#I love toying with aspects like him going into borderline blissful daze states

[dogydayz]

When I first awoke, everything happened so fast. My mind was constantly spiraling, the world around me shifting and spinning, memories foggy and broken from time away from consciousness and outsider tampering. I assumed so much, remembered so wrong, pinpointing on an idea that, admittedly, I hardly understood then.

Destruction.

I raced against my mind, I raced against the clock, I raced against the shadow of myself.

Or... Was I the shadow of him?

Everything happened in a blur, yet I remember the feelings, my mindset, how unstable and hurried I was, how I felt as though I were still in the metal corridor running for my life, running for our lives, running til life went cold.

Faces and voices, they each solidified into my mind, and I wanted to cling to them so desperately. I found myself running in circles, running in place, lights and buildings passing by me, the world around me so vast and dreamlike.

I didn't feel alive, and yet... I felt more alive than I'd ever been.

My feet barely touched the ground as I went, as things happened, events unfolding before my eyes. Voices spoke to me, they called to me, they told me everything I wanted yet couldn't believe. I was broken yet build all at once, deconstructed then pieced back together again... But it all went so fast that I didn't understand much of it at the time.

Locked onto pink quills, green eyes, purple wings, a shining machine... They all had their effects on me, they all took pieces of me and unraveled me like a loosely knit scarf, becoming nothing more than old worn yarn.

Blazing streaks of blue, I chased after light itself, for those moments that I sped through the air and clashed with glowing spines, nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed but a feeling of being held down, grounded, yet lifted onto cloud nine all the same.

My mind loved to contradict itself, it made it hard for me to process it all later on. When everything felt so strange and dreamlike, I felt like I had to doubt its reality... But it was real, I know that now, ever since finding steadier ground for myself.

The final stretch, we were shooting stars in the sky, my mind falling back to blurred memories, now slightly less damaged, and slightly more lucid. A voice called out to me, believing in me, believing in us.

Fighting side-by-side against kin of my own, against a disaster greater than any yet seen, I felt just as golden as our bodies had become. For them all, for the ones who'd given me so much in such little time, I fought. For the love I was created in the name of, I gave it my all. For the world I'd promised to protect....

I plummeted out of the sky.

My memories of that time make recalling it feel like it was all a fever dream, yet I know how real it was.

Awoken again, with new connections alongside me, I chased the high of that night, I chased the high of living after going so long disallowed from it.

Friends.

That's who they are to me. And they were still at that time... But that exuberance wouldn't last. I could only make my life out to be a drama for so long before it would come crumbling down upon me.

Slowly, yet surely, cracks began to form.

And the invasion was the gunshot through my chest that broke the glass I was made of.

Memories challenged, my mind pried open, things confirmed that I'd avoided for so long, ideas brought to mind that still caused me paranoia, even after they were disproven. I lost sight of myself, despite believing so deeply that I'd found myself....

Or, perhaps... There never was a self to begin with.

Who was I prior, even? Just a cocky bastard who yearned for the enjoyment of living everyone else experienced? Who, try as he may, couldn't get those same feelings unless he was neck-and-neck against his own imposter?

My friends think there was a "me" before, but that one feels so distant in my mind that it's... Hard to truly know.

My skull was cracked open, my psyche poured onto a platter where all could view it and taste it for themselves... They didn't leave.

Part of me had hoped they'd leave.

Part of me wanted to hold them so close for staying by my side.

They were so persistant.

Yet so was I.

The feelings crept in and made themselves at home.

Just another adventure, it seemed, just another calamity to be faced.

I had my friends with me, I had myself together, for the time being. Things had felt... Fine, despite how the paranoia lingered within me, despite how my mind couldn't get away from the darkness of our world.

But my friends... They were there.

I was there.

We were there and we would fight together when the time came for it...

Until...

Something inside me shattered.

When I saw his body collapse, something inside of me simply fell to pieces.

Forced to continue on, I trudged, lost, falling into myself...

And you'd think that... Once he was back, things would've been fine...

But they weren't fine.

When they gathered the Emeralds, she imbued them with her own sealed power, and life was brought back to him...

I should have felt relieved... Well, I did, for a moment. It was when we had to fight that beast together that I realized how much I'd been wrecked by my own thoughts.

That stupid smile, that unending bravery, bright eyes and a hand held out to me...

I couldn't lose that again.

When all was said and done... When I collapsed from exhaustion and had to be carried home... I'd wake up....

Different.

They were all so kind to me. They all cared so much. They gave me exactly what I wanted and I loved it. I hated it.

I couldn't let it happen again, not again, not again, not like last time... If I had no one I could never fail them. If no one depends on me, then no one is because of me. If no one is around me, then no one is hurt on my behalf.

Alone...

I began to trail behind. I began to avoid the others. I began to remain silent. I began to snap at each and every one of them until they'd assume I wanted to be alone. I did, that's what I wanted. I didn't, I never wanted that.

I forced it upon myself, I had to defend myself, I had to defend them. It was my purpose, to be a sacrifice to the world for it to thrive. Sacrificing my own comfort, my own joy, my own existence...

It was worth it if it meant they'd be safer... If it meant I wouldn't have to be torn open again and again... If it meant that I wouldn't cause them any more trouble...

They tried to get to me, they tried to speak to me... They were all too gentle about it. They were all too caring about it. They were all to aware of my actions, they left me be out of consideration... But time and again, just as before, that bastard spindashed his way through concrete and rebar walls I'd build around myself. Everyday the barriers would be crumbled, dents left in metal, so chaos-damn persistent to make me listen.

And I did listen.

He didn't know it, I waved him away or struck him with a blow, but I was hearing what he had to say... Because I had no real choice.

It surprises me that, of all the ones I knew who'd been the ones to weasel their ways into my heart, he's been the most consistent of them. It's admirable, such tenacity... Though... I could tell as time went on that... He was growing truly worried. Perhaps he "missed" me, perhaps he just didn't want me turning on his buddies... Or perhaps he just... Was worried that nothing would ever change for me.

Maybe it was all of them.

I'm not quite sure.

All I know is that I'd gone years walled off from those I loved, and I assumed they'd just moved on by then. I was angry, I was lonely, I was desperate and yet so.. so scared.....

But when I finally got the courage to face them...

They were still there.

Waiting for me.

Holding out hope.

Ready to welcome me back just as if it were old times again.

And.. When I finally found the strength, I'd left my fortress behind to join them once more, to find myself in the sea of existence, to build myself from the pieces they'd kept safe until I'd find my way home to them once more.

#my writing #sth #sonic #shadow the hedgehog #shadow prose #i suppose? #yeah I'll call it that #when i do first person shit #I wanted to toy with the idea of connecting his past together #to explain his actions in more modern media and shit #but i pulled a 5th grade “write a letter as if you're living in the 20th century” #but instead of a letter it's prose about a gay hedgehog #I also just #really really love writing for Shadow's thoughts #he's so cool #I love toying with aspects like him going into borderline blissful daze states #when he's super happy #and he thinks about it later and wants that feeling back so badly he cries #but it's happy tears #because he remembers the good times #when he was so fucking cool and doing cool shit #and he looks at the stars and believes that Maria is watching him #and cries even more #and also im super fucking weak for describing my headcanons about how he views like #his battles with Sonic and shit like that #because it's SOOOO fun to write that sorta escapism stuff #like it's totally normal to yearn for the time when you were racing your rival #that you met earlier that day or something #and you were racing through space #to then become golden and glowing with him and save the world