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The winds are loud. Roaring, thundering. The waves below the vibrating biplane sound like a rushing army. It’s cold. It always is up in the sky. The clouds they fly through drizzle their pelts in vapor, their fur turning a shade darker.
The Tornado has been flying nonstop since their departure off of Starfall Islands… hours ago, probably. It’s nightfall. Nobody bothers to ask how long the trip will take; nobody wants to admit they’re tired, so peaceful silence is all they offer.
Everyone’s fatigued, that much they all silently agree on.
Sonic’s eyes are dry, and it’s not all the wind’s fault. He hadn’t exactly slept the past few days. Nobody had asked—there was no time to, given the life-or-death situation they’d been in—but even if they had, he certainly would’ve lied, and he knows they all know that. They know him well. They don’t ask, just as he doesn’t ask them if they’re okay, because that’s a useless question. Why ask when you know.
They’re all quiet. Sonic’s crouching on the wing long enough for his knees to hurt, alternating knees to alleviate the discomfort as best as he could manage; Knuckles’ on the other wing, flexing his creaking neck every now and then; Amy, in the seat behind the pilot’s, is the only one who’d managed to get a few hours of, by the looks of it, admittedly unrestful sleep, jerking awake until she just gave up on it; Tails’ in the pilot’s seat, rubbing his squinty eyes and yawning, baby fox teeth glinting, the wind slapping his big ears back.
The cluster of shooting stars are still falling, it seems. They never did stop. Morning just made it look like they did. But now that it’s night again, they’re clear, little lights drawing blazing tails behind them at a snail’s pace. The shooting stars might keep falling for days.
It’s evident, judging by how little any one of them has spoken, that they’re running on empty batteries. After Tails’ umpteenth yawn, his head falling forward a few times before catching himself, Sonic scoots up the wing, closer to the pilot seat.
“She on autopilot, bud?” Sonic asks with a gentle, encouraging tone. His throat’s stiff. Dry. He hasn’t used it since they’d taken off.
Tails blinks owlishly at him twice. “Oh. Yeah, she is.”
Nodding, Sonic ruffles the fox’s bangs. “Get some shut eye. We’ll wake ya if anything’s up.”
“But…” Tails struggles to find a rebuttal under the sluggishness of fatigue.
In the passenger seat, Amy releases her seatbelt with a click. “Give him here, there’s room.” Her voice lacks her usual pep.
It takes some persuasion—Tails resisting, not wanting to seem like a needy child. But he's the youngest of them and running on barely any energy, too tired to feel embarrassment. Sonic has to firmly grip him when handing him to Amy in the back. She adjusts her seat farther back to make more room for the fox on her lap, holding him in a cradle carry manner, his head plopping sleepily on her shoulder. Sonic takes over the pilot seat, not bothering to strap himself in. He knows how to fly the plane; it was his before it was Tails’, after all.
He subtly glances at Knuckles, the echidna now sitting on the wing with one leg dangling, dreadlocks ruffling in the wind. It’s not a secure position to be on a plane suspended above water, but Sonic’s not worried. They've done more drastic things on the regular. This is nothing.
Resting the back of his head against the headrest, Sonic resists the urge to close his eyes. None of them really had the time to properly sleep in the last two-or-so days on the islands. At times, he gets glimpses of visual hallucinations he only figures are hallucinations because Knuckles (the only other person currently awake and with a view not obscured by a pilot seat) doesn’t react to goliath sized wyverns circling the plane.
Sleep deprivation’s getting to Sonic's head. He’s had fish to eat in a hurry on the islands. Not enough for his fast metabolism and calorie-burning missions, just something to keep him going. He’s not sure if Amy, Knuckles, and Tails had anything before take-off. The fuel tank is two thirds empty; just enough to get them to a Mobian-inhabited island with telecommunication. The Tornado’s too far away from anything at the moment to get a signal anywhere.
He could really use a bed right now. Sleep and not worry about how garbage his body’s going to feel later after getting the crap kicked out of him for two days. He’d like a hammock, at least. And hot soup. And something full of meat. But he doesn’t complain. None of them do. The silence is unnatural for them.
