Fanfic / Suffer

aka: Trauma

"When you're the runt of the litter, you suffer. When you have heterochromia, you suffer. When you lose your mind, you suffer. Sometimes, life just hurts."

— The summary

Suffer (original title Infinite Pain) is a Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic by ShadowLvr15, serving as a Prequel to Sonic Forces and what might have been Infinite's backstory, Dark and Troubled especially.

In a world where jackals live in primitive villages and carry out primitive lifestyles, unlike the other and more civilized Mobians, there was a certain black jackal named Finn, born to the Alpha of a certain village, the smallest of his 10-pup litter and with an oddity, blue-and-gold eyes. As a result, he is ostracized by his sisters, with only his Big Brother Mentor to stand up to.

Then comes the humongous Trauma Conga Line, both for Finn and his family, all starting with when Finn is blamed for the death of Butch's brother, Hutch. It's gonna be a depressing ride.

Read it here. Compare to Memories of Infinite's Past, another fanfic exploring another fan interpretation of Infinite's past and painting him in a sympathetic light, but more suited for the canon.

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"War leaves scars. Suffering leaves scars. Loss leaves scars. The struggle to move on his full of challenges, and different people respond in different ways. Will Infinite ever be able to be who he once was?"

— The summary

Trauma is the Sequel to Suffer (and Sonic Forces also) with some Hurt/Comfort Fic elements.

The War to Take Back the Planet is over and Eggman has been defeated. However, when Jay and Shadow search a recently exploded area, they find the unconscious body of Infinite, who turns out to be Finn, Jay's brother. Infinite is spared and given a chance to redeem himself. Nevertheless, because of what he has done, he faces difficulty to do so.

The story not only focuses on Infinite's struggles, but also on many other characters and their dealings with trauma: Jay and Tempest's life after the War, the Coming of Age experiences of Keelie's sons and Maybree, Jay and Tempest's adopted daughter, and Zayla's jackal village who has been ravaged by a mysterious Illness responsible for taking out the males. As with Suffer, it's not happy either.

Read it here.

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Deceit is the Spin-Off of Trauma, taking place right after the final chapter but before the epilogue. It focuses on Zayla's village and Kenzi's often abusive attempts to make her son Cujo the next Alpha, no matter how incompetent he is. Because of the need for Trauma spoilers to describe it fully, an article for it has been created here.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

