A/N: This is a one shot that I quickly wrote after being inspired out of nowhere. It's definitely not perfect, but I liked writing something a little different. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoy!

Running.

He was sure he had been running for years. Cries for help, unanswered, hung in the stagnant air with the dust of time. He turned every corner, hurrying, running, faster, faster... But there was no way to break free. The nubiform darkness was never-ending, this static maze a permanent shard of paused time. Yet, there were no boundaries to it, nothing containing him within the set space. This place was infinite, but acted as a tether to this glass-like land.

Questions whirled in his mind. Where were the others? Where was he?

It was as if he had been captured by somebody and sealed away. That had to explain it. His friends would come and save him from this place, as it always went. It had to be one of those traps, a scheme, enacted by his nemesis. So why could he not remember? Why could he not remember his name, or his own identity? Confusion and inquietude stirred his mentality at not knowing these things. Reflections against the blackened, glass corridors were scattered and meaningless in his mind. He couldn't decipher them. The face that stared back at him was devoid of any elucidation.

"I tried my best... "

He felt his heart thud erratically and then skip a precious beat at the familiar sound. Voices. The voices of his dear friends. They had found him! At last, he would be free of this nightmare! Looking forward, a lighter area developed, a short distance away.

He gasped with a sudden, welcome relief, dashing toward the light at the end of the corridor, reaching out with one hand for it, as if it would disappear at any moment. At the end, he turned the corner, panting out of the exhaustion of his only recently ended running. "Hey, guys! I'm here!" He called out, running into a brightly-lit room. But then, he stopped.

Everyone was there.

Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cream, Vanilla, Cheese, Shadow... All gathered around a medical berth. He studied their faces from where he stood, silently questioning their ignorance of his arrival. What was happening? Expressions of horror and mourning, on each and every one of their faces. The room was inert, yet electric with perturbation, and devoid of the susurrus that he had expected. Nobody appeared to speak in the stillness. Despite not knowing himself, he recognised them all. Remembered knowing them.

Cream and Cheese were ushered away from the sight by an apologetic, tearful Vanilla. Shadow gave an understanding nod and looked back to Knuckles, a softened countenance betraying his fierce, black-and-red appearance.

Knuckles, despite his clear discomfort, broke the silence with a delineation. "They... Couldn't save him. Injuries were just too extensive..."

"W-Why? Why him?" Tails softly intoned, the pitchlessness of his voice expressing exhaustion and sorrow.

He slowly approached, reaching out for Tails. "What's going on?"

The young fox before him wiped his eyes and choked, turning around to face him - yet not visibly responding to his presence or his call.

"Tails?"

Knuckles sighed and looked away, shaking his head in desolation. "He's gone."

"I told him, Knuckles... I said going to that new base was a bad idea. It was a trap... Explosives, everywhere..." Tails whispered, before shutting his eyes tightly and baring his teeth with a whimper.

Lifting his gaze from the fox kit, the clearly disregarded being looked over Knuckles' shoulder. The sight that met him sent an ice-cold chill down his back.

It was a blue hedgehog. Peach muzzle and arms, with white gloves and torn, red sneakers... By the looks of the wounds, he had been caught in an explosion. And somehow, the body looked familiar. Was that... Him? He felt his vanishing heart sink as he backed away, and finally, he looked down at his own soma. There was no physical body. Just an empty, transparent void.

"Guys? I-I'm right here! Hello?" Sonic cried out, trying to touch his friends to get them to notice. His hands passed straight through the physical matter.

They couldn't hear him. They couldn't hear him!

Now, he could only watch in despair as his friends, his family, covered his motionless corpse with a white sheet, and then left. Tails paused at the door to look back at his deceased big brother, and then walked away with sobs strangling him. Amy was the last to depart, after pulling back the sheet slightly to plant a heartbroken kiss on Sonic's cold cheek. The hospital room returned to a deathly, frosty silence.

Sonic felt a pulsating dread course through what was left of his spirit, for he knew that would be forever trapped within this caliginous vitrine.

Left with nothing but his shattering mind, and a world he could no longer touch from behind these glass walls.