Chapter 25: Helpless
Emerald eyes widened, but in his dizziness Sonic couldn’t quite focus, wasn’t even able to raise himself onto his elbows. The white bulky shape stalking toward the bed he lay on became ever clearer though, as the distance between them closed.
“Left you all alone for me to find…” the albino dingo leered at the prone hedgehog.
Sonic’s stomach clenched up as adrenaline fired out of his glands and again he tried to upright himself, but his muscles felt like jelly…
“You almost broke my hip, you know. I am still in pain. And yet you still seem to have escaped any serious punishment bar that dequilling nonsense…” Drago growled, squatting in front of the bed now to bring his head and wolfish grin level with Sonic still lying on his side.
“But that stops here. I will make sure you receive your punishment. I will make sure you’ll be the one in pain.”
Sonic’s breathing now came in laboured gasps as the graveness of the situation slowly began to sink in. He was virtually defenceless if he couldn’t force his sedated body to move…!
Peach arms began to push against the mattress, trying in vain to get his body to sit up. He attempted to move his legs to at least roll away from the dingo, but that attempt was cut short as a muscular hand closed around his calf and forcibly dragged him back.
“Now now, escape would be useless. You know I’m stronger than you. The Prince sedated you and left you helpless,” he sneered, now crawling onto the bed himself, kneeling behind a squirming Sonic on his belly.
“How…how do you know…?” Sonic wanted to ask, to distract the dingo as much as he himself didn’t understand this. How could Shadow have left him here if he knew it wasn’t safe?
“Slaves don’t talk. Now shut up,” Drago snarled, roughly grabbing Sonic’s hip with both hands and pulling the trembling hedgehog form closer towards him, spreading his legs. “Pucker up, hedgehog…” he leered, saliva dripping from his bared fangs.
“N-no! Don’t…!” Sonic was starting to panic now, but still his body was in this horrible unresponsive state and he couldn’t move…he felt his legs being forced apart even further and something touching him just below the tail.
“NO! HELP!”
“There is no help coming, pleasure slave of the Prince…you’re mine!” Drago roared and pushed in.
Sonic screamed. The pain was immediate and unbearable. Stretched suddenly and brutally, he felt as if he was torn apart from within, the other much too large to contain. Tears began flowing from his eyes and he started begging and pleading.
“Please! Stop it! I can’t take…!” he wailed, wanting to thrash and only get away from the burning agony behind him.
Then the door opened a second time and light fell harshly into his eyes as he could only make out the silhouette of the Ultimate Lifeform standing suddenly in the door.
“Shadow!” Sonic screamed, immediately feeling a surge of hope and shame for being seen like this all at once. “Help me!” he cried, still convulsing from the terrible pain as the dingo now seemed to move out of him.
Shadow rushed over to his bedside in an instant, cradling the terrified blue hedgehog in his arms instinctively as Sonic clutched at him like a scared child.
“He…he…” Sonic managed, but his voice hitched, eyes squeezed tightly shut and face buried in white, comforting fluff.
“Sonic, what on Earth happened? What’s wrong?” Shadow managed, patting the blue-furred back awkwardly, so not used to comforting another living being.
“Wh-what do you mean?” Sonic gasped, only holding on tighter for fear of the dingo snatching him away again. “You’ve seen what he did to me!”
“Who did what to you?!” Shadow asked, confused. “Sonic, are you alright?”
“He’s right here!” Sonic shouted. “Shadow, I just got-!” he started, but then noticed certain key things. Namely, a lack of Drago. And a very sudden lack of pain. He now became acutely aware instead of the fact that they were all alone in the Prince’s chambers, he was drenched in sweat and his lower body tangled hopelessly in the sheets.
And clutching a very confused Shadow.
His mind now worked very fast.
“Your sodding sedative!”
Shadow suddenly found himself very rudely shoved onto his backside onto the floor as Sonic apparently had come to his senses again. The blue hedgehog now looked entirely un-sedated, but instead positively livid.
