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“Stay still and let me kill you!” Surge screamed as she threw another punch at Sonic.
“But that would mess up my plans for later,” Sonic teased, zipping past Surge faster than she could react. He tapped her on the shoulder, laughing when she turned around and he was already gone.
Surge released a yell of anger and the two speedsters raced around the room, ricocheting off the walls and ground of the second floor they were on with a large opening right in the middle that looked down onto the level below. They were in an old warehouse that Sonic had brought some friends to check out some weird reports. Someone had said they heard a rumor about chaos emeralds appearing in the building only to disappear later.
Of course, it was a trap and they had fallen for it.
Sonic yelped as Surge surprised him with a leg out in front of him, tripping the hedgehog. He rolled across the ground and was forcibly stopped by a wall on the far side of the walkway they were on. Tails and Knuckles had disappeared farther into the deprecated building when they first arrived but it didn’t bother Sonic as they honestly would have probably gotten in the way when fighting another speedster.
Surge smirked to herself and advanced on Sonic who was still regaining his wits from the hit. She stomped right over to him and raised a fist in the air to punch him with a super-charged attack. Sonic looked up at her and she sneered when he didn’t look scared at all.
“I’ve got you now!” she screamed and brought her fist down.
See, when fighting a speedster, it helped to have another speedster as back-up.
A flash of red appeared next to the tenrec and a hand reached out, catching Surge’s fist. The hand was attached to a black and red hedgehog that looked at her with a scowl and a flash of irritation in his eyes. Surge growled when she saw Shadow had been the one to protect Sonic. “Why aren’t you trying to help me get rid of him?” Surge hissed at Shadow.
“Because I have no need to end my faker’s life,” Shadow scoffed and threw Surge off to the side, gliding back a few steps so that he stood to Sonic’s side.
“It’s because I keep life entertaining for him,” Sonic giggled as he jumped up to his feet, leaning an arm against Shadow’s shoulder.
Shadow rolled his eyes and slapped Sonic’s hand off of him. “You must have hit your head hard enough to have delusions.”
“Okay, Mr. dark and broody,” Sonic teased with a laugh. “Tell me that again when I see you cracking smile when we are racing.”
With a huff, Shadow crossed his arms and looked away. He didn’t look as irritated as he did with other people so Sonic took that as a win in his books. “You’re insufferable,” Shadow sighed in disappointment, shaking his head.
“It’s who I am. Take it or leave it,” Sonic smirked. He could almost hear the warmth that Shadow withheld for most others coloring his tone just a smidge.
“Have I ever told you how much I hate you?” Shadow grumbled.
“Love you too, Shads,” Sonic chuckled, sending him a wink.
Shadow looked at Sonic, shaking his head with the faintest hint of a smile. Sonic leaned back on a leg and placed a hand on his hip, snickering at Shadow.
Surge looked between the two of them, her rage filling all over again. Here was another mobian that had to suffer because Sonic existed. It made her upset that he wasn’t trying to rid the world of him like she was so that they could both be free. With a roar that had both hedgehogs startling from the sheer intensity of it, Surge darted forward towards Sonic.
Shadow threw a hand out in front of Sonic to protect him but Surge expected that. She ducked under his arm and hooked her arm around Sonic’s neck. Sonic gagged as she cut off his airway and felt himself be pulled along. It was only a second later that Surge dug her feet into the ground to stop herself.
With Sonic’s momentum, his body continued to move forward. Air met his back as he started to go down and he realized then that Surge had stopped where the railway had long decayed away. Sonic closed his eyes as he braced himself for his face from the second-level.
The ground came up quickly to meet Sonic and it hurt as much as he expected it to. Sonic grunted as he bounced over the ground but was quick to recover as it was nothing compared to some of the hits he had taken in his life. He let himself bounce on the ground once more before placing a hand on the ground to right himself. It was decidedly cold and wet, and he looked down to see he had landed in a small puddle of water.
“Sonic!” a call of his name from the side caught his attention. Sonic looked to the side to see Tails and Knuckles trotting into the room. Tails looked like he had been shocked hearing the fight but was now gearing himself up to support his brother. Knuckles had a smirk on his face and was cracking his namesake as he was ready to jump in to fight.
“I’m okay,” Sonic reassured them with a hand held out to him to accentuate his point.