He could nap in the pilot’s seat; the Tornado is reliable enough that he trusts its autopilot function. He just can’t afford to let anything happen. Tails’ asleep, finally. Amy hasn’t flown the Tornado in years, and while Sonic’s sure she knows the important basics to keep it afloat, she doesn’t have that much experience with it if anything were to happen. Knuckles is awake enough, but he’s not trained to fly the Tornado like the rest of them.
Four hours later, the sky goes from purple-black to reds and oranges that reflect choppily on the water. Only, it’s not peaceful. The clouds are too thick, too full. The wind’s not right. There’s an underlying uneasiness in the air a mere human wouldn't have picked up on, that same hyper awareness that makes animals know something’s coming. A storm that’s not fully formed yet.
With an elbow lazily hanging out the pilot seat, Sonic glances at the passengers behind him. Tails’ waking up, tired eyes barely open, ears hanging low in nervousness. The phantom, creepy-crawly feeling they’re all feeling had shaken him awake. Knowing his astraphobia, he won’t go back to sleep. Not like this. Amy readjusts her hold on him, gazing at the thickest clouds in the distance. She looks just as dazed, not all there, exhausted to the bone.
On the dashboard of the plane sits a screen showing a pixelated map. There’s a black smudge the shape of a tadpole. An island. No identifications or hints of any electrical activity, so the possibility of it being uninhibited is high. It’s better than flying through a storm, Sonic decides.
“I’m taking her down,” he announces, disabling the autopilot mode. On the wing, Knuckles righted himself, crouching on the wing and gripping the ledge just as the plane started turning, accelerating.
Distance on a map is hard to judge. It takes an hour for the island to be visible to their eyes. By then, the storm’s taken shape. The clouds are wet and dark, almost black. The air is thicker with heavy vapor and sea salt winds. Lightning strikes seconds before thunder does. In their hazy state, they all flinch a fraction. Rain sprinkles down on them.
Sonic’s impressed Tails hasn’t made a noise yet. He’s getting better at handling thunderstorms over the years—he used to have trouble breathing during them, and Sonic would let him crawl under the blanket with him for security. He hasn’t been doing that as often. Still, a phobia’s a phobia: it doesn’t discriminate how old you are. Another resounding boom! and Sonic’s ears twitch at the sound of a puppy-like whimper behind him.
The island has black rocky ledges glistening from the constant spray of seawater. The thick grass ruffles like waves, the trees thrashing. The Tornado lands, skidding, bouncing a few times. Not the most graceful of landings.
Knuckles uselessly shakes water off of himself under the heavy rain. Or maybe it just got in his eyes. He hopes off the wing with a grunt. Sonic offered his paw to help Tails and Amy off the plane, all of them wobbly on their feet. The plane, while being the only electrical conductor in miles, is safe for the most part if it gets struck by lightning—its overall frame built to withstand lightning strikes, nullify, and redirect the electricity to pass through. Higher level hits could very well do some damage, and it’s not a good idea to be close to it. They get a tarp out from the plane's storage until and work as quickly as they could to cover the plane and have Amy nail the tarp’s anchors down into the dirt.
Normally, Sonic would put a snarky word in to lighten the mood, but it looks like Amy and Tails aren’t all there, fur soggy and eyes half closed.
“I’ll take a look around,” Knuckles announces. He doesn't wait for a reply before running off.
“Knuckles, wait!” Amy only manages a few steps in his direction before acknowledging there’s nothing she could do about him. She huffs, intending for it to sound exasperated, only for it to sound more exhausted than anything. “Jeez, that guy.” She pushes her soggy bangs out of her eyes.
Sonic shakes his head lightheartedly. “Don’t worry about him. It’s Knuckles. Come on,” Sonic urges the two gently, guiding them under a canopy of large leaves.
They lamely shake themselves off. The rain’s still seeping through the gaps between the leaves. It’s better than being directly under the clouds. The three of them are out of energy, hardly saying a word. The wind picks up, and all three sway with it. Sonic uses his body to halt Amy from stumbling, while she does the same with her body to steady Tails. They’d have figured out a shelter and a plan by now, but it’s clear everyone’s straining from exhaustion, their minds only half functional from brain fog.
