Work Text:
Maddie had forbidden Tom from harming the raccoons around their house. Tom was of the mind that raccoons were varmints that didn’t belong around the house. Maddie was of the mind that no matter the messes they made, the outdoors belonged to wild animals first. Inside their house was another matter. When they realized there were raccoons in their crawl space–even squeezing into their basement–Maddie agreed to set some live traps.
Except somehow, someway, the raccoons managed to steal the bait without setting off the traps. Repeatedly. They tested and retested the traps themselves and they worked perfectly. The raccoons were just too smart!
Tom suggested asking Tails for help. Their youngest could probably build something no raccoon on Earth could outsmart. But they had yet to involve their children in the fight. Mostly because Maddie was nervous that if Knuckles, their resident warrior and hunter, knew they had a pest problem she’d one day be presented with an unsolicited pile of raccoon pelts. Besides… Tails would probably build something that sent the raccoons to space. As much as Tom seemed to relish both of these scenarios, Maddie was against them.
She was frustrated, but she was not at Tom’s level. The raccoons were not her enemies. They just had a lot of diseases and parasites that absolutely didn’t belong in her home. And she explained as much to Crazy Carl when Tom brought him over.
Apparently, while trying to catch the ‘Blue Devil’ Carl had become an expert in custom-built live traps… Which was a little disturbing. Maddie asked Sonic if he was okay with Carl being in his space and Sonic looked at her like she was crazy and declared ‘Don’t be weird, Carl and I go way back!’
So Carl came over and built something that Indiana Jones might struggle to get out of and Maddie paid him what he asked: a homemade dessert. The Wachowskis went to bed that night, with Tom and Maddie feeling pretty good that their creature problem would be solved by morning.
They were all woken by what sounded like a metal avalanche.
Ozzie immediately sounded the alarm.
“Carl didn’t say it would be so loud!” Maddie complained as she staggered out of their bedroom. A well-practiced vet instinct had her reaching out and snatching Ozzie’s collar before he could go running ahead. She wheeled him back into the bedroom and shut him in.
The noise was still going.
“Carl didn’t say what would be so loud?” Sonic darted in front of them.
Tails flew after him, fur puffed. “What’s that noise?” He asked.
“Carl set a raccoon trap in the basement!” Tom said, tone bordering on gleeful.
The sound changed. The banging was getting closer. Then it was in the kitchen.
“Oh no, not in my kitchen!” Maddie yelped. She ran down the hall, imagining her kitchen covered in roundworms and leptospirosis and salmonellosis and toxoplasmosis and–
“I’ll get them out!” Sonic dashed ahead of her, Tails in hot pursuit.
“Wait, Sonic they can have–” parvovirus and distemper and “-- rabies !”
But Sonic was already gone. She and Tom rushed to follow. Up ahead, Sonic started cackling. They entered the kitchen just in time to see Knuckles ushering the last of a family of raccoons out the back door. He slammed the door behind them and moved in front of it.
He was, for some reason, covered in fishing line and empty tin cans. The look he leveled on all of them was simultaneously ferocious and sheepish.
For a moment, they all stared at one another. None of them expected for this to be the situation they would face tonight, but here they were. Then Sonic started giggling. Maddie didn’t find the situation that amusing, but Tom was smiling. Tails looked nervously between them all.
“ Knuckles ,” Sonic wheezed between his fingers. “What the hell?!”
***
“So you see,” Knuckles explained. “I did not break my oath to protect this world with you! I merely sided with the raccoons in this instance.”
Maddie frowned as she grabbed another snarl of fishing line from between two of Knuckles’ quills and cut it free. They’d moved him to the dining room while Sonic cleaned the kitchen floor at warp speed. Maddie knelt beside him, painstakingly removing the tangle of line from his quills and wishing she had her surgery lights from the clinic.
Beside her, Tails sat on a dining room chair, occasionally offering Maddie scissors or tweezers as she needed. Maddie tugged a strand out of Knuckles’ quills and Tom held out the trash bag for her to drop it in. Ozzie had gone back to sleep, but this time beneath the dining room table so he could still feel included.
Sonic snapped another picture with his phone and Maddie shot him a Mom Look™. Beside her, Knuckles offered a less potent, but still effective Knuckles Glare™. Sonic was really close to being assigned the second fishing line snipper and put to work digging through Knuckles’ quills.
“So you’re the reason the raccoons were getting out?” Tom clarified. “Why?!” He shook the trash bag as he gestured his confusion.
“Why were you so determined to capture them?” Knuckles asked petulantly.
“Because they carry diseases and parasites,” Maddie answered.
“That can get inside your brain,” Tom tacked on.
“Yes. Really bad parasites.”
“Oh,” Knuckles frowned consideringly. “Well… that’s not their fault.”
“Yes, that's why we were going to capture them and release them elsewhere ,” Maddie explained, exasperated. “Now they might come back. And they walked through the kitchen . Knuckles, we eat here!”