“You won’t be when I’m done with you,” Surge cackled from up higher. Sonic looked up to see her standing with a leg out on the ledge of the second-floor walkway she had thrown him from. A flash to his side showed Shadow teleporting down to the same level as him.
“Can we please just talk this out?” Sonic groaned with a roll of his head. “We don’t have to fight.”
“I’m well past that. It’s time for the era of Sonic the Hedgehog to end,” Surge smiled darkly to show off her sharp teeth. “I got you right where I want you.”
Sonic looked down at the water that barely came up to his ankles and then up at the tenrec. “In this puddle? I mean, water isn’t exactly my best friend but even I can handle this.”
“Oh, but can you?” Surge cackled. “Kitsunami, now!”
For the fastest thing alive, Sonic’s response time was delayed by the surprise of the fennec appearing from behind a large piece of fallen building concrete near the edge of the water. Sonic turned around just in time to see Kitsunami letting a cord of live sparking electricity drop from his hand before turning tail and running away. Sonic’s friends all saw the same time as him and felt their hearts clench in fear.
“Watch out!” Knuckles yelled out a warning to his friend.
“Sonic!” Tail screamed, flying towards his brother with his hands held out towards him.
“Move!” Shadow yelled at the same time, foot pushing off the ground to race towards the blue hedgehog.
All three of them were too slow as the cable fell into the water and Sonic was hit with the full force of the raw electricity. Instantly, his body seized up on him and his breath was knocked out of his lungs with his eyes widening impossibly large. From the corner of his eyes, he could see his friends pausing at the edge of the water or else they would suffer the same fate as him. Surge looked all too pleased with herself before she slipped out of a hole in the wall now that she had accomplished her master plan.
Sonic didn’t have too much extra headspace to think about Surge getting away. He couldn’t tell if the screams that rang in his ears around him were from his friends or his own mouth as his head was thrown back from the pain. He wasn’t even sure if he was making a sound or not. Sonic’s arms bent with tension at his sides, fingers curling into claws. There was a ringing in his ears. A burning of something organic filtered into his nose. Spots dancing in his vision that mixed with the white-hot electricity.
As quickly as it started, it was over. Someone killed the power to the cable and it was pulled out, the water still sparking from the residual electricity. It had gotten impossibly quiet compared to the noise before – so much that it was jarring.
“Sonic?” someone called his name carefully. To be honest, Sonic could not tell who it was who said it. His mind did not recognize it after being shocked.
Sonic didn’t not answer the call. His arms finally relaxed enough to finally drop back down and swing limply at his sides. All strength was leaving Sonic and his legs gave out from underneath of him with barely a reaction from him.
Sonic finally fell forward face-first into the water. His eyes were stuck widen open as his body twitched violently. Water flooded up his nose and his still opened mouth. Even if he wanted to stop it and pull himself out of the water, Sonic found that he had no control over himself to do so whatsoever.
Everything went dark around Sonic as he heard multiple calls of his name from around him.
Sonic didn’t know where he was.
In fact, Sonic didn’t much know except his name. It was like a blank slate was where his memories should have been. Strangely enough, he was okay with this. There was no fear or confusion – just peace.
All around him was darkness. It was never-ending no matter where Sonic looked. It should have been scary but Sonic felt an odd sense of peace as he looked around. His body felt light – like he wasn’t really there. It felt like he was in a dream. A dream of peace and no suffering where nothing hurt.
But why would he care about suffering and pain?
That didn’t make sense.
Whatever.
Picking a random direction, Sonic started walking. Despite the back of his mind begging for him to do it, he chose to not run. He didn’t see the need for it. All he did was walked forward and tried to remember how he ended up here. For who knows how long, Sonic walked.
He walked and walked and walked and walked.
Until there was a small ball of light that appeared in front of him out of nowhere, making Sonic draw up short and stop walking. It was a single, small ball of light that looked warm to the touch. The only other thing in the dark space besides the hedgehog.
Sonic reached a hand out towards the light, his attention stuck on it as it felt like he was being called to it. His hand was almost there. All he had to do was reach forward just a little more. His finger ghosted over the light…
…and another hand grabbed ahold of his.
Startled, Sonic followed the hand up the arm to the person it belonged to. It was a young girl with blonde hair pulled back by a headband that matched her blue dress who shook her head at him.
“Who are…” Sonic trailed off.
“Don’t touch that,” the girl chided Sonic with a giggle. She pulled him back from the light and Sonic let himself get pulled along. Sonic followed along dumbly.