Knuckles’ the survivalist of them. The oldest, wisest, the hunter, the tank. Wherever he’s gone off to, Sonic can rest knowing the echidna knows what he’s doing. Sonic’s their leader by nature, but stuck on an island with his body just barely working, he admittedly can’t do much. Their well being is in Knuckles’ paws now.
In times like this, Sonic reverts back to his younger days, when it was just him and Tails, both kids living out in the woods. He looks back at Amy and Tails, both of whom are struggling against the wind to the point of pressing themselves against the tree bark. Amy’s shivering. That’s right—Sonic remembers—she’s not good at tolerating cold weather. Despite that, he notices her putting her body in the wind’s direction in an attempt to block some of it from reaching Tails. The fox kit is panting. From fatigue, terror, or both.
They can’t stay out here. They can’t stay under trees, either.
Slipping out from under the leaf canopy, he takes a few steps forward toward the downhill grassy clearing, and his vision momentarily goes black around the edges. Vertigo tilts the island on its side until he catches himself on the slippery grass and shakes himself off. He hasn’t been this tired in a long time.
“Sonic!” he hears Amy call out to him.
“Just a sec! Stay where you are!” he yells back.
Glancing back, he sees Amy and Tails watching him with half-lidded, tired eyes. They nod, and duck back under the canopy. The ground vibrates with the lightning’s roar. Tails flinches, his big ears pinning flat against his head, his panting speeding up before he forces himself to breathe more evenly. Amy puts up an encouraging smile, asking Tails something, to which he determinedly nods to.
They’ll be okay, Sonic reassures himself. “Come on, Sonic. Keep it together,” he murmurs to himself.
Continuing downhill, where it’s mostly shielded from the diagonal rain and wind, he starts feeling around with his shoe, stomping, listening to the thuds, judging how firm the ground is. Finding a spot he deems satisfactory, he hops, curls up, bounces once, twice, and on the third, slams down hard enough to puncture the ground. He spins, digging a tunnel within seconds, curving around deep boulders.
He’s not as good of a digger as Knuckles, but he’s still a hedgehog, even if using his quills instead of his claws is an unconventional way to burrow. He retreats a few times to shovel out excess dirt, and bites his gloves off to traditionally dig out a drainage tunnel in case the rain changes direction.
Satisfied, he crawls out, shakes the dirt off of himself, and runs back to where he’d left Amy and Tails. The winds have picked up speed, almost blowing him back. Twigs and other debris come flying at him. Crouching against the wind, he shields his eyes with his paw. The sky has gone completely smoky black. He, Amy, and Knuckles could withstand this kind of gale, but Tails is mostly fluff and doesn’t weigh much.
Sonic finds them where he’d left them. They’re taking cover behind the tree bark. Amy’s got her heavy hammer out, the mallet firmly planted on the ground. Amy and Tails are crouching on the ground, gripping the hammer's handle. They’re using it as an anchor.
He slips over the wet grass a few times before reaching them. “Come on, grab on!” He puts his paw out.
They snap their heads up, looking relieved he’s back. Amy retracts her hammer. Sonic clasps paws with each friend and pulls them along. The wind almost takes them flying with his speed. The weather’s impact is thankfully less brutal on the hillside.
It’s quieter underground. The whistling wind and crashing waves are muffled. The burrow smells like moist dirt. But after their ordeal on Starfall Islands, being belly-down in a hole in the ground feels like a luxury. There’s hardly any room, but the wet Mobians collapse over the dirt with their pelts pressing against one another, all of them hearing each other's heartbeats and straining lungs.
It’s dark in the burrow. Whenever lightning struck, light flashes out the mouth of the burrow, reflecting off of the group’s eyes, their eyelids barely open.
“Not a five-star hotel, but it gets the job done,” Sonic says. He adjusts himself so he's on his side, his back to the opening to shield his friends, letting the rain running down the hill to dribble off of his quills.
Amy also shifts on her side, keeping Tails pressed against her soft front so her back spines don’t accidentally scratch him. She’s plopped her head near Sonic’s chest, her drained exhales brushing the peach fur on his chest.
