Whip stepped slowly into the cave. The dark fog within surged towards him, swallowing him. The tunnel behind him, the glow of the crystals, Black's solemn expression, the very ground beneath his feet—all disappeared from view. Whip may as well have been walking blind. Even sound was muffled; his own footsteps were soft and faint, and he couldn't hear any echoes off the walls like he had in the previous caverns. It felt like drowning.
Whip's heart thundered. His breath caught painfully in his chest. Was the darkness even affecting his breathing now? He desperately wanted to turn and run, return to the light and fresh air. He took a half step back, then forced himself to stop. He clenched his fists. No. He'd come this far. Pretzel was in there, somewhere. He had to find her.
Whip took a deep breath, and was relieved to feel the tightness in his chest ease. Then, carefully, he edged a foot forward, feeling the ice-slicked stone in front of him. He took a step. Then another. Carefully, carefully, he inched forward through the darkness. He extended his hands to either side to help keep his bearings; he couldn't feel the walls, but he occasionally brushed jagged stone—crystals, perhaps, or stalagmites. Stalactites? Whatever they were, they at least told him he wasn't floating in the void.
It felt like he'd been walking for hours when the fog shifted. Whip squinted into the darkness. Was he imagining it? No, he was sure. He could see something, now. His own faint glow illuminated the floor directly under his feet, and the fog itself now had hints of purple instead of being pure black like it had before. For a moment Whip was worried he'd accidentally gotten turned around, but then he noticed the floor. Crystal veins ran under his feet, glowing with violet light and pulsing in time with a heartbeat he couldn't hear. And they all seemed to run in the same direction. Towards the heart.
Whip followed them, still moving carefully in the murky darkness. The fog continued to lighten until it was nothing more than a few wisps of shadow. The room was still dark; the crystal veins were the only light source aside from Whip, and their glow was too dim to illuminate the full cave, but at least now he could see more than a few feet in front of him. And there at last was Pretzel.
She huddled on the floor, wings raised like a protective shield and tail curled around her feet. In the stone beneath her, the crystal veins converged into a pulsing mass of violet. Around her reared sharp crystal spikes, all pointing outward, like a bristling hedgehog. A prison? Or a hiding place?
"Pretzel?" Whip called.
Pretzel whipped around. She looked genuinely surprised to see him, which was a first; apparently her blocking off their bond went both ways. Then she backed away from him, arching her back and baring her teeth like a feral cat.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded sharply.
Whip felt a flash of hurt. Despite Black's warning, he'd still hoped their reunion would involve more hugging and less snarling. He'd come to rescue her; couldn't she see that? But Pretzel was scared, and when Pretzel was scared she got mean.
"I came to find you," Whip said, trying to sound patient and calm like Amy, and not confused and hurt like Whip. "So we can go home."
Pretzel did not look happy at this. Pretzel did not smile and thank him or finally come over and give him a hug. Pretzel didn't even make a sarcastic comment and role her eyes like she often did. She didn't do any of the things Whip expected. Instead, she laughed, sharp and bitter.
"Still playing hero?" She was trying to sound like Twist, casual and mocking, but it was undermined by an undercurrent of hurt and bitterness. Her tail lashed, agitated. "You never change."
"I came to help," Whip said earnestly, reaching a hand out to her. "I can help you escape this place! If we just—"
"Shut up!" Pretzel snapped, voice cracking with… anger? Yes, that was anger in her eyes, he realized a little too late.
And then Pretzel changed. Her eyes turned black and glowy like the monsters back in the cave, and spikes bristled from her back. Shadows pooled around her claws, and Whip stumbled back as she snarled, really snarled, like a wolf.
"I do not," she hissed. "need to be rescued." The shadows swirled agitated around her as she spoke, the darkness rising, forming the shape of something jagged and sharp and monstrous. "I am not an innocent little victim for you to save, I am not a cat up a tree or a damsel in distress, and I do not need to be helped just so you can pretend to be a hero!" The last words were a shout, resounding off the cave walls.