“I didn’t know all of that!” Knuckles crossed his arms and looked away, inadvertently tugging some fishing line out of Maddie’s hands. “I have been captured before and I was never once released safely elsewhere!”
“Whoa, whoa, wait.” Sonic held up his hands to signal for a time out. “How many times have you been captured?”
Knuckles threw out his arms. “I just said ‘many times’!” Maddie clicked her tongue as he once again tugged a fishing line out of her fingers. She wasn’t sure how Crazy Carl was planning on them getting a raccoon out of all this… But it probably would’ve worked on the Blue Devil.
“Yeah, and I asked how many?”
“I don’t know!” Knuckles shrugged. “I was caught by scavengers on my homeworld. I escaped.” He shifted his arm as Maddie plucked at a stray string. “Then again in Sandopolis by the Dingo Regime–” He paused and actually spat on Maddie’s dining room floor before carrying on as if nothing had happened. “Then I went to Prison World and then the arena–”
“Wait.” Tails perked up beside her. “Prison World?” That’s… Knuckles, that's just prison . You weren’t captured, you were arrested!”
Maddie paused her work and leaned back, both brows raised. Knuckles didn’t look defensive or ashamed as she might expect. He looked thoughtful. Like it hadn’t occurred to him that being put in prison was a result of his own actions.
“Uh… I think we are getting off topic.” Tom said. “The raccoons–”
“No, I think we’ve found a disturbing new topic…” Maddie said.
“Arrested?” Sonic gasped. “Actually, why am I gasping? I’m not even surprised! What did you get arrested for? Was it something cool?”
Tom and Maddie both gave him a disapproving look. Knuckles just shrugged. “They didn’t say there was a reason, so I assumed it was a normal ‘capture the echidna’ situation.”
Maddie forgot her task entirely as she crossed her arms. There were a lot of things wrong with that statement but first and foremost: “Yeah, there’s no such thing as a ‘normal’ capturing situation.”
“There is for me.”
“Wasn’t there a trial?” Tom asked. “Did you get a lawyer?”
“No. And I don’t know what that is.”
“What about a sentencing hearing?” Tom persisted. “Did they tell you how long you’d be in prison?”
“No.”
Tom looked between Sonic and Tails before settling on Tails. “So, was there just… no justice system? Not even a really flawed one?”
“Oh!” Tails started. He fiddled with the tweezers in his hands. “Um… well, we definitely had a really flawed justice system where I’m from but… Well, a lot of planets use Prison World and not all of them work the same.”
Maddie thought that was the most flawed part of the system then.
“How old were you?” Sonic asked suddenly.
Maddie looked to Sonic, surprised at the question. Then she looked to Knuckles, who once again, looked thoughtful. She was forcibly reminded that despite Knuckles’s deep voice and the way he carried himself, he was a teenager. He must have been even younger when he was arrested.
“I don’t know,” Knuckles said. He glanced at Tails and stared at him a moment. “Around your age I think. It was not long after I lost my tribe… and the uniforms we had to wear! Mine was the smallest they had and it was still too large.”
Oh, Maddie hated that. A glance at Tom confirmed he was feeling the same revulsion.
Knuckles just shrugged though. “Honestly I could have been arrested for anything. I had no money. Anything I needed, I stole.”
“Valid,” Sonic cut in while Tails nodded along.
“Not to mention all the places I broke into in search of the Master Emerald. I never found it, of course, but you can trade jewels for food so–”
“Knuckles, did you rob jewelry stores ?” Tom gasped like a pearl-clutching church marm.
Knuckles nodded matter-of-factly. “And the homes of wealthy individuals.”
“Nice. Eat the rich,” Sonic said.
Knuckles did a whole body pause, eyes widening. “Uh…… I did not–”
“Figure of speech! Not literally!” Sonic said quickly. “Don’t worry about it. Carry on!”
“Maybe that’s why you got arrested?” Tom proposed, getting them back on track. “Rich people really don’t like being robbed.”
Well, nobody did, but Maddie got what he meant. She could see some snobby rich person sending a little kid to jail for spite.
“No…” Knuckles shook his head, his expression still thoughtful. “No, now that I have context, the people who took me to Prison World must have been law enforcement agents. The Dingos–” he spat again, “--took me from Sandopolis to another world with the intent of selling me, but I got loose and killed them. Then the police came and I destroyed a lot of their vehicles. So… it was probably either the killings or the vehicle damage.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully.
The statement was met by a resounding silence. Tom stared at Knuckles like he’d just grown a second head. Sonic looked like he was mentally flipping through how he could spin this so it didn’t look so bad. Tails stared at his shoes, clearly regretting bringing any of this up.
Maddie tried to emotionally undo the knot in her stomach. It disturbed her to learn Knuckles had killed people. Maybe this was somewhat offset by the fact the people he’d killed had been planning on selling him, she wasn’t sure. She loved watching her hashtag girlboss favorite characters kill off everyone who wronged them, but in real life? Her feelings were way more complex. Further complicating things was how disturbingly callous he was about what he’d done. Like taking lives meant nothing .