Tails’ curled up to make room for them. He struggles to keep his head lifted. “Hope Knuckles’ alright out there,” he whispers.
Somebody’s stomach gurgles. It’s impossible to tell who it came from
“He’s a tough one,” Sonic reassures. “He’ll be fine.”
***
They fall in and out of sleep, the sound of the rain making them drowsy, the thunder snapping them awake before they fall back to sleep. It doesn’t register to Sonic just how much he needed this shut-eye until thunder wakes him up once more. His eyes feel dry. It might’ve only been a few minutes, but it’s enough time for his adrenaline to subside, alerting him to just how stiff his joints feel from the beatings he’d taken on Starfall Islands and the whole thing with the cannon.
He grits his teeth, biting down a hiss of pain when he shits his back a little. There’s a trimmer in his fingers. He needs food. He’d been running on a trickle of fuel for two and a half days. He’s normally a big eater, ravenous. He burns through calories with how active he normally is. But on the islands, he’d been in a hurry. The fish he’d caught, cooked, and eaten was nowhere near enough to sustain him on a regular day, let alone all of what he’d pulled the last few days.
There’s a disturbing sensation in his bones that comes and goes. Like painful static. It burns through his nerves and vanishes like it was never there. Phantom pains from Cyber corruption. It's a staticky buzzing through his bones.
Tails’ sound asleep, curled up into a ball pressing up against Amy’s belly. Amy seems asleep, unmoving with her head on Sonic's chest. But her ear flicks. Her head shifts, squeezing her muzzle under his chin. Exhaling against his neck. Her nose is warm and moist. She’s purring lightly.
He can’t help but chuckle lightly. “Of course,” he whispers.
“You can’t sleep?” she says surely.
“Don’t worry about it.” He keeps his voice down.
“You keep shaking.”
Ah. It might be the pains he’s feeling on and off. “Nothing I can’t handle.” He droops an arm around her back. Her purrs vibrate under the paw pads of his palm. It’s a purr of relief.
The exhale she releases against his neck ends with a whistle. “Does it hurt?”
She sounds inside of his head with how close she is, her muzzle pressing up against his throat. The rumbling of her purrs make him drowsy. “It’s not too bad.” Nothing compared to the agony he felt inside that cannon.
There’s nothing but the winds and rain encasing the silence.
“You holding up okay?” he asks. He hasn’t had a chance to check up on how his friends were doing.
She hums. A weak affirmative. “I feel a little more real now.”
That catches his attention. His ear flicks. He recalls when he’d asked her how she was feeling when she was still in that digital ghostly form. ‘Detached,’ she’d called it. Like flying in a dream, there but not there, unable to land, to ‘feel whole again.’ A state of dissociation. He rubs his chin against the crown of her head, as if to remind her he’s here, she’s here, and it’ll be alright now. “Feeling whole again?”
“Mostly.”
“Give it time. We did it. Take a breather.”
He feels the tickle of her eyelashes against his throat.
“Not the kind of rain you were wishing to share an umbrella under, huh?” she asks humorously, voice heavy with fatigue.
The question startles him. As much as anyone can get surprised with how little energy’s left in them. “Oh. You heard that.”
“M-hm,” she hums. “Heard a bit more.” She’s not saying what else she’s heard. She knows him well enough to know he'll figure out what she’s referring to. “It’s okay, though. You take your time.”
He does figure it out. Wish I'd made up my mind sooner, Amy. Right.
He breathes out against her head. After a minute, when it seems like she’s still enough that he regrets she might've fallen asleep, he speaks, hoping it’s not too late. “You’ll be whole again.” He feels her ear twitch against his jaw. She’s listening. That’s good. “I’ll make sure of that. I’ll be there. Just wait for a better rainy day.”
When she doesn’t say anything, he knows it’s because there’s nothing else to add.
