Heavily inspired by the song ‘Pool’, by Samia! Swipe to the left to see the verse(s) I based this AU off of! —>

They’ve been through everything together. Battles. Fights. Hardships. Low moments. Victories. Constant competition. Rivalry. The rare times of vulnerability that they share. Almost everything. Who’s ‘they’? The blue blur and the ultimate lifeform themselves! Though, through all that’s happened, things were always…complicated between the two hedgehogs. The quiet moments with unspoken words. The way the world felt like it would slow down a bit just to be back to bickering about stupid things the next day as if nothing is going on internally. Even if it gets complicated or hard, the two hedgehogs have underlying respect for one another. Not that either of them would admit it. It’s nice having someone like that. But not all good things last, right?

Recently, something’s been going on with Sonic. He’s been slowing down. Not as in trying to drink in the life he has. He’s physically slowing down. Even if it’s just slightly, Shadow noticed. He always noticed when the smallest thing was out of place. It’s strange, really, but he chose to keep his mouth shut. None of the others noticed anything.

Not until it got worse, of course.

The ‘slowing down’ only became more worrying as Shadow began winning more of their races. As Sonic started to come up with excuses to skip races and avoid running. That’s unlike Sonic. He loves running.

Eventually, Shadow did confront Sonic about it, who wasn’t surprised that the ebony hedgehog caught on. The blue blur explained truthfully that even he didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t reach out to any of his friends because he didn’t want anyone to worry about him. He reassured Shadow that he was probably sick or something.

Boy, was he wrong.

After long, Sonic came back to racing. Everything was normal again. Almost. It wasn’t until one day that it all started to fall in place about why the azure hedgehog had started slowing down.

During one of Sonic and Shadow’s races, things were going normal. Pushing each other to their limits, running at the speed of light, their burning rivalry. Not until Sonic disappears from Shadow’s sight. Sonic’s never behind. This causes Shadow to stop and retrace his steps to find the menacing blue blur, only to find out that Sonic’s legs full on gave out in the middle of their race. That can’t be good.

Shadow took Sonic back and went to Sonic’s brother’s lab to figure out what the hell was going on. According to Tails, he couldn’t find anything in particular. He told Sonic to just rest and see how he is the next day.

The next day, Sonic got up early as he usually did to go on his morning run. But as he went to stand up and walk, he immediately falls. He can’t walk. What the hell? He can still feel his legs, but can’t walk..

Sonic humiliatingly crawled to Tails’ place to get help because he couldn’t really do anything in his case. Apparently, during one of his battles with Eggman, he got hit in a specific part of his head that caused him to get a weird type of concussion, making him forget how to walk. Running was Sonic’s passion. His first love in this world, but now? He’s stripped of it. He’d have to start all over again.