“I have said the wrong thing,” Knuckles’ eyes narrowed.
“No, no!” Sonic tried, waving his hands like he could dispel the bad vibes. “I mean…” He winced. “Kinda? Just! You might not want to mention k-wording people around anyone other than us, okay? The average person on Earth doesn’t have a body count so… yeah.”
Knuckles was unimpressed. “I do have a significant ‘body count’,” he emphasized. “Killing was part of my life.”
Sonic chuckled nervously, his eyes darting to every member of the family and back to Knuckles. “Well, if we ever need a hit man…” He visibly suppressed a wince at his own bad joke.
Knuckles eyes narrowed to slits. “You will find someone else,” he said sharply. They all tensed as he stepped into Sonic’s space, towering over him. “I will not be used as a weapon by my tribe. If killing is necessary in my mission to protect the Emerald or this planet then so be it, but never by a whim or for your amusement!”
“Okay! Okay, bad joke. Sorry.” Sonic took several steps back, holding up his hands in surrender. “We wouldn’t really ever ask you to kill anyone.”
“The opposite actually,” Tom cut in. “No killing anyone on Earth ever.”
Knuckles’ eyes slid to the side. “What if I have… already possibly killed some people on Earth?”
“What?!” Tom gasped, dropping the trash bag.
“Knuckles!” Maddie yelled.
“They could be alive!” Knuckles said quickly. “Two disappeared, I don’t know where… but possibly to the next life. The third, I simply did not check if he was alive or not.”
“You killed three people?!” Tom threw up his hands.
“Did you not listen to what I just said? I don’t know for certain!”
“When?” Sonic demanded. “ Where ?”
“What happens in Reno, stays in Reno.”
“Wha–” Tom sputtered. “At the bowling tournament?”
“Where was Wade?” Maddie asked. “Does he know?”
“What happens in Reno–”
“Nuh-uh.” Maddie held a finger up in front of Knuckles face so she knew he was on thin-fricking-ice. “Does Wade know?”
Knuckles sighed the most teenager-like sigh. “ Yes . He was there when it happened.”
“Oh my god,” Maddie said, turning to Tom. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You just said that’s a bad thing!”
“I’m not actually going to kill him! Because killing is bad!”
“Wait, wait, hang on!” Sonic zipped forward to stand between Knuckles and the rest of them, spinning his hands like he could physically rewind the conversation. “ Wade saw you maybe kill some people and he was just… fine with it?” He turned around and looked between Tom and Maddie to see if they understood the significance of this.
“Well… sort of.” Knuckles rumbled. “They were trying to sell me. Or use me for some sort of weapon?” He shrugged like this was no big deal.
Wade was dead. He was so dead.
“He acknowledged that it was a difficult situation. Then the Whipple matriarch, Wendy, was concerned that if they went to any sort of authorities, that I would not be able to claim self-defense since I do not legally exist and have no ‘legal protections’.” He scowled at the memory. “Apparently my strength is not enough protection because it is ‘different’. She was quite sure I would be imprisoned in a government laboratory forever.” He held out his mitts and shrugged once again. “We all agreed to leave Reno in Reno.”
The Wachowskis sat with that for a moment. Knuckles was right. He wasn’t just an illegal alien he was an illegal extra-terrestrial . There was no justice system to represent him here. Not even a really flawed one. Just like that world that asked no questions and threw a little kid in jail for killing his captors, he would likely wind up in some G.U.N. holding cell.
Assuming they didn’t know and hadn’t already let it slide.
“Okay,” Tom broke the silence. “From now on. Avoid killing people at all costs. Like never, ever, ever do it. If you’re in trouble like you were in Reno, you call us okay? Call your tribe.”
“The family that slays together,” Sonic muttered under his breath.
“Sonic,” Maddie admonished.
“I mean, Dad’s right! Sonic said. “We’re stronger together. There’s nothing we can’t fix–in a non-lethal way–if we work together.”
Tails nodded beside him. “We all look out for each other,” he said.
Some of the tension eased from Knuckles’ shoulders. “That is agreeable,” he said. “I am a proud echidna warrior and always will be! But… I do not want killing to be a part of my life. Not even our neighbors, the raccoons.”
Maddie let out a breath. He’d been so casual before that she’d been afraid… But no, he’d been casual about stealing too. To him it was the same: stealing to eat. Killing to escape. Just parts of his life. Parts that he didn’t want or need anymore. Just so long as the Wachowskis could keep their promise to stay by his side and protect him as his tribe.
She readjusted to kneel before him. “I promise, it won’t be,” she said. She took his hand because she felt she should and gave it a squeeze. “No more stealing for food. No more being captured. No more killing, okay?”
Knuckles stared at her hand. He never fully relaxed, but she did see a degree of tension ease from his shoulders. He offered her a small, almost wistful smile. There was a part of him that didn’t believe her. But he wanted to. “I would like that.”