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Sonic couldn't pinpoint the exact moment the thought bloomed in his brain even if he wanted to. He thinks the seed of it had been planted long, long ago, perhaps from the moment he was born. It's only now, though, that it's been allowed to grow.
When living alone in a cave, there is a lot of time to think. Too much time, in his opinion. That is the main source of sustenance for the thought, the water that’s strengthening its roots and helping it spread its leaves, reaching up, up towards the sky.
The thought is simple: he wishes he were a boy.
Even just referring to himself as a he , a recent development, and only within his head, feels refreshing somehow. A gulp of fresh, cool water in a barren desert.
It's invigorating, but it’s more than that. It's life saving, because he’s finally himself.
There's no one he can discuss these thoughts with, so he takes it upon himself to research them. He sneaks into Green Hills' pitifully small library after dark, using their computers and borrowing books on the matter to take back to his cave. (He'll return them eventually, he's sure.)
He thumbs through the pages of the books at lightning speed, every last sentence backing up his thoughts and feelings.
He feels like a boy, and these books back it up. It's called being transgender, apparently. Just knowing that what he’s experiencing is normal enough to be named sets his heart fluttering within his chest. He’s not alone in his experiences, despite how alone he is in this world.
The books tell him more. They tell him that he doesn't just feel like a boy - he is a boy. It’s more than he could’ve dared to dream for.
Sonic can't change much about himself to affirm his new discovery. The books tell him he can, even offering suggestions. The first is changing clothes, to fit your style more. He doesn't wear clothes, though, so that's a no-go.
...However, he does wear shoes. So Sonic decides to change those up, to mark his change somehow. It's impossible for clothes and shoes to have gender, he knows that.
It doesn't stop him from feeling wicked in his new kicks (not borrowed, this time, but in his defence they were just left lying around on the floor! How could he not?) He finds himself admiring them every time he looks down at his feet. Even when running, when his feet are just a vague blur, they look awesome.
More than that, though, they look masculine, which makes them feel like his. Like him.
Sonic goes so far as to change the spines that protrude from his back. The books talk about gender-affirming haircuts, and this is as close as he'll get to that.
He borrows this thing called hair gel from a barber shop in town, and uses copious amounts of it to shape his spines. They become more clumped together, as well as more pointed and defined under his ministrations, and that alone makes him feel infinitely more like himself.
He finds a mirror thrown out, and adds it to his cave. He stands before it, and with all his new changes, he feels like himself.
Yet, despite it all: the changes he's made, the new him he’s created, at the end of the day there's still a gaping hole in his chest. There is no one he can share this with, no one to smile and call him him to his face. No one to celebrate the new him.
That's what brings his thoughts back to Longclaw. If he could tell anyone, he would tell her, but she's the one person he can't tell.
She’s worlds away.
He holds the golden rings she gave him in his hands sometimes, flipping them over and over between his fingers. He considers how easy it would be to just throw one, to envision his home and have it appear right in front of him. To step through it, return home, return to her, and tell her everything.
There are so many things from his childhood that just make sense now, previously murky and unexplained events becoming clear. He wishes he could explain them to her, too.
Sonic remembers when he used to hate the colour pink. He didn't actually hate it. It was - it still is - rather pretty, actually. He remembers admiring it in the flowers that grew by Longclaw's window, silently enthralled.
He would sometimes stare at those flowers when worn out, admiring the way they swayed in the gentle breeze from the window. The way the sunlight illuminated them perfectly, a warm glow encasing them.
One day, Longclaw noticed his obsession with them, and draped a wing around his shoulders.
"They're pretty, aren't they?" she asked with a soft smile, tilting her head slowly. "Do you like them because they're pink?"
Sonic thinks his face lit on fire. He despised being seen as being girly in any way. He knows now just didn't want to be seen as a girl, but he obviously didn't recognise that desire at the time. He sees it now, though; that he didn't want to be associated with femininity in any way, thus he performed a hatred for pink.
"Ew!" he remembers saying snootily, shoving Longclaw away playfully. "No! My favourite colour is green!"
