Play of Shadows: Catatonia
"Tails?"
"What do you want?!"
"Hey, don't sass me!" Sonic berated, "Aren't you forgetting who's the oldest here?"
"Well, according to the press", the young fox looked over the hull of his home-made bi-plane, "that's me. Others would agree." Sonic groaned at the memory.
He hated spring-cleaning, and Tails thought it would be a splendid idea to thoroughly clean the house. This was no surprise to the blue hedgehog; he'd been whinging for weeks over the cluttered space they habituated, or the five layers of dust he found and studied from behind the toilet, which apparently had seventeen different disease-causing bacteria festering in it. Whether or not this was actually true, the result would be inevitable. The house needed to be cleaned – today was the workshop. Sonic agreed, but he saw no reason why he had to be there to help. He loved his little brother more than all the gold in the world – he couldn't say the same for Rouge or Vector, of course – but housework was so boring and domestic. Couldn't Amy take his place instead?
No. Somehow, he couldn't trust her to keep an eye on Tails, no matter how much she's helped over the years. He was only nine, after all. Nine-year-olds shouldn't be allowed to touch cleaning chemicals without supervision.
"You know", Tails called to Sonic, "if you want to prove how mature you are, you could help this poor little nine-year old wash this massive plane… Or you couldn't help and just laze around like a sloth. It's really your choice."
With a sigh, he slid out of his hammock and dragged himself sluggishly over to the runway. His gloves were removed and replaced with a soapy sponge. He blew a bubble off the sponge and watched it float into the air, a surprising shade of pink. He grimaced at the matching solution sloshing in the tin bucket.
"Is it just me, or does this stuff remind you of Chemical Plant too?"
A positive hum was his reply, and the hedgehog continued, "I think it's fair to say that water not the colour of water isn't safe."
"Where do you get that from?"
"Instinct, experience…"
Sometime later, Knuckles emerged from the dim workshop carrying oddly-shaped machinery and stacked boxes of spare metal, each marked with a chemical symbol that corresponded with the contents of each box. He sat down the boxes marked with Mg and Cs and smacked his dusty palms together. At least Knuckles could carry the heavy stuff. The guardian was about to speak before the airborne dust gave him rapid-fire sneezes. And he was a source of amusement.
"Where do these go, Tails?" The gruff voice queried the mecha-mechanic.
"Uh", his namesakes swished behind him in thought, "Load them in the backseat. I'm still working on the bi-plane's storage extension." The actions were followed out.
Sonic glanced upward at the consistently greying sky and noted the darker shade the wind was carrying in their direction. At a bold gust of wind and scattering autumn leaves, his quills rattled uncanny to the twisted sound of shaking a bag of hollow bones. The cold was transferring down from Holoska and in through the canopy of twisted fig trees that obscured their home from Dr Robotnik. The only pleasant sensation was that of the earthly gumnut, tossed around in the currents and filling the air with a strong, easily-decipherable scent. It was going to rain, which meant they would have to retire until it ceased. The speed demon couldn't be happier.
Of course, who to crush his short-lived happiness than one Amy Rose, who currently bee-lined for the aeroplane runway with quick-paced steps. He wondered briefly if the wind was bothering her, as one gloved hand gripped her right ear. Oh well, who was he to care? He just wanted to get inside before the storm hit.
The wind must have been carrying messages from an omnipresent deity, as another wave flushed into his mind the possibility of Amy unable to return home because of the rain and staying a night or two with them. No way. It's time to start running.
"Wait,Sonic! Don't go!" She must've noticed him getting ready to bolt, because she approached faster and called for his attention, "Stop! Please! It's an emergency!"
Selectively blocking her out prior, he stood up from tying his shoelaces when a flying lump of red unbalanced his stature and forced his muzzle into cooling grass and eucalyptus leaves. He tried to voice his irritation, but one such leaf pressed past his lips and onto his tongue, where he gagged profusely. Eucalyptus does not taste as good as it smells.
"Are you deaf, or stupid?! She said, 'It's an emergency!'", Knuckles pulled him up from the ground, disgusted after Sonic spat out the intruding foliage, "You couldn't possibly be bored now that there's hero duties to do. So, go on-"
"I need all of you", the sakura hedgehog puffed out, "Well, it's not me that needs you – it's Rouge – but it's just as important as anything else."
She held up her phone, open to an SMS message. Tails squeezed past the hedgehog and echidna to see what was happening. His demanding look was enough to motivate the she-hog to keep speaking.
"Rouge tried to call me a few times this morning – my phone was dead then, but she sent me a message that said to get you guys and call back", she halted to catch her breath and swallow a presumed dry throat, "Apparently, something's wrong with Shadow."
"There's always something up with that shady hedgehog, Amy. And how can you trust Rouge's word for anything?" the islander intervened.
Miss Rose glared at him, "Rouge is actually a nice girl when you get to know her. She doesn't steal from friends-"
"Can we leave this for another time?" the outspoken hedgehog interjected. He just wanted her to get to the specifics and point without a debate over Rouge's loyalty, "Continue?"