The girl hummed as she pulled Sonic along for longer than he cared to count. Behind him, the light grew dimmer and farther away. Sonic felt the call of the light fading away and questioned why he was drawn to it so much.
And why he was being filled with a sense of relief for being stopped from touching the light.
Sonic stared at the girl. He knew this girl but he didn’t know how. Something about her was just so familiar. It was like her name was on the tip of his tongue. There was something about the girl that made his mind flash with red and black for some reason.
“I’m glad you didn’t touch the light before I could stop you or else you would be stuck here,” the girl said cheerfully, a slight skip to her step. “And I don’t think your friends would like that very much.”
His friends?
Sonic didn’t know who she was talking about.
“I never thought I would get the chance to speak with you but I’m glad to get the chance to,” the girl continued, turning around to look at Sonic. “This blank space is so depressing. Let me show you my favorite place.”
Sonic was shocked when the black on all sides of him seemed to be swept away and he was left standing in the middle of a field filled with yellow and blue flowers. Sonic let his hand fall out of the girl’s as he spun around in a slow circle. “How’d you do that?” he asked.
“A special skill of mine,” the girl giggled and ran a hand over the flowers. “Since the Arc was in space, I was never able to bring Shadow to my favorite flower field so we used to use the virtual reality room a lot so I could show him. I even got some of the scientists to make a little plot of flowers and dirt so we could still get the feeling of like we were on Earth.”
Shadow.
Sonic knew that name.
Those flashes of red and black morphed in shape to become another hedgehog. One that grimaced and frowned more than he smiled. Barbed retorts would fly off his tongue that Sonic learned to never take seriously. A true rival in his speed and that Sonic would actively seek out to race against. An enemy who became an ally, evolving to something more than a friend.
Sonic remembered Shadow in all of his glory. Memories rushed back like water breaking through a dam. Sonic watched the girl the entire time as the memories returned, his mouth dropping open as he realized who this was.
“You’re Maria,” Sonic said bluntly, his mouth hanging open. “Oh my chaos, you’re actually her. You’re Maria.”
Maria giggled and clasped her hands behind her back, leaning forward slightly with a small section of her hair falling forward over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Sonic.”
“I can’t believe it,” Sonic breathed in awe. “I’m actually meeting the Maria.”
“I see Shadow has told you about me,” Maria giggled sweetly.
“He didn’t at first,” Sonic said, his eyes still wide as he took in the only person that Shadow openly admitted that he loved. This girl meant everything to Shadow and it had nearly destroyed him to lose her.
And here she was in front of Sonic.
“But he did in the end,” Maria said. Maria tucked her knees underneath of her to sit down and smoothed out her dress over her legs.
“Well, yeah,” Sonic mumbled, kicking a loose piece of dirt with the tip of his shoe. “Took a long time though.”
“Shadow has always been on the quieter side. He was always much more reserved than me and kept his precious things close to his heart,” Maria giggled as she plucked some of the flowers around her. “But, he has a mischievous side to him. I used to pull him into all types of pranks on the Ark. The scientists used to get so miffed with the two of us but I didn’t care. It was worth getting told off to see how Shadow would laugh with me.”
“Shadow? Laugh?” Sonic scoffed incredulously. “You’re kidding me.”
“I am not,” Maria laughed and started to expertly intertwin the flowers together. “His smile was my favorite thing about him.”
Sonic’s mouth dropped open for a moment as he looked at Maria before shaking his head roughly. “No way. We have to be talking about two different Shadow the Hedgehogs. My Shadow would cease to exist if he smiled at all.”
Maria’s smile turned rueful. Her fingers stilled for a second before they continued to weave the flowers together. “Life has not been kind to my brother.”
Sonic pressed his lips together and nodded. Nothing more had to be said about why the Shadow that Maria knew and the Shadow Sonic knew were different. Shadow had been through much sorrow and suffering, more than Sonic believed he could have handled. It was no surprise that Shadow came out on the other side of it the way that he was.
Maria held the flower crown out towards Sonic. The hedgehog flicked his eyes to it and then up to Maria’s face. He could see the quiet patience in her eyes as she waited for him to accept it. Not wanting to disappoint her, Sonic leaned his head forward and let the dainty crown be placed on him.
