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Tangle sits down next to Fiona. The fox doesn't speak at all, and the lemur lets the silence linger. The quiet is painful, but Tangle isn't going to force her to say anything. She's content to just sit there. It probably fifteen minutes before Fiona finally speaks.
"Okay, what the hell do you want, lemur?" Her words are crass, angry. Tangle's first instinct, based on almost any time they'd interacted before, is to retaliate, but she doesn't. Instead, she takes a deep breath.
"Before, when I offered a chance to get away from that whole villain life, you said no. You said there was no going back from what you’ve done,” Tangle began to explain.
“Uh, I know that. I know what I said,” Fiona snapped. She punctuated her words with a scoff and an eye roll.
“Why did you say it?”
“What? I said it because-”
“Why did you really say it?” Tangle emphasized the word really. “Was it because you didn’t want to, or you couldn’t for your own sake? Or was it because you weren’t allowed to?”
“Hold- What the hell are you talking about?” Fiona’s voice was harsh, but in a different way than normal. She sounded like she was accusing Tangle of something.
“The green hedgehog,” Tangle answered. “The one with the big scar on his chest.”
Fiona stood up and turned to face Tangle, to look down on her. “Oh, no, you leave that out of this, my relationship is none of your-”
“I saw how he treats you. It’s unfair.”
Fiona pauses. She blinks. In confusion, she blinks again. She sits back down, in front of the lemur this time, and tries to understand what she was saying as she looks down at her own hands. She comes short.
“What the fuck are you talk- the fuck would you know?” Fiona challenges aggressively. It takes effort on Fiona’s part not to snap back at her, but she manages to maintain her cool.
“He reminds me of my parents. They weren’t great, you know? They were so dang controlling and spiteful. Everything had to be their way, how they saw things, it had to be perfect. You weren’t allowed to mess up at all,” Tangle explained. Fiona fell silent. She didn’t know why, but she listened. “At first it was fine. I told myself I was fine, cause they didn’t hit me. I could endure it, sticks and stones. But their words always cut deep. I had to trust them, they were my parents, and that made what they said seem like… like religion. Like objective truth and reality.”
Fiona’s eyes lift up to meet Tangle’s. They’re softer now than they were seconds ago.
“But that only lasted so long. The hitting came. Never when anyone could see it, but it happened. I tried to convince myself it was me, that I had to endure it because it’s what I deserved, it’s what I brought on myself. Jewel—you remember my friend Jewel, right? Jewel hated it, she could always tell something was wrong, but I couldn’t. I genuinely couldn’t see anything was wrong at all. I thought it was normal.” Tangle gulps and takes a deep breath, trying to keep herself calm as she recollects. “I was just a kid. I still loved them. Why wouldn’t I? What kid doesn’t wanna trust their parents? It wasn’t until I came out to them, and they kicked me out, it wasn’t until I finally got away, that things began to change.
“Jewel and her mom took me in. They showed me what healthy love was like. Familial, platonic, but healthy love. And I began to understand it wasn’t my fault. And I got angry for awhile. I was angry with myself, I hated myself. I hated how I didn’t understand, how I didn’t respect myself enough to actually try to make a case for myself, and ironically, I didn’t even understand that in doing so, I was treating myself with just as much respect as I did before.” Tangle chuckles bitterly.
“Why are you talking to me about this?” Fiona asks. She sounds genuine at first, then almost like a defense mechanism—something Tangle is more than familiar with—she continues with aggression. “I mean, really, what makes you think I’d give even- even half a shit about your past? Why should I care even remotely about anything you’re saying?”
“Cause you’re the same way, aren’t you?” Tangle can tell her words pierce right through the fox by the way she clams up. She waits a moment for a response, but none comes. Fiona looks back down at the ground. “It’s probably a combination of things, isn’t it? He’s hurting you, he’ll hurt you even more if you try to leave, and you feel like you deserve that hurt because of what you’ve done to others.”
“I… I still don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Fiona grumbles. Tangle gives her a chance to continue, but Fiona doesn’t say anything else.
