Chapter Text
With those spikes on his knuckles, Tom and Maddie expected the red hedgehog (possibly? He looks slightly different from Sonic, the only self-proclaimed hedgehog of their kind that the couple knows) to be here for a fight. Instead, he just looks confused. Like he wasn’t expecting to find himself in a snow-covered yard.
Interestingly neither Tails nor Sonic seemed scared of the newcomer. Even as he stood staring directly at them. What was even more interesting was that the red hedgehog (?) seemed confused to see the two humans.
What do they do now? How do they go about this? Luckily, the choice was made for them.
Sonic, who had come outside with Tails not long after the humans had, spoke.
“Knuckles?” It was obvious to both humans that Sonic wasn’t simply commenting on the red hedgehog’s (?) spiky knuckles, rather he had said the word like it was a name.
It was obvious that the older of their sons recognised whoever this newcomer was.
“Sonic?” ‘Knuckles’ questioned, approaching the house.
“What are you doing here?” The blue hedgehog continued. Tails stood beside his brother, confusion clear as day on his face. Interesting…
“A Transport Ring deposited me here,” ‘Knuckles’ explained. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Sonic, do you know who this is?” Tom semi-interrupted.
Both the hedgehog and Tails turned towards Tom as if they had forgotten that he and Maddie were there too.
Knuckles stopped just a few paces out from the stairs leading down from the house. “Yeah, I do,” Sonic said, which really wasn’t all that helpful. The speedster turned his attention back to Knuckles “I thought you would be in training to become a Guardian? How did you even get on Earth?” he questioned.
The red hedgehog (it seemed more and more unlikely that he and Sonic were both hedgehogs) looked away from those standing near the back door and towards the snow-covered trees for only a moment before he spoke. “Mobius…is not safe for me anymore,”
The humans thought they heard Sonic mumble “Mobius was never safe for you,,” under his breath, but neither of them was certain.
It was only then that the speedster seemed to remember that his brother was standing next to him and was very confused too.
“Tails, this is Knuckles the Echidna, Guardian-in-training, and my…friend,” Sonic told Tails, in a manner that was supposed to exhibit a formal air but appeared endearingly amusing to the two humans.
“Not a Guardian-in-training anymore but yes,” the echidna, apparently, corrected slightly.
While the introduction hadn’t been directed towards them, it still gave them useful information.
There were questions upon questions upon even more questions floating around in the minds of the five who were standing in the snow-covered backyard.
Sometime earlier…
Knuckles had been having a fairly normal day — or what had become normal for him over the last year — until he wasn’t. A couple of members of the Owl clan had found him.
He had believed that what he had done had resulted in the deaths of the entire clan. And he had been so careful to hide his tracks and thought that he had succeeded in doing so.
There was no way that he could remain on Mobius any longer, he was already out of hiding spots and the seemingly still-alive Owls would continue to track him down no matter what he did.
Knuckles dodged a low-hanging tree branch as he considered what he should do next. He had only one Portal Ring, which meant only one chance to get off of Mobius. It was still better than nothing.
The golden glow of the Ring felt like it was searing into his eyeballs as it expanded to its full size. The world on the other side was unrecognizable to him with the blindingly white landscape. A snow world then.
One moment, Knuckles was standing there looking at the ring and the world beyond it, the next his feet had moved before he had properly thought it through and the last remaining echidna had passed through the Ring only to be falling…falling…falling. He fell muzzle-first into a thick pile of unexpectedly-soft snow.
His initial judgment about this being a snow world was further supported when he took in his surroundings after getting to his feet; The blanket of thick snow covering the ground and the white-dusted trees. It was only then that the echidna realised that he was not alone. There was a fox and a surprisingly familiar blue hedgehog Mobian standing near the door of a large dwelling, as well as two who Knuckles believed to be human.
How was Sonic here? Like everyone else in the village, he had thought the moustached human had killed him and a fox kit. But here the hedgehog was, seemingly living on a snow world, and clearly not dead.
They all relocate inside. Knuckles was apprehensive but joined them nonetheless (he was getting uncomfortably cold standing out in the snow, not that he would tell any of them that).
Maddie and Tom ask Knuckles questions, both more generic ones such as where had he come from and slightly more intimate ones such as did he have a way to get back and how did he know Sonic?
Once they had gotten answers that satisfy them, and the questions are over and done with, Tom invited Knuckles to spend the night at the house. It’s clear that he has nowhere to go, unexpected arrival to this planet and all, and the couple wasn’t about to throw a teenager out into the snow. Even if he was an alien. They wouldn’t throw someone that young out at all unless they posed a threat to their family’s safety. The echidna turned it down, claiming that he will be fine outside (despite knowing fully well that he would not be). The topic was dropped, even though both humans were concerned and didn’t completely believe him when he said he would be alright outside.
Everyone dispersed to different parts of the house not long after that. Maddie went off to her and Tom’s room to call her sister and niece. Tom cleaned up the loungeroom from the standard Christmas morning mess. Tails continued to refuse to leave Sonic’s side so all three of them go upstairs to the fox and hedgehog’s room.
Maddie came back downstairs to the living room after finishing up her call.
“I’m not the only one who’s noticed that Sonic seems to know the echidna — Knuckles — right?” Maddie asked as she joined her husband on the sofa.
“No, I noticed it too,” Tom said. “I wonder how they know each other? What’s the history there?”
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, Sonic was about nine-years-old when he and Tails were…taken,” Maddie says, dropping her volume even though the two kids were upstairs. “That’s old enough to form a friendship and remember the friend you made it with and any connected memories,” she added.
While that was correct, it still left two very obvious questions unanswered: why did Sonic and Knuckles know each other? What was the history between them, was it shrouded in good or suffocated in bad?
When the light had long since disappeared from the sky and it moved from afternoon to firmly evening , and dinner had come and passed (although not without its own incidents), none of them is able to convince Knuckles to sleep inside. He is very resolute in his claim that he will be fine outside. They honour that claim, there’s no point in trying to push the matter further, despite the obvious connection between him and one of the sons, Knuckles is still a stranger.
Although the blanket that was folded over the back of the sofa disappears sometime between their conversation about Knuckles sleeping inside and when Tom came downstairs an hour later.
When he looked out the window, the man sees the familiar worn orange of the blanket wrapped around an alien echidna who was sitting just at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the railing.
Even though there hadn’t been all that much snowfall when compared to past Christmases, it was certainly still winter and by association still cold , especially at night time.