Looking all too pleased with herself, Maria drew her hands back to herself and folded them on her lap. “Shadow has been through a lot of sad things in his life so please be patient with him. I don’t know if the old Shadow will ever come back fully but I feel with some time, parts will return. He just needs you to not give up on him.”
Sonic snorted breathily. “Me? Give on Shadow? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. That faker is stuck with me for the long run.”
Maria giggled behind a hand. “I am very glad to hear that Shadow has someone like you in his corner. He really needs it – despite the way he acts.”
“Yeah, that edgelord,” Sonic scoffed playfully, making Maria laugh more. He liked the way she laughed. It was nice. “He’s always acting all dark and mysterious. Sometimes I wonder if he even likes me or if he is really good at pretending to tolerate me.”
“Trust me, he thinks a lot of you,” Maria told him with a bright smile. “More than you can imagine.”
Sonic could tell that there was something to that smile than Maria was letting on. It was mischievous in a way that only an older sibling teasing a younger sibling about something could make. Sonic would know from how much he smiled that same smile when teasing Tails.
But before Sonic could ask her to elaborate, Maria continued speaking.
“Thank you for staying with Shadow and not giving up on him,” Maria thanked him with a bright smile. “It makes me happy to see he has more people that care for him now. When you see him again, please tell him that it’s time for him to move on and live his life without me in it. That it’s okay for him to live for himself.”
Sonic deflated slightly. Maria noticed and she tilted her head to the side in a quiet question to explain what’s wrong. “It’s not like I’ll be seeing him again,” Sonic mumbled.
Maria raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m with you and you’re…you know,” Sonic explained with a hand gesturing up and down her. “And if I’m with you, then that means I’m also…you know. Surge actually did it.”
Maria chuckled and grabbed his hands, shaking her head. “You’re not dead.”
Now it was Sonic’s turn to be confused. “But…I’m with you and you are dead.”
“You’re in a sort of limbo, but you’re not dead,” Maria explained. “On the border of life and death. If you had touched the light, you would have died.”
“But you stopped me,” Sonic said.
“But I stopped you,” Maria nodded along. “I knew I had to stop you before Shadow lost another person close to him.”
Sonic’s mouth dropped open. He pulled a hand out of Maria’s hold to rub at his face. His emotions were going through a roller coaster. Just as he was about to accept the fact that he was dead and gone, Maria was telling him that he was still alive. She had saved him from crossing the line he could never undo.
“Your friends are trying their hardest to bring you back to them. Do you hear them?” Maria asked, interrupting Sonic’s growing spiral. Sonic wrinkled his brow at her in confusion and she smiled, tilting her head to the side as if she was listening for something.
Sonic copied the movement, listening for nothing but was surprised when he heard voices.
“Sonic! You have to wake up! Please! I’m sorry for not noticing earlier and I promise to do better in the future! Come back to us!”
“You knucklehead! Don’t you dare die on us! We have work to do and you can’t leave me to do it on my own!”
“Stop pretending to be dead and get up, faker! I’m serious! Wake up! You can’t leave me!”
The voices overlapped, pleading with him to answer their calls and wake up. Sonic felt something shift in his chest as he began to remember the other parts of his life aside from Shadow. Tails and Knuckles…how could he have forgotten them? Tails, his little brother, and Knuckles, his brother-in-arms, that were with him through thick and thin. It broke his heart to hear them so devastated because of him.
And Sonic had never heard Shadow sound that broken before.
“They still need you,” Maria told him. A light started to shine in the middle of his chest and Maria smiled when she saw it. She released Sonic’s hands and placed one of her own flat against his chest. “And I think it is time for you to return.”
Maria pushed the hand on Sonic’s chest to send him falling backwards. Empty air met his back instead of the solid ground that he had been expecting. The flower crown fell away from his head to explode into a shower of petal that covered his vision of the pale blue sky – Maria waving to him as she grew farther away from him.
“Don’t forget to tell Shadow what I said,” Maria giggled with a wave of her fingers.
And the world disappeared from around Sonic.
Sonic gasped loudly as he came to.
His hearing felt like he was underwater as his vision swam in a wave of gray with smudges of colors on the sides. All of Sonic’s nerves felt like they were on fire. Sonic whined in pain as his body seemed to unconsciously curl in on himself. Everything hurt and breathing was a laborious task.
But he was alive.
Sonic’s vision cleared up enough that he could make out what was around him. For starters, Sonic was laid out on his back with the old gray ceiling of the building they had been fighting in above him. Despite still feeling cold from the water, Sonic could feel that he was no longer in the puddle that he had fallen into after being electrocuted.