The female turned to him, a genuine sadness in her lowered gaze, "She thinks he's gone mad; insane. He fainted last night from exhaustion and when she woke up to check on him, the house was destroyed. She said he was crying in the lounge room."
Sonic knew he cried – he remembered the dried tears on his face when they fought the Finalhazard – but he only ever got upset over his past. Did he have a nightmare? Another flashback, perhaps?
He asked the questions he pondered over and she shook her head, short quills framing her chubby cheeks, "She said he never gets violent when it's to do with memories of Maria. He's sad, but not destructive. She thinks it's something to do with a letter they got in the mail yesterday. He was reading it and fainted, waking up not all there. Even she said it made her feel paranoid."
The thought that Shadow and Rouge were in danger was enough to convince the trio to help. Knuckles was more reluctant, but agreed on the basis that the visit would be quick. Sonic rushed ahead impatiently while the others stayed back to pack things away and out of the rain. Droplets of water trailed down his shoulders as he ran, deceptively appearing to be sweat. Manoeuvring the city streets seemed to be more difficult while wet, as the blur of cobalt took extra care speeding around corners.
It wasn't the slippery ground or the rain, Sonic told himself. It was worry. He felt afraid for Shadow's safety. He was a threat not only to Rouge and other people, but he became a threat to himself when mental health was concerned. Then there was the unspoken fear with this letter… He was unconsciously speeding up, almost leading him to run head-first into vehicles and walls. He wanted to get there before anything detrimental took place. It was just Rouge on her own to defend herself from an aggressive hedgehog with pin-pointed quills and barely-restrained chaos energy. She was her own stronghold, but Shadow was on a whole different level of dangerous. While Rouge broke hearts, Shadow broke skulls.
Not good.
As the familiar fern-covered verandah became visible, Sonic began timing his steps. With a considerably elegant leap, he pushed his body into the cooling air and onto the paint-chipped balcony rail. He praised himself for succeeding the jump without breaking the terracotta pots placed haphazardly across the bay view. He'd already been threatened by the bat for the destruction of one pot, and that had been on a good day. He wouldn't dare try it now.
He rapped on the door and waited until the screen slid open. Tired eyes, one with a burst blood vessel, greeted him gratefully. Never in the time had he met Rouge seen her without makeup, so he mentally snapped a photo of the woman in her grey tracksuit and powder-blue tee. She was handling a bunch of children's drawings like they were useless handkerchiefs – he found it hard to believe she was a child-hater, so explanations needed to be made.
Rouge followed his gaze down to the crumpled paper in her fist.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with him. He's really lost it." Did Shadow draw those?
Oh. They were everywhere. The pictures layered the floor in an abstract mosaic of purple lines and zigzags. They depicted no sense of gentleness: just jagged surrealism and unspeakable horrors. Staring at the sharp purple unnerved the blue blur; why?
You'll get cut. Those points will rip through you, shred you like paper. It'll drag you against your will. It'll taint you. You'll bleed, but the colour that pours from your body will be nothing but purple.
Sonic had never thought a colour revolted him as much as this flaky purple. What was so offensive about a colour anyway?
"He descended so rapidly." The agent jolted him from his strange thoughts, "He was his brooding, sarcastic self just yesterday and now…" She appeared to search for the right words, but settled with silence. Sonic understood perfectly fine. Something changed in him.
"Where… is he now?" Sonic was afraid to know the answer. Yes, afraid. He needed to fix that.
Rouge's curved ears folded in melancholy. Her finger motioned down the hall, towards their bedrooms and the bathroom. "In his wardrobe. Hidden under a pile of clothes." She dismissed the hedgehog's frowning face and pushed him along.
Those horrid, purple-streaked pages littered the hallway too. He didn't feel like stepping on them in case they really did cut his feet, so he turned towards Rouge. She was back to picking up the drawings. Good. Their mere existence haunted Sonic.
Pushing his irrational fears aside, he traversed the hallway. Though his feet were in shoes, they felt the foreshadowed pages across the carpet. Those shadows weren't gas. They were a thickened liquid that oozed from nowhere and swallowed their victim in a slimy, midnight jus.
Was Shadow swallowed by them?
Sonic inspected the door before he reached it; a white-washed tombstone in an otherwise-empty hall. The handle was sterling, dirtied only by oily handprints. The runner, unsure whether to knock or barge in, knocked out of politeness. He didn't want to scare him.
"He won't come out", the thief called, "Just go in. The door's unlocked."
He took her for her word and entered. The room was absolute chaos. More of that wretched purple streaked the torn-up bedroom and glowed from the artificial ceiling light. A watercolour pencil of the same colour angled its point towards the doorway, where Sonic stood. He glared at the culprit and immediately discarded it in the work bin that sat nearby. Sonic, from that day forward, would deny ever throwing it away. He would also deny admitting that he tiptoed around the pencil in order to pick it up.
Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Knowing the cruelty of some of his friends, they would throw pencils at him as a running gag. It would become worse than the face-plant or water pistol jokes.
