Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The question came three hours after the dust had settled - literally. No one knew why, but the debri clinging to the air of Green Hills absolutely refused to settle and was quite content with being a source of breathing hazard for all the townsfolk. It was now evening, and the mild haze outside had only just begun to die down. Anyway, Tom was getting off topic.

The question was raised three hours after the showdown between Sonic and Robotnik’s death machine, halfway through their celebratory dinner. Somehow, within such a short time frame, Chef Frank from their local diner had managed to whip up a victory feast for the main trio of the day, going as far as to make them customised for each of them, and had even prepared something for both Tom and Maddie. As it was, Sonic had already bulldozed through four chilli dogs, while Knuckles was staring rather warily at a bowl of bolognese and Tails was happily munching away on breadsticks, and Tom was absolutely suffering through the awkward silence that was coating the half-destroyed diner, painfully aware that they would have to start discussing things soon. He also decided that he’s suffered through enough, and could stand to suffer through a few more no doubt really serious conversations.

Sonic was on his sixth chilli dog now. Three quarters of Tails’ breadsticks basket was gone, and Knuckles seemed to have lost interest in his completely untouched bowl of pasta and was now staring intently at a fruit stand which had miraculously not suffered a single scratch through all the explosions. It was now or never.

The clearing of his throat caught everyone’s attention, and Tom had to remind himself that he was the adult in this room, and he will not be intimidated by a bunch of alien anthropomorphic creatures staring at him intently, all of whom barely reached his waist level. “...So,” he began, and winced at how loudly his voice seemed to reverberate through the diner, “I guess now is the time to ask what happens next, huh?”

Sonic tilted his head and shoved yet another chilli dog into his mouth. “Next?” He asked, blatantly forgetting the rule of not speaking with his mouth full that Tom had painstakingly instilled within him, “Whaddya mean, next?”

“He means what happens now, sweetie,” Maddie said from next to Tom, taking a bite out of their shared steak, and Tom mentally thanked his beautiful and amazing wife, “Our house is still destroyed, and we would like to know what your two friends plan on doing now that the Master Emerald is safe.”

At the mention of the Wackowski’s family home sitting somewhere in a sad pile of rubble, Knuckles tore his eyes away from the fruit stand, and glanced at them with a guilty look in his eyes, and Tom’s suspicion that the little red guy was the one who busted up their house proved itself to be correct.

“...I will stay and help you. Clean up.” Knuckles said seriously, looking at Tom. “I…am sorry for destroying your house, Mr Wackowski. It was dishonourable of me, and I will do everything in my power to help fix up your residence.”

Tom blinked. He…had not expected help to rebuild his house, if he was being honest, and certainly not from the space echidna who looked like he had much better things to do than fix up an old house. “I- Well, I mean, sure, if you insist-”

“I could only hope that my services would allow you to forgive me for bringing ruin to your house, and I am still deeply sorry for doing it, I-”

“Sweetie, it’s okay,” Maddie interrupted, before Knuckles could speak any further, “We’re not mad, we were only curious about your decisions now that the world is safe. What would you do after our house is fixed? Any places to go, or things to do?”

Tom chanced a glance at Sonic and Tails, who were glancing at each other with uncertainty. The fox seemed to be trying to communicate something to Sonic, who looked like he was debating with himself internally, and the sheriff took pity on the little blue guy. “Sonic. Something on your mind?”

Sonic startled, green eyes flicking up to dart between Tom and Maddie. “I- uh. No? W-why would you-”

“Bud, you’ve lived with us for two years. I think we can recognise your cues by now,” Tom chuckled, and crossed his arms. “Come on, out with it.”

Sonic’s eyes flew to Tails, then Knuckles, then darted wildly between Tom and Maddie, and the poor guy looked so stressed Tom wanted to retract his request before the hedgehog finally sighed, took a deep breath and blurted out, “...cantheylivewithus?”

The question hung awkwardly in the air for a good few seconds. In the span of these few seconds, Tom could see the way Tails’ gaze flitted nervously between Sonic and him and Maddie, while Knuckles just looked at Sonic as if he’d suggested breaking the Master Emerald again. He shared a glance with Maddie, to confirm that yeah, he’s not crazy to already know the answer to that hastily asked question.

“...It depends on what your friends think.” Tom said, and surprised himself by realising that he did not think that it was a bad idea to spontaneously adopt two more talking space creatures that stumbled into his life. “After all, we wouldn’t want to hold them back if they have something else to-”

“I want to stay!”

All eyes turned to Tails, who seemed to shrink into himself with all the attention suddenly on him. He cleared his throat nervously. “I- I mean, I, well, have never really been…accepted? In my village, so it’s not like I have anything to…y’know, lose, by staying here, and Sonic’s here too and he’s really cool and I wouldn’t mind living with him if you are okay with it because he’s accepted me for me and I like that and-”

Tom refused to unpack all of those sentences right then in a broken down diner. He’ll deal with it when they actually have a roof over their heads again, and was grateful when Maddie cut the fox’s ramblings with a soft nod and smile. “Of course you can stay with us, sweetie. I know Sonic will love a new roommate, won't he?”

Sonic’s smile was blinding. “Of course! See Tails? I told you there’ll be nothing to worry about! They love you!”

The fox laughed awkwardly, rubbing a gloved hand over his head. “Ahaha…yeah…”

Tom glanced at Knuckles, noting how the echidna had remained quiet this whole time. “And for yourself? What would you do?”

The echidna glanced at the diner’s destroyed window, and was silent for a long time, long enough for Maddie and Tom to look at each other with concern. From the little bits and pieces Tom had been successful in getting Sonic to cough up about his little trip to the other side of the world, Knuckles had been alone for a long time, and Tom had spent enough time with Sonic to have learnt a thing or two about little space kids suddenly finding themselves facing the cold, harshh world alone.

“…I do not know,” came the hesitant answer, after the silence stretched on for a few more minutes, and Tom absolutely did not feel his heartstrings being pulled by the uncertainty that tainted Knuckles’ normally confident and stoic voice, “I spent my entire life searching for the Master Emerald. Now I have accomplished that goal. I…I do not have a goal now, and I admit that I have not thought beyond keeping the Emerald safe.”

Once again, Tom was not about to unpack all that in a half-destroyed diner at that very moment. Instead, he decided to settle for an invitation. Something tentative, not too forthcoming, something that might allow Knuckles to trust them enough to guard that emerald at their house when they rebuild it. “You could always guard it with us,” he finally settled on saying, gesturing to himself and Maddie, “We’ll all help you keep it safe. How does that sound?”

The startled look that graced the echidna warrior’s features at the offer did not tug on Tom’s heartstrings. Not at all.

“…I would only be a burden,” Knuckles finally said, “I would not want to trouble you any further, not after what I had done, and-”

“Dude, no,” Sonic interrupted suddenly, earnestly, “You’re not gonna be a burden! We made a pact, remember? We stick together from now on! That includes being roommates with one another and telling each other embarrassing stories before bedtime and breaking every possible house rule Donut Lord and Pretzel Lady could come up with. Right?”

