"Silver? Are you sure you don't want us to come cheer you on during your assessment?" Mom asked as he put on a jacket and started to zip it up. It was a foggy morning before the sun showed up, clouding Sonic City in unnatural cold. She handed him a bottle of hot chocolate before asking, "I could drive you to work, if you'd like."
"No, it's okay, Mom," Silver mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I'll be okay."
"I don't want you running into a telephone pole," she admitted. "Try to stay on sidewalks, and make sure that you know exactly where you're going."
silver looked up at the sky, humming. Fog wasn't all the way up into the sky... maybe he could fly there?
"I'll be careful, Mom," he promised as she kissed him goodbye.
"Good luck, Silver. Stay safe!"
"I will!" he called back as he walked into the fog.
Aurora pulled her hair up and put on a hat and a coat. Fog, the weather man said. Cold fog, and reduced visibility. Please try to stay inside.
But Aurora knew that if she stayed inside, her parents would try to call and tell her to forget about Selene. As if she could.
'Aurora! Aurora-"
"Mom, calm down," Aurora said, mellowed after a busy college day. "Slow down. What's up?"
"It's- it's Selene-" The little crybaby come crawling back finally? Well, wasn't that neat, but Aurora sighed, ready to throw her mom off the subject.
"Selene is dead!"
Aurora froze up. Dead? What did she mean- "What do you mean she's dead?" She can't be dead. That's... that's outrageous.
"They found her body- they-they say it was an accident-"
"What do you mean she's dead?' No, Selene had to be playing a joke or something. Being a little attention whore was something she was good at. All that moping around and stuff, she was just playing, being a psycho.
Right?
"Theia- Aurora?" her dad was on the line now, he sounded a little shook up too. "Aurora, listen to me. Selene's dead. The police received a call about a dead body and it's her."
Time stopped. Everything went quiet. What... what did he mean by... but... that means...
The last night Aurora saw Selene she was picking herself up from being slapped by her older sister. She held her red cheek, flinching a little from the tenderness, the pain. But she didn't say anything, just went upstairs and shut her door.
"Aurora!" her mother gasped, face pale.
"Aurora!" her father had yelled at her.
Aurora's fur prickled. "What?" she whirled around to face them. "You heard her- she was talking crazy. She just doesn't like it because-"
"Selene is clinically depressed, Aurora," he said through clenched teeth. "And now I know why." He stormed past her, his eyes a hodgepodge of anger, and something else. Aurora had never had that glare lock eyes with her before.
Her mother was weeping and refused to look at Aurora.
When Aurora woke up, there were police officers down the hall, in Selene's room. They had on gloves and were putting things into small bags. One of the bags had a set of razors.
Since when did Selene have razors? And what for?
Mom and Dad weren't in the house, she found out when she found Helios sitting at the kitchen table with two investigators. They nodded as they wrote down something he'd said.
"Helios, what's going on?" she asked, and the two investigators glanced at each other and thanked Helios for his time as they left the room. "Why are the police here? Where's Mom and Dad?"
Helios stared at her, eyes red, and the saddest shade of blue Aurora had ever seen. What- what was going on?
"They're at the police station, filing a report," he mumbled, sounding dead.
"Report for what? What's happened?"
His eyelid twitched. "Selene's disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Aurora said, then blew a strand of her hair out of her face. "Are you sure she's not outside?"
He scowled at her. "Selene is gone. And so is her entire savings account, around a hundred thousand dollars. So yes, Aurora, I'm absolutely positive Selene isn't' outside planting the flowers she bought to feed her new baby pegasus."
The hostility surprised her, as did the fact that money was involved. "Why are you saying it like that? What did I do?"
He stood up and new tears were welling up. "You hit my baby sissy, is what you did. You hit your own sister, who happens to be a table with one leg too short. You slapped her because you think you're so special and perfect. You think that she's just acting for attention, because that's what you do, but she would never stoop to your level."