To Sonic’s left was Tails. The fox was crying fat tears as he said something Sonic couldn’t quite hear. He was holding his electric in his hands and Sonic could see small wires popping out of the top that connected to his body with electrodes. In his haste seeing Sonic awake, Tails dropped his device in favor of grabbing ahold of Sonic’s hand in a tight grip.
A flick of his eyes to the right had Sonic seeing the relieved face of Knuckles staring down at him. His hands were being pulled off of Sonic’s chest, Sonic assuming that he had been doing compression while Sonic was gone. One of his mittens came up to wipes at his faces and came back tellingly wet.
Finally, Sonic looked up to the pinched expression of Shadow staring down at him. Sonic could feel Shadow’s hands on the back of his head that held him in place. Shadow’s lap seemed to pillow Sonic’s head from the rough ground and the blue hedgehog could feel how his rival’s hands shook.
Sonic opened his mouth to speak only for a round of coughing to come out instead.
“Sit him up,” Tails ordered, Sonic’s hearing finally returning.
The hands holding his head disappeared – part of his mourning the loss of the touch – only for it to reappear a second later under his arms. Sonic was lifted upwards so that he was sitting upright and braced against Shadow’s body. A part of him wanted to lean into Shadow’s warm body with how chilled he felt but the demand to cough overpowered it.
The water that had flooded in when he fell into the puddle and coded spilled past his lips as he coughed it all up. It definitely didn’t feel great coming up but Sonic didn’t stop it from happening. Tails was pressing his fingers to various parts of Sonic’s body to feel something – whatever it was, Sonic didn’t know. Knuckles had a hand on Sonic’s shoulder that he rubbed to provide some sense of comfort.
Longer than Sonic wanted to, he finally stopped coughing up water and just focused on filling his lungs with fresh air. Sonic leaned back against Shadow and was somewhat surprised when his rival didn’t fight it. In fact, it felt like Shadow pulled himself to his body.
“How long…was I knocked out?” Sonic asked between pants.
“You weren’t just knocked out,” Shadow grumbled, his fingers pressing harder against Sonic’s sides. Sonic cut his eyes up to Shadow but the other hedgehog had his head ducked to the side to avoid his glance.
“You were legally dead for six minutes and 37 seconds,” Tails answered in a rush. Tails’ hands stopped moving on Sonic’s wrist, holding tight as he brought his emotions of terror and fear back under control.
“We thought that you were gone,” Knuckles whispered in horror. There was a haunted look in his eyes and Sonic could guess it was from coming so close to losing another person he had welcomed into his clan.
“I guess I got lucky that I had you guys to bring me back,” Sonic said and flashed them a tired smile. Despite just waking up again, he was feeling so drained. His mind supplied that dying and then being brought back to the side of the living seemed to tire one out immensely.
Shadow’s grip lessened a fraction on his sides.
Tails wiped at his eyes to clear them of the new waves of tears that threatened to fall. “Well, duh. We weren’t about to let you go and croak on us. It’s not your time to go yet.”
“Maria said something like that,” Sonic mumbled.
Shadow’s ears perked up instantly and his gaze snapped down to stare at Sonic. “What did you say?” Shadow whispered.
Sonic turned his tired gaze up to Shadow. “I know you’ve told me how nice Maria was but you really downplayed it. That girl is a literal angel. Made me a flower crown and all that jazz.”
“You…saw…Maria?” Shadow whispered. The pressure from Shadow’s fingers on his sides returned in full.
Sonic nodded and shot Shadow a small smile. “Yeah, she came to stop me before I touched anything I wasn’t supposed to.”
For the first time in his whole span of knowing Shadow, Sonic had never seen him look as caught off guard as that moment. Shadow’s mouth had dropped open and he lost the crease in the middle of his brow that he always bore with his constant scowl. Sonic liked how Shadow looked in that moment, not full of his usual brooding.
Tails let his gaze flick between Shadow and Sonic, his bottom lip being worried between his teeth. Like Sonic, he knew of Maria. To be fair, Tails didn’t know very much about her – only the basics. What he did know was that Maria was dead and gone, and if Sonic was saying how she stopped him from touching something that was bad enough for her to step in…
Tails wondered just how close he was to having lost his brother in that moment.