“Hard no on the last one, buddy,” Tom sniffed, but felt his lips form a smile nonetheless, “I don’t know enough about anything to make a decision for you, Knuckles, but all I want to say is that…you don’t have to be alone.” The sheriff looked at Sonic, then Tails, before focusing on the red echidna again. “You have Sonic and Tails now. Heck, you have me and Maddie too, if you’ll take us. We can look out for each other. If you will accept it.”

“I do not get it,” the echidna said, sounding painfully lost, and Tom had to remind himself that he’s only met this little guy this morning, they were not close enough for him to hold his hands in reassurance at all, “I broke into your home and wretched your place. I brought danger to somewhere that should be considered your sacred and safe location. Why do you insist on letting me into such a place?”

“You were tricked by Eggman,” Sonic replied easily, “Seriously, Knucklehead, we already told you that it’s water beneath the bridge now! We’ll be happy to have you with us, really.”

Knuckles glanced at Tom again, and the sheriff offered him a bright nod. Despite this, he still looked deeply troubled, glancing at the large green emerald in his hands, and it was such a stark contrast to his normally unfazed look. “I…”

“Come on, Knuckles,” Tails implored, “You still have to take revenge on me for driving a car into you, remember? Think of how easy it’ll be if we were all living in the same house!”

Tom…would have to ask about that. Later.

The silence lasted just a little while longer, before the sheriff finally saw the edges to the echidna soften just ever so slightly. He gripped the emerald in his care just a little harder, before finally giving an impeccable little nod, albeit hesitantly. “…If nothing else, it will be nice to have some shelter while I assist you in rebuilding your home.”

Tom felt a grin form on his face as he looked at Maddie, who had a similar smile on her face as well. A strange feeling of warmth flooded his body, distracting him from Sonic and Tails’ excited cheering at their friend’s decision, as he thought to whatever was to happen after this. After this, they would crash at Wade’s for a few days. After this, they would begin the tedious process of rebuilding their fallen house. After this, Sonic would gain two new friends, and Tom and Maddie would gain two new wards.

After this, amidst a newly reconstructed home, would be a new normal Tom found himself looking forward to expecting. After all, it is not every day where you invite alien kids to live in your house.

They would certainly find a way to make it work.

Chapter Text

When Tails mentioned that he was giving the house a ‘makeover’, Maddie hadn’t exactly known what to expect.

She knew, of course, that Sonic’s little fox buddy was a genius. She had known the moment she had gotten hold of his backpack all the way back in Hawaii, and glanced at gadgets she’d never seen before stored away in it. Logically, this meant that when said little genius fox offered to ‘upgrade the security of the house’, whatever he had in mind would be something inconceivably advanced.

Seeing it, however, was a completely different story.

Sneaking a quick glance at husband to affirm that no, she wasn’t slow, Tails’ mind just worked too fast for any of them to catch up, Maddie opened her mouth and continued to stare at…whatever was in the blueprint laid out in front of her.

“Tails, sweetie,” she said hesitantly, “I’m…afraid I have no idea what I’m looking at.”

The little fox perked at her statement. “Oh! Don’t worry about it! Sonic and Knuckles said the same thing when I showed it to them too! I…suppose I should explain?”

“Please,” Tom agreed from next to her. He blinked, and then quickly added on, “That’s not to say whatever you have here isn’t good! I’m sure it’ll make very nice additions to our home!”

Tails laughed lightly, and hopped onto Wade’s coffee table to make himself taller. A proud expression graced his features as he took the blueprint from Maddie’s hands, and she had exactly one moment to take in just how young Tails looked before the tiny genius was off on a tangent.

“So I was actually discussing this with Sonic and Knuckles last night,” Tails began, “We were talking about how Eggman broke in. Judging by the way the lock to your door had been broken I could guess that he must have used some sort of miniature blowtorch gun device to cleave through it, which led me to think, how do we prevent such break-ins in the future? And this led me to create,” here, he paused to gesticulate to the blueprint in his hand, “The Miles Prower 100% Guaranteed, Totally Airtight And Unbeatable Eye For Spies And Intruders Alike!”

Maddie blinked. “That’s…quite a name.”

Tails grinned sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. “I- I mean, Sonic and Knuckles were technically the ones to come up with it, since I had no clue what I even wanted to call a security system, so…”

She giggled. Of course Sonic would think of something like this for the title of a security system. Next to her, Tom laughed outwardly with a tiny shake of his head and a smile at his son’s antics, gesturing for Tails to continue.

“How it works is that it’s basically a connected network of cameras to track movements. Your Earth technology of infrared is actually really cool, Mr and Mrs Wachowski! I think I was a little harsh when I said that Earth was backwatered, haha.”

Maddie grinned. “None taken, sweetie. What do these do?”

“Track movement. What sets these cameras apart from your normal night vision cameras on Earth, however, is that they are proactive in responding to threats! Instead of needing someone to man the cameras, I’ve equipped them with rudimentary AI to recognise intruders from the moment they step three kilometres or so within the vicinity of the house. They’ll actively be scanning the area to determine hostilities.”

Maddie frowned thoughtfully. The idea was really interesting, if she was being honest. “They’re basically upgraded security cameras?”

“I guess so? But that’s not all!” And was it just Maddie, or did Tails’…tails…start spinning? “Once the threats are identified, here, these red and green lines here represent the connection I’ll be making from the camera network to the trap system-”

“Woah, hang on,” Tom interrupted, looking at the blueprints, “Traps?”

“They’re not lethal, Mr Wachowski. I…might have taken some inspiration from this movie Sonic was telling me about. Something called…uh…Home…Alone?”

Maddie shouldn’t be surprised that Sonic had introduced Tails to Earth movies way before she and Tom would get the chance to. But the idea of having petty thieves or trespassers being nearly singed by blowtorches or being pummelled by paint cans sounds rather interesting, because even for a place as homey as Green Hills, robbers and thieves still exist and her husband being a sheriff is surprisingly not as great of a deterrent to them as it ought to be.

“And what kind of traps did you have in mind?” Maddie asked, and yes, Tails’ tails were definitely spinning as he starts talking rapidly about tomato catapults and tripropes that releases tanks of air…perfumed by Sonic’s post-chillidog activities and swinging radios that blasts Sonic’s favourite Speed quote over and over again. Call her a softie, but Maddie was absolutely endeared by the fact that his tails wag when he was getting excited.

“….and Knuckles suggested pelting grapes, which sound really cool but kinda similar to my tomato idea, and-”

Tails suddenly cut himself off, and both Maddie and Tom glanced at him curiously. “Sweetie,” She asked, “are you…okay?”

The little fox blinked, and flexed his grip on the blueprint in his hand with what looked like uncertainty. After a stretch of silence that lasted a few moments, he looked at them with a gaze that Maddie could only describe to be unsure, hesitant and apprehensive.

“You…you don’t find my rambles…annoying, do you?” The young fox asked hesitantly after a while, and Maddie felt her heart break at how young and fragile his voice suddenly sounded without the layer of excitement costing it, “I- I mean, if I am, I’m sorry, it’s just that I-”

Maddie reacted before her husband could, leaning forward to place both her hands on Tails’ shoulders as reassuringly and comforting as she could be. She might not know the full details of Tails’ life before he met them, but it did not take a genius to figure out a basic story. After all, which young genius hadn’t been sidelined before?

