Hi. So I'm back. Oop. Been a while again. Partly graduation, partly starting like two other projects and, to be perfectly honest, partly Baldur's Gate 3. Not gonna lie, I've been thoroughly distracted recently. And no, I have still been writing. Just not… this. That's not to say I'm losing interest – not at all, I assure you – I just simply wanted to, needed to really, start a few other stories that will likely end up trashed or sitting in a folder for eternity. Weeee, love my brain.

Anyway… New chapter, yay, go me, I did it. Eventually. Was up until three in the morning yesterday doing a god damn sprint to write half this chapter, just because. I hadn't even intended to start writing, I just wanted to check over what I'd done and gauge how much needed to be added and, well, here we are. I actually genuinely love Knuckles' part in today's chapter – it was, after all, the part I wrote in some possessed state last night. No idea why, the idea just struck me and I'm kinda loving it?

I hope you all enjoy.

Chapter Ten

Suddenly, letting go of Tails felt so much easier.

Sonic excused himself and stumbled his way to the bathroom. Tails called his name again. He locked the door, took three steps and his legs failed him. Thankfully, he was close enough to catch himself on the toilet. Good thing too, because the moment he got there he began to heave. So far there was nothing coming up though.

The panic gripped his heart. This couldn't be happening. This was a joke, a sick joke.

'Wh-where's Dark…?' he asked the insane hedgehog hesitantly.

Did he want Dark back? Of course not, but he wanted to know if he had to deal with them both. He also wanted to know exactly what happened. Why was Fleetway talking to him now? Why was Dark quiet?

"He's taking a little itsy-bitsy vacation," the twisted form sang.

Vacation? He could hear Fleetway cackling. What did that mean?

"Oh, it has been a while," Fleetway continued. "We're gonna have a lot of fun."

'I don't want to play.'

"Too bad, bitch."

His mind was silent after that. Sonic heaved again. This time a little something came up. Guess he could say goodbye to that lovely soup he'd had last night. He felt the burning in his throat, knew he was just getting started. The next heave brought up much more. He felt the liquid force its way up his throat. The burning entered his nose. For a moment, it just kept coming.

When he was done, he breathed in so hard he choked on the air.

He could hear a light knocking on the door. It was specific. Two knocks. Pause. Two. Pause. Two. Pause. One knock. He didn't even need the voice to confirm who it was. He hadn't heard that pattern in a while.

"Bro?" Tails called. "Are you ok?"

Man, he was getting tired of that question.

The answer was no. It was fucking no. But he couldn't say that, not to his brother.

It just felt like everything had been turned up to twelve hundred all of a sudden and he couldn't see properly. It felt like every nerve had been wired to a 9 volt battery. His stomach was still protesting, but there was nothing else to bring up. He gagged a few times, bringing up nothing but air. The only meal he'd had for the past few days had been that soup. That was certainly out of his system now.

Sonic leaned his cheek against the toilet seat for a moment. Was it gross? Sure was. Did he fucking care right now? No.

"Sonic?"

Fleetway was worse than Dark. So much worse. They must have been talking. So he'd been right; Dark must have gotten some inspiration from Fleetway for those horrid nightmares. They just weren't his style. But they were Fleetway's. Dark was sort of an enigma, but the nightmares did not fit with the Dark Sonic remembered. But they absolutely lined up with Fleetway's. So why? Why? Sonic knew Dark didn't like Fleet. Dark didn't really like anyone.

Now, that was a lie. Sonic couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he knew that was a lie. At least, it used to be. Because Dark did used to care. He must have, at least somewhat. About him. About Tails. Even, perhaps, about Knuckles. In his own weird way. He must have cared because Tails was often the catalyst. If Tails was in danger, Dark's insistent spark would blaze inside Sonic. Sometimes, Sonic had let that fire consume him. Others, he'd been able to resist it, extinguish it. But Tails' life had always seemed so important to Dark.

Probably because he was so important to Sonic.

'That must have changed,' Sonic thought grimly.

But Fleetway was something else. Dark had always resented his other super forms. But Fleetway… he was just different. Fleetway was a psychopath. He was destructive and cruel and bloodthirsty. And Sonic could remember a time when that had disgusted Dark.

So what had changed?

"Bro?"

Sonic gagged again. Still, nothing more came up. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth. His nose felt super gross. Sonic reached for the toilet paper to wipe his mouth and blow his nose. He would likely be gagging and heaving for a while yet, but at least he knew nothing else would come up.

