Chapter Text
It was the height of summer, and the Sol Empire sang its joy as one.
It'd been a surprise to Sonic the Hedgehog, during idle conversations with Blaze, that her world had broadly similar holidays to his own in many ways. Seasonal things, generally - except that with the differences between his own more landlocked planet and the largely-oceanic places Blaze ruled, the seasons were closer to those found around the equator in Sonic's world. Blaze had named them to him - the annual cycle of Parch, Monsoon, and Storm - and advised him that by far the most pleasant time to visit was at the beginning or end of Parch, when the days were more clement and warm, but without the baking heat that led to what she'd described as 'the blasted water-rationing issue'.
He'd come in the middle of Parch anyway, and for one reason: Blaze had mentioned that their biggest annual celebration, Bright Zenith, happened at that time. From her descriptions, it was treated in many ways the same as his world's Christmas - Bright Zenith was a time for family, generosity, forgiveness of minor slights or debts, and the giving of gifts amid general jubilation. Sounds like a great time, he'd said with a grin. I better think of something to get you. She'd blushed at the time, but then at the end of her visit she'd extended him an invitation. He'd accepted immediately (because, heck, if the thought had stuck in her mind like that, she clearly wanted him to come along) and given in to impulse right then and there. It'd been their first kiss, on the edge of both their worlds, where the boundary had thinned long enough for her to spend the last week and a half.
See you soon, he'd smiled through his own blush, while her face matched his redness. He'd managed not to laugh as she fumbled through her own goodbyes, but after the light of the portal had gone out he'd promptly started panicking. It'd taken weeks of thought, as to what to get her; even after three years of loving each other, her naturally reserved nature sometimes made it difficult to tell what she was thinking. He'd seen her look at a dress in a store window once, and bought it (and she'd looked beautiful in it, too), but it'd been a rare guard-down moment in mid-conversation. Even knowing she lowered those walls more often around him than with others, he remained aware that his own less-than-fantastic sense of insight meant he probably missed more of her signs than he spotted. More than once, he'd considered going to Amy or to Rouge, or even to Vanilla - she had a little more of a conservative kind of style, he reasoned, and so she might have a better idea of what Blaze might want. Amy's more cutesy tastes and Rouge's dedication to her femme-fatale mask meant he wouldn't feel super confident getting advice on something that'd suit Blaze. She was…what was the word? Serene, all cool and calm even when she was mad. It never failed to amaze him how gentle she could be, even when literally fired up.
It didn't help that he hadn't really looked at getting a gift for someone he was romantically interested in before. In the end, he'd decided to pick a single word that described her as completely as he could, and looked for a piece of jewellery that seemed to fit it as closely as possible. With that method, he'd chosen the word Elegance and soon found a necklace, selected as carefully as he could from the options he could lay eyes on. All things considered, he was kind of proud of himself for having discovered and chosen it solo. The real test of courage was going to be giving it to her.
That brought him here, and to today: Blaze's world, holding the flat little box and mumbling something half-coherent through an unexpected but emphatic blush. Blaze, likewise, looked like her face was living up to her name; she hadn't expected a Bright Zenith gift, and her flustered reaction was the only thing keeping Sonic grounded right now. If she couldn't keep a blush of her own back, it probably wasn't that embarrassing if he couldn't either, right? It was too adorable for him to lose focus, anyway.
"Oh, Sonic," she breathed softly, lifting it out into the light: a simple, elegant twist of silver with an opalescent little gem set into the centre of it, that looked almost like an abstract icon of a flower or a sun. In the afternoon sunlight, here in the rooftop garden of Blaze's own palace, it shone nearly as brightly as she did.
"I, uh. I hope it's okay," he began, stricken by a sudden and merciless urge to overthink. "I couldn't figure if gold went better with your fur, and I know it'd match your eyes but silver kinda looked like it'd go better with your favourite coat, you know, the purple one-"
"Sonic," she interrupted him, a gloved finger coming to rest on his lips. He stopped, at last, and looked into a smile like sunlight.
"Yuh?" he asked, lips partly immobile against her fingertip. She removed it, and turned her back to him with a smile.
