Cold Hands: A Sonic the Hedgehog Oneshot

They say the one thing you can never get rid of is the one thing that changed your life forever.

Well, I don't know if I believe that's true.

But I know of a curse, and this memory has never left me.

Morning comes, the light shines through the window, passing through my shut eyelids. I roll out of bed, feet pressing against the floor, tugging on my shoes and yawning. Navigating towards my dresser through the organized mess my room is, I fumble for my white gloves, pull them on over my fingers, and start a new day.

My friends love to joke with me about the twin gloves I've loved far longer than any girl I've ever come in contact with. They all claim that I must've been born with them on. I, however, know the true story.

To find this story, one would have to walk backwards across the span of my life, from the time I was just a little hedgehog kit, till now. And believe it or not, my rivalry with Eggman is very personal. I hate him not only because he's trying to take over the planet which I hold dear to my heart, but because of an event that happened just ten years ago, when I was five years of age.

I don't remember much of anything before five. Obviously, I had a mother and a father, because I'm here. But my original name (if it was Sonic to begin with, I don't remember), and everything about the earliest years of my childhood…it's almost as if they never existed. Every time I try to think back, a great black mist surrounds that time period and I learn nothing. So, my life began at five.

If I think back, even if I'm just about to close my eyes and go to sleep, the memory is so clear, so vivid, that what happened has to be real. Why do I wear the gloves my friends say I was born with?

A flashback fades in from blur to reality. Below me, I see the flames of destruction and my feet dangling in the air. I'm not flying. An ice cold hand holds me, suspended miles above the ground. The wooden roofs of houses collapse on themselves, all orange and light red from the fire, children are crying for their mothers and mothers for their children. A young woman is crying, running after us.

I realize, at this time, that I'm crying, too. My other hand stretches out for her, though I can barely see her face from my height. My heart is aching as I'm torn away from her. "Mommy!"

I can't hear what she's saying over my own sobs. Suddenly, the cold hands wrap around my middle and pull me up into a warm lap. I hear laughter and a cold hand closes over both of mine. The woman's screams stop short and my sobs break out again. "Mommy!" My cry is louder this time as I scramble out of the lap I'm sitting in to thrust my head over the side. The hands bring me back to the lap before I can see anything and keep a firm hold on both of mine.

The hands are like ice and this doesn't help matters. I continue to cry. The voice above me is a voice I would soon grow to hate, speaking softly and sternly to me. I don't understand the words, and don't care about them either. Finally, I find myself on hard ground, in the middle of nowhere. The smoke is still billowing into the sky from the ashes of what was once comfort to me. The man's strange ship flies away and I am left alone.

Now, in the present, I take my gloves off and press them against my warm cheeks.

They are still as cold as the day Eggman touched them. An eternal curse, never to be removed. Always a reminder of who the one I should truly hate is.

Dark destiny of a failure, one spirit no one can break. As I did on that day, I use my feet to take me into the horizon, forever a loner and forever one with the earth.

Funny thing about this one. My mom is always saying "oh your hands are so cold!", and I was wondering why Sonic wears gloves. Hmm. An origin story.

I am taking requests now for "origins" (as in, something unexplained about a character). For example, "No Air" is one about Sonic's fear of water, this one is about his gloves. If you'd like me to write an "origin" story for you, please ask! Thanks!

-----pantedgieQueen13