Work Text:
Knuckles woke up feeling all too warm for his liking, the basement window's light streaming onto him. It was far past dawn. The echidna struggled to prop himself from the pillow nest he made, limbs uncharacteristically trembling. While Knuckles peeled the blankets off of him, his head began to ring. A high-pitched, painful ring that he couldn't cease even when he banged his head against the floor.
He shakily got up, almost hearing drops of sweat hit the smooth concrete floor. His vision blurred and his head felt all too light for the rest of his body but he dare not faint. He used the beam in the center of the room to steady himself and push back the nausea just enough to get out of the chaos-forsaken basement. Knuckles struggled up the stairs, tremors wracking his steps. Could he even make it?
The echidna grasped the doorknob for stability and weakly turned it. He hated feeling weak. The door swung open with an uncomfortably loud creak, momentarily silencing the chatter from the kitchen. Knuckles set a foot down on the hardwood floor and heard his mother's cheery voice from the kitchen, greeting him good morning and noting how late he woke. As if he wasn't already embarrassed.
His brother Sonic, talking a mile a minute, offhandedly greeted him before returning to the latest trends or game or movie that Knuckles would never fully understand. Tails had one hand delicately scooping cereal into his mouth and the other brainstorming how to better fortify his (stolen) biplane. He dropped his pencil for but a moment to reach behind him and wave to the echidna.
He shot a weak smile to the three, stuttering his way to the kitchen table. He was just hungry, if he got some food he'd feel better. Knuckles got about halfway there and resisted queries from his mother about his condition when he felt a heavy shudder and he felt gravity crushing him down. He heard only a yell and the thud of the floor on his head before his vision went pitch black.
__________________
Light peered through Knuckles' eyelids, in every color imaginable. He didn't want to open them, for fear of being blinded. But when he did, the beams softened to a gentle glow as he felt himself plunge into what felt almost like an ocean, but full of air. He had these types of dreams before, especially since he came to Earth. The light refracted through nothing as he felt a breeze wrap his body. It felt different.
Knuckles became acutely aware of a static tone he had heard once when his father hit the wrong button on the "remote". It was a constant volume, never growing louder than a mumble. The wind grew faster and louder, joining the static in its own little symphony.
In the whistling he heard a voice familiar to him. A woman's voice he remembers only hearing when he was young. Was this the Master Emerald? The void he found himself in dimmed to a pitch black and the beams of light centered into one. The voice uttered a single sentence, one that held such weight it was impossible to ignore or accept without question.
"You are a woman."
__________________
Knuckles bolted up in bed, met with a soothing whisper that could only come from their mother. They laid back down and felt a cold towel-like item press on their head, an ice pack. It felt good against their pounding head. Knuckles was about to ask what happened, when Tails bounded over in the way only an eight year old could and held him as tight as he could with such little arms. He was swatted away by his mother, on the grounds that "your brother needs to rest."
It felt weird.
Oh, right. The dream. It had told them that they were a woman, and they supposed that when anyone called them otherwise it would cause some level of discomfort. Knuckles needed the Master Emerald, it would give them the answers they needed. About to speak, they realized how dry and painful their throat was. They instead pointed to the locked safe where the Emerald was, then to their throat. Luckily, Healer Maddie understood and got up to grab it. She input the code and gently lifted out the green jewel, the light from the window refracting into it as she moved. She gently set it next to them and pet their head, ruffling crimson fur in her wake.
Mother whispered an order to get some rest when she left the basement, but Knuckles could do no such thing. Not when they needed answers. The Master Emerald sat in front of them, and they held it and made an attempt to tap into the powerful Chaos within the gem. Moments later, a voice echoed in their head. The woman's voice from before.
"Did you not hear me? You are a woman."
Immediately, Knuckles opened her eyes that she didn't remember closing. She looked around her room, then down at herself. She felt the same as she did before. The echidna had heard of people like this, born one way but feeling another. In almost every case, they had felt uncomfortable in their bodies before cosmetically changing them. But Knuckles somehow felt… better about her body. As if, this time around, it was better made to suit her like it hadn't before.
She trusted the Master Emerald's judgment, and if it told her that she was a woman in her spirit, she believed it. The only discrepancy between her own realization and others was the previously unreasonable discomfort. She had felt no discomfort in her body or the way people referred to her before the dream. Did this mean she wasn't really a woman like the Emerald says? She would have to go to another woman for help, and the only one nearby was Healer Maddie. Regrettably.
__________________
This worried Knuckles. While she had heard inspiring and powerful stories of social rebirth and becoming your true self, she had also heard stories of those hurt by people they thought they could trust. Most concerningly, getting kicked out of their home. What if the Wachowskis were like that? What if Mother was like that? She had just begun to get comfortable, getting used to calling Sonic and Tails her brothers and calling Maddie and Tom her parents. So.. if they shunned her, she would simply leave. It would be easy, just take a bag of rings and the Emerald.