He stormed past her, hissing, "Don't you ever touch her again."
How was this her fault?
Months went by. No sign of Selene. News stories died down. The case went cold. What was a living nightmare for Hyperion, Theia and Helios was a stupid game of hide-and-seek for Aurora. And she was not looking for Selene.
No matter how much she felt she needed too.
And Aurora went to where the body was taken in, and saw her sister snapped in half. Instantaneous death, the doctors said. She would have felt a crackling sensation and then nothing at all. She was probably in a car, since the force that was needed to kill her, and from all the glass embedded in her skin, face.
Her eyes were what got Aurora. They were wide open, full of fear, glazed over like a porcelain doll.
This is all your fault.
The first few weeks was spent looking around for newborn hedgehog babies recently put up for adoption around Sonic City, and the surrounding area. Hospitals, shelters, everywhere. But no such luck. They gave up a month-and-a-half in. Aurora still searched, missed her sister's funeral, still looking for a chance to say sorry, to make up.
Maybe it'd be today.
"What are you doing?!" Selene shrieked just as Haku was preparing to powerbomb Shadow off a table years ago. She was a few months along and Metal Sonic had driven her to the shop to hang around. She was wearing one of Shad's shirts half-tucked into some baggy jeans and her hair was in a ponytail over her shoulder. As Shadow squirmed he could see the way she was glaring at Haku the way someone glares at a little sibling on a crude step ladder to the cookie jar.
"What are you doing," she repeated, and Haku let go of her opponent who ragdolled to the floor. He sat up with a groan.
"Morning, Len-Lennie," Haku coughed, twisted smile twitching. Shadow was watching the soon-to-be mom, her face pinched in frustration. "How-how you feeling today?"
Selene took a deep breath but did not answer. Her stance didn't take well to chatter. Haku skittered off from the table and pushed in the chair she used to get on top of there.
"I...um... just," she stuttered.
"Don't even try it," Selene added. "I can hear you."
Beads of sweat formed on her friend's temple, and her smile faltered. "Um... Shadow- he didn't answer the question I asked him to, so uh-"
Selene took another deep breath and put a hand on her swelling stomach and Haku burst, "Omigod Selene, I'm so sorry, I was just playing with him- I wasn't trying to hurt him or anything like that, honest!- Oh, God, are you okay?!"
Lennie sighed and assured her panicking friend, "I'm fine, but if you keep shouting like that-"
"I'm so sorry," Haku gasped, quieting down. "I'm so, so sorry!"
Shadow brushed the dirt off his pants and stood up as Lennie urged Haku to calm down. "She means stop panicking and think about something quieter," he explained. "She can hear you- thinking," he grunted as he stood up.
"Sorry!" she whispered, and scurried off into the kitchen. Selene sighed as her hand went to her forehead.
"You okay?" He asked, guiding her over to a chair. She nudged him away and settled down.
"So that's what you've been up to?" she huffed. "Wrestling in the back room?"
"More like being a sandbag," Shadow replied. "The table takes more of a beating than I do."
"What did she mean you didn't answer her question?" she wondered.
"I'll make you a cocoa, okay?"
"Do you avoid questions like this all the time?" she laughed as he ran around making the drink. He came back with a frothy batch of hot chocolate, with a twist.
"I thought you were making hot chocolate."
"I did. Taste it." She sipped at the cappuccino-looking drink and hummed.
"What're you calling it?" she asked. "Cappu-chocolate?"
Shadow laughed as he pulled up a chair and sat down. "I wasn't planning on calling it anything yet. Just wanted to surprise you."
"Lucky day I guess," she said before continuing to drink it. "Any other day I might've hated it."
"So... do you want to know the question...or...?"
Lennie's ears pricked as she drank. "Hm? Oh, that. Not important. But you need to be thinking about your baby, here. What if he came in seeing his dad getting beat up by a girl?"
