sonic’s own abilities couldn’t compete with in a million years. He’d have the thing back before Shadow even noticed it was gone at all.

If he notices. Probably fallen back asleep.

An almost rueful thought, but Sonic felt little to no pity for the older hedgehog. It’s not like it was exactly untrue, was it?

Holding the bulb out in a reverent-like fashion, Sonic’s other hand groped for his braids. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out an electric blue quill, so different from the flickering orange power orb in his other hand, and broke the glass with his other. Blood dug into one side of his wrist, but for the moment Sonic ignored it, far more interested in the fact he was so close to what he really wanted to know: where did they come from? Where did they belong?

The orange quill felt no different, just Shadow. He was all Sonic could ever feel, always. It would usually be endearing, if not incredibly frustrating, yet Sonic was far too interested in his own experiment to properly ask.

Maybe if he learnt where they came from, he could prove Shadow was wrong to be scared. Prove they deserved more than crouching in some hovel for the rest of their lives, however long they happened to be.

Not stopping to think – not even considering the cataclysmic consequences, or what might happen, or who could be watching and listening – Sonic moved both quills together, interlocking their powers.

***

It was unclear what awoke Shadow that night: the world around him shaking or the noise of it all. Or perhaps he was just sleepless and imagined waking up again.

Whatever it was, he found himself sitting up with a start, immediately hissing as a bandage he’d wrapped around his arm before apparently drifting off was pulled from the sudden motion. Not bothering to fix it, for he had far more pressing matters, Shadow teleported outside of the cave and looked around wildly for the source of the commotion.

Something – it was a strange feeling, as though in his gut – told him his beautiful disaster of a child knew a thing or two about what had just struck the entire landscape. Moments later, Shadow found himself proven right as he saw faint smoke going into the sky, blue and orange mixed into a foreign, almost murky haze against the indigo sky.

Well, at least he had am actual plan now: rescue Sonic from whatever disaster he’d caused, and then throttle the irritating, quill-whitening child himself.

Finding himself without the ability to stop himself from what he wanted to do next, Shadow vanished in a quick ‘bzzt’.

***

At first, Sonic had assumed he’d simply created a tiny explosion. No big deal, it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened in his time around Green Hills.

But then the cars sounded, quicker than Sonic could recover from what he assumed to be a mild concussion, and soon there was yelling and bright lights and horrified screaming and humans.

The first human to do so was an older woman. Dark skin, short hair in a bob, eyes far more curious than frightened, at least until she registered what whelp was curled up in a newly made crater. She dropped the flashlight she’d used to shine on Sonic and screamed like she’d just found her only child newly murdered.

What a dreadful sound. Neither Sonic nor Shadow screamed much, at least while awake. Asleep was another story, but they were never quite as spine-chilling as this. This woman sounded like grief and agony and hatred all rolled into one person, and pure fear was in her eyes as she backed up, flashlight uselessly illuminating the newly formed bumps from where she’d dropped it in fright. The sound was new and horrible and Sonic instinctively wrapped his hands around his ears, not caring if he looked like a shy child.

Confused murmurs broke out from those who hadn’t seen Sonic, but it would only be a matter of time, and then he’d be caught and taken away and killed, and why hadn’t he listened to Shadow and why did he always make things worse than they had to be and–

All at once, every flashlight and phone light went out. Some devices had glass fall out, others had the bulb completely shattered. Puzzled words and indignant curses followed all the broken equipment, but as something red flashed round the entire crater, they turned to frightened yells and scampers to return to the car.

Well, at least the humans won’t have to kill me. Shadow has that honor instead, apparently.

Feeling tempted but knowing that it would be inappropriate to laugh, Sonic instead opted to silently scramble to his feet, so it wouldn’t jolt as much when Shadow teleported them both back at home. Mentally, he prepared himself for the next lecture that would surely be drilled into his mind over and over for the following days.

He was distracted in this rather dull train of thought by the noise of something clicking, almost. Utterly confused by such a noise, Sonic glanced to the side, freezing the second he recognised what was being pointed at him.

A gun, held by a man. Not the crazy one, just an older one. Pure fear held him upright, hands trembling, and Sonic felt a flash of empathy for the man; he likely just wanted to defend his home from an unknown enemy, not unlike Longclaw had wanted to, at some point.

“It’s okay,” Sonic whispered quietly, attempting to be reassuring to the older man as he put his hands up to appear nonthreatening. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya –”

Snap.

***

Yelling.

Screaming.

Flames in the distance.

A gun.

***

The man collapsed to the grass, neck snapped the full way round, gun falling on top of it with a hard sound. A few people gasped, then started to scream. Far, far, far worse than the first woman had been. Some rushed to his side, checking his pulse and trying to speak weakly.

Sonic held no fear in him, only a weak sort of grief and fierce fury. Momentarily, it appeared he had been forgotten, but both him and Shadow knew it would only be moments before he was remembered, and so he was unsurprised when he felt his wrist grabbed and suddenly found himself slammed into the familiar ground outside the cave hole.

Groaning, Sonic forced himself to his feet, glancing round. Shadow was crouched in the darkness like a sentinel, his glowing eyes the only visible part of his body due to the rest of his form blending in with the darkness of every tree and fern.

“You killed him!” It was an instant, honest reaction from Sonic, shoving his way forward and shoving Shadow accusingly. Abruptly, his wrist was grabbed as Shadow spoke, Sonic twitching in genuine shock as he heard his guardian’s complete snarl; no humor, no dullness lurked in it, only danger and warning to anyone who crossed him.

