Chapter Text
~~ “Someone told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm, I know. It’s been coming for some time. When it’s over, so they say: it’ll rain a sunny day, I know, shining down like water.” ~~
There was a list—and one he wasn’t exactly quiet about—of things that Sonic hated. Swimming, bad chili dogs, Eggman ruining a perfect summer day, interacting with the Gogoba tribe for more than thirty seconds at a time. It went on and on, and he was too outgoing of a person to keep most of it from any of his friends. They could probably name more things than he could.
Rain made the top of that list.
~~ “I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain coming down on a sunny day?” ~~
Sonic sang quietly to himself, staring out the window as rain pattered against it. The chatter of his friends sounded distant. Amy had this idea that rain was wonderful and demanded days spent inside playing games and drinking hot coco, and she’d managed to drag them all over to her house as soon as the sky turned gray. Sonic didn’t like it, but he knew by now that dealing with Amy’s antics was far better for him than sitting in his house watching the rain fall. He knew it was better than waiting for people that would probably never show up.
~~ “Yesterday and days before, sun is cold and rain is hard, I know. Been that way for all my time. Till forever, on it goes through the circle, fast and slow, I know. It can’t stop, I wonder.” ~~
His friends knew he was weird about the weather. They’d asked a few times, though they knew after the first few non-answers that Sonic wouldn’t give them anything. He managed to chalk it up to his violent hatred of water in general. No one believed him. Telling them the real reason, though, was out of the question. He hated it almost as much as he hated the bandana around his neck, set there to cover a pendant he refused to take off. But it was for them. For their safety.
Sonic hadn’t heard from Sonia or Manic since that night.
--- “Sonic.” Sonic didn’t listen, his eyes locked off in the distance. Maybe if he stared long enough, the scene would change. Maybe if he never left this point, it would have never happened. Maybe if he stopped breathing, everyone who lost their lives could breathe again. He almost considered jumping from the cliff just to test it.
A hand—familiar, comforting, and barely noticeable through the ringing in his head—landed on his shoulder. “Sonic.” A gentler voice this time. Water filled his eyes. It mixed with the rain soaking through his fur until he could barely tell the difference, though the rain was still white with ash. “We have to go. They’ll come for us next.”
Sonic finally tore his eyes away from the still-burning factory. Sonia—his sister—had never looked worse. Soot was pressed into her fur, lodged so deep the rain wasn’t dislodging any of it. All kinds of small injuries covered her. The bandages around her torso were soaked with blood and water, but somehow managed to stay on. Sonic wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be standing.
Her eyes looked dead. He imagined his weren’t much better.
“She’s right, bro.” His brother, Manic, had fared better than his siblings. He pushed fur out of his eyes, his bandaged wrapped hands dripping with water. The rain immediately pushed it back. “Mom wasn’t in there. We know she left. She’s alive, but we can’t find her unless we go. We can’t find her if we’re trapped.”
“Aren’t we already trapped?” Sonic’s voice was void of emotion. He looked at them both, then off at the building they’d barely escaped. All of it was still raging in his mind—the explosion, the pain, the fear when he lost sight of his siblings. How much he and Manic cried as they dug Sonia out of the rubble. The fourth member of their group that Sonic couldn’t think about without breaking completely. “We… can’t keep doing this.”
Manic immediately shook his head. “Don’t say that like you’re giving up. We can’t. We swore we’d find her.”
“Sonia almost died, Manic!” Now Sonic was yelling through his broken voice. More tears slid down his face. “None of us should be here right now! What is this helping?” He was always the strong one. He knew that. But he couldn’t keep the hopelessness out of his voice. “We’ve been chasing her for years. Nothing has ever changed. That factory was full of people, and we’re—we’re the only ones who escaped with our lives. Barely.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “How many more people have to die for this?”
Manic was quiet. It was Sonia who spoke, her eyes flashing in the rain. “However many it takes to give Mobius back the life it deserves.” She glared at Sonic. “The queen it deserves.” ---
“Sonic!” Sonic blinked as his name was called, snapping back to reality. The rain sounded the same as it had back then. He hated it. His eyes focused on Amy, hands on her hips as she glared at him. “We’ve been calling you forever. The game is about to start.”