Silver walked into the back room just as Haku slammed Shadow into the table, destroying it. Metal Sonic was right behind him.
"what the $%#?!" Metal screeched as his girlfriend released the headlock on the limp hedgehog and stood up. "That table was relatively new!"
Haku brushed off the splinters on her clothes and fixed her hair as if she hadn't just knocked out a hedgehog. "We can get another one, no problem."
"Getting one isn't the problem- it's keeping one! And stop slamming Shadow into the ground before work!"
"Is he okay?" Silver asked, though, he wasn't sure what to think about Shadow here, on his performance assessment day. Maybe it was just luck Haku knocked him out...
A groan escaped the hedgehog, but he didn't move.
"He'll be fine," Metal assured, lifting the hedgehog up by the shoulders and dragging him to the left side, towards the office. "He's just going to have a massive headache when he wakes up...'
Once the pair disappeared around the corner, Silver turned to Haku. "What just happened?"
"We were playing truth or dare and he said 'truth,' but didn't answer the question. We do this a lot."
"So if one of you doesn't follow through, you slam each other into the ground?"
Haku shrugged as if she was a kid who broke a vase. "He'll be fine. Adamantium skull, that hedgehog. He makes a good battering ram."
From the office, "That's not a good thing, Haku."
"No wonder his memory's awful," Silver muttered.
"Ah, *&%#," Shadow hissed as Metal handed him a bag of ice. "What the &%$*, Haku!" His forehead felt dented and on fire. He could probably leave the bag on his head and it'd stay in the dent, hands free.
"Yes, I think she's too strong for her own good," Metal commented. Shadow growled at him. "You need to stop goading her on. We just lost another table from that move."
"Y'know, the last mood I wanted to be in when I saw Silver was pissed off," Shadow puffed. "I guess it's my lucky day." He took a deep breath, trying not to focus on the chalkboard-nails pain in the front of his skull. "So.. has the store opened?"
"A half hour ago. One, two customers inside. He can handle it. Haku's working drive-thru right now."
"How's he doing?"
"Very well, actually. You want to go see how he's doing?"
Shadow huffed as he stood up. "Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing?" Metal manufactured a chuckle and followed him out towards the back room, where the remains of a table were swept into a corner to be taken out to the trash later. They loitered around the entrance of the kitchen to watch the young hog work. He was wearing a bright green visor Haku had gotten some years ago when she started working, and he looked like a kid working a chain shop. He just needed a green apron and a cheesy smile and he'd be all set.
"Has he been manning the counter all morning?" he wondered.
"I've been doing drive-thru while he does the graveyard shift here," Metal explained. "With this fog, people are reluctant to leave their warm cars, unless they're eating breakfast," he gestured to the two customers in the dining room, spreading toppings on bagels or muffins alongside their hot drinks. Shadow recognized one of them as a regular and returned the wave.
Shadow's fur prickled as the chime announced a cold blast of air into the coffee house. It was that split second before an accident- that impulse-
Silver-
He watched a yellow orange hedgehog shut the door and look around the room. He could suddenly feel his cheek twitch as if he kissed asphalt.
Or got slapped in the face.
He felt like tackling Silver to the ground before the hedgehog saw him, but it was too late- she was making a beeline for the counter.
"How are you today m-"
"Is Haku working here today?" she asked. "I have to talk to her about something very important."
Silver flinched, caught off guard by the brisk nature of the woman. "Uh... well-"
Metal straightened up as his computer clicked and beeped. "Oh *#$%," he hissed. "That's Aurora Phoenicia."
"Selene's older sister," Shadow muttered, watching Silver and Aurora interact.
"She's been looking for Silver since Selene died," he explained. "She doesn't know what he looks like- she's... riddled with grief."
"Yeah, no *$#%. She slapped her in the face and never saw her again," Shadow huffed, glaring at the hedgehog from the doorway.
"She's not looking for Silver. She's looking for Selene."