“Do you know what I just went through because of you?!” Sonic shouted, trying to stand but wobbling slightly, probably the last remnants of the pill wearing off. “Do you know what could have happened while you left me here? And you took Tails!”
Shadow slowly climbed to his feet again, his familiar defensive attitude breaking through whenever someone shouted at him. He had no idea what Sonic's reaction just now had been. Another nightmare, perhaps? But that was no reason to just lash out at him!
“You might not have noticed, Sonic, but I locked the door! Nothing would have happened. And I took Tails for his own good!”
“How would you know what is good for him?! You don’t even know him!” Sonic yelled, fists clenched. He felt like hitting Shadow, but knew that in his state this was probably not a good idea. Nevertheless, his raised quills and bared teeth spoke volumes in body language.
“We agreed on a foster family!” Shadow shot back, in no way intimidated, but feeling his own fury rise in turn. He had gone out of his way to keep that urchin safe, risked his own life and this was the gratitude he got!
“Yeah, but not this very night! And you didn’t even leave me a choice in the matter!”
“You would never have let him go, Sonic! You would have kept him here until war broke out and it was too late!” Their shouting had now risen to a dangerous crescendo.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye! And what would you know of taking care of people? The last person in your care died!” Sonic scathed and Shadow breathed in sharply.
Silence descended. The black hedgehog opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, not saying anything in return. They both stood staring at each other, panting, the silence stretching on. Sonic briefly wondered whether he might have gone too far, but he was too angry to care. The thought occurred whether Shadow would attack him now. He usually did when somebody mentioned that Maria girl. Sonic tensed mentally, knowing that with the remnants of the drug coursing through his system, he might not be able to hold his own in a fight against the black hedgehog. Would Shadow try to punish him for real this time?
But Shadow's own thoughts were along completely different lines as he stared hard at the tensed-up blue hedgehog, expression unreadable. He was reluctant to show how much that remark of Sonic had hurt, which had lashed across his insides like a whip. It had been a low blow, but one to which he’d have thought he was immune – now he had to learn that if you loved somebody, it meant you were much, much more vulnerable to them, too, and not just in the physical sense. But had he...deserved it? he wondered. Was Sonic right? Had he done something bad because he was unable to understand what true love, like that between the two mismatched brothers, meant?
Shadow bowed his head.
“I am…sorry."
He swallowed. "I just…” wanted to make you happy, he wanted to say, but it wouldn’t quite come out. Nevertheless, the effect had been immense, even if he couldn't see it as he stared at his feet.
Sonic had nearly dropped his jaw. Had Shadow just...apologized? The arms with the clenched fists fell down to his sides, the blue hedgehog, blinking, not at all sure what to do with his hands now anymore. Much like Shadow, his own mouth opened and shut, the usually flippant speedster at a loss of what to reply. The sudden apology from Shadow’s side had blind-sided him, the blue hedgehog having been prepared for more shouting, for pain, for anger and helplessness...and now this.
Then again, Shads, you at least pretty much managed the 'helpless' part. What the hell am I supposed to do now?!
The black hedgehog was of no help at all. Shadow was still staring at the floor, not continuing his incomplete sentence, leaving Sonic the one who had to do something. A part of him wanted to reach out to Shadow, feeling a sudden stab of sympathy, but he couldn't - for once, if he tried to take a step, he wasn't sure whether he wouldn't topple to the floor but also because his pride still stung at having had his rights trampled with feet like this. But Shadow obviously really had been thinking he was doing him a favour and now he had apologized when he had seen that Sonic was displeased...for Chaos' sake, did he care for him or not?!
Taking a breath, Sonic decided to go for the neutral option.
“Where did you take him anyway?” he asked, crossing his arms but a bit of the anger had vanished from his voice. At that, Shadow finally looked up, blinking.
“I took him to the echidnas. I had read that they occasionally adopted outsiders and decided to give it a try. Knuckles will be a decent big brother for him.”