Tails hovered outside the bathroom. His brother wasn't responding.

"Sonic?" he asked a little louder. "Can you hear me?"

"Is everything ok, Tails?"

The yellow fox turned to see Rouge walking down the hall towards him. Behind her, he could see Shadow hovering in the doorway to the living room, frowning. He opened his mouth to respond and then closed it. It didn't really feel like anything was ok anymore.

"Sonic left a few minutes ago," he told them. "I… I think he was just throwing up."

"Throwing up?" Rouge asked, alarmed.

He watched the bat exchange a wide-eyed look with Shadow. Even the Ultimate Lifeform appeared worried. Like, clearly worried. It made the anxiety in his chest skyrocket. Shadow never really portrayed much on his face, so to actually be able to see the worry there? Tails was a few steps away from joining his brother at the toilet – if he ever opened the door.

"He does that sometimes," Tails said and, once he started, he couldn't quite seem to stop. "When he's really stressed. And right now he is but I'm not sure what triggered it. One moment we were… talking… the next he completely froze up. Then he was gone and, well… I-I-I don't know what happened."

Had they been "talking?" Technically yes. Technically no. The semantics didn't matter right now. What mattered is that his brother was in full panic mode and he could see nothing that would have set him off so badly.

Rouge seemed a tad shellshocked but she recovered rather quickly. She had a hand to her chest and her ears were perked. Tails idly watched her dark wings flutter. In. Out. In. Out. He tried to time his breaths to that steady rhythm while Rouge collected herself. Shadow was looking at the carpet with furrowed brows and folded ears.

"Nothing happened?" Rouge clarified. "He just bolted?"

He nodded solemnly.

"Maybe it's the inhibitors…" Tails mumbled, taking a similar stance to Shadow.

"Inhibitors?"

"Those rings around his wrists," Shadow chimed in. "I noticed them when I first found Sonic, but they'd slipped my mind with everything else. I hadn't realised that's what they were."

Tails nodded again. He flattened his ears and averted his eyes. All of this was somehow connected to the inhibitors. It had to be. Besides the incident at Eggman's base, Sonic had been fine before. Unless there was more to this than just the inhibitors. Sonic had run because he'd felt betrayed, but everything else? This was more than Sonic simply feeling upset over a decision he'd had no say in. And it must stem back to Eggman's base. Perhaps even further back than that – it was so hard to gauge with Sonic sometimes. He always kept serious stuff like this to himself.

For all Tails knew, this had started months ago.

"Why does he have them?" Shadow asked.

Those ruby eyes were fixed on Tails. His eyes were narrowed, irises slits so sharp Tails could feel them cutting into his soul. Just carving strips from him and flinging them aside, digging for an answer. Tails shrivelled under that intensity.

"It's a long story," Tails said, voice impossibly feeble. "Knuckles thought he needed them..."

"Why?" Shadow pressed, sounding angrier than ever.

"I…" Tails started, then stopped. "Knuckles just… Sonic is… It… I-It's hard to explain."

"Try."

Tails opened his mouth to respond but the words died on his tongue. The muted sound of running water came trickling through the bathroom door. Tails' ears registered it as the sound of the toilet flushing, followed by the tap. Part of him hoped Sonic would open the door. The other half of him suddenly hoped Sonic would keep the door locked and stay inside. He knew this was not a conversation Sonic enjoyed having. He did not like bringing up the strange, scary super form he had. That was part of why Knuckles had wanted to go behind Sonic's back for the inhibitors. Tails had not seen the super form in a very long time and, now that he thought about it, he realised only he, Knuckles and Eggman even knew of it.

Explaining the inhibitors meant explaining that weird form. And Tails didn't know how to start with that. He really didn't know much at all. Only that Sonic never seemed himself in that form; he did not seem to have full control of himself. He'd only ever seen it in times of stress, times usually when he was in danger or when things looked bleak. He knew the form was terrifying. He knew that after the fact, Sonic was always upset. Tails did not know how Sonic could achieve the form without a single emerald. He did not know why Sonic seemed to have no control. He did not know where it came from. Tails just knew it existed and that it was bad.

Shadow was still waiting for a response. He'd moved from his spot in the doorway. The dark hedgehog shouldered his way passed Rouge. He towered over the yellow fox and Tails took a step back. He could not meet those blade-sharp eyes.

"Why does Sonic have inhibitors, Miles?"