“Tails, sweetie,” she said seriously, and tried to convey the message that he was allowed to express himself as much as he wants to, as much as he needs to, “Here in the Wackowski household, there’s no such word as ‘annoying’. You’re one of us now, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with telling us about your inventions, okay honey? Don’t ever feel that anyone is judging you for your actions. We’re a team now, and you don’t have to feel sidelined anymore.”

Tom nodded. “She’s right, bud. You’re family. And that means that we will always have time for you, okay?”

The look that Tails gave the both of them simultaneously warmed and shattered Maddie’s heart. He was just a kid. Sonic was a kid. Heck, even the little red one Knuckles was a kid. They might be from space, but Maddie had made herself a promise back when she and Tom had first taken Sonic in all those months ago, that she would strive to be the best parental figure she could be for him. The same applied to the situation at hand, and Maddie couldn’t help but to tug Tails gently into a loose hug.

“You aren’t alone anymore, little guy,” she said, once again, pulling back to smile brightly at Tails.

“I- I-” he whispered softly, a slow smile spreading across his features once more as he looked at her with newfound confidence, “I’m not alone anymore.”

Maddie nodded with a grin.

“That’s right, kiddo,” Tom said, “You’re stuck with us. No take backs.”

Tails smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And as the door to Wade’s house opened to reveal a rather dirty blue hedgehog, red echidna and golden retriever debating back and forth on whose fault it was that Ozzie was now tracking mud all over the place, as Tom got up from the couch to gasp in consternation at the utterly dishevelled state of the two others in their family, and as Tails turned to laugh brightly at his friends, declaring that the Miles Prower 100% Guaranteed, Totally Airtight And Unbeatable Eye For Spies And Intruders Alike was an operation to, Maddie realised one thing.

Her life had never been more perfect than it was now.

Chapter Text

“Don’t stay out too late!”

“Got it, Donut Lord!” Oh lord, he almost forgot the camera!

“ Don’t make any rash decisions!”

“Yeah yeah I won’t!” Zoom . Ah, there it was. Into the red backpack it goes.

“And don’t get into trouble!”

“Yes, dad , I get it!” Oh! And the map! How could he forget the map! In it goes as well.

Donut Lord’s huff was audible even with two and a half floors separating them, somehow. Sonic had never felt more offended by a sound as he reappeared in front of him in a flurry of blue quills. “Come on , Donut Lord, you know your Blue Blur. When have I ever gotten into trouble, huh?” Besides that time he decided to stop a bank robbery. Then another robbery at the bagel place. Then another robbery at the local duck sanctuary then another robbery in Seattle and then another- okay Sonic, shut up. 

His ( maybe ) dad only rolled his eyes again and clapped a hand gently onto his shoulder. “Kiddo, I think that both you and I wouldn’t wanna answer that question.”

Next to him, Tails seemed to perk up. “I know the answer to that!” The young fox announced brightly, and, oh no , Knuckles was shifting over in interest too and Sonic would die before he would allow his maybe-father and new friends to tease him over his totally- not mishaps he’d encountered in the past. 

“O- kay !” He announced brightly, clapping his hands together while shooting a glare at his traitorous traitor of a Donut Lord for his unwelcome giggles, “Tails, you have everything, right? Water? The cheetos? Don’t forget the cheetos. Knucklehead, do you have Ozzie’s leash? That horrendous pink one that he prefers for whatever reason unknown to all living kinds?”

The red echidna warrior rolled his eyes and tossed said horrendous pink leash in the direction of  Sonic’s head, who barely managed to catch it with a squeak. “Watch the head, dumbass!”

“There was not any to begin with, I fear.”

“You-!” Says the guy who asked if an iPad was supposed to be a fly swatter!

“Okay, okay!” Tom cut in with a grin before the two could start another session of verbal roughhousing that would always eventually descend into chaos somewhere along the way, “Take care of Ozzie. I don’t want anything to happen to my best animal friend when you’re sightseeing, you hear?”

Sonic made a face at Tom, then at Ozzie who looked back at him guilelessly. “Blasphemous.”

Tom rolled his eyes again. “Oh, woe, whatever shall I do,” he replied drily, and opened the door, grabbing his uniform from where it was hanging off a coathanger. “I’m leaving for the station now, alright? I expect you lot to be home before Maddie and I do in the evening. Do not give anyone heart attacks. No terrorising Carl. No losing Ozzie. Got it?”

“Of course, Mr Wachowski!” Tails grinned in affirmation. 

“It’s Tom,” Donut Lord sighed, stepping out of the door’s threshold to give them one last look . “Somehow it’s more reassuring hearing Tails affirm it. You guys know your way around?”

“‘Course we do!” Sonic cut in before Donut Lord could ask another ridiculous question, like whether they had enough protection from the sun because he was always overthinking like that. “Now go to work before Wade drowns in his own incompetency! Shoo!”

And then Donut Lord finally goes through the walkway of the house with a bright laugh at the hedgehog’s last quip. With the remaining responsible adult gone for the day, Sonic turned back to his companions and felt his face split into an excited grin. They were finally doing it! He was finally showing his soon-to-be new housemates around town! The town that he basically grew up in! Green Hills! And sure it was still kinda banged up from their crazy fight with the wacko doctor, but hey, you win some, you lose some, right? They’ve spent the past two weeks cooped up with a contractor detailing plans to rebuild the Wachowski house while adding in new rooms for both Tails and Knuckles, and Sonic was now dying from cabin fever and the insistent urge to just go out. 

“Green Hills County Map,” Knuckles read off from Tails’ Miles Electric with a squint, “That…is the name of this town, correct?”

“Sure is, pal,” Sonic affirmed with a grin as he fixed up Ozzie’s horrendous pink leash to be rewarded with a face full of dog slobber, “Be prepared to be absolutely floored by the sheer awesomeness of it all! Green Hills and Earth extraordinaire Sonic, here to be your guide for the day!”

“Awesome!” Tails laughed, blue eyes shining with visible excitement and pumped a fist into the air, “Let’s do it! This is gonna be great !”

~

This was not going great. 

“I’m really sorry, pal,” Ms Anne from the bagel shop sighed as she gestured to her shop, which was admittedly in really bad shape, “but as you can see, my shop’s kinda trashed right now. We’re closed until we’re able to fix everything up.”

Sonic stamped down the ridiculous, childish urge to stamp his feet. In hindsight, he should have known, should have realised that fighting Robotnik in the heart of Green Hills was going to definitely result in a lot of collateral damage. He knew it, and yet heading out towards the town square for the first time since the disaster and actually witnessing the reality of the aftermath of what happened just…hit different. 

He tried for a smile up at the owner of his favourite bagel shop. “It’s okay, Ms Anne! We get it, seriously. We’ll come back when everything’s repaired, yeah?”

The young lady laughed and gave the trio a wink as she ushered them out from the barely standing store. “Wouldn’t want to be eating Anne’s famous bagels from inside a pile of rubble now, would we?”

“Definitely! See you around, Ms Anne!”

The door closed behind them with an ear-jarring croak. “You too, little guy!”

