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Loud, deep rumbling could be heard outside as storm clouds rolled over the entirety of Green Hills. The sky darkened a couple hours early, rain pattering quietly in the beginning stages of the oncoming storm. It didn’t seem too bad yet, but Maddie knew from experience how quickly that could change. Judging by the size of the clouds, they were in for a flood.
Sonic had spent the better part of a decade in Green Hills, so he was already used to how bad the storms could get, more or less. But Tails, Knuckles and Shadow hadn’t, meaning this was their first time experiencing Montana’s ruthless storms.
They’d already been warned of what could happen, but in terms of floods, Green Hills usually got fairly light flooding compared to some other places in the state. The water had only ever reached their doorstep once, several years ago.
Although the floods never got too bad, Maddie was still immensely grateful that they’d found Shadow in Sonic’s cave long before the storms usually came in. Her heart still ached when she remembered all the years Sonic had spent in the cave, forced out of his one safe space for hours - even days - at a time due to all of the water filling it. She couldn’t help but wonder if that contributed to his overwhelming fear of water.
Despite the storm gradually gaining strength outside, the boys didn’t let it disrupt their usual nighttime routines. They played a board game before dinner (Maddie had to stop herself from laughing when she noticed the way Tails cheated, yet didn’t get caught), then they all watched a movie after dinner. Shadow kept glancing nervously toward the windows, but if there was something upsetting him, he didn’t draw any attention to it.
They only made it about halfway through the movie before the power cut out, plunging the whole house in sudden darkness. Maddie almost groaned. It wasn’t the first time the storms had caused a power outage, but it was always a nightmare to deal with. She just hoped it came back on before the food in the fridge could go warm and spoil.
When the lights cut out, one of the boys, Tails from the sound of it, let out a frightened squeak. All of a sudden, something small and fluffy bumped into her uninjured arm. Maddie wrapped her arm around Tails before he could freak out too bad.
“Aww, come on! We were just getting to the best part!” Sonic groaned.
“Sorry, kiddos.” Tom sighed. “Guess we’re going to bed a little early tonight.”
“The cruelty of Mother Nature knows no bounds.” Knuckles said solemnly.
“How about we finish the movie while we eat breakfast tomorrow?” Maddie suggested, lifting her hand to pet between Tails’ ears. She felt his namesakes flick over her lap.
“Fine…” Sonic grumbled.
Maddie felt the couch beside her shift as Tom stood up.
“I think we have some flashlights in the garage, I’ll just-“ Tom paused. “Dang it, I left my phone in the kitchen. Give me a minute.”
Maddie heard Tom walk away. A few moments later, she heard a distant thud.
“Ow, fuck!” Tom hissed under his breath.
“Did you just stub your toe?” Maddie asked, amused.
Tom scoffed. “I remember the layout of our house, Maddie.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“…Yes.”
Tails and Sonic laughed while Tom continued his blind search for the kitchen.
“Blackouts are so lame.” Sonic complained, then gasped. “Wait, I’ve got an idea! Shads, you wanna try running around in the dark?”
“Sonic, no.” Maddie sighed. “You’d just break something. Possibly a bone.”
“C’mon, please? None of us are even tired yet! Shads, help me out here.”
Shadow didn’t respond, which is when Maddie realized that he’d been silent since the lights cut off. She hadn’t heard him move, and she definitely would have noticed if he’d teleported.
“Shadow? You still there, sweetheart?” Maddie said.
A soft, barely audible whimper came from somewhere on the other side of the couch. Maddie almost hadn’t heard it over the sound of the rain pounding against the house’s windows.
Suddenly, a bright red spark of Chaos energy lit up part of the room.
That spark showed Shadow, curled up on the couch with his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees. He was hyperventilating, shoulders rising and falling rapidly, and the sparks grew worse with each second of darkness that passed.
“Baby, talk to me, what’s going on?” Maddie asked.
“Dark-“ Shadow choked out. “Back in the- in the room.”
“What room?”
“T-Table. Tied me u-up.” Shadow let out a sob. “Blindf-fold. I w-was alone.”
After learning about the worst of what had been done to Shadow, Maddie had started to believe that her heart couldn’t possibly keep breaking over every new bit of information she learned about Shadow’s past. Every single time, she was wrong.
“Can you come here, baby?” Maddie asked softly.
Shadow shook his head. “D-Don’t wanna h-hurt you.”