“It’s… not, really. I’m not here to ask you to tell me anything, though. I’m not asking you to open up, or even to be my friend. I’m asking you to understand something,” Tangle replies. It’s striking just how calm she’s being, how serious she is. “Mobians on our side of things, we only validated how you felt about yourself, didn’t we?”
“What, like… You and the sugar queen and all your dumb hero friends? Yeah,” Fiona answers quickly. “Yeah, because what the hell did it matter what I was trying to do, right? I was only ever going to be just another villain to you all.”
“That was unfair,” Tangle responds softly. Fiona scoffs.
“Oh, it’s unfair of me to call out how you all act and feel? It’s unfair to point out how you all see me?” The fox almost laughs, bitter and full of disbelief.
“No. It’s unfair that you were treated how you were. It’s unfair how my friends treated you before I was in the picture, and it’s unfair how I treated you once I was,” Tangle answers. “You were hated for not being perfect, for not being a perfect victim. You were, really, just like me, just like Lanolin… just like Tails.”
Tangle can’t help but give out a little laugh as she says Tails’ name, the one mobian she Fiona really have in common to any extent at all.
“I hated you so much for how you treated him. And frankly, I’m still right to be upset by it because he’s never been any less of a victim than you, and it was just as unfair how you treated him, but you know? I kinda get it now,” she continued. Fiona scoffed again, a different scoff, one full of genuine incredulity. “You weren’t a perfect victim. You were hurt, and it made you mad, and you did what anyone who gets mad does. You lashed out, you tried to take some control in your life by being mean to others and making them feel a bit of the pain you’ve been through. Gaia knows I did the same for a time, to Jewel and her mom. I was just lucky that they understood and never held it against me. But you didn’t have that. You were met with judgment.
“And then you met him, and he told you that he accepted you and you were perfect the way you are, and like any good lie, there’s a bit of truth in it. Because you weren’t perfect, but you didn’t need to change. You did need to be accepted, and he was the only one that would do so, right?” Tangle finally asks Fiona to confirm something about their relationship.
“You trying to say it’s bad that he acc-” Fiona cut herself off, pausing to think over Tangle’s words again. She sighed. “I mean… yeah. He was great. He let me feel like myself, he let me feel like I didn’t need to be judged.”
“And he was right, in a way. You didn’t need to be judged. You still don’t. But he wasn’t empathetic either.”
“How do you know so much about all this?” Fiona interjects. Her eyes narrow at Tangle suspiciously.
“Aside from getting some good therapy… I’ve seen it happen before. Lano’s situation wasn’t quite the same, but she was hurt, and ended up being manipulated by someone posing himself as an ally. This… well, this asshole, really, Duo,” Tangle explains. Fiona starts to laugh. It’s a genuine, hearty laugh, there’s something truly joyous to it.
“You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve actually ever heard you swear. Don’t tell me I’m rubbing off on you, now!” Fiona’s smile makes Tangle smile in turn.
“Well, if you met Duo, you’d think the same! Well, anyway, Duo joined the Diamond Cutters, but he wasn’t who he appeared to be. His real identity was Mimic the Octopus, and to make a very long story short, Mimic hurt Whisper very badly a while ago. And Whisper, you know, she didn’t take finding out very well. I mean, she didn’t even talk to me about it, and not only are we as close as can be, but I’d also both met and fought Mimic before. And Lano… well, Lano’s mom sucks. I met her once and it was enough. She never really even had friends until Whisper and Jewel and I.
“So imagine how it felt for her when one of her first ever friends didn’t trust her enough to talk to her about our new recruit actually being a shapeshifting jerkface who genuinely wanted us dead? She felt betrayed. She felt unimportant. And all that did was push her into Mimic’s hands, where he could manipulate her and hurt her just the same. And really, she wouldn’t have found out if not for Mimic’s employer outing him accidentally. Who knows where she’d be at this point otherwise?
“And it’s the same for you, right? You weren’t trusted by the ones you wanted to be friends with, the one you wanted to trust and be trusted by. It isolated you. And then he came along, and made you feel trusted. But like with Mimic, it was just to keep you under his thumb,” Tangle concludes.
“I mean… It sounds like your friend was largely… innocent? She didn’t get anyone hurt the way I did,” Fiona replies, shaking her head.