Tails seemed to notice Sonic’s expression, bless his little foxy heart. “...Don’t worry!” He exclaimed, waving his Miles Electric around as if to prove a point, “There are other things to do, right? Sure the playground’s closed for repairs and a good portion of the town has to go through reconstruction for now, but there are other things to do around here, right?” 

“I think I saw this building annotated ‘Pet Store’ a few blocks down,” Knuckles chimed in, “Perhaps that is an appropriate location to check out? Little Ozzie, no , sit .”

“Oooh! Do you think there’ll be rabbits there? They’re cute!”

“I find these Earth creatures known as guinea pigs rather endearing myself.”

Sonic let his friends’ chatter wash over him as he looked at the street in front of it, and looked hard . From where he was standing, signs of the fight from two weeks ago were rather clear. Scorch marks, piles of debri, crumbling infrastructure…it was all there. If he looked close enough, he’d be able to make out the outlines of Robotnik’s death machine’s footprints burned into the cement, which meant this was one of the harder-hit streets. Streets that he had gotten destroyed while trying to distract Eggman because he had been the one to lead the maniac there in the first place. 

How many more? How many more people’s lives had their fight affected? How many more people lost their homes, their jobs and possibly even their- Sonic refused to think about that even being a possibility.  This had been different from that first fight months ago. That had only affected a street, at most, and it took less than a week to erase all evidence of a fight ever happening back then. 

And now…

A sharp creaking groan got his attention. It belonged to a street lamp as its twisted metal finally gave way and crashed to the ground to join the countless pieces of debri that lay scattered on the cement. 

“-onic? Sonic! Helloooo, anybody in there?”

It was Tails, and Sonic blinked as his vision was flooded with waving white fabric of the fox’s glove. “Come on! Let’s check out the pet shop!”

Sonic tried for a smile, but all his previous enthusiasm about town-seeing had fizzled away in the face of reality. “Sure, pal, let’s go.”

It seemed like he wasn’t successful in hiding his despondence from his face, however. 

“Is there something on your mind, hedgehog? You do not seem to be as sparkly as you were a while ago.”

Sonic made a face at Knuckles’ remark. “Ew, sparkly ?” He asked incredulously, turning to fix the echidna with a look of disbelief, “I don’t sparkle , Knucklehead, that’s ridiculous.”

“You kinda do,” Tails shrugged unhelpfully, “Like when you’re happy, you get really infectiously happy and glowy and it makes other people happy too!” The young fox blinked belatedly at his statement, and hurriedly added, “I don’t mean that in a weird way! I- I just, mean that-!”

As if understanding them, Ozzie let out a bark from where he was soaking up warmth from the sidewalk’s cement.

Sonic could not help but laugh, and firmly banished all previous thoughts to the back of his head. And then imagined taking out an imaginary key to lock an imaginary lock. There, problem solved. No more dwelling on your own bad decisions when you have to show your new housemates around town. The southside of Green Hills was relatively unscathed - they could go there! Yeah! Problem solved. Easy. 

“You guys mentioned going to the pet shop?” Sonic asked with a grin, though it only felt a fraction more genuine than his previous attempt. Oh well, at least no one called him out for it. “Well, I’ll do you guys one better - what about a duck sanctuary ?”

~

Sonic could not get the image of a broken town out of his head. Even as he watched Tails and Knuckles coo over Donald, Daisy and Daffy (hah, who’d have thought that Knuckles, last of the echidna warriors, keeper of the Master Emerald, former Sonic enemy who packed a mean punch, would be absolutely in love with ducks?) the images of Green Hills occupied his mind and refused to leave him alone. There had been so much destruction just from the few streets they’d gone through alone. Who knew how much worse it was at sites where battle had actually taken place? Like the town square? The outskirts? The highway?

In the end, Sonic cut the trip short, choosing to leave for home after two hours at the sanctuary and coming up with some half-hearted excuse that he didn’t want to miss the end of Donut Lord’s shift when it ended. By the suspicious glances Tails and Knuckles kept shooting him on their way home, Sonic doubted his excuse landed with either of them.

They’d met Maddie at home, and Tom came home only shortly afterwards. Then there was dinner, and a movie, but the only thing that Sonic could think of was his battered town. The battered town he was supposed to protect and failed because people were now out of jobs with their lives affected in one way or another. He barely registered his friends heading off to Wade’s extra bedroom to rest, or Maddie going to wash up for bed. He barely registered that Tom was the only one left in the living room until a hand came to rest upon his shoulder. 

Sonic startled at the sudden contact, gaze flicking wildly from the hand on his shoulder to Tom’s gaze that rested upon him, coloured in concern. 

“Bud,” The sheriff said, after a while when it was clear that Sonic wasn’t going to talk, “You’ve been quiet this whole evening. What happened?”

Had he really been that obvious? Sonic blinked at Donut Lord owlishly, and tried his best to brush off the question. “What, me, quiet? Noooo, everything’s fine! I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Hey, did you know that Knuckles liked Daffy more than Donald? Weird, right? I’d thought he’d prefer Donald, but nooo, he-”

“Sonic.”

Tom’s voice cut him off from his attempt at distraction, and Sonic blinked again, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. 

“You’ve been living with us for months now, bud,” Tom continued gently, squeezing his shoulder just slightly, enough to convey the concern that was radiating off him in literal waves, “I like to think that I know when you’re upset and refusing to share what’s going on in that little blue head of yours, hmm?”

Sonic blinked again . It seemed like that was all he could do right now. “I-”

“I told you before, you’re our kid, Sonic. You’re a Wachowski, and Wachowskis tell each other when something is bothering them so that we can solve it together. So tell me, son,” Tom said, and his other hand came to rest on Sonic’s other shoulder, bringing with him such warmth and care and Sonic was suddenly twelve again, looking into his new attic bedroom for the first time and trying not to break down from the sheer overflowing warmth that had been flooding his body, “so that I can help you. So that Maddie and I can help you. Please.”

A giant metal foot hanging above their heads. A ring of fire around them. Resignation. Broken emerald. Tom - no, dad’s - whisper of ‘I love you’. A flash, then broken buildings cloud his vision. A broken city, broken because of him , and suddenly it was too much too fast. Sonic hiccuped once at the surge of despair flooding through him, and Tom’s arms came to wrap around his frame, and suddenly it was too much to bear and the self control he’d been grasping at since that afternoon broke. His arms came up to wrap around Tom’s shoulders tightly as he felt his frame wrecked by silent, barely-audible sobs that seemed to be wrenched from his own chest.

Oh, gods, they could have all died . Tom and Maddie - his parents could have died , and he had been so close to not being able to stop that. They could have died from the psychotic doctor, and it was only through sheer dumb luck that Sonic had been able to prevent that from happening a second time . How was it that disaster always seemed to follow him? First Longclaw died because of him, and now his parents almost died because of him again. How could he still call himself a protector of a town when he couldn’t even protect his own parents? When he couldn’t even-

“Alright bud, I’m gonna have to stop you there.”

Another sob forced itself from Sonic’s throat. “Wha-”

“You said all that aloud, kiddo,” Tom murmured softly, and Sonic only clamped his eyes shut around a fresh wave of tears that threatened to spill over. 