Before Maddie could respond, another spark of energy flickered, pushing away even more of the darkness with its blue glow.
Sonic didn’t seem upset, however. He knelt down in front of Shadow, trying to catch the younger hedgehog’s eye.
“Hey, it’s gonna be alright, Shads.” Sonic whispered. “You’re not alone. I’m here, okay? No scientists, no soldiers. It’s just us. Is it alright if I touch you?”
“B-But-“
“You won’t hurt me.” Sonic said immediately, not giving Shadow time to worry.
“…O-Okay.”
Sonic sat down beside Shadow and opened his arms. Shadow hesitated for a moment before gradually leaning into the embrace, not truly relaxing until he was certain his uncontrollable energy wouldn’t hurt his older brother.
“See? Doesn’t hurt.” Sonic turned toward a darker part of the room. “Knux, get over here.”
Knuckles lit up with his own energy, sitting on Shadow’s other side, wrapping his arms around him until he was surrounded by both older siblings. Shadow startled at a particularly loud thunderclap, to which Sonic and Knuckles held him tighter.
Altogether, their energies gave off a purple glow, almost strong enough to light up the whole room. Shadow’s breathing was still too fast, but starting to slow down (faster than it usually took him to calm down, Maddie noted).
“Whoa.” Tails breathed. “That’s so cool. I wish I had Chaos energy.”
Shadow chuckled mirthlessly. “No, you don’t. It’s horrible.”
Maddie frowned. “What’s horrible about it?”
“It only ever hurt me or the people I love.”
Sonic’s ears flattened. “Yeah, it… can be bad sometimes, but not all of it is bad.”
“I’ve never resented my own energy.” Knuckles told Tails.
“Getting a lot of mixed signals.” Tails snorted.
Shadow bit his lip, looking uncertain before he spoke. “My energy… before I met you guys, it only ever brought me pain. Sometimes, I wish I’d never discovered that I had it- or, never even had it to begin with. Maybe…” he sighed. “Maybe if I was normal, the scientists wouldn’t have… hurt me.”
Maddie was devastated. The last thing she ever wanted was for her kids to feel like there was something wrong with them over who and what they were, and the abilities they possessed. This idea that Shadow should have been ‘normal’ to escape abuse was almost enough to drive her to tears.
“Sweetheart, I know it might not always feel like it, but you’re enough as you are. And we love you just the way you are.”
Shadow sighed again, the sparks of his energy beginning to dim, not quite calm yet. “They… made me feel like I was never good enough, no matter how hard I tried. Anything less than perfect was failure, and I… failed a lot, in the beginning. The deprivation room was both an experiment and a punishment-“
“The what?!” Maddie blurted out.
Shadow flinched, ears folding back. Sonic and Knuckles shared a startled look that Shadow didn’t see, and Tails tensed up next to Maddie.
“…Sensory deprivation. It- It was one of the experiments. They wanted to see how long I could last without any of my senses, s-so they-“ Shadow took a deep, shaky breath. “They s-strapped me to a t-table and… blindfolded me. They put a m-muzzle on me so I couldn’t s-speak. It was just… d-darkness.”
Knuckles’ eyes widened. “This is why you are afraid of the dark?”
Shadow nodded. “It’s not- I don’t usually… freak out like this over it. I can handle the dark. I mean, I had to get used to it when I was living in the cave. It just… it was sudden, and I wasn’t prepared for it.”
His energy had almost completely faded, though Sonic and Knuckles continued to let theirs flicker lightly over their quills, acting as makeshift nightlights for their little brother.
“I feel so dumb right now.” Shadow admitted. “Nothing even happened. It’s just the dark.”
Knuckles scoffed. “So? It was you that told me we all have ‘dumb fears’, and to not be ashamed of them.”
Sonic’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that something I told you-“
“No.” Shadow scowled, ducking his head.
Sonic laughed and nuzzled the top of Shadow’s head affectionately.
Tom returned to the living room a few minutes later, using his phone as a light. He was holding a few flashlights, which he passed to the boys. With the additional lights, Sonic and Knuckles no longer needed to use their Chaos energy to brighten the room.
“Use these if you boys need to come back downstairs for any reason.” Tom said as he passed around the flashlights. “And don’t open the fridge until the power comes back on. It’ll keep the food from going bad a little longer.”
