What A Long Hard Life: Bless' Story

Chapter 11: Darkness

I am very happy with the response of my readers with both this story and 'It Isn't The End' because the reviews seem to come in quickly and there's a lot of them. Thank you all so much.

After what felt like hours the door was opened to reveal a read and black hedgehog with red eyes, furry chest and spikes. Bless froze for a second, could it really be? He was holding a tiny red and black baby in his arms and was crying. He passed the baby to Shade and fell to his knees, crying aloud. "Shadow… what's going on?" Shade asked him.

Bless sighed, it wasn't her dad it was her nephew. This was one of Shade's sons who had left about a year ago. He looked exactly like Shadow, which was why he was named after him. Bless was disappointed that her father hadn't come back, however this was nearly as good. She wondered what was going on.

As Shade held the baby he noticed that it was a bit wet and gooey, there was blood on it. "Shadow, please tell me!" he said, and gasped as he saw that it still had the umbilical cord on it.

Shadow, still on the floor sobbing, started to talk. "My girlfriend… she…" he took a long shaky breath in. "… died… in childbirth…"

There was silence, before the baby started to cry. Heather went to clean it up and get it fed. Shade brought Shadow inside to calm down. After a while, Shade decided to ask him about how everything happened. "Well… since we had to hide from GUN… we couldn't get to a hospital, so… she died since she couldn't get the treatment and help to survive…" he sobbed. "I feel so bad… it's all my fault that she couldn't go to hospital…"

"Shadow… remember this… it's not your fault that anything like this happens. It's because GUN is corrupted and evil. It's never your fault, or our fault, it's there's." Shade said boldly. "Now, we'll look after you and the baby for as long as you need, even if it's forever." Shade said. "Have you named the baby yet?"

"N-no…b-but… I think we should name her… D-darkness… after her mum…" he said, still sobbing. He wasn't the type of person to hold back his tears, he let it all out, crying almost like a child. Shade just let him do it because he had a very good reason to act like this.

Bless watched all of this happen and despite what Shade said about it all being GUN's fault, all Bless could think about was how it was her dad's fault. She hated him even more for causing this, it was all his fault, she couldn't even begin to imagine what the other's could possibly be going through. She was going to ask Shadow weather he had seen his brothers and sister lately, but he had fallen asleep.

He'd cried himself to sleep. Just like Bless used to do a lot, especially when she was young. And he had something to cry about, he had lost someone he loved so much. It reminded Bless of when she lost her father and mother. But it wasn't time for her to cry, it was time for Shadow to cry. He too, like his elders, had experienced true suffering and the sad thing was, he had a lot more to come, an eternity ahead of him of pain and misery.

Bless watched as he slept, his cheeks wet from the tears. She went over and wiped them from his face, even though he had the face of her father, he had a look of a little last innocence, as if it was just hanging on. This is what told her that it definitely wasn't her father and that it was her nephew so she should treat him with love and care. He also wore different clothes to Shadow. He'd gone with fingerless gloves and black boots.

As she wiped his tears, he stirred a little and turned over to sleep some more. Bless then went to check on how Shade and Heather were doing with the baby. She was expecting them to be cooing at the little baby and giving it love, but instead, only Shade was taking care of it and they were arguing.

"But Shade! I've become the producer of this… black arms spawn! Think of all of the children the rest of our sons and daughters will create! This one's red and black like your dad too!" Heather yelled pointing to baby Darkness. "And think of the children she'll create and so on… and it'll all be put onto me!"

"So… when you think of those future generations that will live on forever, you don't feel proud! What kind of a mother are you?"

"One that feels she's been used just to create an army! These aren't hedgehogs! They're black arms monsters!" she screamed. Bless stayed outside the room to listen in, she was horrified. She had no idea Heather felt this way, but then she remembered the argument they'd have when the younger generation were babies.

She decided to leave them to it, to walk in now would probably cause an even bigger argument. She continued to lean against the door frame, just putting herself out of site, and before she'd made her decision to leave, Heather went bursting out of the room in a rage, only to see Bless eavesdropping on them, only at this time she was lost in her thoughts and decisions.

She snapped out of it to see Heather looked at her in rage. Bless slid against the wall, shuffling herself away from Heather nervously. "How dare you eaves drop on us you little runt! Get out of here!" she yelled, throwing a fist at Bless and hitting her in the face.

"What's going on out there?" Shade shouted out to Heather, when he noticed that she was acting strange outside of the open door. "Who's there?"