“I- I-” He whispered, and found his throat too clamped up to say anything, “I- I’m- I-”

“Shh,” Tom- Dad - whispered, and suddenly there was a hand in his quills, stroking through them gently, “Deep breaths, son. Breathe in, then out. One, two, three, out, two three, that’s it. Just like that.”

Sonic took in another shaky inhale, and released it unsteadily. His fingers tightened around the fabric of his dad’s shirt. The fingers carding through his quills never stopped, while the arm around him tightened minutely and he felt himself being pulled impossibly closer into his dad’s embrace. 

They stayed in that position for god knows how long, with Sonic clinging desperately onto his father, and Tom keeping a comforting hold over himself, gently stroking through the quills on his head. It took who-knew-how-long for his sobs to finally subside, and then another who-knew-how-long for Sonic to stop trembling in his father’s hold. A gentle quiet descended around the darkened living room, before he finally heard his dad speak once more. 

“Whatever happened in the town, whatever happened two weeks ago…”Tom murmured, “You know that that wasn’t your fault, right?”

“How could it not be?” Sonic hissed, voice sharp with loathing, “I led that…that thing through the streets. I led the destruction through our home, and because of that people are suffering the consequences! How is that not my fault?!” His throat clogged up again and oh god he didn’t want to start crying again. 

He felt his dad shake his head. 

“Perhaps, but were you the one who built that death machine?”

What kind of a question was that? “I…guess not?”

Tom hummed. “Did you want Robotnik to get his hands on that emerald?”

“Definitely not.”

“Did you want to destroy the town?”

“Of course not!” What kind of a question was that!

Tom chuckled from somewhere over his head. “See kiddo? There’s your answer.”

What? Sonic frowned in confusion, pulling back slightly from his dad’s embrace to frown at him in puzzlement. “I- I’m sorry, what?”

“You didn’t actively seek out the destruction of Green Hills, Sonic,” Tom said, and squeezed his shoulders gently as if to emphasise his point, “Perhaps the battle banged out our town a lot, but imagine how much worse it would have been without your interference. How much more damage we would have taken, and how many more lives lost without you being there.

“We couldn’t stop Robotnik from being there, and neither could we stop him from making his crazy delusions into a reality. He would have trashed our town either way, but you were there to make a difference. You saved all of us, Sonic, and that makes you a hero.”

Sonic frowned unsteadily. His eyes felt wet again. “But- a hero takes responsibility for other lives, not hurt them,” He said quietly, “I wished I could have saved more people.”

There was another sigh, a quieter one this time. “...Sometimes, most times,” Tom murmured quietly, “You cannot save everyone.”

Sonic’s heart sank. 

“In a perfect world, we would be able to save everyone. In an ideal world, Robotnik would not exist, and you wouldn’t have to take on the burden of fighting him. But…we don’t live in an ideal world. And that means that we can only take what we get, and fix what we couldn’t get, and move on.” Tom looked at Sonic, and flashed him a melancholic smile, “I really am sorry, kiddo. But it’s an unfortunate truth in this world. But you did well, and because of you, our town isn’t reduced to an actual pile of rubble in the middle of a crazy scientist induced worldwise apocalypse right now. Take comfort in that you did much more than what any of us could have done that day, alright?”

“But even then,” Sonic whispered quietly, “I failed to protect both of you from being targeted by Eggman. How could you just-”

“Maddie and I are still here, aren’t we?” Tom asked with a wry smile, “Trust me, kiddo, we knew what we were doing when we drove that truck under a hundred ton falling hunk of metal. We’re family. And family…”

“...Always sticks together,” Sonic finished, and finally felt that tightly knitted knot in his chest loosen a little. He sniffled once more, and rubbed at his eyes with a gloved hand. “...Being a hero sucks.”

Tom smiled. “I know.”

“...But…you’re- you’re right, da- onut lord,” Sonic continued, and covered his slipup before the term left his mouth entirely, “I…I still saved the town. That had to count for something, right?”

“Definitely.”

“And- we can all agree that Robotnik sucks?”

Tom huffed out a slight laugh, and squeezed Sonic’s shoulder again. “Anyone who says otherwise could only be as crazy as him.”

And finally, for the first time since the whole thing started plaguing his mind, Sonic finally let his face slip into a small, but genuine smile. “Thank you, Donut Lord,” he said quietly, “I- I needed that. Thank you.”

Tom released his shoulder with one final squeeze, pushing himself back to his feet. “Anytime, bud. Though…” Here, his face broke out into a mischievous smile, and Sonic felt dread pool in his stomach. “...I will require… payment. ”

This was bad. “...What sort of payment?”

Tom’s face split into a wide grin. “Dad jokes for a month.”

Sonic’s eyes widened in horror. “What? No!” He took everything back. His dad was the worst .

“Two months.”

“ Donut Lord!!! ”

Chapter Text

“And to celebrate the revival of the Casa de Son- I mean, Wachowskiiiii- ” Sonic trailed off with a sheepish grin on his face as both Tom and Maddie shot him a deadpan look from different corners of the kitchen where they were rummaging through the cabinets, “We will have…dramatic drumrolls please!”

Knuckles looked confused from where he was perched near the sink, a bunch of grapes held delicately in his hands, “We are having dramatic drumrolls for breakfast?”

Sonic ignored him, and gestured impatiently at Tails by his side. With a start, the young fox gave a belated ‘oh!’ and dropped whatever it was he was tinkering with to start drumming his fists rapidly against the table he and Sonic were both seated at. 

“ Thank you . As I was saying, we will be having…the bestest and greatest breakfast food known to Earthkind…pancakes!”

The drumming stopped. Tails looked at Sonic curiously with a gentle tilt of his head. “Are pancakes those round flat things you make with the pan?”

“Sure is, buddy,” Tom replied for Sonic from where he was wrangling out a sack of flour and cooking utensils, “And Sonic loves ‘em. Not as much as chilli dogs, mind you, but Maddie and I basically banned him from having that for breakfast.”

“And I tell you that that’s still unfair. Chilli dogs are totally breakfast food!”

“Your stomach never seems to agree with that statement.”

“ Donut Loooooooord… ”

“Alright, boys, that’s enough,” Maddie grinned, bringing over the sugar and butter, “Sonic, be a dear and take out the eggs, would you?”

Ten eggs magically appeared in front of her a second later. She accepted them with the grace of a lady who was too used to such phenomena, cracking them into the mixing bowl one by one. As she cracked them, she directed a conversational question to the two new household members of the Wachowski family, “Say, Tails, Knuckles, have you guys had pancakes before?”

“I saw Sonic eat pancakes many times before,” Tails offered, adding another screw to the device he’s tweaking, “Back on my home planet. But I’ve never tried them myself, I think. We uh…had a different diet, back on my home planet.”

“Most of the food I had found before this was foraged,” Knuckles added, popping another grape into his mouth. He had magically acquired another three bunches in the time it took Tom and Maddie to get all the ingredients required for pancake batter together in the mixing bowl. “Plant roots, most of the time, for they were the most easily accessible ones. Fruit, sometimes, and insects when needed as well. It might not have been the most ideal situation, but it was practical.”