Sonic swallowed down the memories, as he had been doing for the last five years. Five years since they decided to split up. Five years since he hugged his brother and sister goodbye. Five years since he promised them this wasn’t the end, and that they would stay separate until anything about their mom came up again. He plastered on his trademark smirk and shoved all of it back—the song, the words, the memories of faces he promised himself he’d never forget—until it was just a throb in his chest. “I hope you’re all ready to lose, then.”
Amy rolled her eyes, but the gesture lacked any real weight. Sonic imagined it was because of the tremble in his voice. She turned and walked back to the table, taking her spot on the couch and immediately arguing with Sticks over game pieces. Sonic watched them for a moment before standing. Before he got anywhere, though, Tails appeared in front of him.
Sonic’s smile turned a little more genuine. Tails especially—though Sonic would never admit it out loud—had gotten him through all of this. The fox tilted his head. “Are you sure you’re alright, Sonic?”
Sonic reached out and ruffled Tails’ fur, the callouses on his fingers no doubt uncomfortable against the fox’s head. “Course I am, little buddy.” He waved a hand at the window. “Weather and all. Thanks for checking in, though.”
Tails didn’t exactly look convinced, but he shrugged. “I made a new machine for the hot chocolate. It’s supposed to take custom orders.” He nodded towards the kitchen. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He paused before walking away. “I like that song, by the way. The one you were singing. It’s nice.”
Sonic’s chest hurt a little at the words, but he brushed it off and followed Tails. Falling back into his life here was easy once he stopped reminiscing. Amy and Sticks arguing was normal, as was Knuckles jumping in as if he knew what they were talking about. Even if the echidna was one of many constant reminders of his past life. Tails’ excited voice as he explained the workings of his hot chocolate machine was as familiar to him as the strings of his guitar. He knew that once they started playing, the game would be derailed after five minutes. Knuckles would mess up the rules. Amy would be too distracted explaining them to him to notice Sticks cheating. Sonic would pick up the guitar he literally never left home without and start playing over all of them, and Tails would win despite all of it, as he always did. It was predictable.
That, he thought, was the weirdest adjustment to make when he came here. With Sonia and Manic, every day brought something different. They could spend a week pampered in Bartleby’s mansion, and the next three days wandering around in search of an abandoned hut to sleep in. It was chaos. Not that he was complaining about it, but the only thing he could rely on in Mobius was his siblings being there with him.
Here, he knew what to expect. Every day, every moment, one after the other. He knew where everyone was at basically all times. They had patterns they attacked in when Eggman showed up, regular orders at restaurants, and the same weekend plans every week. Even when some unpredictable nonsense happened, it always ended the same way. Nothing ever surprised him anymore.
Well, nothing but Shadow. But Sonic didn’t want to think about that right now.
He’d admit, there were worse places to be. He’d managed to locate some far corner of paradise, far away from Mobius and all of the things it expected from him. And that’s what it was. It was messy, sure, and things weren’t perfect. Eggman kept coming up with new ways to bother them, though he really wasn’t dangerous so much as annoying. The village was more susceptible to problems than Sonic thought was possible. Sticks still had an entire civilization of evil froglodytes living in her basement. But… this place was paradise. There was no other way to put it.
Maybe that meant he should just enjoy it. He should get his weird hot chocolate from Tails, claim his spot on the couch, and let familiarity wash away memories of the past. He didn’t even know where his siblings were. They didn’t know where he was. That was how it was supposed to be, and how it would continue to be until something changed.
Even if that killed him.
He smiled at Tails, and it only took a little more effort than usual. “So it can make anything?”
Tails nodded excitedly. “Anything! If it’s in the form of hot chocolate, anyway.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that.”
“Make me something sweet!” Amy piped up from the table. “Ooh, like cinnamon! Or s’mores!”
“Does it come in dirt flavor?” Sticks asked.
“Or chocolate! That would be awesome!” Knuckles added. He paused. “Wait, that’s just normal hot chocolate.”
“All of you think too small.” Sonic had pressed a pile of buttons, and the machine was now dispensing a liquid that was so dark brown it was almost black. “With a machine that can make anything, why not make everything?”
A brief, rare moment of silence from the group.
“Sonic.” Tails sounded nervous. The machine—as if on cue—started making a weird sputtering noise. Sonic’s mug was full, spilling onto the counter and down to the floor. The machine kept dropping the dark liquid. “Just how many things did you put in that?”