Even me?

“Don’t even start.” Shadow hissed, pulling Sonic along forcefully to the cave trapdoor they’d built together. His spines were bristled up, flickering with static electricity, and his grip was like iron around Sonic’s weak wrist. “I give you one real order – the others, I don’t mind. But my one order? Stay away from the humans. And what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO, BABY BLUE!?”

Managing to pry Shadow’s metallic grip off his wrist, sure it would leave permanent indents in his bone, Sonic retorted back easily. A couple of his braids had come loose, resulting in him having a manic look as accusing eyes of bright green narrowed horribly. “I stayed away, and you killed a man! Pretty sure that outweighs your stupid rules here!”

Evidently, Sonic had been wrong before about Shadow’s snarl, for what next came out of Shadow’s mouth was a truly monstrous noise, like from the depths of the bad place Shadow told him evil people went to after they died, in an attempt to console him one evening.

“If you hadn’t directly disobeyed me, I wouldn’t have had to! Why don’t you ever think, Sonic!? Tell me that, if you’re now old enough to do whatever you want!”

At that proclamation, Shadow teleported them both back inside despite them being just above the cave. Finally, he released Sonic, who remained where he was, but put his hands up in case Shadow lost control again. His guardian had never lost it on him – never hit, never struck, never anything – but he had been known to cause smaller craters than what Sonic had made minutes before, and in his continued ranting, he seemed to be unravelling.

“I don’t even know why I bother. I really don’t, kid, I DON’T KNOW! Sometimes, I think you’re the one good thing, y’know? And then I think back to that night – how I wanted to go home. I had a massive shard of glass in there, before you came along and prettied this all up. All I wanted to do that night was slit and cut until –”

Unable to hear anymore of this, this unnatural state both hedgehogs had now found themselves in, Sonic covered his ears with his hands again and began to screech. Not out of frustration, not to make a point, but just so he could block out Shadow’s words. He could not, would not, accept such sentences from the one who had raised him the last ten years of his life. A life lived without Longclaw because of him.

While he was busy helping get rid of one guardian, he kept another one here. Sonic’s mind – the delicate, smashed little thing – refused to comprehend these facts, so he instead screeched, even as Shadow tried to shush him hurriedly. When that didn’t work, Sonic instead pulling away and shoving horribly, the older hedgehog snatched at one of his few remaining braids and pulled, hard.

“GET OFF ME!”

It was less a plea, more a demand. Such a fierce, hissing demand from the child Shadow had raised as practically his own for the last decade. Yet, it was the next words that snapped Shadow out of his state of mind at the time.

“SHADOW, YOU’RE HURTING ME!”

Now, Sonic’s voice was cracked and raw with genuine pain, and his demand had been reduced to something similar to a cry. A mouse pretending to be a lion, yet failing horribly. All Sonic knew was his braid was abruptly let go, the bent and frayed quills sliding from Shadow’s grip like butter.

Fresh rain pattered on the ground above as Sonic pulled the limp, loose-hanging braid back to his head, eyes cautious and dismayed as he stared piercingly at Shadow, the one he’d always thought of as flawed yet unable to truly do a single thing wrong.

“...murder me, like you murdered her.”

Shadow’s voice was hollow and sounded like it was coming from miles away, making Sonic pause in his pathetic attempt to fix his braid. There was an evident reason he had to ask Shadow to do it instead of simply looking after his spines himself.

But Shadow wasn’t staring at Sonic like he was someone he cared for anymore. He certainly knew whoever it was standing in front of him, but it wasn’t Sonic he saw. Detestation and grief collided in his now almost childlike gaze, round and soft but slowly sharpening round the edges.

“Murder me like you murdered my Maria…go on, murder me. Murder me like you murdered my Maria. I’m asking you to murder me, and I’m right here so MURDER ME!”

Startled at the sudden screech and small explosion of energy, Sonic leapt back, setting his hands in the air while his mind whirred faster than any machine, trying to calculate a way to calm Shadow down while also figuring out what he was seeing. And there was that name again, that Shadow often mumbled about at night. ‘Maria’. Whomever his mysterious figure was, his ‘sister’ Shadow had called her, she had clearly been important to Shadow. Jealously, Sonic wondered if Shadow loved her more than him at some point in time, but that wasn’t important at the moment, for Shadow suddenly threw himself at Sonic, kicking and trying to hit weakly, his blows landing clumsily like a newborn child’s.

“MURDER ME, MURDER ME, MURDER ME! MURDER ME! GO ON, MURDER ME, I WANT YOU TO MURDER ME LIKE YOU MURDERED HER!”

“I DIDN’T MURDER ANYONE!”

Just as quickly as Shadow’s almost incoherent rambling had begun, it ended. He went limp and weak against Sonic, who felt his breathing become shaky and uneven, like his lungs had been punctured and were struggling to fill up with enough oxygen to breathe and keep himself alive.

Did he even want to be kept alive, though?

“...Shadow, why did you want me to…”

Sonic dared to try and ask the question only minutes later. Instinctively, Shadow tensed and bristled in his grip, so Sonic pressed his chin into the older hedgehog’s quills, letting him shake and tremble uselessly.

“...you don’t want to know.”

Five words. Five words of unknown grief, agony, and exhaustion came from Shadow, and then he vanished, and Sonic was left alone in their little cave.