“Okay, first of all, gross ,” Sonic made a face, dramatically, and flopped down into the chair he had been in before helping Maddie, “Don’t ever put fruits and bugs in the same sentence ever again. And secondly, man , that sounds terrible. You guys are absolutely going to love pancakes. The way Donut Lord makes those banana pancakes? Mwah. Practically Michelin star worthy!”

“Flatterer,” Tom snorted, accepting a whisk from Maddie. 

Knuckles regarded his former nemesis for a moment, before asking the important question, “Are there grapes in them?”

“Grape pancakes?” Sonic wondered, furrowing his brows, “Well…if banana pancakes can exist…”

“They can’t,” Maddie interjected, before the blue hedgehog could plant any false hope into Knuckles. She gave a sympathetic glance to the now forlorn echidna warrior, “Sorry, sweetie. But it’s simply not viable. And it wouldn’t taste great, either.”

“But!” Tom continued, “Pancakes with grape sauce exists, with grapes on the grape sauce too. That exists, if you’ll have it.”

Knuckles’ expression lit up at that. “It would be an honour to try it, Mr Lord of the Donuts!”

Sonic made yet another face from the kitchen island. “I feel like we’re just enabling your obsession with grapes,” he complained, and watched as Knuckles got started with the second of his three acquired bunches of grapes, “Seriously, there are so many Earth fruits to try and you’ve eaten nothing but grapes for three weeks! What about the poor raspberries, or blueberries, or strawberries? They deserve a chance to be eaten too!”

“None tastes as good as grapes,” Knuckles declared, and picked another one from the bunch he was holding in his hand. Then, in a quieter tone, he added, uncharacteristically hesitantly, “They…they remind me of a fruit that grew in the forest where my village had been located. I have not had the chance to try them since I left a long time ago, and grapes…they taste the closest to that fruit. To…to my home.”

The chatter in the kitchen quietened, in lieu of such sombre news. Sonic’s eyes widened with guilt at the revelation. “I- I didn’t know that,” he stuttered, wincing at how callous his words sounded now, “I’m sorry-”

“Do not be.” Knuckles replied, with such quick recovery that everyone was stumped. He popped yet another grape into his mouth. “I was merely…reminiscing. I miss my people, and I miss my home, but here…and now…I have a chance to have a new one. A new home. I would not change it for anything.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Maddie murmured quietly. Nobody commented on how her voice shook, ever so slightly, at the echidna’s words, “We are glad that you have managed to find a new home in us.”

After that, Tom made sure to put in extra grapes into the pancakes that he had made for Knuckles. Maddie added grape sauce to the list of items that were to be bought from their grocery runs, and Sonic and Tails started asking Knuckles more about his life back in the echidna village. And to see the way the echidna warrior’s face lights up every time he gets to share little anecdotes about his life from before, made all the efforts absolutely worth it. 

Chapter Text

The sun had turned red. Its glow shone upon the forest he resided in. 

“My son, would you not look at me?” The kindly murmur of his father broke him out of his trance. His trance of…what? He didn’t remember. All he remembered was that his clan had been celebrating the victory of a skirmish. There had been laughter, food, cheer and talk. The spirits were high, and his father was laughing. 

His father rarely laughed. He basked in the rich baritone of it. 

The sun’s glow was red, and it cast upon them like a vermillion veil, enhancing the red of their body. For some reason, this made his eyes hurt, and he continued to keep them plastered to the ground. He knew he used to do that a lot, as a kid, because…

Because…something. His brain stopped short of finding an answer, and he relented. Around him, the voices of his people continued to blanket the atmosphere, quiet and soothing and gentle. They have faded from the rambunctious laughter from before into a lull. He found it comforting. 

Above head, the sun seemed to be setting. Its rays got dimmer, redder, shrouding the lands in its crimson glow. 

“Son, look at me.” 

It was his father’s voice again. It sounded less gentle this time, more serious and commanding than before. The urgency in his tone made him pause, but he found his eyes drawn to the red glow bouncing off the grass at his feet. 

“Son, I need you to look at me. At us .”

He could feel the sun’s rays dim even without looking at it. The red got duller. His memory got fuzzier and he could not remember why he was there in the first place. Something about…a tribe…a…dance? A voice, above all else, and a victory. 

“Son, please!”

The voice again. It sounded oddly desperate, but he could not remember who it belonged to. His eyes remained glued to the ground, and as he stared, fixated, at the grass, a gnawing sensation started to tell him to move, to get away from where he was. He had to leave, but he did not know why. He never knew why. 

“S—n, don’t l—ve , — king a mis—e!”

He lurched to his feet almost mechanically. He did not notice when the background had faded to a noiseless stillness. The feeling within him intensified, urging him to move, to walk, to go somewhere. Impossibly, the sun hung in the air still, and its red glow continued to reflect off the blades of grass as he walked on unsteady feet. 

Tress loomed above him. The sky was a sickly yellow, and the air was silent. He no longer remembered why he was even walking. He walked on regardless. 

His eyes never left the red on the ground. Light bounces off it, and almost shimmers in an iridescent way. The grass seemed droopier here, as well, as though it had been walked upon before. He continued his way forward. The red grew in quantity as he moved. 

The red grew in quantities as he moved. 

The red. The red on the ground. 

With a start, his steps faltered as his eyes finally landed on the grass and properly took in the visage for the first time. The red glow—no, it was not a glow anymore, it was just red, was splattered on the grass blades, puddles of large and small littering the green of the earth beneath him. Hurriedly, he glanced backwards. The sun had set, leaving scattering moonlight to filter through the dark folds of the forest and illuminating the red on the ground in a sickly pale white. 

What was going on? What happened? Why was there red on the ground? Where was he? Why was he here? Who was he? What has brought him here? The questions whirled in his mind, and grew a form, forcing his head to lift, forcing his eyes to peel themselves away from the sea of grass in front of him. 

Look up, it seemed to say. To demand. Look up, and do not be a coward. 

He fought the urge. His hands found purchase on his forearms. I am scared. 

Look up, it insisted, almost like a voice threading a command into the fibres of his body. Look at the result of your folly, and reap what you sow. You dared come out this way, you dared allow yourself to forget them, the least you can do is look up, you coward. 

The last word rang in his ear, reverberating through his skull and pounding blood with such a shockwave that his head snapped up from the ground for the first time. And for the first time, he took in his surroundings. For the first time, he took a good look at where he was. 

And for the first time, he saw a massacre. 

The red extended all the way into a field, illuminated from the moon overhead. A blood moon, casting its merciless red glow onto the sea of bodies littered across the space. His people .

And all at once, it came crashing into him. Owls. The echidna. His tribe, dead. His father, dead. His brothers, and sisters in arms, dead, their bodies cold and hard on the ground before his very eyes. 

“No,” he whispered, and ran into the moon’s red glow, shaking his head desperately as the word tore itself from his throat, “No, no! They’re not dead, no!” 

Yes, his mind hissed back at him as he dropped onto his knees in front of meadow lit red under a red moon amidst a sea of red bodies with red staining his fur dark crimson, yes they are. And you abandoned them. You forgot about them. You left them behind .