‘Wish I'd made up my mind sooner, Amy.’ His thoughts on desperation ring in his ears. It always feels like he has all the time in the world for her, until she's almost gone and he's left with nothing but regrets. She'd been a ghost, only partially awake, and when it had drizzled on Starfall, he couldn't let go of all the things he could do with her at that moment—hold an umbrella over their heads, have a quiet moment, kiss her in the rain, wet fur and all—before he'd never get the chance to ever again if he was too late, if she faded into nothing.
She'd be gone, and never know how sorry he was for not making her happy, for not letting her know she was wanted.
…
There’s the sound of boots stomping against the dirt over their heads. It wakes Tails up. It’s familiar enough that the three of them feel relief more than anything else. Sonic shifts to glance over his shoulder, at the mouth of the burrow, locking eyes with a pair of purple pupils. Knuckles' crouching low. He’d sniffed them out. Rainwater trickles down his face. His dangling quills sway with the wind.
“Long time, no see,” Sonic says. “Any finds on your stroll?”
Knuckles rolls some palm-sized lumps down the burrow. Fruit. “Recharge and get your tails up. You’re not staying down there. There’s a safer place.”
The three in the burrow cringe when moving their bodies after being still for however long they've been down there. Sonic misses the adrenaline rush. It was one hell of a painkiller.
Crunching on fruits that test like apricots, consuming seeds and core and all for whatever strength they can get out of it, they brace themselves for the storm outside once more. They move on quick feet behind Knuckles in a snaky line, crouching and planting their gloved paws against the ground to stabilize themselves whenever the wind blows at them more violently like a titan's wingbeat. Knuckles thrusts the thorns on his mitts into the dirt to hook himself into place. At times, the winds are so strong, it's hard to keep their eyes open. He lets Amy grab onto the end of his crooked tail. Tail-grabbing is uncomfortable, but Knuckles tolerates it without a word. Amy doesn't have the best eyesight to begin with.
Sonic trails at the rear of the pack to make sure no one gets left behind. It'd be impossible to hear each other through this gust if one of them were to call for help. A few times, the winds push Tails sliding back over the slippery grass, until Sonic uses his own body as a stabilizer, letting the fox bump into him. Then, when the winds let up just a breath, he encouragingly nods at Tails and nudges him forward. Amy would notice whenever the two at the back are a bit behind and give Knuckles’ tail an obvious tug for him to halt. Knuckles would stop, look back, and wait for the two brothers to get back in line. Sonic would give him a determined look that lets him know they're good to keep going, and Knuckles would nod and wordlessly move forward.
Knuckles leads them to a cave with a high ceiling. There're woodland animals taking shelter here. Puffins and gulls and a small herd of elk. Deeper in the cave, there’re the squeaks of bats and rats. It's humid in here, but safe. The crystallised minerals on the ceiling are shaped like icicles.
There's a nest of grass and branches and leaves on the ground. Around it, the rocks have been smashed to sand. Knuckles had pounded down the hard edges of the rocky ground. Near it, some fruits, nuts, and berries.
“Bed and breakfast,” Sonic says. “Sweet.” His voice comes off weaker than he'd like. Simple fruits and nuts wouldn't be enough to recharge him—he needs meat and carbs—but he'll take anything right now.
Tails and Amy manage to murmur relieved ‘thank you's to Knuckles.
“It's not much,” Knuckles says with his arms crossed. “Better than going on empty.” He starts a fire by clapping stones together, then stays in front of the cave's entrance, guarding.
Splitting the food between them, Sonic finds himself suspecting Knuckles might’ve refrained from eating what the echidna assumes would be food needed for his team. Knuckles is hard-headed, but he's noble. He'd rather make sure everyone else gets their fill rather than eat before them and deprive nourishment from those in more need.
Knuckles keeps his back to them, peering out the cave. When Sonic turns to Tails and Amy, he sees they too are looking over at Knuckles with understanding gazes. They glance at each other, all of them have figured it out. Tails grabs the biggest fruit—a yellow melon of sorts— out of the pail between two paws and runs over to Knuckles, his soggy yellow tails flicking.
Knuckles momentarily looks away from the typhoon and regards the fruit Tails pleadingly holds up to him, then looks over at the two hedgehogs. Sonic's plopped down on the ground in a lazy posture, casually holding a fruit up to show Knuckles they have what they need, so he needs to stop being a hard-ass and have his share, too.