Suffer

• Accomplice by Inaction: Finn is blamed by Butch for Hutch's death, even though Finn's rolling of the climbing rocks was unintentional and Hutch chose to fall to this death himself.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In this fic, Gadget (the Avatar) and Infinite first met each other years before the events of Forces.
• Age Lift: In Sonic Forces, the Avatar is implied to be a young child. Here, Gadget, the Avatar stand-in, is apparently an adult who's old enough to marry and have kids with Keelie before the events of Forces.
• Anyone Can Die: Death seems to be for a common fate for anybody, such as Hutch, Axel, Jay and Infinite's sisters, Butch, Bella, all of her and Infinite's pups, Jay and Tempest's first pup, Nia, and Keelie's children Reagan and Aurora.
• Badass Family: The Jackal Squad, led by Finn, consisting of Jay, his brother, Tempest, his (technically) sister-in-law, and his cousins Pierce and Lance.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Whenever someone fuses with the Phantom Ruby, they commit murders and atrocious acts, while being blackened out and unaware of what they're doing. And that was Finn's fate.
• Child by Rape: Keelie's sons were conceived via rape, as their father, the unnamed leader of the jackal invaders "forced her to be his mate, locked her in a bedroom, took her clothes and never let her out, because all she was to him was someone to have his pups." However, this doesn't change her view of her sons, as they are still hers.
• Dark Fic: Safe to say, the unpleasant lifestyle of jackal culture and Finn's Trauma Conga Line isn't as rosy as the Sonic games. Let's not get to Keelie being abused and raped offscreen.
• Death by Childbirth: Bella's body is too small to support pups, which is why she was exiled. When she and Finn conceive pups, her body slowly suffers, and she dies minutes after giving birth.
• Furry Reminder: The jackals' physiology and culture is modeled after real life jackals. Jackals age faster, don't marry but have mates only for children, and females regularly have estrous cycles in which they emit a pleasant smell to attract a mate. A jackal village is headed by an alpha. Unlike the "human with animallike body" mold all the other Mobians are in, the jackals are in the "animal with humanlike body" mold.
  Author's Notes in Deceit: Also remember, these characters are not people. They are animals, based on real life.
• Gray Rain of Depression: Lampshaded at the burial of Bella and her two stillborn daughters:
  Usually rain was refreshing in their village. It brought happiness to many, as it was a sign of life. But ironically, today it brought gloom and sadness.
• Klingon Promotion: To avenge his brother's death, Butch kills off the Alpha Axel, all of his daughters, and nearly Jay and Finn, before taking the position as the new Alpha and Nia as his new mate. Apparently this is a very okay thing to do in jackal culture. Finn later kills Butch also as revenge and takes the Alpha position as well.
• Hate Sink: While characters like Butch have committed atrocious actions yet still are sympathetic, the leader of the jackal invaders has no sympathetic traits at all. He kills Kylo, Finn's only surviving child, without qualms, exiles Finn and his family, and proceeds to abuse and rape his forced mate Keelie to the point of nearly killing their unborn sons. Keelie kills him off and no sorrow is drawn at all.
• Howl of Sorrow: Pierce, his friends, and eventually the village let out "a low, mournful howl" when Finn finds his mother murdered.
• Human Like Animal Aging: Subverted. Mobians age faster than humans, as their age corresponds with their animal species' biology and life span. This is clarified by the author to Hand Wave how Gadget and Keelie are able to be in a relationship despite the wide age gap. As explained in the notes for Deceit:
  Jackals aging is based more heavily on dogs in real life. They start weaning at six weeks old. By eight weeks old, puppies are ready to leave their mothers and go to forever homes. Female dogs can go into heat at six months. Miracle and Splendor are around four months, which equals to elementary age.
• In Name Only: Pretty much the only main Sonic components are Infinite and Gadget (the red Avatar wolf), and the other canon characters do not show up until the later chapters. The plot focuses on the quiet life of a primitive culture, and the story would be quite the same without the Sonic. Though more canon characters and elements appear, the sequel Trauma is this also, focusing on many original characters living out somewhat mundane life without the robot-smashing action.