“Woah – Knux?!” Sonic staggered. On Mobius, the echidna and the two-tail had a very good relationship with each other… “That’s…not a bad choice, I guess…was Tails happy with it?”
“Yeah, The last thing he said to me was asking me to thank you for everything.” Shadow nodded and Sonic at last let see a small smile.
“Good. At least that’s one problem solved. I hope Tails at home is okay, too…” then his eyes abruptly narrowed again, though and he turned to Shadow once more, expression serious. “But that doesn’t change a thing that I am goddamn pissed about how you handled this, Shadow. You abused my trust in you. At the moment you’ll have to come up with something pretty good for me to hear or else this won’t work anymore,” he said, leaving it deliberately ambiguous what exactly he meant with ‘this’.
The black hedgehog sighed. “Very well. I might have gone a bit too far this time. But you must know this isn’t easy for me, Sonic. I haven’t worked…lived together with anybody in this close proximity for a long time.”
“It’s not that hard,” Sonic shrugged, his tone the icing on a glacier. “Not sedating people or tying them to their beds helps, of course.”
Shadow glared, knowing that the blue speedster wasn’t going to let him forget that anytime soon. “I know I made a mistake, Sonic, and I apologize. Now can we focus on the Emerald again?”
Sonic looked non-impressed. “What’s there to focus on? In two days Black Doom’s gonna give that dinner, present it to whatever big-shots he’s got invited and we steal it faster than they could blink. Problem solved, we’re back on Mobius and I’m my own person again.”
“I hope it’s going to be as easy as you think it will be.” Shadow said, moving toward the bed and trying to ignore the jab, but a finger stabbing into his chest suddenly stopped him, Sonic barring his way.
“Not a chance, Shadow. After the nightmare I just had I don’t want any company. You can sleep on the carpet.”
“Excuse me? This is MY bed. You can sleep underneath your ring on the wall!”
“This isn’t your bed, it’s the Prince’s, and you’re an impostor,” Sonic shrugged. “Of course, you’re more than welcome to sleep on the side I just lay on, where the sheets are completely sweat-drenched.”
Shadow touched the spot indicated and screwed up his snout in disgust. “Urgh. This reeks.”
“Your choice,” Sonic quipped, and stretched out on what had previously been Shadow’s side, which was still more or less clean, pulling the sheets over his body.
Shadow scowled at the blue-spiked back. There was absolutely no call for this! But at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder what that nightmare might have been if it let Sonic act this agitatedly…
“Fine. But I hope you know that I’m right now doing this as a favour to repay you for the sedative. Next time you try this I’m going to kick you out of the bed,” Shadow grumbled, trying to get comfortable on the wooden chair at his writing desk. This was going to be one uncomfortable night…grunting, the black hedgehog settled back, casting a last glance at Sonic.
Sonic meanwhile was busy staring at the ceiling, sleepless. It wasn’t easy to return to peaceful slumber after any nightmare, but right now there were just too many thoughts chasing each other around in his head. Had the horror he’d just mentally experienced any meaning to it? Generally, Sonic wasn’t the kind of guy who would puzzle endlessly over some deep, potential subconscious enigma. Instead, he preferred much more to just get up and run until he found some mildly life-threatening situation that would make sure he took his mind off things, lest he didn’t want his head removed as well. But now the collar was around his neck and he couldn’t…
The blue hedgehog tossed himself onto his side again, silver moonlight falling into confused emerald eyes. This hadn’t even been the first nightmare he’d had since he’d come here, right? Now that he was thinking about it, there had been another one two days ago, but he had forgotten about it until now…
There had been Shadow. And the dingo. And again, he himself, on the bed, chained and helpless…
Sonic suppressed a wince as memories of the other terrible dream flooded back into his mind. He stared out of the window unhappily. Basically, the nightmares had only told him things he’d known anyway.
It’s not good for me to live in captivity like this.
Sonic curled up underneath the blanket and groaned, feeling all the muscles of his body flexing, aware of how useless their strength was in a dream, aware of how this world was trying to let somebody else own his body and make him submit…he wrapped his arms around himself as if that could prevent somebody else claiming him instead.