“Are you kidding? She hurt all of us. She hurt me, Whisper, Silver, Sonic, Amy, Tails, Jewel… all of us. We forgave because we knew what Mimic was like, but Mimic himself was a lot more obvious about it once it was all revealed. Seems like your guy does it behind closed doors, right?”
“I mean… it’s not like I’m innocent there either. He hits me, I hit back. It’s mutual,” Fiona continues, still trying to deny any semblance of forgiveness she may be given.
“Would you be hitting him back if he wasn’t hitting you?”
“I don- I don’t know! Maybe!” Fiona pushes herself off the ground abruptly and start to pace as she wonders why she’s even humoring the lemur for this conversation. “You’re acting like I’m some damn saint, some- some innocent little girl that’s not doing anything wrong! Like I’m not responsible for the shit I’ve done! I don’t want you to patronize me like that!”
“No, no, I’m not! Believe me, I still don’t like you because you’re a jerk!”
“So there it is, you don’t actually care, so why even bother talking about this?!”
“You think that just because you’re a jerk doesn’t mean I can care? I thought Lano was just as much of a jerk for what she did but I never stopped caring about her! You think me caring about your safety is reliant on you being some angel that does no wrong? No, you can be the worst, most awful girl I know, but you are being abused, and no one deserves that!” Tangle fires back.
“Who says I’m being abused?” Fiona demands, stepping up to Tangle and towering over the sitting lemur.
“You did! Just now! You said yourself that he hits you!” Tangle stands her ground without standing up. “You’re not a perfect victim, and that’s fine! Neither was Lano! Neither was I? What kind of mobian would I be if I judged for that?!”
“A hypocritical one!”
“Exactly!”
Fiona pauses for a moment. She looks at Tangle in confusion, waiting for her to backtrack, but the lemur doesn’t.
“Are you gonna… You gonna take that one back?”
“Nope,” Tangle answers matter-of-factly. “That’s the right answer. I would be a hypocrite for judging you for that, knowing I was the same way. You’re entirely right.”
“S-So, what, I’m just supposed to believe you’re on my side now?” Fiona questions, trying to bite at Tangle with her words. She’s frustrated when it doesn’t work.
“You can believe what you want. I’m just saying you’re right. I’d be a hypocrite, and anyone who knows what you’ve been through and what you’re going through would be too,” Tangle answers.
“No. No, see, you’re being too kind now. The whole time we’ve known each other, you’ve hated me, there’s no reason to just switch it up now! You’re hiding something, o-or you… you’re tricking me somehow,” Fiona surmises, glaring at Tangle before she starts to pace again. “Just get it over with! Do what you’re gonna do!”
Tangle chuckles. “You know, I know that exact feeling. I can tell you it doesn’t change if the mobian you’re talking to never disliked you, for what it’s worth. I remember dropping a bowl, a glass bowl, while living with Jewel and her mom, and her mom wasn’t mad but I was dead convinced she was. I begged her to just yell at me and call me a name and hit me and get it over with because that’s what I knew.”
Fiona opens her mouth to speak, but she can’t find the words to say. She stops in her tracks as she listens to Tangle speak.
“You what changed? I didn’t see your boyfriend before. I thought you were just being a jerk to be a jerk. And it didn’t help that unlike with Lanolin, we were never friends beforehand. But you’re not. You’re lashing out cause you’re in pain, still. And as much as you feel like yourself, you feel trapped in staying with him.”
“No, no, you saw Scourge before. You can’t tell me you didn’t. You were there when he fought that tenrec, the one with the badass electricity powers? You were there, you saw that,” Fiona challenges her.
“Yeah. I saw her beat him. I saw you try to help him up. I saw how he grabbed your arm and dragged you away. And I saw you had a new scar today, after that,” Tangle explains, confirming the one time she actually did see the green hedgehog. The time so happened to be the last time she and Fiona were in any kind of direct proximity before now. “Not a big one. There’s that small one on your eyebrow. It’s noticeable because of how you tried to hide it. You normally tuck your bangs to the other side of your head.”
Fiona’s left speechless. She touches her face, touches her eyebrow. She clearly hadn’t thought it would be noticeable.