"Put it on me," she half-whispered, glancing over her shoulder at him, "and then let me tell you why I'm never wearing silver jewellery…"
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Five and a half minutes later, Sonic flopped onto a lounger. Blaze stayed on her feet, tail low, ears angled backward in the anxiety she hadn't expected to feel. Explaining this to Sonic was one thing, but the shock in his reaction was another.
"Proposals?" he reiterated, at last. His eyes met hers, and she nodded once, forlornly.
"As I said, it's an old, old tradition," she began, trying to soften the blow. "I don't…it's clear you didn't know. I wouldn't hold you to it. Of course."
"I mean…I guess, yeah - wait, hold up, I've seen this rom-com before," Sonic blurted, suddenly sitting bolt upright. "This is the part where we misunderstand each other and things get tense. What if we just…didn't do that?" Blaze regarded him owlishly, frozen in indecision and self-doubt, but in a way, this was Sonic's comfort zone: unknowing of what lay ahead, unwilling to guess, and forging a path of his own. "Like…let's just talk about what we're thinking. Want me to go first? You're looking kinda worried, is all, so…"
"Please," Blaze replied, her face beginning to thaw a little as she moved a step or two closer, turning to seat herself on the lounger with him. He cleared his throat briefly, an uncharacteristic hesitation gripping him for a moment before he slipped free of it.
"Okay. So, uh, you're right, I didn't know about the silver-jewellery thing in Sol. It's kinda cool, actually. With us, the guy gets the girl a ring of some sort. Usually gold, and with a diamond. Y'know, traditionally," he added with a lopsided, playful smile, and a brief huff of laughter was her response as she listened. Already, she seemed less frightened; her ears were more forward-perked, and while her shoulders were still a little hunched, she was leaning toward him.
"What if the girl proposes?" she asked him, and he stared at her for a wrong-footed second or two.
"…Good question," he conceded finally. "I dunno, it's…again, traditionally, it's the guy who proposes. If a girl's feeling old-fashioned like that, I guess she just drops hints until he catches on or she's had enough. I should ask Shadow," he added, brightening up. "He'll know, he's from like hundreds of years-"
"-fifty years-" Blaze corrected him, with a smile. He returned it, both of them fully aware he knew it.
"-fifty years ago. Everyone was all about formality back then. Where other people could see them, anyway." He forced himself back on track, before his nerves and high-speed train of thought could escape him properly. "But…yeah. I guess I proposed by accident. But can I say something? And like…please don't be mad, or upset or anything?"
Blaze's ears pinned back again. "I only promise to try," she compromised, but placed a solicitous, reassuring hand on his. He squeezed it, and met her gaze resolutely.
"Now that I know…now that the idea's come up? I wish," he told her simply. "I wish. More than anything. I think I really want to, Blaze. But…" the cat's face fell, from where shock and joy had lit her up for a moment. She nodded, after a second.
"But we can't," she offered, and he nodded too. "Two different worlds…"
"Honestly…I think half my friends would kick my tail if I told them I was holding back for them," Sonic clarified, lacing his fingers with hers. "And the other half would just call me a loser and tell me to go for it, and then be upset later where I couldn't see. But it's not them." He swallowed hard. "It's him."
Blaze's ears dipped, and her gaze lowered with them. "Yes," she acknowledged. "I understood that, early in our time together. Where I have my kingdom, you have your war. As long as he remains…"
"I can't," Sonic finished for her, simply and helplessly. "I'm the core of it. They're all awesome, I'll bet they could totally win, given time…but the thing I hate is I'm idolised about it." Briefly, heat entered his voice, in mid-lament. "Like - like an icon. I ended up as the face of all the resistance against him, and the one time they thought I was gone, they - Blaze, they kinda just fell apart," he sighed. "I can't leave them in the lurch like that again. I can't, and I don't want to." Blaze's hands came up to gently cup his cheeks, bringing his gaze up to hers again.
"You are a leader," she whispered softly, her voice filled with love and promise. "Beloved, and held on high, as a standard. A symbol. Where I stand for the safety of my people, you stand for the freedom of yours. And while my commitment will last all my life, yours need only last all of his. Perhaps one day, you'll be freed of it." She drew him in, and their lips met briefly. "And on that day," she added with a little smile, "perhaps I'll be able to wear this necklace over my clothes, instead of hidden beneath them."