A slowly increasing pummelling told him that the storm had begun. He heard a trickle from behind him and quickly closed the window once he realised the rain showered through the half-closed venetian blinds. The window slammed shut harshly. A forced exhale sounded from the walk-in wardrobe next to Sonic. The hero turned in that direction, listening to the hoarse intakes of air and shuffling. He glanced to the back of the closet and saw the previously-mentioned pile of clothes rustle from the far corner. Sonic slid the door open further, thankful that the wheels didn't squeak. He crept in and rolled the door shut until only a slither of light entered. A form rose sharply from the heap.
"Shadow?"
Never in his years as a renowned hero had he seen someone so in shock. The word 'shock' wasn't even a good way to explain it. 'Traumatised' would be a more suitable word, if his breathlessness, gaping mouth, wide-set and glossy eyes, shrunken pupils, flattened ears and twitching body were anything to go by. The light looked to burn the paled skin of the dishevelled experiment as it pivoted away from the doorway. Blue had long since expected him to lose balance and approached him carefully, lacing his arms around his torso to guide him into a sitting position.
Sitting on his legs behind the quivering form, still hugging him, he motivated the other hedgehog to react by speaking directly in his ear and padding his cool, un-gloved fingers along the backs of each quill. To other people, it would seem romantically suggestive, but he knew it was actually an extremely effective way to incite responses out of unresponsive people. Overpowering someone's senses with his presence focuses their attention on him, and once this is achieved, he needs only his voice and careful wording to coax them from their shells. In the bio-engineered hedgehog's case, there was no exception.
"… Sonic?"
A tiny voice that was relative to the stronger, baritone voice of the 'Ultimate Lifeform' – but not entirely as "ultimate" – was intonated from Shadow.
"Yes. It's Sonic", he replied solidly, but calmly, "What happened, Shadow?"
"The…" he stopped to take a breath, "The house…"
The detached hedgehog seemed stunned at the mess his room had become with all the ugly, purple drawings suffocating the carpet. The blue blur was shocked as he exited the firm grip and stood up with the intention of leaving, but willingly allowed his rival to lie him down on the bed. He looked disoriented.
Sonic didn't know whether to be glad or disturbed that he was already undressed; he was naked for no apparent reason and the outsider couldn't understand why, but at least he didn't have to go through the awkward process of removing his clothes. He flicked back the sheets to the well-made bed and helped Shadow under the covers. He saw his cheeks flare up in embarrassment at the fact that he was assisting him with second-nature tasks. He knew he'd feel the same if the situation was flipped.
Shadow appeared better settled in bed, so Sonic made for the door.
"They were chasing me."
"What?" The younger of the two tossed his head back to look at the mature hedgehog. The words connected in Sonic's head and he rushed to the other's side, wanting to clear the mystery up.
Poorly-hidden fear was present in the crimson orbs, "Those… dead-ish people. And a lot of purple spikies. But they were alive! They were dancing. The purple things were making them dance."
The blue counterpart stared blankly, waiting for an explanation but receiving nothing more than a randomly-shifting gaze.
What sort of psychedelic drug has he started taking?! To say he was confused would be an understatement. He was discombobulated! Completely thrown for six!
"It was big… There was only one place left. They were flying after me. Really long halls. I hid there. I didn't see. He knew."
Sonic tried to follow along but got lost with Shadow jumbling his sentences around. It was like he thought of new things to say and forgot to finish what he was already talking about. Nothing was established.
"The door wouldn't shut-"
"Shadow!"
The black hedgehog was brought back to reality and regarded Sonic with clearer eyes. Cobalt watched the shell of his former enemy slowly curl up into a ball, preparing for sleep. His eyes glazed over with fatigue and unsettled puzzlement before retreating into darkness.
The usually-impatient hedgehog waited silently until he saw eyes flicker back and forth beneath his eyelids, in a state of REM. He reached to stroke his quills, but decided against it and patted his shoulder instead, which turned out awkward on his part. He removed himself from the room before anything could get weirder.
"How is he?"
Sonic shared a grimace with the suave agent before glancing down at his feet, where a page landed face-down on his shoe. He tentatively picked it up and took a closer look at the drawing. He didn't understand the jagged lines until he turned it upside down.
They were teeth, in a gaping mouth. Whatever it was, it held a limp doll in its talons. The eyes were slanted and empty; soulless. The drawing depicted unbridled fear – Shadow literally poured emotion into these scribbles. The drawings were all the same image.
All were drawn in that flaky purple.
Hey, reader! AuroraAura11 here!
'Play of Shadows' is back, baby! This fanfic has been completely re-done from my original idea. I lost interest in the first idea and had abandoned this for good, but it had potential. So, I changed it. It used to be Romance/Suspense, but it is now Horror/Mystery. Sonic!Seme X Shadow!Uke is still the pairing, so don't be sad! Also, don't be deterred from the genres as there won't be heaps of gore. It's creepier than it is horrific! I'm good at creepy!
The chapters will be longer and they'll be a lot of foreshadowing, so look out! Feel free to tell me your thoughts and by all means, review!
(Note: Shadow's speech is meant to look and sound off-putting. All syntax and grammatical errors are intentionally placed there. Thankyou!)