• Interspecies Romance: Gaia the wolf has feelings for Finn the jackal and even kisses him, but cannot be because of the tradition of keeping the jackal bloodline pure. Keelie, Finn's half-sister, later as part of her integration into civilization, falls in love with, marries, and has a wolf-jackal hybrid with Gadget.
• Mature Animal Story: Suffer is no by means a happy story for children, depicting a tragic life of a jackal who witnesses death regularly, even as a pup, and also contains Sexy Discretion Shots and rape. Trauma is even more so, with depictions of more gruesome graphic violence, Hotter and Sexier moments, and even more rape.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Keelie, having been stripped naked by the abusive leader of the jackal invaders, escapes from her village and makes it to Gadget and Gaia's city covering herself only with a blanket and nothing else.
• Mercy Kill: While wandering in the desert in exile, Finn is forced to kill Jay and Tempest's pup dying from starvation. He doesn't take it well.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Finn eventually has to Mercy Kill Jay and Tempest's dying pup. Even though they agreed it was necessary to end the suffering, Finn cannot pass over the fact he killed an innocent child, and he still grieves about this in Trauma.
  • Upon realizing he massacred Keelie's children and millions more as Infinite, Finn hits the Despair Event Horizon full notch.
• Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: In the jackal culture where baby pups are the most valuable asset, a female jackal would be considered worthless if she did not produce any pups, whether by nature or choice. Bella was exiled from her village simply because her body wasn't fit for carrying pups. Word of God implies in Trauma's notes that this applies to homosexuals as well.
  Author's Notes in Trauma Chapter 60: Jackal pups are a necessity. Most jackals would always choose to have them. If for some reason they did not, there would be no force put upon them in any way. They would be looked down upon though.
• One-Word Title
• Sexy Discretion Shot:
  • After accepting to be his mate, Tempest drags Jay "behind some rocks", as seen by Bella.
  • After killing off Butch and becoming the new Alpha, Finn drags his new mate Bella "off to a private place".
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: Finn grows from being the runt of the litter to overthrowing Butch and becoming the Alpha. His reign as Alpha doesn't last long, but he then becomes a leader of his mercenary squad and finally Infinite.
• Spared by the Adaptation: All of the Jackal Squad live! Shadow the Hedgehog didn't kill them.
• Species-Specific Afterlife: The jackals have their own Afterlife, which consists of an endless desert and where jackals and their loved ones of different species go after they die. Everyone else won't go there.
• Spirit World: The Afterlife, which consists of an endless of a desert and where the jackals and their loved ones go when they die. A living being can visit and appear (but not move around) in the Afterlife during their dreams, usually to meet up with a dead loved one.
  • The Afterlife is explained more in the sequel Trauma. People there stay the same age when they died, and can see what the living are doing through a special mirror.
  • The Afterlife is explained even more in the spin-off Deceit. There are four jackal women who serve as judges and evaluate the heinous to see if they are truly redeemable and can to stay in the Afterlife. In addition, miscarried babies go to the Afterlife and do not awaken until their mother dies and joins them in the Afterlife.
• Title Drop: In the epilogue:
  After Eggman left he rolled over on his back. He drew deep and shaky breaths. He deserved this. He would just lay here and bleed out. After all, he'd learned what it truly means, to suffer.
• Trauma Conga Line: The whole fanfic is this for Finn. He is blamed for The Bully's death, has his father and sister murdered as the result, loses his mate to Death by Childbirth, has his only surviving child killed by a jackal invader, is exiled by the invader, and ends up murdering Keelie's son and daughter and a thousand more innocents under the influence of the Phantom Ruby.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Axel and his daughters don't live long after their introduction...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Jackal Squad's assassination of the Prince isn't heard of again, and the Squad doesn't receive any payback for this somehow.