“I did not,” he whispered futilely, his gaze falling upon the closest body. Empty, glassy eyes from a once familiar, warm gaze bore into his soul and he lurched back jerkily, only to fall into something hard, and cold. “I did not.” He tried again. 

“You did ,” something snarled. His gaze shot up to the face of his father, expression frozen in eternal agony from his death throes and mouth permanently twisted into pure hatred, and he scrambled to get away, to get away from the corpse of his father lumbering towards him, “You stayed behind. You left us, and you forgot us.” 

“I—” He pleaded, “Please, I didn’—t—!”

“Why did you leave us, Knuckles?” A voice whispered in his ear. He leapt away from the grimacing face of a brother. A former brother in arms. “Why did you let us die?”

“Oh brother, why weren’t you here?” A third voice chimed from his right. 

“You could have helped us.” A fourth.

“You should have been here to die with us.”

“You ran away when we needed help!”

“You forgot about us~”

The voices kept coming, kept assaulting his senses. The bodies crept closer, and expressions of pure torture were drilled into his mind as he took in each one of them.  Behind them, the blood moon flared and bathed the meadow a deep red. Beneath him, his gloves were red, redder than his fur, stained with the blood of his people. And in front of him, the bodies of red advanced closer, snarling mouths pulled into painful smiles, broken limbs dragging on red grass as they asked, and asked, and asked, and it was all just red, red, red, red, RED—

The shock of cold water was what tore Knuckles’ eyes open. The screeches of the undead was what followed him into the world of the waking. He felt himself lurch upwards violently as the warring sears of grief and fear clashed violently with the frigid cold currently sending shockwaves through his body, with the afterimage of his dead brothers and sisters and father directing his every motion. All that he felt was residue guilt and lingering fear that propelled him to shove whatever that was coming his way away. Hard. 

His vision was still coated with red. Red and silver and more red, all taunting him and making him remember the night he’d found his tribe dead in that forsaken forest clearing. He would never get a reprieve from the voices of the dead. Once, he thought that it was because he had failed them. He let it drive him to hurt innocents, all in the name of revenge. He let his grief from what happened to his people turn him into a monster

And the most ironical part of it all? Some nights, like tonight, he’d find himself awake, shaking, and struggling to map out the features of every one of his tribespeople. On bad days, he couldn’t even remember how his own father had looked like, and realise that he had failed them. He’d failed to remember his tribe, he failed to be what they couldn’t be, do what they could not do, why had it had to be him who was left behind and eventually survived, he did not deserve such luxury, and he–

“...Knucklehead?”

A soft, tentative whisper from…somewhere, so vastly different from the scathing and malicious voices in his mind, cut through the fog of jumbled thoughts in Knuckles’ head. The echidna whipped his head up and came face to face with green eyes glimmering with worry that was evident even in the dark of night. It took him a moment to find his voice, and to shove all the thoughts into the recesses of his mind, before he could speak up. “...Hedgehog?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Sonic replied quietly, and dropped something onto the ground to carefully make his way deeper into Knuckles’ room. He belatedly realised that it was a bucket, and even with his addled mind, it did not take much to piece the biting cold currently coating him like an extra fur coat together with said bucket. 

“You poured that water,” Knuckles said, “From the bucket onto me.” It was not a question.

His former adversary winced at the direct hypothesis, but nodded. “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep and figured I’d check up on everyone. Ended seeing you like…” the hedgehog gestured rather lamely in Knuckles’ general direction, “then remembered that I saw from somewhere that pouring cold water helps wake people up, and, guess I improvised?”

Knuckles stared at him for a moment longer, before acknowledging Sonic’s actions with a minute shrug and letting his eyes trail elsewhere again. With that distraction out of the way, his mind drifted again, on its own accord, back to faces of twisted anguish on his tribesmen’s faces, their empty eyes and their accusations, his own folly, his dishonour upon his tribe, and his–

Something hit his head, rather painfully. Knuckles looked down, and saw a strange, multicoloured cube staring back at him, and he looked at the perpetrator with an annoyed frown, ready to tell the hedgehog off for disturbing him from his thoughts and foolishly picking fights with someone stronger than him, but the hedgehog beat him to speaking. 

“You need to stop that, you know,” Sonic said, and gestured to him once more. Knuckles frowned at the vagueness of the statement and forgot his annoyance. 

“Stop…what?”

Sonic threw his hands up in exasperation. “That! The…the hiding away, the suffering alone and pretending you’re fine when you’re not, the ‘I-Think-I’m-Worthless’ look, you have to stop with that!”

Despite himself, Knuckles felt a flash of anger burn through him. How dare this hedgehog insinuate that he wasn’t allowed to grieve? To remember his people and the wrongs he did by them? To live up to their name?

“M’ not insinuating anything ,” Sonic’s voice rang out again, and Knuckles turned his head to glare at him. The blue hedgehog had his arms crossed and was currently leaning against a cabinet, looking at him with an indiscernible expression. It took Knuckles a moment to belatedly realise that he’d said all that out loud. Even then, he held his ground. “Then what do you mean by…me needing to ‘stop that’?” 

Sonic shrugged. “The self blame.” He replied quietly, averting his eyes. “The…the thinking that you don’t deserve to be standing here, after everything that had happened. Trust me, I know the feeling.” 

Oh, right. Sonic had lost Longclaw. Despite his reservations about the owl guardians in general, Knuckles could tell that she has cared for him deeply for him to miss her this keenly even until today. The echidna warrior glanced towards the window, towards the silver moonlight lighting up the otherwise dark room in a soft glow. “How did you cope?” He whispered, feeling uncharacteristically out of depth, and wrong-footed. “How do you live with…it?” 

Sonic pushed himself off the cabinet and padded over to sit next to him on the bed. He was silent for a while, long enough for Knuckles to believe that he did not have an answer, before he spoke up, hesitantly, “When I first came to earth? Not well. I…well, I ran from my thoughts. Constantly decided to not think about it. Constantly tried to keep myself busy with other things. It…didn’t always work out, y’know? Whenever I ran from your issues, it only made the fallout of the confrontation much harder to bear.

Then after a while, the fallout became too much to contain. I hated everything. I hated Earth for stealing me away when Longclaw needed me. I hated the rings for, well, doing their job, I guess. I think I even hated Longclaw for sending me away. I felt like I could have done something, anything—”

“—to help the ones close to us, because perhaps…perhaps we could have made a difference,” Knuckles finished. Sonic gave him a joyless smile, and nodded. 

“Yeah. For a few years I really was just a dirty little hedgehog eating wild berries from the forests surrounding Earth because I didn’t have it in me to do anything else. And after that…well. I discovered the town by accident, and it was like…an outlet? For me. That’s what Maddie said, anyway. It was like a great source of distraction for me from the guilt of leaving Longclaw, and hey, it did work! It distracted me for almost ten years!” 

“I had my goal,” Knuckles murmured quietly, thoughtfully, eyes trained on the moonlight, “a goal to honour my people, by capturing their killer’s apprentice. A…distraction, as you say, probably.”

