I got this song from RyokoDarkwing. It... Actually looks like a Celine Dion song that I actually like. I decided to mess with it a bit. This fic isn't really a romantic one.
This one actually requires a little continuity, since its set in the same storyline as my other, much bigger fanfiction Chaos Mythologies. If you don't want to read that, then just imagine that this fanfiction takes place in some obscure, future, never-made-episode in which sonic and the others are back on earth and the battles have started all over again.
37. Celine Dion, Wrong One Loves You Right
Christopher Thorndyke isn't stupid.
He is a teenager, which means he has the right to a little... exaggeration, now and then. But exaggerating things is very different to misunderstanding them. And Chris is sure he isn't misunderstanding the looks that Sonic gets whenever he blows a Bot'nik to pieces in a blur of Sonic speed, or the expressions on random members of the public as Knuckles gruffly but politely apologises for throwing cars about in his attempts to get at Eggman.
Confusion, awe... and sometimes, if you watch people hard enough, fear.
He supposes things were different when he was a kid; the first time Sonic had been in this world; before the Neorex and the evils that are draining his planet of colour. Or maybe he was just seeing things differently. The child-Chris viewed the world through blue coloured glasses, and even what he did see; he only did so in terms of his own feelings. Which is a very, very human behaviour, but still a selfish one.
There's another thing that Christopher Thorndyke knows very well. He was a selfish child who was given everything he ever needed and never the one thing he wanted more than anything. As an adult, he is anything but.
But... no. It didn't all happen after he grew up, did it? He remembers being twelve years old standing on the pier and trying to understand just why the president had been talking to his grandfather like the government was plotting to lock his best friend in a cage somewhere.
Sometimes he dreams about all the ways in which things could wrong. Not wrong in the way they have so many times before. Not wrong in the way that Eggman makes things, or the way they are when the Master Emerald shatters into pieces, or even when the Metarex are tearing apart the centre of the galaxy. Wrong in the way that only humans can be.
He has the feeling that if his life were a comic book, he would've stopped reading because the plot had jumped the shark and gotten too ridiculous to believe. But that doesn't mean the things that worry him aren't innately, potentially real.
Chris isn't stupid. He knows that Sonic's abilities and nature and very appearance frighten people more than they would care to admit on television. He knows that he's dreading the day Cream finds out that sometimes, people aren't always coming over and staring because they want to play with her. He knows from reading his Grandfather's encrypted-but-not-encrypted-enough-probably-on-purpose files the huge number of plans and contingencies that the government has just in case Sonic turns out to be on some other governments side.
Chris would like to charge into a white house official office and yell at somebody about how none of that is true; that Sonic doesn't care about any of that stuff, and how the only dangerous thing around here is the people who think of Sonic like he's some kind of weapon that needs to be activated and deactivated at will.
Except that...
Well.
Shadow told him about what happened, after he passed out on Black Narcissus's base. After the blood, the sealed container and the sight of Sonic's face disappearing as the floor rose up around them. Of Cosmo's frightened frustration.
He never actually saw what Sonic did. But he knows how being around him felt afterwards: strange and distorted enough around him for Chris not to immediately dismiss what Shadow told him as nonsense.
Besides it's not like it takes a genius to work out what Sonic is capable of. The guy can outrun a NASA rocket engine for crying out loud. And that's all he really wants to do. All he's ever wanted to do. Outrun everyone and everything. Chris won't pretend to understand the how's and why's of that anymore now than he did when he was just a kid.
It's human nature to feel jealous of what someone else can do, and scared of how they can do it. Perfectly understandably to be confused because one day there was only earth and a single bipedal major species and nothing more than that, and the next there were the kind of creatures you normally found on sale in the supermarket or in Pet Stores, holding conversations and fighting evil geniuses in the street.
Chris knows all of those feelings, because he's felt them himself. Because sometimes he still does, even if for different reasons. He's never been afraid of Sonic, but unlike when he was twelve, now there's a small part of him which understands why other people are. Sonic can manipulate Chaos on a fundamental level, (which in scientific terms is rather like a human being able to control liquid plasma and C4 at the same time). Sonic can outrun speeding missiles. Sonic can smash somebody to insignificant little shreds just by hitting them at a high enough speed...
And he uses these abilities to take a twelve year old boy for one last run around the planet. He uses them to collect flowers from the other side of a planet because he knows how much a little girl will like them. He uses them to go for races with speed obsessed human beings, and to help Ella tidy up the kitchen at ridiculous speeds.
Most of the people in town, however much sonic of televised and idolised and feared, don't get to see that part of him. Chris does. Chris sees the person sonic is when he's not kicking Eggman's ass.
And the thing is, Chris can't think of any better person to possess those abilities than Sonic the Hedgehog.
I'm getting tired, of hearing that
You're dangerous, but they won't stop
Until I leave, they won't believe
That being with you won't break my heart
So worried bout, the road ahead
They can't see that, you're my best friend
They're never gonna take me away from you
There's nothing they can do