"That form," he whispered.

The bathroom door opened right as Shadow took another step towards Tails. All three of them turned to look at Sonic. His quills were on end, his muzzle pale. There were haunted shadows fogging over his half-lidded emerald eyes. Sonic's fur was ruffled, matted, and his ears were drooping. Tails saw Shadow's eyes drift down to look at the inhibitors he'd made and felt another prickle of guilt creep along his chest.

Sonic's eyes, dazed and hollow as they were, narrowed minutely at Shadow's aggressive stance over Tails. He let out a low, barely audible growl. The bite was there in full force, but Sonic's face was remarkably blank aside from the slight glare. Shadow wisely took a step away from Tails but did not back off further. The growl felt wrong to Tails. He'd heard Sonic when he was angry before – it did not happen too often in his memory, but he'd heard it – and this growl was different than that. It wasn't anger, it was full on rage. It was the type of growl Tails associated with Sonic's scary super form. Thankfully, because of the inhibitors, Sonic's fur stayed the same shade of royal blue. That was comforting at least.

Tails couldn't figure out where that protective fury had come from.

Shadow was a little close for comfort, sure, and his stance had been threatening. But it was Shadow. You sort of expected that type of thing from the darker hedgehog. And Tails was mostly sure Shadow wouldn't actually harm a single hair on his body. Surely Sonic knew that too. So why the growl?

"Hey bud," Tails said hesitantly. "Are you alright?"

Sonic's hands started to move. Shadow and Rouge frowned in his periphery but Tails tried to ignore them. He watched Sonic's hands for a moment as the words formed. What he signed was brief. It was alarming in a way Tails couldn't pin down.

'I am so tired.'

"Sonic?" Tails asked, taking a small step closer to his brother.

'I do not want to do it anymore.'

Tails swallowed thickly. He felt his tails, which had been flicking nervously since Sonic had run for the bathroom, go still. He wrung his hands together. The agents watched the exchange with an almost sombre respect, like neither wanted to interrupt or ask what was happening. Tails supposed neither knew sign.

"Do what, buddy?" he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

'Everything.'

Tails was gone.

It had been obvious to Knuckles the moment he woke up. Tails' bedroom door stood open in the hall. So was bathroom door. The garage downstairs, filled with homemade gadgets and tools, wires and metal – a mess, as usual – held no fox in its walls. Other than Knuckles, the house was devoid of life.

Knuckles hadn't felt this out of place in the brothers' house since he was first invited down from Angel Island. He remembered the awkward moment when Sonic had first offered clearly.

Sonic had come up to Angel Island in the Tornado by himself. Until that point, he hadn't even known Sonic could fly it. He learned later, of course, that Sonic had fixed the plane way before he'd even met Tails. But at the time, it had been so strange. The red-winged contraption had touched down on a bare patch of ground in sight of the Master Emerald. From his place by his charge, Knuckles had noted with startled surprise that he could see Sonic sitting at the controls. The hedgehog had hopped out and was by his side before he could even comprehend what was happening. He remembered growling – Sonic was too close to the Master Emerald – but the blue menace hadn't even looked over at the giant gem. Those unsettling green eyes were on him.

"Heya, Knux," Sonic had chirped, sounding a little stilted.

He hadn't been speaking for long by that point and his voice had been so off. It was like Sonic couldn't quite figure out what tone was meant to go with the words he was using. Knuckles had been torn between a weird sense of pride for the hedgehog and an uncomfortable need to push him down the shrine's stairs. Still, it was nice being able to actually understand him.

He didn't respond.

It hadn't deterred Sonic though. With his hands behind his back, Sonic rocked back and forth on his heels. He'd had to look up to meet Knuckles' eye back then. Now they were closer in height. Not the same height, but much closer. Knuckles still had a couple inches on the younger hedgehog.

"Was just thinkin' that you're probably lonely up here by y'self."

"I'm used to being alone, hedgehog," he had snapped back. "I like the quiet."

Sonic's face had scrunched up in a frown. The rocking had stopped, but his hands remained clasped behind his back. He shifted, seemingly always needing to be moving some part of his body.

"You've never not had quiet," Sonic shot back.

Knuckles had to stop himself from telling Sonic he'd just used a double negative. He wouldn't have even understood what that meant, and that would've just lead to a fight when Sonic had clearly come with peaceful intentions in mind. So again, he didn't respond, just watched the hedgehog with cautious eyes. What was his game? For surely, he was playing one. Sonic always seemed to be playing some game that no one else around him was privy to. Except sometimes Tails, that was.