“Hey, we could totally use these to tell spooky stories!” Sonic said, pointing a flashlight under his chin. He turned it on, then immediately dropped it, one of his arms raising to cover his eyes. “Ack-! Ooh, fuck, that burned so much worse than I thought it would. Right in the eyes, oh my God.”
“You are being dramatic.” Knuckles rolled his eyes.
“It looks so much less painful in movies.” Sonic whined. “I think I’m blind. Are my eyes still there?”
“No, they’re gone. No more eyes for Sonic.” Shadow deadpanned, making Tails burst into a fit of giggles.
“I knew it!” Sonic flopped over onto the couch. “We’re holding a funeral for my eyeballs. Shads, guess what song-“
“If you say ‘Barbie Girl’ I’m throwing you out into the rain.”
Thunder crackled loudly outside, bringing a bright flash of lightning with it. Sonic jolted at the sound of it.
“Uh, you know what? My vision recovered. It’s a miracle.”
Shadow scoffed and shoved Sonic off the couch. Sonic responded by quickly grabbing Shadow’s arm, dragging him down with him. Maddie just shook her head in exasperation.
“Alright, boys, time for bed.” Maddie said.
“Can’t we wait until the power comes back on?” Tails pleaded.
“Sorry, honey, but that could take hours. You boys need sleep.”
Tails let out a little huff, but he didn’t argue further.
Shadow and Tails calmly made their way to the bathroom to brush their teeth while Sonic and Knuckles used their flashlights to try and ‘blind’ each other, nearly tripping each other up in the hallway.
“Boys, honestly.” Maddie sighed, though she couldn’t quite keep the fondness out of her tone.
Tom and Maddie waited near the end of the hall, just in case the darkness caused further struggle even with their flashlights. Maddie quietly filled Tom in on what happened while he was gone. He looked just as upset by the news as Maddie had been.
Once the boys were finished brushing their teeth, Sonic, Knuckles and Tails hugged Tom and Maddie before heading upstairs for the night. Shadow lingered behind.
“Can I stay with you guys tonight?” Shadow asked, sounding only slightly hesitant. He flinched at the sound of thunder, loud and far too close for comfort, though it sounded like it was slowly getting further away.
“Sure, bud.” Tom said. “Wanna grab your bear first?”
Shadow nodded. He stepped forward and lifted his arms in a silent request to be picked up, and Maddie almost couldn’t handle how cute he was. Honestly, that was probably the worst part of having a broken arm; she couldn’t hold any of her boys at the moment.
Tom picked him up and brought him to his bedroom, returning a moment later. Shadow held his plushie in one arm, his other wrapped around Tom’s shoulders. He was absentmindedly biting one of the plushie’s ears, not hard enough to tear the fabric, just gently gnawing. Maddie wondered if he even realized he was doing it. Considering his past history with biting, she couldn’t help but wonder if the storm was still upsetting him more than he let on, but he seemed completely relaxed. Not a panic response, but a self-soothing method, maybe?
Tom and Maddie headed to their bedroom, Shadow still secure in Tom’s arms. Tom stayed with Shadow on the bed while Maddie prepared to sleep, grabbing her own phone off her nightstand to use as a light. It took longer than usual, as getting ready for bed one-handed was hard enough on its own without the added trouble the darkness caused.
She returned to the bed, giving Tom the chance to get ready as well. Shadow shifted closer to Maddie’s side of the bed, curling up next to her. She set her phone down between them, light facing up.
She stroked one of his fluffy cheeks with the backs of her fingers, earning a content chirp. Sweet boy, she thought with a small smile.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were afraid of the dark, baby?” Maddie asked.
Shadow’s ears went flat, and he dropped the plushie’s ear from his mouth to say, “I didn’t think it would be a problem anymore. The cave was dark, and it only scared me the first few nights. And my room gets really dark. I don’t… like it, but it’s fine.”
Maddie ran her fingers through his quills. “We can get you a nightlight, if you want. That way your room won’t be completely dark at night.”
Shadow’s ears perked up again. “Really?”
Maddie nodded. “Of course, sweetheart.”
Shadow tucked his head under her chin, and though she couldn’t see it, she could hear the quiet thump of his tail wagging against the bed. She pressed gentle kisses to the top of his head, grinning when the soft thumping sound sped up, followed by a clicking, stuttered purr.
Tom returned to the bed and turned his phone’s flashlight off, Maddie following suit. The three of them exchanged quiet good nights, and Maddie fell asleep to the sound of Shadow’s purr and the distant rumble of thunder.