#blackdoomed

Sonic felt yet another baguette hit his head. He turned to face his offender.

“Hey! What’s the big dea- Oh, hey Shadow!” He narrowed his eyes, lifting the bread in the air and holding it back.

  "You speak nonsense, old fool." He dismissed, the arms crossed over his chest denoted this tall silhouette spoke ill and lies and nothing more.

  Except semantics struck too close for his liking. Shadow masqueraded as someone who did not wilt from the inside, even to his reflection. No, he straightened his back and squared his shoulders when exhaustion aimed to sag them down.

He would feel like shit but wore a mask before he crumbled under the weight of everyone's eyes on him as he struggled to confess sentiments. He could handle that type of despair. It felt claustrophobic and twisted his gut, but he found solace in the familiar. Shadow could cope with it, learned his way around this road, and chose to trek on it alone.

He wanted to avoid the questions and retell the same damn story. Avoid reliving his ineptitude to reminisce his time before, his time above. And he couldn't do that without feeling powerless. Control was paramount, and lack thereof instilled sickness and anger. 

Often bombarded by an abrupt storm of stray emotions, Shadow could not slot them in the spot they belonged. He longed to cull the visuals that should tether with those feelings. Unbeknownst to him, it would reveal why heartbeats repulsed him, why he didn't like anyone near his chest, and so forth. He knew the source resided in the past, but it was an itch behind a wall he couldn't scratch. 

Still a harbinger of his misery, he dug his elbow deep into the mental chasm but frequently unearthed fabricated memories,  both nonsensical and horrifying, because his mind suppressed the truth he desperately wanted to remember.

   He was right, he was far away from home. Maria was his home. She was also his greatest plague. For that reason, his mind’s trauma response was to ransack and take every coherent memory from him, forcing it to the most unreachable places of his mind. Away from him and his prying hands as an imperfect means to protect him.

"So find something more useful to do than to pester me with bullshit."

JOLT. Shatter.

What a shame. The mug that now lay in pieces on the kitchenette tile had been one of Shadow’s favourites.

...

Mumble, mumble.

     Yeah... Volt wants absolutely no part of that. Nope. Not happening.

- And it was that sudden whisper in his head that had the ebony hedgehog bolting out of bed, quills bristled and eyes wide.

Shadow's chest heaved with borderline-panicked breaths as his ruby gaze darted around the room, his keen night-vision easily cutting through the gloom of a night with the curtains drawn as he searched for something, anything, that might've been out of place.

Nothing.

'I'm going insane,'

He sat up with a sigh, running a hand through his quills to calm himself down.

'Might as well humor myself.'

He took in a breath. Then he spoke.

"-Then I'll kill you again. And again. And again. As many times as it takes, I won't hesitate to put you down."