The Eleventh Plague Of Mobias

TWENTY-ONE

A/N: Sorry, no lemon for this story. However, if you do want a lemon scene of Sonic and Shadow and their night in the barn, I will make a seperate one-shot titled This Is Our Night. It will be in third person instead of first.

W

hen I woke it was barely light out and freezing. Winter had finally arrived. Even in my sweater, flannel shirt, and jeans, I shivered as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Shadow was sitting on the floor of the barn, dressed in jeans and a black sweater, scribbling away on his sketch pad. “Aren’t you cold?”

He shrugged, focused on the paper in his lap, sketching, frowning, erasing, and starting over again. In the sunlight his black eye from the day before looked even worse, an oil slick spread of blue, black, and gray. I turned on my side and watched him, pulling the blanket up over my shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Drawing,” he said without looking up.

“What?”

“You.”

“Think you could make me taller?”

Shadow smiled. I turned on my back and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

“What do you do them for? The drawings. Do you sell them or trade them or something?”

“Oh yeah, I supply the entire town with moody line drawings.”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know. Rouge found this set of drawing pencils somewhere and gave them to me. Everything seems a little quieter when I draw. Nothing else manages it. If I didn’t, I think a lot more people around here would be sporting black eyes.”

I looked up and traced the dusty lines of the timbers stretching across the ceiling, wishing I had something like that, something that would still the nameless feeling that was growing inside of me like a storm cloud, like something just barely forgotten.

Dad.

It was the first night of my entire life that I had spent apart from him. And for what? I thought bitterly, memories of the night before swarming in. So I could run around having fun while he lay there alone in that house? What if our little prank made things even worse?

I closed my eyes and saw a glint of gold shining in the dark. My uncle's fist falling from the sky. Alive or dead, he was still there. His voice still in my ear. Our survival was all on me — and what was I doing about it?

I drew myself up out of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Shadow asked as I slipped one sneaker on and hunted for the other. “Uh, hello? Question here.”

“I should be out looking for supplies,” I said. “Making camp somewhere.”

“Funny, it seemed like you were making camp here.”

My fingers froze on the strap of my backpack. I stood there stupidly, unable to move. It was like all the bones had tumbled out of my body. How could I make him understand?

“Talk to me, Sonic,” Shadow said quietly. He was looking up at me over the edge of his pad. His eyes, liquid and sharp at the same time. It was like he was always one step ahead of me. Uncle Chuck had told me a hundred times to keep quiet. To keep things to myself. But I couldn’t anymore.

“I just … I keep thinking I’m going to be …”

“What?”

A white star, crowned in gold, fell, and I shook from its impact. “… punished,” I said.