She had looked mildly hurt, face crumbling like a ball of paper from the over-the-top reaction. She didn't push the subject.
Now, Sonic is kicking himself for it. He craves her presence more than anything, a soothing balm even back then.
He misses her so much it hurts. A desperate ache within his chest, longing just to see her, one more time.
If he could have even more, he’d wish for a chance to explain everything - why he did what he did back then, and how he feels now.
Sonic wonders if she'd be okay with it. If she'd embrace him, telling him she loved him anyway, or if she'd push him away.
Either way, it's never happening, he scolds himself internally. So drop it.
───── ✿ ─────
Despite the significance of the realisation, nothing hugely changes with Sonic’s life. He’s a boy, and he knows it, but no one else does. Aside from the changes within his own mind - it turns out, rewiring the entire way you think of yourself is hard, no matter how much every part of you wants to. He even misgenders himself sometimes, which is crazy - nothing is different in his day to day.
His life doesn’t stay the same forever, though. Thanks to the force of his sheer stupidity, things change for the worse.
It starts with his emotions getting the better of him. To overcome them, Sonic finds himself doing what he does best: running.
Running has been the one constant companion in his life. Between different worlds, different dangers, between changing genders it has always been there. It’s his everything, from a talent he possesses to probably the only thing keeping him sane.
He runs to calm himself down, and today is no different.
Today, Sonic runs full pelt, throwing himself around and around in an endless loop. The pounding of his feet against the ground is the only thing holding him together, peeling duct tape desperately trying to piece him together.
Until it can’t anymore.
He leaps into the air, entirely unravelling, and something explodes out of him. All he can see is a blinding flash of blue, and when he lands back on the ground, everything is pitch black.
A giant surge of energy, his energy, just shut off all the lights.
“I’m sure no one will notice that,” he says aloud, eyes still wide from shock. “Right?”
Things only go downhill from there, because people did notice that. He’s discovered, thrust back in danger once more, and that means he’ll have no choice but to leave Earth.
His heart aches as he sprints to a safer place to use his rings, taking in his last lungfuls of this planet’s air, drinking in his last view of this planet’s magnificent sights. Forests laden with trees will be a distant memory, a longed-for dream when he ends up on the mushroom planet.
Except things go from worse, to even worse.
He loses the rings. The rings Longclaw entrusted to him, the rings that were his only escape-
Gone. Lost, because of him.
There is minor relief, however. He finally gets to talk to Doughnut Lord, a man he’s admired from the shadows for years. He offers (albeit incredibly reluctantly, and only after Sonic guilt trips him) to help him out.
Their road trip is long, and it’s awkward at first. It somehow begins to melt away, however, and by the time they arrive at a hotel to stay for the night, Sonic is finally ready to speak up.
“I’m a guy, by the way,” he asserts. “Not a girl.”
Tom blinks, clearly processing his words and their implications. Sonic finds himself holding his breath as he waits for him to speak.
Tom’s face turns warm as he does so, melting away Sonic’s worries entirely.
“I didn’t think you were. A girl, that is.”
Sonic puffs his chest up, grinning wildly at the statement. It was the first reaction he’s ever had from telling someone about himself, and it was the best he could’ve asked for.
Sonic, perhaps naively, thinks that’s that. He’s confident in who he is, and with the help of Tom and Maddie, everyone else knows who he is. When new people, Tails and Knuckles, join their family, he makes sure they know, too.
He’s had his realisation, and now he knows who he is.
At least, that’s what he thinks.
───── ✿ ─────
Sonic is proven wrong the day he, Tails, and Knuckles are called in by G.U.N. for an emergency. He isn’t worried, not really; with his team, he has no doubt they’ll be able to easily stop the threat.
That is, he isn’t worried until they land.
He’s never seen anything like the destruction he faces now. Cars are overturned everywhere, fires rage, dotted around the city. Glass is shattered, lights are flickering, people are running in all directions, and dread begins to pool in his stomach.
“Keep your eyes open,” he warns the others. “Tails, are you getting anything?”