Whip swallowed as Pretzel glared at him, inhuman eyes glowing red-pink. The shadows writhed behind her, forming a shape like they had when they'd confronted the cult. A shape like the images in the temple that had always creeped him out so much. A shape like Dark Gaia, looming over him, monstrous and terrible. And at its feet Pretzel, small and hurting.
He'd gone into this assuming he could save Pretzel from Twist. He'd pictured her confused and helpless and needing a rescuer. But the crystals pointed outward; the shadows surrounded her, jumping to her beck and call; Hurricane and Midnight and even Black answered to Pretzel. If Pretzel wanted to leave, she could. So why didn't she?
Black had said Pretzel needed him, but she seemed far more in control here than Whip was. This was very much a Dark Gaia situation, not a Light Gaia one. So what could she possibly need him for?
Stupid. When has she ever wanted you for Light Gaia?
"You're right," Whip said. That alone seemed to catch Pretzel off guard, and the shadows froze in place. While she stared at him, he quickly forged ahead. He needed to get this right. "This whole time, I wanted to prove I could be a hero. Punch the bad guys and save the day, like on TV. I thought that would make everyone like me, even you and Sonic."
The shadows around Pretzel had shrunk down now, the monstrous silhouette fading to leave just Pretzel, staring at him like he was insane. She often did that when he started rambling. At least she hadn't thrown him out yet.
"But you never cared about that, right? I was trying to be a hero, but I forgot what I already was." Whip swallowed. "Your brother." I'm still your brother, right? He hurried on, afraid to see her reaction. "Amy always says the key to a good relationship is listening. I know I talk a lot, and it annoys you sometimes, and I didn't really listen when you said you didn't want to chase monsters, and when you were trying to explain about us being Gaias, but—" he took a deep breath and forced himself to finally meet her gaze. He couldn't read her expression, but the shadows were gone, and the weird spikes had disappeared. "I'm listening now. If you want me to go, I'll go, but before I do just—tell me. Please. Did you know the whole time? Why did everyone pretend? Were you—were you planning to tell me, someday?"
A million additional questions clamored in his mind, but he realized he was going to start rambling again and quickly clamped his mouth shut. He held his breath, waiting. A moment of silence. Another. Then Pretzel sighed, the fight seeming to drain from her body.
"Fine," she said.
Whip exhaled softly and resisted the urge to speak. He'd promised to listen, and he was determined to keep that promise.
"I knew from the beginning," Pretzel said softly. "I realized I was Dark Gaia just before the… um… just before you were created. And I saw you get… transformed, so. Yeah."
Whip nodded, trying not to feel too hurt. She must have had a good reason to keep it from him, right?
"Amy, Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Rouge, Blaze—they all knew too. Only them; I don't think Amy told Cream or anyone else." Pretzel bit her lip. "They thought if more people found out, they might try to arrest you or something. I don't know how they'd do that, but—" she shrugged. "It seemed better to keep it quiet. Better for us to keep an eye on you without the whole world weighing in."
Whip winced at that thought. He tried to imagine what it would have been like, if everyone had known the truth during those first confusing weeks. Would he have been on the news, or even in jail? Would people have been scared instead of cooing over him? Would he and Pretzel have been safe at all?
"Amy agreed to take us in," Pretzel went on. "She didn't have any known connection with the Gaia Incident other than being friends with Sonic and the others, so she seemed the safest option. Short of hiding in a cave, anyway, which was what I wanted to do."
Whip's ears pricked forward at that, and he spoke before he could remember he was supposed to be quiet. "You didn't want to go with Amy?" Belatedly he clamped his hands over his mouth.
Thankfully, Pretzel looked more amused than annoyed at the interruption. "I didn't. I hardly knew her, and…" she grimaced. "Well. To me you were still Light Gaia."
"So why did you come with us? You could've just gone with Sonic or Rouge or Shadow, right?" Wow, he was bad at this not talking thing.
Pretzel hunched her shoulders, looking… apologetic? "Honestly? I wanted to keep an eye on you. I wanted to be the first to know if you became a threat again."