After planning a possible escape, she picked up her phone and texted Maddie to ask her to come down, her large gloves and the shakiness of her hands not helping in the slightest to convey the actual message. Soon enough, Knuckles heard the door open and Healer Maddie appeared next to her within a minute. She sat down next to the pillow nest, worry staining her gorgeous face.
"Knuckles, baby, what's wrong? Do you need anything?"
The echidna took a deep breath in, and when it hurt her, she took a sip of the previously discarded glass of water. Feeling much better, she began to speak in a dry voice, throat filed and rasped like wood. It was very deep, but she barely minded like she used to.
"What does it mean when…you are born as one thing, one sex, but when you are older, you wish to change it?"
Maddie's face turns from worry to surprise in a split second. Knuckles couldn't see this, though, for she refused to make eye contact and see her mother's reaction.
"Well, I don't know what you called it back on your planet, or if you even publicly had it, but here we call it being transgender."
"Really?"
Knuckles hears the comforting tone of her mother's voice and finally meets her eyes, tears threatening to fall. Maddie's face is adorned with a gentle smile that her whole family loves, and Knuckles' fear is immediately gone.
"Yes."
"If a person doesn't feel any discomfort in their body or what people call them, can they still be.. 'transgender'?"
Trying the word out on her tongue, her mother took both of her hands, avoiding the echidna's spikes.
"Yes, they can still be transgender. Everyone's experience with their gender and how they choose to express it is very different. Like how some boys prefer wearing pants, and some prefer wearing dresses."
Now it's time for the big question that would determine whether or not Knuckles would be allowed to stay here. It wasn't the direct question that she would usually ask, but in this case, dancing around the topic was much safer than getting straight to the point.
"If..if I had a friend who was… transgender… and I wanted them to come over to 'hang out' very often, like Sonic does with his friends, would they be allowed in the house?"
"Of course. As long as they're nice to everyone, even Ozzie, any friend of yours is allowed in the house. But.."
Maddie paused. The echidna's blood ran cold.
"..I have this feeling that you aren't talking about a friend, are you?"
Knuckles averted her eyes and felt her face grow hot. If she cried, she'd be kicked out for sure. But when Healer Maddie grabbed her shoulder and turned her daughter's face towards her own, she had the sweetest smile you could comprehend and started to stroke her cheek with her thumbs. Knuckles didn't care anymore. She let the tears fall and let her mother hold her in her arms while she sobbed.
"Please don't make me leave."
"Oh baby. I would never. I wouldn't kick you out if you were my son, my daughter, my child, whatever you wanna be."
Knuckles simply cried onto her shoulder, now turning to tears of joy. She could stay.
__________________
After a couple minutes of soothing from her mother, the sobs transitioned slowly into mere hiccups and sniffles, and the fear of rejection was a thing of the past. Still curled up, her mother asked her a question.
"So you're a girl? If you don't mind me asking, when did you find out?"
"Today, actually. The Master Emerald gave me a strange vision, where a voice I barely recognize told me I was a woman. And when I held it again, the voice came back and just told me again."
Maddie hummed in response, kissing her new daughter's forehead and holding her close. It seemed a little strange, the way that Knuckles had learned of this. The fever, dizziness, and nausea had all seemed to subside.
"I'm glad you told me, sweetie. But I have a few more questions."
Knuckles twirled to look up at Maddie.
"What are they? I'd be happy to answer any questions you have."
Maddie tapped her daughter on the nose in response.
"Do you want to change your name?"
She thought for a minute.
"No. I like my name. It means something to me."
Her mother kissed her child, the red one, on the forehead. "Perfect, then we'll only have to call you a girl. Easy peasy."
"Yes. Easy."
————————————
Knuckles sat in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror, her mother tugging at her quills.
"When will you be finished? They were fine as they were.."
They were being tied into a loose, high ponytail that Knuckles seemed to like on other girls. But if it takes this much work, it might not be worth it..
"Because it's summer, sweetie. You're gonna burst into flames with all this soft stuff on your neck."
Maddie kissed the crown of her eldest's skull when she finished, hair tie scrunched around thick red quills.
"And it was worth it, wasn't it? You look gorgeous, hon."
She did, in fact, look gorgeous. Before this wonderful ordeal, many people had lied about such a fact and claimed that Knuckles was a handsome young man and that she reminded them of her father. Incorrect. She would never be so weak as to resemble her father.
The people that mattered claimed she looked like her mother.
And they were very much right.