Hey guys, hope your all doing okay and staying safe and healthy out there. Thought I'd post something that I just suddenly had to urge to write after listening to the song 'Where the heart is' by HAEVN.

WARNING: This one shot deals with the topic of death, mortality and thoughts of dying. If this could upset you please do not read.

For everyone else, enjoy and don't forget to send in requests.

This is not how the story originally went, of this he is certain. In this world, a Princess is free to cry and the God of the Sun is not fragmented and bitter. But this is a better version of what had transpired, an ideal vision from the one he remembers. At night he still sees fire burning across the landscape, still feels the hate and anger from a broken God pressing down on him. But most of all, he remembers how it felt to not exist.

Sonic knows he died once upon a time in a different world. He's not entirely sure that all of him came back.

The phantom feeling of cold crystal tearing through his back, splitting open his organs and shattering his bones before ripping out of his chest follow him into this new (false) reality. For a moment he had been frozen in agony and fear, breathing stuttering to a halt as his lungs were shredded from the inside out. It was a moment that lasted but a few seconds yet stretched out into thousands of years. Then he was falling, both physically and spiritually, vessel crashing to the ground cold and empty while his essence watched on from above. He couldn't say how long he had stared down at his own body, only that eventually he found himself falling into endless blackness, cold hands reaching out to gently guide him home and to soothe the lingering fear. Sonic remembers this with startling clarity, remembers how it felt to be weightless yet heavy beyond belief, to be free from all earthly attachments yet to also be chained to an invisible force.

At the time he knows he should have felt fear, sadness, anger and grief. He should have mourned for his friends, should have fought against the pull of death. Yet all he had done was just sink into the coldness, allowing the blackness to wash over him as hushed disembodied voices sang out a haunting yet beautiful lullaby. The voices spoke no true words, carried no tone of gender to them. All he had known was their presence and power. He had wanted to stay and listen to them forever, yet the feeling of being chained to something prevented him from sinking all the way. The chain kept him in limbo, kept him from crossing all the way. The chain is what pulled him back, pulled him from the cold void and the gentle voices. He had cried for their loss (never for his friends and family) and had reached out almost desperately for them. It hadn't mattered in the end for the chain gave a final yank and suddenly he was awake once more, lungs jerking into action while his heart spluttered to life.

It hadn't felt right. Each inhale felt false and took so much effort, each beat of his heart was painful and wrong.

Sonic knows he died and he knows that not all of him came back. But something had followed….

Death was an inevitable moment that no one could escape from. For every beginning, there must be an end, for every life, there must be a death. It's a fundamental truth that has existed since the dawn of time. Death also left its mark as Sonic had come to know. Despite being a new world, a new reality where he hadn't died it still clung to his soul. It was in the way his skin stay just slightly cold to the touch, in the way his breath felt false and forced in his chest and in the way he felt the imprints of those long passed around him.

Angel Island has become a place of both comfort and unease. The history of the Island and the people that once lived there is bathed in blood, betrayal and suffering. Some of the ancient tribe's men and women still walk as shades along forgotten trails that remain invisible to all but knowing green eyes. Sonic sometimes wonders if Knuckles feels their presence too, if perhaps the reason to clings to his ancestral home so fercily is because he knows some of his ancestors still walk among the trees. The theory grows when, on a rare day of peace and quiet the echidna takes him to a hidden clearing that is home to the ruins of a village, crumbling away with age and time. Sonic steps into the clearing and feels a heaviness descend upon him, feels how his heart slows to a crawl inside his chest while his lungs seem to have to work extra hard to draw in oxygen.

"This is a graveyard." He says it so certainly, voice unnaturally serious and carrying a weight to it that feels ageless. Knuckles goes stiff beside him, and Sonic can hear how the elder's heartbeat spikes. Blue waits, knowing the other is brimming with questions and fear but not feeling bothered in the slightest. But instead of questioning him, Knuckles just grunts while crossing his arms, "This is where it all fell apart for my tribe, where Chaos attacked them after they tried to use the Emeralds for their own gain."

Sonic doesn't bother saying that he already knew this, how he can feel the lingering panic, fear and regret that hangs like an early morning fog in the air. He thinks saying such things is stepping across a line that shouldn't be and for once he finds himself not wanting to push the boundaries. Knuckles stays in the clearing for the rest of the day. Sonic leaves after the heavy feeling grows too much to bear and he fears his heart may stop if he stays for a moment longer.

A part of him thinks that wouldn't be so bad in the end.

The others slowly start to take note of his change in attitude and personality. They notice how he smiles less, how his jokes and puns become none-existent. They watch as his eyes will track something only he can see, note how fridged his skin is to the touch. They try to help, try to be supportive and inclusive but there's something about his presence now that leaves a feeling of unease in them all. Sonic understands, death is frightening to most after all.

Sonic had died once, he isn't afraid to die again.

Some nights sleep is so far from his reach that Sonic finds himself running (Fleeing) to the forest near his home. Among the tall ancient trees, he sits and allows the power of the earth to surround his being. The feeling of falling into their embrace is similar to the sinking feeling of being claimed by death. Similar, but not the same.

Not enough.

It's a year after the world reset itself, a year of living in a world where he is no longer dead but no longer fully alive that Eggman dies. A brain aneurysm that finally ruptured in the quiet of his lab, his robots finding him in the early hours of the morning long after his heart had stopped and his soul of left his body. Sonic's friends aren't exactly happy to hear of the man's death, but they aren't exactly sad either. They are an odd mix of both that leaves them teetering between. Sonic isn't sad either, but he is most certainly not happy. He feels a sense of loss, Eggman had been a large part of his life, after all, had known him longer than any of his friends. He finds himself drawn to the gravesite, standing as the lone mourning over the freshly dug earth.

"I died once." He finds himself saying, feeling a presence that is neither here nor there. "Sometimes it feels as if the whole world died for a moment. Everything came back in the end…but I think I left something behind."

The tombstone stands silent in the face of his words, unmoving and unchanged. When he'd died he'd spluttered and coughed, had wheezed and cried out, a deafening sound in the face of his mortal enemies quiet demise. It's a strange thought. Sonic knows Eggman had been loud and demanding in life, never one to go silently into defeat.

"Were you scared? Did you fight the cold hands? Did you resist the gentle voices?" He stares intently at the stone, waiting for something that isn't a verbal answer. The heaviness that has followed him since his death grows almost unbearable, the invisible weight threatening to send him to his knees.

"I'm not afraid, not anymore. When death finally comes for me I think I'll greet him like an old friend."

He's been fading ever since he woke up, becoming less with every day that passes. Death leaves its mark for it won't be denied once its hand has held your own.

The ending is up to your own interpretation. Weather Sonic dies in the end or not is up to you as the reader. This was just an interesting idea I had after listening to that song and thinking how it must have felt for Sonic to have died only to come back. It was bond to have some effect on him mentally after all.

Anyways, hope you all enjoyed it and I will see you all in the next chapter. Until then have a prosperous day, week, month, year and life