This freaky dimension is getting to me.
Could living like a slave let you become one?
Some part of Sonic was aware that these were merely the usual dark paths your wandering mind would take whenever you lay awake at night, whenever your silly fears and worries no longer had to hide from the light of day and reason, but at the moment that didn’t help him.
Another part of him wished he could just get himself to call Shadow back to bed and curl up against him, feel safe in the arms of someone who knew he wasn’t a slave, didn’t treat him like one…cared for him, Sonic hoped. But at the same time, he knew he couldn’t. It wasn’t that Shadow might not come – after all, he’d rushed to Sonic’s side instantly when he had screamed for him in his nightmare – but the reason was different.
He trusted Shadow. Thought he loved him. He just wasn’t sure whether he trusted him completely. The black hedgehog had been nice to him, like he’d claimed in front of Tails – for a given, psychotic value of ‘nice’, anyway. Shadow’s version of nice. And to Sonic, Shadow’s version of ‘nice’ was nice.
A quick smile stole over the blue hero’s face.
However, the bigger issue was that Shadow also had always done what he’d deemed right – and then Sonic’s wishes hadn’t mattered a bit. And that scared him. It wasn’t that the black hedgehog had once tried to kill Sonic and to blow up the planet. Sonic knew Shadow wouldn’t do that anymore. But it was that his ruthlessness sometimes did not seem to have changed at all.
Shadow thought that the charade was their best option, so he’d rather fought Sonic than to release him from the collar when the blue hedgehog had returned fuming after Lord Drago had attacked him. He was still disinclined to stop Black Doom if it interfered with their plans because he thought the lives of other people here didn’t matter. Finally, Shadow had drugged Sonic and taken his little brother away from him, just because he thought it was in the best interests of all of them.
And because of this, I’m scared, Sonic thought, scowling because he was Sonic the Hedgehog and not allowed to be scared.
Or worried. Whatever.
Because he couldn’t help but be anxious what would happen if Shadow had the upper hand in some situation – would the black hedgehog abuse his power over him if he thought it was the right thing to do? Go against Sonic’s wishes even if the blue hedgehog asked him not to? Right now he wasn’t completely in the hand of the black hedgehog. Even though he was wearing the collar that marked him as his property, Sonic knew that in reality they both depended on each other and that under normal circumstances, he was more than able to stand up against Shadow. The nightmares merely resulted from his own fears what would happen if the independence and freedom he cherished so much was taken from him. If for some reason he'd ended up a true slave, owned by Shadow, his body and being belonging no longer to himself but to the person who had bought him...
And the easiest way to avoid these fears, Sonic reasoned, is if I don’t let myself get that close to Shadow anymore. The mere thought hurt, but the blue hedgehog ignored it. The less I make myself vulnerable to him, emotionally or otherwise, the better. And in two days it’ll be all over, anyway.
And even though he now felt as if something inside him was as heavy as a cement block encasing your feet, emerald eyes at last closed and the hero of Mobius and unwilling slave of the Crown Prince drifted off into dreamless sleep.
Shadow, sitting silently on the chair gave no indication whether he had noticed his azure counterpart finally falling unconscious. Instead, crimson eyes just looked on with a hint of disappointment – with himself for making Sonic mad enough to ban him from being close to him…and with the blue hedgehog as well, for not turning around and looking at him once.
Shadow sighed miserably, folding his arms on the writing desk and laying his head atop them.
Maria told me that love was the greatest thing in the world. By now I’m starting to think she might have been mad.
To be continued...
He Is My Master by Taranea
Chapter end notes:
Yes. Yes, I am evil. But I gave you this update just in time for a beginning-of-Christmas-season-treat, which is nice, right? Mindrape and holidays, they go so well together. And yup, drugs can do weird things to your brain, so don't take them, not even from your genetically engineered master currently trying to pretend to be a prince. ;) Once again, thank you so much for all those comments, tho, I can't remember ever having had such an awesome readership. :D