“I am, and it’s not good,” he replies, eyes widening as he stares at the device in his hand. “These energy readings are off the chart-”
Tails doesn’t get to finish his explanation, though. Without warning, a huge dark mass is falling through the air, right towards them.
Sonic is the fastest, and thus the first to notice it, calling out a warning to the others.
Knuckles is the first to react, though, reaching upwards to catch the car, before tossing it away from them. They offer the other two a cocky grin, but Sonic’s attention is snatched away from them, and drawn to the person behind them.
Emerging from the fire, with a menacing glare on his face and fists clenched tightly, is another hedgehog.
Sonic’s heart begins to pound frantically in his chest. It should be fear, but in the moment, he can’t identify what it is.
“Woah,” Sonic breathes. “Are you guys seeing this?”
Even he’s not entirely certain what he’s talking about. There’s a magnetic quality to this guy, and Sonic finds he can’t tear his eyes away. Do the others feel it, too?
“Yeah, he looks just like you,” Tails says, eyes just as wide as Sonic’s own.
Now that he’s drawn attention to it, Sonic supposes it’s true. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked as powerful, as majestic, as this hedgehog does, though.
His spines are different from Sonic’s, curled upward at the end. He has red markings around his eyes. His eyes, which are practically screaming murder with the way they pierce into him.
All Sonic can think of, though, is how pretty he is.
Focus, he tells himself. Just subdue him, then maybe G.U.N. will let you talk to him, and find out why your heart is pounding like crazy. Maybe he’ll know.
Sonic doesn’t subdue him, though. He can’t. Even with his team, the failure is swift, and brutal.
The new hedgehog takes them on all at once, without even breaking a sweat. It’s efficient, it’s effortless, and Sonic feels an indescribable heat creeping its way onto his cheeks.
As the hedgehog punches him, sending him spiralling into the dirt, all he can focus on is his eyes. They’re red, strikingly so, and undeniably beautiful.
What on Earth is happening to him?
───── ✿ ─────
“Are you okay?” Tails is the first to ask.
Sonic hesitates before answering, because the truth is that he doesn’t know.
He voices that honestly. “My heart was racing like crazy back there, but it wasn’t fear, because I wasn’t scared. It was all fluttery, and I felt all hot, especially in my face.”
Tails blinks. “Sonic, are you telling me you find the guy who just kicked our butts attractive?”
Sonic’s eyes widen. He hadn’t considered that possibility, but Tails could very well be right. The symptoms all match the ones he sees in movies.
“Maybe? Is that bad?” Sonic asks desperately “He’s a guy, I’m a guy-”
“You’re allowed to like guys, Sonic,” Tails assures him with an awkward chuckle.
“Well, duh, but I really thought I liked girls,” Sonic explains, burying his face in his hands.
“You don’t have to only like one,” Tails tells him earnestly. “You can like both.”
“I do know that. I think?” Sonic says slowly, shaking his head to try and clear his mind. “I just didn’t know I liked both. This changes things.”
“Does it?” Tails asks.
His voice isn’t pressing or accusing, but it stops Sonic in his tracks all together. He makes eye contact with Tails, urging him to continue.
“So, your label is different now. But it’s not like you’ve been lying to yourself or anything; that label worked for a time, and now it’s been proven to be incorrect. So change it, and move on,” Tails advises.
“It really isn’t different,” Sonic says aloud. He didn’t think of it like that at first, but he supposes it’s true. The word he describes himself is different, but it doesn’t really change him, at his core.
“You’re right, as always,” Sonic admits begrudgingly. “It just feels weird. I thought I knew who I was, you know?”
Tails blinks. “You don’t have to have your whole life and identity sorted out yet. Or ever, really; just keep being you, until that feels wrong. If it ever does, then you can just change the definition of what it is to be you.”
They share a small smile, Sonic’s heart finally slowing down. The beat feels more assured now, along with its newfound steadiness.
“Thanks, Tails,” Sonic tells him honestly.
“You’re welcome. I am going to tease you for having your gay awakening be with an enemy, though,” Tails tells him easily.
Sonic audibly groans, but the warmth he feels inside doesn’t fade, not even slightly.