part 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1134911264/ part 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1140945886/ part 3: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1142187905/ ------------ In the next few days, Terios learns a little bit more about where he is, and the thing he’s supposed to remember drifts to the back of his mind, undisturbed. The humans who captured him are a part of an organization called G.U.N. and they have a pledge to protect Mobius. This strikes a chord in him, though he doesn’t know why. Then again, they don’t seem all that friendly in Terios’s interactions with them, so their claim of “protecting” is a little shaky to him. He also learns that--minus Maria--no one really trusts him. He doesn’t understand why; after all, aren’t they the ones that captured him? But he gets really good at noticing the kind of tenseness that’s only visible around the scientists and soldiers when he’s in the room. He grows averse to the tests they’ll run on him, partly because of the fact that they’re poking and prodding him with all kinds of instruments, and partly because he hates the way they look at him. Also, mostly unrelated to the labs, they hate if Terios touches their stuff. He learned that the hard way about a year into his loose captivity. (They’re quite protective of a gem shard at the heart of the base. For some reason.) Terios remembers trudging into Maria’s bedroom (well, a very quiet trudge, just enough to let Maria know he was there) with his ears pinned, waiting until Maria finishes what she’s doing so she can pull him close, plop his head into her lap, and ask what’s wrong. “Mmfh,” Terios grumbles into her big sweater. Because he doesn’t really know why he’s so distraught over the gem shard, or what the meaning of the unfamiliar, balled-up feelings rising in his gut is. But it isn’t the first time that Maria has been met with non-words from Terios, and she’s become practiced in redirecting him to something new. “I found something really cool,” she begins. Her hands, rubbing the fur between Terios’s drooping ears, move away to turn her computer screen toward him. She waits for the hedgehog to lift his head from her lap before continuing. “You know your Chaos energy, right?” Terios nods slowly. The scientists discovered it a while ago, but Maria took greater interest in it. He finds that while he’s uncomfortable being talked about by the scientists, he likes when Maria does it, because Maria makes him sound like he’s really special, and he likes feeling special to someone. “Look,” Maria says, pointing to a chart on one side of the screen. “These are the charts from the past few tests. See that line for your Chaos energy? “How come there isn’t a drop when it leaves your body? How come there isn’t…” She searches for the word. “...a lull?” Terios’s eyes leave the computer screen to watch Maria’s face. What does she mean? “Have you ever thought of why you have those rings on? What they’re for?” she asks. That’s a good question. One that Terios can’t answer. Maria starts talking about the rings more in-depth, the logistics. Something about circulating his energy back to him and keeping it from leaving his body? Terios wants to listen, but it’s making his head hurt even with the rings helping him concentrate, so he drops his head back into Maria’s lap and makes another sound into the fabric of her skirt. Maria hits a pause in her research findings, and she looks down when Terios lowers his head again. “Wanna color?” she asks. She seems to know that Terios doesn’t need more information flooding his brain right now. “Mm,” Terios hums, his voice muffled. “Crayons or colored pencils?” “Crayons.” --- “You put all the bad ones on top,” Terios accuses while pulling from the deck. “I don’t even know which cards you have,” Maria says, giggling. Terios sticks out his tongue at her. He finally gets a good card, though, and he sets it down on the stack. Maria smiles and counters with a card of her own, and Terios groans and begins pulling cards again. By now he has half the deck in his paws; he looks at his ever-growing stack with more and more horror as the right card doesn’t surface. He shoots Maria a look that shows he thinks she’s clearly cheating and warily sets down a card. “Kids,” Gerald says. He’s passing through the hall, and now he sticks his head through the doorway. He pauses for just a second too long when his eyes lock on Terios, but Maria seems to be the only one who notices. “Ten more minutes.” “Aww, what?” Maria cries. But Gerald has already left. --- Terios is scared when he wakes up in the night and doesn’t feel Maria next to him. Frantically, he sits up, eyes darting. The bed is there, the blankets too (even if they’re a bit crumpled). She was here when he fell asleep. Where did she go?