“Tom and Maddie had a long talk about this with me when I first moved in,” Sonic continued, and Knuckles suddenly felt a pressure on his arm that was not there before. He glanced away from the window to see Sonic’s hand resting in his arm. “They told me that it was normal to feel the way we did after seeing someone close to you, well, die, said it was called survivor’s guilt, and that people suffered from it too. But do you know what else they told me, Knucklehead?” 

Knuckles said nothing. He did not know what to say. 

“They said that no matter what, they’ll always be there to listen to me talk about it. My feelings regarding it, my thoughts, my despair and my guilt. That no matter what, they’ll always be there to support me and my baggage. And now, well, I still hate that I couldn’t have done anything to help Longclaw, but I think I could at least acknowledge that she would have been absolutely sick with worry about me if she had seen the state I’d been in for the last ten years. I live better, to honour her now.” 

The hand on his arm gave a little squeeze. “I guess all I’m trying to say is that you can talk to us, y’know?” Sonic said, quietly, and shot another small grin at Knuckles, “I talked to Tom and Maddie, and they helped me feel much more sure of myself. You can talk to them too. Or if you don’t want to talk to them , well, there’s always me, right?”

Knuckles felt a small lump burn in the back of his throat. He resolutely swallowed it down, staring holes into the hand resting on his arm. “It…won’t be bothersome to you?” He murmured, softly, a distant echo of his dream ringing in his ear, “It might be burdensome.”

“I can share the burden with you,” Sonic replied, “if you’ll allow me to.”

And in that instant, Knuckles could feel a faint prickle at the base of his eyes – a sensation he had not felt for over a decade. The echidna warrior inhaled deeply, closed his eyes against the hesitance and wariness of letting someone into his deepest fears that had kept him awake for too long, and nodded. “Okay,” he said, and the hand on his arm tightened just a little more, grounding him to the present and warding off the whispers of self loathing in his mind, “I- I allow you to.” 

Chapter Text

“I…do not get it.” 

The confused tone that Knuckles spoke in only served to make Sonic bury his head deeper into his elbows to muffle the giggles doing their best to escape his mouth. Next to him, Tails was bouncing excitedly on the sofa seat. 

“Knuckles’ and my first movie night!” The fox kit exclaimed cheerfully, woefully unaware of the misery they were about to be put in. Sonic glanced up from his elbows, espied Tom and Maddie’s faces screwed up as they were trying not to laugh, and promptly lost it. 

Both Knuckles and Tails only looked confused as Sonic rolled onto the ground from the sofa like a possessed maniac. 

“…Sonic?” Tails ventured, enthusiasm put on hold at the sight of the blue hedgehog whose head had somehow found its way into Oz’s fur and was still giggling uncontrollably. “Are you…okay?” 

“Ahahahahaha- I- I me-mean- I am- pfffffffft——”

From the sofa, Knuckles picked up the movie disc of the night and continued to inspect it like a warrior inspecting their weapons, and continued in the same, confused tone from before, “If this is a documentation about the time of day between afternoon and dusk, then why are there three people on the cover instead of scenery depicting that time of day? This makes no sense at all.” 

The matter-of-fact way the echidna warrior said this finally pushed the wavering stone-faces of Tom and Maddie over the edge as well, as the couple took out the last of the popcorn from the microwave to join the trio at the living room with shit-eating grins. Sonic, meanwhile, was hysterical. 

“AHAHAHA- TIME— OFDAY—-IF ONLY—”

“Okay, okay, that’s enough, Sonic,” Tom sighed, though the large smile on his face indicated that he was also looking forward to the disaster that was to happen, “Let’s just—put the movie on, yes? I’m absolutely positive that this will be a movie night to remember. Heh.”

Sonic wheezed from his position by Oz’s side and gave a thumbs up. 

Tails just looked confused now. “I don’t get it.” He said slowly, eyeing the disc cover with wariness, “What’s so special about… Twilight …that elicited such a response from Sonic?” 

Maddie popped the first popcorn into her mouth. “Oh kiddo,” she said with a mysterious smile, “this is how you truly integrate yourself into Earth’s culture.” 

~

“So…the protagonist’s name is…Bella Swan? Like the Earth bird from the genus Cygnus?” 

“Oh! It’s one of those Earthen metal birds with stiff wings! I think Lady Pretzel mentioned them to be…aeroplanes?” 

“So…she’s moving somewhere?” 

“Is it just me, or does the whole thing look unnecessarily…blue?”

~

“Is that what Sonic means by…the cool kids?” 

“Ohohoho my young, uneducated sweet summer child, you have no idea just how cool they are.” 

“Stop with the puns, Sonic, you’re making Knuckles confused again.” 

“It is okay, Lord of Donuts, I think I understood the ‘reference’.  This just means they are… cooler? Than the others?”

“…Never mind.”

~ 

“So, uh, this sounds stupid and maybe I should have asked this sooner, but…Mr Wachowski, what’s a vampire?”

“Well—”

“Waitwaitwait. You went all this while under my guidance without knowing what a vampire is??”

“Am I supposed to?”

“I am a failure of a hedgehog. Then, uh, do you know what a werewolf is? Dracula? Uhh…quick, Tom, Maddie, what other pop culture supernatural beings are there?” 

“What is a ‘pop culture’? Is it a ritual of sorts?”

“What’s Dracula?”

“ Oh my god. Okay, so—.”

“Sonic, no.”

“Oh Sonic yes. Anyyyyway…”

~

“OH MY GOD.”

“Aaaand that’s how the whole thing on Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way came to be.” 

“OH MY GOD.”

“…Tails buddy, are you okay?”

“OH MY GOD-”

“Maddie, I think we broke him.”

~

“WHY DOES HE SPARKLE UNDER THE SUN?”

“This…this does not make sense. Why is the Cullen of Edwards so nonsensical?”

“ WHAT IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER?!”

~

“The Cullen of Alice is very nice.”

“You, Knuckles, are so cultured for that.”

“The Cullen of Carlisle is also very nice. Why am I ‘cultured’ for that?”

“It’s a saying, and it’s—you know what, never mind.”

“…The Swan’s father is also very nice.”

~

“WHAT ARE THEY DOING.”

“Y’know, good question actually. Tom, Maddie, what are they doing?”

“Why is the Swan not-so-bright?”

“…WAIT SO JACOB IS A ‘WEREWOLF?!”

~

“…Why are they not telling Father Swan? That is a terrible move on their part.”

“Y’know Knuckles, I’d really stop questions whose motives are what by now too. But yeah.”

“Make it stop…”

“…Maddie I really think we broke him.”

~

And finally, two and a half hours later, the credits rolled. If somebody listened close enough, they could perhaps hear a certain fox kit scream into the bolster that he’d somehow managed to get a hang on which was currently firmly smushed into his face. 

“And…that was it?” Knuckles intoned, confusion evident in his voice. “Lord of Donuts, Lady of Pretzels…what…did I just witness?” 

Sonic snorted from his position, draped across the kitchen counter limply and too drained from laughing too much to laugh some more. The blue hedgehog, Thomas Wachowski and Madison Wachowski, shared a look with one another, before looking over to where Tails was still screaming silently into his bolster and where Knuckles was still staring at the screen with eternal perpetual confusion, and replied simultaneously with much ease,

“ Culture.”

Tails wailed painfully into his bolster.