Tails flinches when thunder lights up the cave's entrance and rumbles the ground, but he shakes it off and insistently holds the melon up to Knuckles.
With a small smile and a huff, Knuckles accepts it. He ruffles the fur on Tails’ head. Even when the hedgehogs and fox have their fill, they leave behind leftovers, because they're not going to let Knuckles pretend one melon is enough. While he's mostly vegetarian due to the variety of grown foods Angel Island provides him with, the quality of what he used to have there is significantly higher—more suitable for a Mobian echidna—than what this island has.
It's Amy who eventually gets disgruntled enough to march over and forcefully drag Knuckles over to the food they'd left for him. He begrudgingly insists he already ate. It fools nobody. They know him well enough to know that's not true.
Amy and Knuckles are equally stubborn, but Amy wins this round. It probably helped that it was three against one, Tails urging, “Come on, Knuckles.” And Sonic lazily supplementing, “Just eat it, man. You know she's not gonna let up.”
It's a defeat on Knuckles’ part. It satisfies the rest of them.
They take turns watching the fire so the others could take moments of much needed slumber. Like the elk and the puffins and gulls, they huddle for warmth. When Tails’ turn to watch the fire is over and he returns to join them in the nest, they make sure they're soft underbellies are turned to him, the spiky members of the group mindful of how soft the rest of him is. The nest of foliage keeps making scratchy noises with every move they make, but it's weirdly comforting hearing their friends are nearby. They're fine. They're safe.
Sonic actually manages to sleep for a little longer without a pain spasm jolting him awake. If he'd missed his turn to watch, he wouldn't know. His friends insist he'd had his turn. He has no memory of it. He wouldn't put it past them to skip his turn so he could get a longer shut-eye.
Out of the four of them, Knuckles might be the least comfortable in a pail. He's a solitary person in general, but he's also an echidna, a Mobian subspecies that, unlike foxes and hedgehogs, doesn't huddle for warmth. He's got better body temperature regulation and environmental adaptability than they do, and that might be exactly why he lets the rest of them use him as a heat conductor, even if it means he has to sometimes smack Sonic's legs off of his back when Sonic decides to get too comfortable.
Sonic slowly gets woken up when Knuckles and Amy switch places, him removing himself from the pail, and her taking his warm spot, laying on her side with her back just almost falling out of the nest. Her and Sonic have to resist instinctively balling up to keep warm. Tails is right between them, between their soft bellies with his head propped up on Sonic's stomach; they can't ball if and prick him. After Amy replaces Knuckles’ spot, Tails, still sleeping, unconsciously lifts his namesakes and droops them over her like a blanket.
Sonic stars bleary-eyed at Amy's face. There's an inch of space between their noses. He feels her humid exhale over his snout. The fire Knuckles is watching crackles.
“Did you mean it?” she whispers out of the blue. “Back in the burrow. Did you mean what you said?” Her half-lidded eyes are too unfocused for her to be looking directly at him.
Sonic's focusing enough to feel the heat radiating from her face. “Said a lot of things.” He shifts his head closer until their cold noses touch. It's an intimate gesture, something done between loved ones or family, like a kiss on the forehead. “I meant every word. You'll be whole again. I promise you that.”
She closes her eyes fully, her ears folding back, the beige of the inside of her ears darkening into a red shade. She breathes out deeply, and it feels like a sigh of relief, like she just wanted to be sure she hadn't hallucinated what she'd heard back in the burrow and hadn't been able to relax until he'd proved to her it was all real.
There's a repetitive scratching noise; her tail weakly wagging, rustling the dry leaves of the nest. She's calm enough to drift asleep properly. Sonic chuckles lightly.
They were going to part ways after returning home. Amy, Tails, and Knuckles. They were going to grow as people, take time for themselves, change the world in their own way.
But, as the saying goes: distance makes the heart grow fonder.
He never thought he'd be the one left behind this time around.
They'll come back. He'll wait for a rainy day with an umbrella ready. He'll give Amy a little piece of paradise and make her whole.
END