“I do the same thing with my hair. I have this scar on my head that I hide under my bangs. Jewel’s pretty much the only one that knows about it. I get it,” Tangle offers. She lifts her bangs, and sure enough, there’s an old scar that isn’t otherwise visible. It disappears again when she lets go of her hair.
A spark of realization crosses Fiona’s eyes. Her lips stay closed, but her jaw drops a little, unclenching as that understanding washes over her. She sits back down next to Tangle again.
“Shit, you… You really do get it, huh?” Fiona’s question is incredulous, but genuine. It’s as though she has trouble understanding how anyone even could understand. “Like, this whole time, I thought you might’ve still be just talking out of your ass, but you… I mean, that’s the same type of thing. That…”
“Yeah,” Tangle replies with a soft nod and a softer voice.
“So, uh… what now then? I mean… You get it, maybe, but I doubt the rest of your friends do. I doubt the princess does. I mean… I mean it’s still not like I have a place there, with you all,” Fiona stumbles over her words. It’s odd, to Tangle, seeing her so anxious now, but it’s also familiar.
“Well, I imagine Lano would also get it. Tails… might take a bit longer to come around because of how you’ve hurt him, but he probably would too. You’re not alone in this,” Tangle offers.
“I mean… even if. It’s still not like we’re friends,” the fox continues.
“Nope,” the lemur confirms, honest and transparent. “We haven’t gotten that far. But it’s not off the table.”
“I still would be able to get away from Scourge, you know? I can’t just quit the Destructix,” Fiona adds.
“Or he’ll hurt you more?”
“I mean, yeah. He’ll grab me, I’ll push him, he’ll hit me, I’ll hit back, he…” Fiona trails off.
“He won’t get to you. It’s… hard, but starting over is possible. You don’t have to go back to him now. And if he tries to find you and hurt you again, it doesn’t matter how much we’ve fought or how much I’ve ever disliked you. I won’t let him. Lanolin wouldn’t. Even Sonic and Tails and Sally would help.”
“You make it sound so easy.” Fiona scoffs again, but there’s clear pain behind it now that she’s no longer trying to hide.
“It’s not. Believe me, it’s not. Starting over with nothing? It’s going to suck. It’s going to be miserable, and it’s going to hurt. But it’s better than going back to him,” Tangle shakes her head slowly, softly.
The a good chunk of silence again, a good few minutes, though not as long as before the conversation. The first sound to break it isn’t a word this time, it’s a soft cry. Fiona face is in her hands. She stays like that, crying for a couple more minutes, until Tangle pulls her into a side hug.
“I… I don’t know if I can. I mean, through all the bullshit, through everything he’s done, I still… I still love him,” she finally says. “I mean, years of my life, I spent with him, every day. It didn’t matter how much it hurt because I did love him, I do love him.”
“That’s normal. I can’t tell you the number of times I missed my mom and dad, I missed them and loved them so much that I wanted run back to them and apologize and say I was confused, that I didn’t know what I was saying, just to have them in my life again. Love is messy like that,” Tangle explains. “Lanolin still lived with her mom until a couple months ago, when she got a home with the Restoration. And then the Freedom Fighters, after the Restoration HQ was destroyed… again.”
“Again?”
“Again. It’s a long story.”
Fiona chuckles a little. It doesn’t stop her from still crying.
“I don’t know what I’ll do without Scourge. It’s going to be so… empty. It already feels like I’m alone just thinking about it,” she chokes out after a bit.
“It’s definitely going to take some time to feel whole again. But you won’t have to do it alone. I’ll be there for you,” Tangle offers. She brushes her hand comfortingly against Fiona’s shoulder the same way Jewel had done so many times with her. “I’d like to be friends. I’d like to help you get better. And, hey, I know two mobians who are also really good at helping with that. They offered me a home, after all.”
“They won’t get mad at me for being a jerk?”
“They never got mad at me for it, so I think you’re safe,” Tangle answers with a smile. “They’re not the judging kind.”
Fiona nods. Her hands drop from her face and her arms wrap around her knees. She isn’t crying anymore.
“I don’t think I wanna get up yet,” she says.
“That’s okay,” Tangle replies. “We can stay here as long as you’d like.”