Trauma

Spoilers for Suffer are unmarked! You Have Been Warned.

• Abusive Parents: Kenzi is very controlling of her son Cujo while neglecting her daughters, just because she wants him to be the next Alpha. For example, forcing him to drink more of her milk even though he's full, and defending this when Zayla points this out, saying "You're not a mother like me." It gets From Bad to Worse in Deceit.
• And I Must Scream: According to Lance's experiences in the afterlife, those who are infected with the Illness are completely unaware of what they're doing.
• Attempted Rape: Infected by the Illness, Lance finds Gaia and drags her to her bed. Finn later finds Lance already having stripped Gaia naked and pinning her against the bed underneath him. Infinite fights off (and kills) Lance before he is able to take advantage of Gaia.
• Body Horror: The Illness apparently disfigures its male infectees, "like they were eaten away". The babies of the infected are also disfigured.
• Berserk Button: Do not insult Pierce's preference for the alpha female, or else he'll probably sterilize you. Especially about the lack of pups.
• Breakout Character: The females of Zayla's pack were originally intended to be minor characters, but the author admitted being interested in them so much that she gave them major roles in the story.
  Author's Notes in Chapter 60: I originally intended for the girls in Pierce's pack to be side characters, but I'v fallen in love with them. I will give them some form of closure in this story, but there is still much of their life to tell.
• Cute Mute: Fortune is unable to speak, yet has a nice demeaning manner, attracting the talkative Keri.
• Darker and Edgier: Even more so than Suffer. Violence is described more gruesomely, with details of blood, wounding others with fangs and claws, and the whole Illness itself (complete with more Rape as Drama!). Also, there are Hotter and Sexier moments.
• Dead Guy Junior: At the very ending, Zayla has named her eldest son after Pierce's dead brother, Lance.
• Death by Childbirth: Because the wolf baby is too big for her body, Keelie dies at childbirth rather graphically. The baby does too.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Fortune pauses when he turns around and sees a naked Keri.
  He swallowed, unable to tear his gaze away from her curves. He was still a male jackal after all.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After much trauma been through, everyone has a happy ending, getting the fates they wanted. Honorable mention goes to Infinite, who manages to redeem and believe himself as a good person once again, becoming the Family Man to his mate Gaia and his two daughters Katia and Talia.
• Gendercide: Zayla's jackal village is entirely female, because a mysterious Illness swept up the village in the past and made the males insane, fighting each other to death.
• Godiva Hair: Described in Keri's Skinny Dipping scene:
  After a bit Keri ducked under the water. She removed her hairpins first though. When she came back up her long mane framed her face and covered her breasts.
  ...
  She went to sit in the shallow water by the shore. Thankfully her hair was long enough to cover her top half. A small part of Fortune was disappointed though. But quickly, he shook thought from his mind.
• Hotter and Sexier: There are way more Sexy Discretion Shots than in Suffer, given we're dealing with more adults this time.
  • Not to mention the scene in which Kinnley drunkenly strips Britany to her "red" (read: lingerie).
  • And Keri stripping naked and Skinny Dipping with Fortune.
    By the time Fortune caught up she had her bra off too. Luckily her back was to him. As she pulled off the rest of her undergarments he covered his face. He didn't look until her heard her splash into the water.
• Interrupted Intimacy: When Keri and Fortune go to Keri's favorite river, Keri senses someone is there and goes to investigate, finding Zayla and Pierce in a very intimate moment. Keri leaves immediately and is shocked.
• Insatiable Newlyweds
  • Kinnley and Britany have sex immediately after their wedding.
  • When Lily tells Ace she would wait to get married to "be touched by a man", Ace gives her the idea to get married now without a wedding. You know what happens next.
• Interspecies Romance: Kinnley the jackal falls in love with Britany the chipmunk and they marry.
• Let's Have Another Baby: After lots of pleading and pondering, Gadget and Keelie decide to have another biological baby of their own after losing their only one. Keelie then suffers from this one because it's full wolf rather than a hybrid, and dies.
• Lie Back and Think of England: Invoked. Finn, having been raised in a culture which values procreation and pups, is upset when he hears his mate Gaia was taking birth control pills to enjoy sex while refusing to conceive a baby.
• Mama Bear: Tempest is very protective of Spade, especially after what happened to her first child. Spade still sleeps in the same room with his parents.
• Moral Guardians: Keelie absolutely disapproves of Ace's immersion into punk, for fears that he would become just like his father, a Domestic Abuser.
• Noble Savage: Invoked when Pierce hangs out with Zayla's tribe, enjoying the primitive jackal village life he used to have.
  Pierce: I miss the simplicity of it all.
• Oh, Crap!: When Zayla realizes Pierce impregnated her after eating the worm-infested fish, which cause the Illness. When Pierce realizes his brother Lance ate the same worm-infested fish he offered.
• Puppeteer Parasite: The Illness is caused by worms that live inside fish. When it gets inside a male's body, it will climb up to and eat away at his brain (they don't find female's brains delicious, which is why they are not affected), degenerating their body and making their personality more deranged.
• The Quincy Punk: Invoked by Keelie, who becomes increasingly disturbed when her son Ace cuts his hair, wears piercings, and tries rock music, and tries to drive him away from punk, fearing he would be like his abusive father. Defied by Gadget, who sees punk as harmless and lets his son stay this way.
• Rape Discretion Shot: In Zayla's Flashback to the Illness, when Ghost proceeds to rape her, the "prize" of Ghost's Cock Fight.
  She lay there crying as her friend's beloved pup was killed. Crying as she became Ghost's prize. And sadly, this battle had barely begun.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Whenever a couple is shown about to have sex in euphemistic words, the story then cuts to the next scene.
  • Jay and Tempest "get lost in each other". She becomes pregnant later.
  • "Let's forget about it now, just let me love you," says Jay. He then takes Tempest to their bathroom.
  • Maybree and Trojan's scene in the final chapter ends with "She loved him. And he loved her. And they were going to show each other just how much."
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Keri doesn't care if she's Skinny Dipping. She just wants Fortune to swim with him.
• Shout-Out: Cujo, Kenzi's only son, is named after the Steven King novel.
• Title Drop: In the final chapter:
  For the first time in his life. He believed he could recover. He could be Finn again. Despite all the trauma.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Finn and Gaia's daughters: Katia Hates Wearing Dresses and screams when her mother forces her into one, while Talia doesn't mind and puts on a silver necklace to add touch to her black dress.
• Tragic Stillbirth: Zayla's 7 pups end up dying in her womb early from being conceived while Pierce was infected with the Illness.
• Unusual Euphemism: "The packaging to their prevention" (read: condom)
• Womb Horror: Keelie's pregnancy with a wolf pup is hellish. The fact her body is rejecting the pup is nightmarish to think of, not to mention blood spilling out from the womb at childbirth, whom Keelie and the pup die from.