"Weeeeell, I'm just gon' leave this here then."

Sonic unclasped his hands, revealing a small key in the palm of his glove. While Knuckles stared at him, Sonic had slowly put the key down in front of him on the floor. The little clink as it touched the ground was still so loud in his mind. Sonic had backed up a few steps, gave him a salute, and dashed back down the steps.

He'd already been back in the air before Knuckles could reach the bottom step of the shrine.

With a sigh, Knuckles shook his head, but the memory wouldn't quite go away. Sonic had never really asked him officially, just left a key to the house he shared with Tails with no explanation. Eventually, Tails had addressed it himself, asking if he'd like to stay indefinitely. Knuckles had declined, but he did spend more time than he'd like to admit on the surface these days. He still had that key.

He found himself in the kitchen again. He wasn't sure how long he'd been holding the glass in his hand. It was the red one. The one with the crack in the base. Sonic's glass. The urge to toss it against the wall overcame him for a moment. He stopped himself. Just barely. It wouldn't be right to smash Sonic's favourite glass, especially not when Knuckles' frustration was directed at himself. He set it down gently and just stared at it for a moment. He watched the way the sunlight filtered through the glass, leaving a pink stain of light across the countertop. His violet eyes found the crack again.

Why did Sonic like it so much?

The glass was damaged. Not enough to be useless, but enough to be noticeable. Why had it not simply been thrown out? Why was it his favourite? It just didn't make sense to him. He picked up the glass again, felt along its base, realised the crack wasn't just noticeable, but that he could feel it too.

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, Knuckles could see Sonic doing what he was doing now. Could see Sonic thumbing the glass where the crack was idly, talking to Tails across the table. Could see, now, another memory of the same glass. One where Sonic had felt along the base at the wrong angle. Could recall how he'd frowned slightly mid-conversation, subtly turning the glass in his hand without missing a beat in the conversation. Could recall how that frown instantly melted away once the crack had be found again. His finger had been searching for that imperfection. Had almost seemed to… need it.

But why?

Knuckles furrowed his brow. He set the glass back down and opened the cupboard again. He took out Sonic's mug. He wasn't sure what he was doing, but something told him to look at it closer. After a moment, he found what he had been unconsciously looking for. A imperfection, a fault, along the handle. A slightly irregular groove on the inside. He felt along it again, once more remembering Sonic fiddling with the mug, how the back of his finger trailed up and down along the handle.

Knuckles started to pull out more dishes from the cupboard. Then silverware from the drawer.

Sonic's favourite plate. A chip on the underside. Noticeable only if you caught it right with your finger.

His favourite bowl. A mistake in the glazing; the spot had been missed. It left the small area rough instead of smooth.

His favourite knife. It was a butterknife with a tiny indent towards the bottom of the blade, the section below sticking out, a little too sharp. Sonic used it for everything, despite it being only a butterknife. Knuckles almost genuinely cut himself.

His favourite spoon – Knuckles now saw it was warped slightly.

Fork. One of the tines was bent so it was sticking up a little further than the rest.

Knuckles was almost frantic now and he didn't even know why. He ran to Sonic's chair at the table, the one by the door. Along the edge of the seat, he caught it: a groove in the wood. Deep but not altogether noticeable on first glance.

What the fuck?

Why…?

Why was everything the hedgehog owned damaged in some way? Why were they all imperfect? It couldn't be a coincidence, surely? Every. Single. One. Why was Sonic seemingly drawn to broken things?

And why was that starting to make him mad?

It was so small, so easy to miss. But it was true. Knuckles even went into the living room, found the spot he liked best on the settee – right side, by the armrest. He saw how a piece of irregular stitching stuck out where it was absent on the left side. He could see, so damn clearly now, how Sonic's hand would trace that stitching. Fuck, he could see it now. But he hadn't thought about it back when he first noticed it. He hadn't thought about any of it, but now he couldn't stop.

What else in this house was subtly imperfect? What else did Sonic hold close that was damaged in some way? Did Tails know? Was it even really that significant? Was he overreacting? What did it all mean? Did it mean anything? Was Knuckles genuinely losing his mind?

Why did it seem like Sonic favoured everything damaged in this bloody house?

There was no way it was a coincidence. He refused to even entertain the idea.

He had to search the rest of the house.