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There was something wrong with Sonic’s head.
He had to fix it. The brain was important, one of the things you’d wish least to be harmed. That was why he was outside today, outside at the crack of dawn, watching the fake sun rise and listening to the birds sing.
Early morning brought along bouts of lonely gales and dancing grass. He could see the mourning in the darkening skies overcast. It was needlessly silent in a way that gnawed from within the chest and outwards, and the feeling grated on him for some reason. He wasn’t sure why it felt so pressuring, but then again, there seemed to be very little he was actually sure of lately.
The land here warped in funny ways. They pulled at him with silent familiarity, but any attempt at decoding the memories ended in pitiful failure. It was rather saddening. Perhaps his newfound friend would have some relevant insight? “What do you think, Shadow?”
Shadow turned his head with a frown. “What?”
“What do you think about this place?” Sonic grinned. His new friend was so grumpy all the time. “You said it’s your first time here, didn’t you? I’m curious!”
Shadow scoffed at his explanation. It was a bad habit of his, or maybe Shadow had always been this way, and it was something he just had to get used to. He laughed. Sonic did, and Shadow didn’t.
“It’s quiet,” Shadow responded, red eyes scrutinising the landscape with suspicion. “What do you think of it?”
“I think it’s quaint,” Sonic declared, “and cool! It seems real peaceful. Don’t you agree?”
“That’s funny. I would have thought a place like this would be maddening to you.”
Sonic snorted. “And why would that be?”
“You know how you are,” Shadow scoffed, face scrunching with a bothersome scowl. “Always chattering so loudly. It’s annoying.”
“Am I, now…” Sonic mulled the words over. It was hard to decide whether Shadow was right or not. Trust was a difficult thing to judge, especially in conjunction with his headful of holed memories and blanked figures, but Sonic had been delegated to Shadow for a reason. He wanted to trust it was because Shadow was the right one for him—a person who knew him better than most, better than all.
Well, Sonic would still end up being the judge of that. First and foremost, before anybody else. He crossed his arms, looking to the side with attempted subtlety. “Do you think I’m annoying?”
“Do I think you’re— what? Yes,” Shadow immediately spat out, pausing as if waiting for a specific response. He groaned upon catching sight of Sonic’s confusion. “No. You’re just… why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t.” Shadow didn’t seem very convinced. Sonic grinned wider. “I don’t think it does.”
“You would be right.” Shadow snapped his fingers in Sonic’s face, as if pulling him down to reality. “Don’t go forgetting what we came here for. That’s what’s important.”
He looked a stark image of darkened edges, painted gold with sunrise. It looked good. Shadow had these striking, angry eyes. They should have pushed fear into him, but Sonic only found himself captivated. He guarded his vision with his right hand, admiring the view. Now his new friend was just being silly.
“I haven’t forgotten that. You can relax, Shads!”
How would he possibly forget their objective? How could he, really? The whole reason they came here was to recover his soul, or rather, the pieces that had been left behind. Even for an amnesic fragment like Sonic, or whatever was left behind, he could manage that much.
“It’s not about relaxing.” Shadow shook his head with a scowl, craning up to the skies; Sonic followed his gaze. “I’m doing what I’ve always been doing, and…”
He trailed off, perhaps forgetting the remainder of his words. Sonic didn’t push for him to finish. He directed his attention upward instead, marvelling at the sky: “There’s something up there. It’s so sparkly. Did you see it? Shadow?”
The black hedgehog was silent. He swapped between those frequencies quite often, jumping from biting agitation to forlorn quiet. Sonic turned his head back, and Shadow was shaking his head now, brushing past him. Almost as if he was scared to look back, and have his expression read all too easily.
“We’re getting off track,” he declared, nudging his shoulder against Sonic’s. “What did you see?”
The contact felt nice. Sonic nearly stepped back without realising, and he had to drag his feet forward to keep from clinging to Shadow longer than necessary. “Up high.” He licked his lips. “Looks like a portal.”
“Does it now?” Shadow lifted his head, tracing back to where Sonic had caught the initial spark. He squinted, but no matter how hard he focused his vision and furrowed his brow, the glimmer wouldn’t seem to come into focus. “Show me.”
“Can’t you see it?”
“Of course not.” Shadow was quick to move, drifting after him as they began to move once more. Sonic swung back and forth between the two hills of the plain, gathering power beneath his soles. Shadow didn’t really have to follow him. He had those rockets of his, after all, but he chose to go along with Sonic anyway. The thought made him strangely happy. “It’s a portal made just for you. It’s your soul that’s trapped in this place. Remember?”
The way in which the Cyberspace worked was convolutedly roundabout, in Sonic’s opinion. He had had the dimension explained to him three times over, and yet it continued to fail at making sense in his brain. How could the shape and form of a place be dependent on knowledge lost to even yourself? He couldn’t understand. He really didn’t, but Sonic enjoyed pretending that he did.
“Yeah,” Sonic nodded without much thought, his confirmation as solid as habitual agreement, and any other reactionary response that came without preparation. “Of course I remember. Who do you take me for?”
“An idiot. I could’ve deduced that without experience.”
“And yet you still came here with me.” He got a glowering expression in reply; it made laughter rise in his chest.
As if to combat the strange, jittery feeling, Sonic let his feet lift high above the ground from all their momentum, and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut when the light surged close. Shadow wasn’t far behind. His new friend never was, in the short time Sonic had since been introduced to him.
He still had no clue of what exactly he would regain once they joined the parts of his fragmented soul back together. There was little to mourn under the spell of ignorance, and perhaps that was a blessing of sorts. Sonic wasn’t sure.
He was looking forward to remembering Shadow. That was good enough for him.
The portal stung like prickling heat when they finally passed through.