Sonic took a careful half-step away from the machine. “Um… all of them?”
Tails’ eyes blew wide. “All?!” he demanded. “Sonic, that machine has over two hundred flavors!”
Tails backed up, too, and Amy stood from the table. “You didn’t tell me not to do all of them!” Sonic countered.
“I didn’t think you would do all of them!”
“Guys.” Amy interrupted their bickering. “Guys! It’s gonna blow!”
For a moment, everyone stared in the horror as the machine sputtered loudly. Black smoke poured from it, thick and rancid. “Why would you put all of them?!” Tails demanded again.
“I thought it would be fun!” Sonic looked around helplessly. “Amy, I hope you wanted to add some black to the décor of your house.”
“I didn’t!” Amy yelled. “Someone get it out of here!”
“I got it!” Everyone turned to Sticks as she piped up. Her eyes got that glint that usually meant she was about to do something very chaotic. Sonic backed further away as she plastered on a wicked grin. “Disposing of evil machines is my specialty.”
She jumped from the table, ran to the kitchen, grabbed the machine, ran back across the room, opened the front door, and flung it outside as far as she could. It flew out past Amy’s front fence, landing in a patch of cute flowers in neat little rows. “My petunias!” Amy yelled. “Sticks!”
The machine stopped pouring smoke as the rain hit it, making odd hissing noises in the outside air. For a moment, everyone stared at it. It didn’t seem like it was going to do anything else, and a breath of relief seemed to go around the room.
Sonic waited another moment, then said, “Well, that could have been a lot wo-”
The machine exploded.
“My petunias!” Amy yelled again, despair coloring her voice. It shifted to anger almost immediately. “Sticks! Sonic! Tails! You all owe me more flowers!”
“Me?” Tails demanded. “My machine worked fine! It was Sonic who broke it!”
“And it was Sticks who put it in the flowers,” Sonic added. Amy, Tails, and Sticks all turned to glare at him. He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m just saying that the blame game ain’t pretty. Why don’t we just chalk it up to a happy accident and uh…” He gestured to the table, where Knuckles was holding the rules upside down as if any of them thought he was actually reading them. “Play a game!”
Amy, Tails, and Sticks all moved to dispute that particular comment. Before the fighting could escalate to problematic levels, though, a new voice spoke up from the door. “Well,” it said, a laugh behind the word. All eyes turned to the door immediately, where a hooded figure stood just outside of the range of light. Sonic’s group went silent. “At least I know you haven’t been bored all this time.”
His friends reacted as they’d been trained to. Amy grabbed her hammer, Sticks pulled out her boomerang, and Tails jumped into the air and held himself aloft. Knuckles just carefully set the game rules down and locked a disbelieving gaze on Sonic. He had to admit, he had a good group here. They knew how to defend themselves.
But Sonic didn’t care about any of that.
Five years. Five years, and that voice hadn’t changed nearly as much as he imagined it would. A little older, sure, but that was the difference between sixteen and twenty-one. Sonic still froze, though, every one of his senses honing in on that figure. He was pretty sure he’d started crying. He didn’t care.
“Who are you?” Amy demanded. “Show yourself.”
“Yeah, or I might have to ruin more of Amy’s stuff,” Sticks growled.
“You will not.”
The figure chuckled, stopping yet another bickering match between the two girls. No one seemed to notice Sonic going through a crisis next to them. “Ouch. Cold reception.” Green fur flashed as a hand raised, reaching for the hood. “But okay. I can respect that.”
The hood was thrown back, and Sonic made a choked noise that he was sure got his friends’ attention. He barely noticed their eyes landing on him. The boy—man now, Sonic reminded himself—was shorter than Sonic remembered. His fur was different, the longer pieces he’d always kept in front cut so they wouldn’t be in his face. A new scar cut across his nose and over his left eye. But none of that mattered as much as the familiar pendant around his neck—a small, silver drum set—or the golden eyes unlike any others Sonic had ever seen. He could’ve changed drastically since Sonic had seen him. He’d still recognize him anywhere.
Manic smiled as his eyes landed on his brother, smirking in a way that didn’t match the emotion shining in his eyes. “Sonic,” he greeted. His voice shook as he opened his arms. “Long time no see, huh?”