“We should bring Sonic to the hospital to get checked out fully,” Tails announced suddenly with a new vigor for Sonic’s health.
“Aww, but I hate going there,” Sonic pouted.
“I don’t care,” Tails said as he looked Sonic right in the eyes. It scared him to know just how close they all were to not having Sonic back with them. “You were shocked with so much electricity that you were legally dead for over six minutes. You may like to brag about how smart I am but I am not a doctor. You need to be checked over by a professional to make sure we don’t miss something that will have you keeling over in two weeks.”
Sonic felt how Shadow flinched from behind him.
“I got it,” Shadow volunteered immediately. He moved from behind Sonic to his side and picked him up in one fast movement to carry securely in his arms. Sonic nearly yelped from the sudden change but found that he was too tired to do so.
“Are you sure?” Knuckles asked.
“I am the fastest of us all. It will be more efficient for me to bring him in,” Shadow declared to them.
Tails nodded and stood up from the ground. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Shadow, don’t let Sonic try to weasel his way out of tests and make sure to correct any lies he tells about how he is feeling. He is going to down-play how he is feeling when the doctor asks and I need you to nip that in the bud.”
“Very well,” Shadow nodded his head.
“All of you are traitors,” Sonic grumbled as he let his head fall to the side onto Shadow’s shoulder.
“We just care about you,” Tails explained with a soft smile. “And if we have to be the bad cops to make sure you are okay because you are clearly not going to do it—”
“Hey,” Sonic protested half-heartedly. His eyes lids were really starting to feel like they were made of lead.
“It’s true,” Knuckles nodded along solemnly.
“—then I don’t mind being the bad cop,” Tails finished. With another nod of his head and a small salute to Shadow, Tails took a step back. “See you both at the hospital.”
“See you there,” Shadow said before widening his stance to step off.
Shadow was gone in a breath and the two hedgehogs disappeared in a blur of gold. The world passed by Sonic rapidly and he let himself exhale with a huff. “Tails worries too much,” Sonic mumbled.
“Probably because you worry too little about yourself,” Shadow snapped back.
Sonic didn’t retort the comment as he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Even he knew how bad he was about his own well being but it was hard to let habits break. To Sonic, as long as his close ones were okay, then so was he.
Shadow and Sonic dropped into silence as the former raced over the ground. Despite how fast he was, carrying another person slowed him down enough that it was going to take a handful of moments for them to reach the hospital. It was about halfway through their quick trip that Shadow finally broke the silence.
“Did Maria say anything…about me?” Shadow asked after a moment, His gaze was set resolutely forward as if he was nervous. Like he didn’t know if he wanted the answer to the that question or not.
“Yeah, she did.” Sonic smiled to himself and blinked heavily. “Said that she wants you to move on and live your life without her in it. That it’s okay for you to live for yourself.”
Sonic wasn’t sure if he imagined it or not, but he could have sworn that he heard Shadow’s breath hitch. Whatever it was, Sonic chose to not comment. He had enough tact to know better. Instead, Sonic fought against his closing eye lids with all his might…which wasn’t much to begin with after being brought back to life.
Shadow seemed to have noticed, his eyes flicking down for a moment before back up to the path in front of him so he didn’t run into something. “Go to sleep,” Shadow said softly.
“’m not tired,” Sonic slurred, his head listing more as he fought a losing battle.
Shadow snorted and readjusted Sonic so that his head was tucked between his shoulder and jaw. “Stop fighting it and go to sleep. I’ve got you from here,” Shadow murmured just loud enough for Sonic to hear.
It was like all of the fight went out of Sonic. The tension eased out of his body and slowly his muscles relaxed – Sonic hadn’t even noticed just how tense he was. His eyelids finally got a leg up on him and dropped down, Sonic not having enough energy to crack them back open.
His mind was starting to shut down on him part by part. Memories of the day flew behind his eyelids and he inhaled sharply when he remembered the flower field. With a pout, Sonic exhaled harshly. “I didn’t get to keep my flower crown from Maria,” he grumbled.
If Sonic was more awake, he would have startled from the way he heard Shadow’s chest reverberate with a chuckle. “When you are better, I’ll teach you how to make flower crowns the way Maria taught me,” Shadow promised quietly next to his ear.
“I would like that,” Sonic murmured with a smile.
Sonic let himself drift off then, visions of a blonde girl weaving flower crowns with her black and red hedgehog brother in a field of flowers.