(cont.) He feels panic rise in his throat. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Terios slides off the mattress and lands with a small thump on the floor. The door isn’t shut all the way--cracked slightly--so Terios opens it the rest of the way and peeks out, looking down one end of the hallway and the other. Shivering, Terios steps out of the bedroom, pulls the door closed behind him, and pads down the hallway. Did she leave? Did she go to get something? Where would she have gone? His thoughts start out coherent, but with every step he takes they begin blurring together, too fast and too many to track. Wordless thoughts. He finds the kitchen and there she is, leaning on one of her elbow crutches as she searches the fridge. Terios starts running. He doesn’t mean to, but he lands a little too hard against her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging tight. Maria stumbles. “Woah,” she says, righting herself. “I was just getting some water…” She talks some more, but Terios simply looks up at her. Filled with wordless thoughts. Glad that she isn’t gone. “Sorry,” Maria whispers. She shuts the fridge and lowers herself to the ground so she can look Terios in the eyes. “You were worried, huh?” Terios looks down at his paws and nods, biting his tongue. He’s enveloped in another hug as Maria tells him, “I won’t ever leave, okay? Together forever.” Just like she always says. Terios melts into the hug and they stay that way for what feels like forever before Maria pulls away. “Let’s go back to bed.” --- Maria can’t fall asleep. She stares at her bedroom ceiling long enough that her vision blurs, turning the glow-in-the-dark star decals into little smudges in her vision. Next to her is Terios, curled by her side, breathing deeply. She’s done a lot of thinking about Terios lately. Mostly, about what she’s seen them do to him. Terios knows some, but not the whole of it. He doesn’t know that Maria had to watch, helpless, as the scientists put him in a tank full of water to see how long he could survive. They drowned him. Then timed how long it took for him to revive. And then Maria watched as they pried into his brain and wiped his memory clean. They gave into her demands when it came to Terios’s cell, but they don’t listen to her any longer. No matter how many times she tracks down her grandfather and tells him that they can’t do that to him, nothing changes. They keep Terios’s memories of her when they take everything else out, though. Like it’s a mercy. And Maria is ashamed to say that, deep down, she’s glad for it. Terios shivers in sleep. Maria subconsciously pulls the blanket tighter around him, bringing him closer to her. The hedgehog’s ear flicks, he presses himself further into her, and he goes still again. Terios is warmer than what Maria knows the average temperature is, like a heated blanket. If you had told her just a few years ago that she would grow so close with a mysterious Mobian hedgehog, she wouldn’t have believed you. But now it breaks her heart every time Terios wakes from one of the labs, seeing how light sparks in his eyes when he finds her, not even remembering what happened before that moment. Also, he’s not mysterious at all. Not very talkative, sure, but he’s clumsy and he gets grumpy and likes the color blue, and always looks to her when he’s nervous or scared, and doesn’t like spinach and always wants to hold her hand and gets sad when she’s sad, and… The scientists say he’s a freak of nature. A project. A weapon. Something to be analyzed and studied. No, he’s not any of those things. He’s a lot more. He’s her little brother. Albeit her small, fluffy, hedgehog little brother. And she doesn’t want him to hurt for another second. Terios shouldn’t be stuck at a base and experimented on. He should be out there, living. A plan starts to form in Maria’s head. ------------ i've realized that this is a lot of terios back-to-back, whoops,, although brisk is literally in a coma so i'm sort of limited at the moment but some brief maria perspective!! yay!!! look at her thinking older sister thoughts (i will defend older sister maria and younger brother shadow with my life) i wanted to convey how close these two goobers have gotten over the years through little habits and mannerisms rather than just throwing twenty billion domestic scenes together, so some of my ideas were sacrificed to show a little more of their intimacy. also yes the "together forever" thing is supposed to be an echo of the "forever, remember?" from the first part if anyone CARES /lh (trying to get an invite from ao3 so i can put all this there. theres some dark stuff in this chapter near the end so im honestly surprised i can post this here) CREDITS art: me music: live and learn (acoustic movie cover) - captain roxas au: starfall also i got procreate! if the art looks a bit different that’s why lol I’ll make a separate post when this is on ao3, hopefully with some goofy art to look at :)