Heather didn't answer, but Bless did. "Me…" she said in a timid voice. Shade narrowed his eyes at Heather.

"How dare… you do that… to my… SISTER!" Shade said, putting the baby down on the tale and running out to stand up for Bless.

Now the argument was blazing. Bless got herself away from it too see the baby rolling and wriggling towards the edge of the table. She gasped aloud, giving a little scream before she ran to the baby and caught it before it fell off the edge.

The two of them turned around to see Bless holding the crying baby. Shade ran over to her feeling ashamed for leaving a baby unattended. Heather left their sight. "Thank you so much Bless… she could have been seriously hurt if you hadn't caught her…" Shade said taking the baby back gently. "Are you okay? Did she hit you hard?" he asked worriedly.

"No… she's weak… hardly hurt… shocked me a bit though…" Bless said, acting tough.

"Good… I'll be sure to keep her away from you… and maybe the baby too… she's not happy at all for being related to black arms descendants…" Shade said sadly. He carried on tending to the baby, getting rid of the remainders of it's umbilical cord and cleaning it up completely with warm water in the sink.

Suddenly the both of them heard masculine yell then a large crash. Shade didn't make the same mistake as before by leaving the baby on the table, he took her with him. Shade and Bless ran to see where the noise came from. They went to the room that Shadow had fallen asleep in and saw Heather attacking her own son and Shadow getting ready to attack her back. "What is going on here!" Shade boomed like an authoritive father. The both of them stopped.

"Our own son threw me against that wall!" Heather cried out, tears in her eyes.

"Sh-sh-she…" Shadow started to stutter, utterly shocked by all of this. "She was… s-s-strangling me… while I was… asleep…" he struggled to say. "It was a reflex action…" he gulped, pulling himself away from her and running to Shade for protection.

"Heather… I think you should go… you've been outnumbered." Shade said. "And you're no mother to our children… leave… now!" Shade said, pointing to the door with one hand and holding the baby in the other.

Heather refused to move. Shade handed the baby to Bless and decided to remove her by force. "I said leave now…" he said while gently pushing her towards the exit of the shelter but this made her violent.

"You can't kick me out! This is my home! Get off me! Why don't you leave!" She screamed while hitting Shade as hard as she could. Shade was hit back by this unexpected force.

Shadow saw this, he saw his father being knocked down and this sparked a sudden boost of energy and anger inside of him, it was like his mind went blank.

Bless watched as Shadow charged at his own mother at a great speed, leaping over his fallen father, creating a chaos spear and impaling her in the chest. She coughed, choked and fell to the floor, losing a massive amount of blood before she met her dreadful end.

Young Shadow stood there… still looking angry, breathing heavily until his thoughts returned to his head and he slowly realised what he had done. He fell back onto the floor, curled up into a foetal position and started to whimper to himself. "This isn't happening… .it's just a dream… it's just a dream…" he squeaked.

"It's not…" Shade said solidly, getting off the floor. Then baby Darkness started bawling from Bless' arms. Shadow stayed tightly curled up, not moving from his position, hoping to block out the real world and forget about what he'd done.

Shade went to check on Heather's pulse, there was none. He picked her up looking emotionless, he kicked the door open and carried her out of the building.

Bless was dazed by all of this too. The death of Heather was like the riddance of a wicked old step mother to her. Though she was worried about how Shade would cope.

He didn't return for a few hours. By then the baby was dressed in decent clothes and Shadow was slowly and quietly going mad in the corner of the kitchen where Bless was, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth, wide eyed and breathing heavily. Shade called his name about five times before he got annoyed at his lack of response. "SHADOW!" he yelled, while shaking him.

Shadow looked at his father with wide eyes, not breathing. "Just pull yourself together… it's all over now." Shade said calmly.

"But… I kil-"

"Don't say it! I've dealt with it! It's over… let's just move on." Shade said and left the room. Shadow looked to Bless in confusion.

"You know he's very forgiving… don't be surprised…" Bless said. "Now I think you should hold your baby…" she said, passing it to him and leaving the room.

She went to her room to be alone, only thinking to herself one thing. "He is nothing like my dad." she said to herself as she locked herself in her room all alone to reflect on her thoughts.

Sorry for the delay on this, I've been quite busy. On a happier note, it's nearly Christmas! (For those of you who are reading shortly after the chapters upload.)

Lucy Labrado