Whip remembered those first weeks of Pretzel constantly glaring at him from across the room. It had always confused him how she seemed to simultaneously hate him and yet never want to be apart from him. That… made a lot more sense now. A hurtful kind of sense. He understood why she did it; Pretzel hadn't had any real evidence that Whip wouldn't become Light Gaia again, and wanting to keep an eye on him was actually a rather heroic thing to do, all things considered. But it still hurt, to think she'd only ever pretended to be his sister because she thought he might become a monster.
"I was jealous," Pretzel admitted, and Whip stared at her in surprise. "They all accepted you so easily, even knowing who you were, even after everything you—after everything Light Gaia did. At first I told myself it was all an act, but eventually I realized you were genuine. And that scared me."
"Scared you?" Whip echoed. "Why?"
Pretzel scowled like she did when Amy tried to make her talk about her feelings. "Because if you were genuine, then it meant you really were as good and nice as everyone thought you were, and I was the impostor. The one lying to you. And I saw the way you reacted to the monsters on TV. If you found out the truth…" she hunched her shoulders, looking away. "If you found out I was a monster like that, I knew you'd hate me."
Whip looked at his feet, remembering how he'd responded when he had found out the truth. Something slid loose from his fur, and he blinked, bending down to pick up the flower.
"Pretzel," he said softly, looking up at her, the flower clutched in his hand. "Do you remember what you said in Chun-Nan? You said—" he swallowed. "You said I'm no more monster than you. So… so do you really think we're both monsters?"
Pretzel looked affronted. "You're not—I'm not saying— you're not a monster, Whip. You can be annoying and insensitive, but you're not a monster. No matter what you did in the past."
"Well," Whip said deliberately slowly, furrowing his brow as if he was thinking really hard. "If I'm not a monster even though I used to do bad things, and we're both Gaias who did equally bad things, then that means you're not a monster either, right?"
"That's not—" Pretzel's wings fluttered, agitated. "It's not the same—"
"It is the same. But even if it isn't, I don't care." He reached out and pressed the flower into her hand. "You're not a monster. You're my sister. If you want to be," he added hurriedly. "I know I kind of messed up, and I understand if you—"
"I want to," Pretzel interrupted him. "I…" she took a deep breath, looking at the flower. "We both messed up. But I do want to be your sister. I want to try again."
Whip smiled. Hesitantly, Pretzel smiled back.
He let himself bask in the warmth of it for a moment, but then other worries came crowding into his mind and he looked around, frowning. As Pretzel had been talking, the heavy darkness in the cave had lightened, allowing the glowing crystals to illuminate the walls. The cave seemed far smaller now that he could actually see it. And there was only one exit, the way he'd come in.
"How are we going to get out of here? Back to the… um, the surface? The real world?" Whip furrowed his brow. "Where are we, anyway?"
"I think I know the way out," Pretzel said, turning around slowly. "But I'm not sure we should leave."
Whip blinked at her. "Why not?"
"We haven't saved the world yet," Pretzel said, smirking briefly before her expression became serious again. "When I was… absorbed, I guess, I figured something out. We thought the fragments were disconnected, just acting on their base instincts at random, but that's not it. Something's agitating both the Light and Dark fragments, making them destructive."
"So if we stop that thing, all the fragments will stop hurting people?"
"That's the theory. But I don't know if it'll actually work. And it'll mean heading down, into the dark, to fight something we know almost nothing about, with no one to help us."
That didn't sound fun. But saving the world wasn't supposed to be fun, was it?
"I want to do it," Whip said firmly. "It's our job, right?"
Pretzel sighed. "Unfortunately."
For once Whip understood her lack of enthusiasm. He turned, inspecting the cavern. "So how do we get to this thing? Do you know the way, or—"
He was interrupted by a loud rumble. They both jumped back in alarm as the rocks around them began to shake. And then, on the wall opposite the entrance Whip had come through, a hole opened in the stone.
Pretzel and Whip exchanged glances, then, carefully, approached the new entrance. Together they peered in. A dark tunnel lay in front of them, leading down and down and down, illuminated only by faintly glowing crystal veins.
"Oh," Whip said. "I guess that's how."
"You ready?" Pretzel asked, glancing at him.
Whip swallowed and balled his hands into fists. "No. But let's go anyway."
"That's the spirit," Pretzel said, and together they walked into the deep.