"The day I can be free of him," Sonic whispered, in a tone that mixed wistfulness and hope.
"The day I can say yes," Blaze smiled, drawing him closer and resting her head on his shoulder. His hand found hers again, beneath the bright gold sunshine.
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It was a day or two later, at the edge of Star Light City, that the portal opened again. Sonic hopped through, and turned to extend a gentlemanly hand. Another took it, and Blaze descended the eight or ten inches from the portal's edge to the grass as if stepping out of a carriage. Sonic squeezed her hand, and took a deep breath of the air of his home - and her eyes shone, to see him so in his element.
Behind the bole of a large tree, the beginning of its roots exposed years ago by some soil-scouring flood or another and now moss-covered in themselves, two glowing scarlet optics regarded the pair with unblinking, unceasing vigilance. The predictions had been correct as to the location and time-window of this portal; credit was due. Even potential variations in chronal procession had been taken into account, in that time flowed at a slightly different rate in one universe compared to the other; this had been a hypothesis extended when the Sol Dimension's ruling monarch demonstrated a willingness to abandon her throne for days at a time. The simple answer, of course, being that days here were not days there. Not quite. Cumulative differences mounted quickly even when the variation itself was, on the surface, less significant. The observation was encrypted and buffered, ready for rapid transmission when next in broadcast range; a supporting data point would be appreciated by its recipient.
Metal Sonic's standing mission profile was not confrontation. Not today. No specific orders had been given; lately, his creator had been more restrictive on this topic, and forbidden independent or opportunistic strikes when not given a direct command to engage on a combat footing. When he had no immediate or applicable instructions, his time tended to be spent either working on his speed in various isolated or uninhabited areas, or gathering intel on potential targets for the future. His master had occasionally referred to this practice with the pejorative description "crouching in the bushes with your running lights dimmed", but there was little opposition to the activity. He had never been ordered to cease, except when told to engage. It was, therefore, classed as a productive use of his time: anything he learned was a potential advantage later. Knowledge was power, and with his physical parameters solidly defined, Metal Sonic intended to increase his power in any way he could.
He would have increased audio sensitivity, to pick up the conversation between his organic counterpart and the feline monarch, but all it would achieve was increased noise. He had settled himself here and gone as silent-running as he could, cooling his frame and reducing his power output until he blended in with his surroundings, totally motionless. This had the advantage of fooling most organic eyes, limited as they were to instinctively seeking movement or other signs of imminent danger; the corresponding disadvantage was that he also fooled lesser lifeforms, and the chorus of night bugs around him meant that no actionable audio would be detectable if he did dial up his auditory. His lip-reading capacity was minimal, but he recorded what he could pick up of mouth movements for replay and dedicated analysis later. Something, surely, would come from it, even if only concerning immediate plans for the cat's stay in their world.
From his body-language understanding, it was clear that the relationship between the two remained close, intimate, or both, and there seemed to be an element of conversational maintenance to that. Sonic would say something, and his eyes would fix directly onto Blaze the Cat's face until he was certain of her reaction. Evidently he was attempting to elicit certain responses, likely favourable ones given their romantic involvement, or possibly something specific…it wasn't until the hedgehog dropped into a limber crouch and picked a flower, to lift it and nestle the short-plucked stem among the strands of Blaze's ponytail, that she reddened and smiled more broadly. Her eyes did something different, and Sonic's entire demeanour shifted. He had been successful in whatever he'd attempted, with this interaction; the flower in the cat's hair must be significant. Hurriedly, he ran it against his taxonomic library, but received no data on the species involved. The societal import of a decorative plant was unknown to him, and so he continued to monitor while Sonic endeavoured to…
…endeavoured. Some part of his programming, long unused to surprise input, had taken a little time to recognise what was happening here. His counterpart was attempting something; his success was based, at least in part, on how skilfully he conducted himself. Metal's coding knew exactly what to do with this. He fought it, feeling his chassis warm with the processing effort he put into resisting the ramifications that began to make themselves known around the idea, but it was too deep-rooted a compulsion for him to fully shut off. It was a core directive, a part of the driving force that propelled him through existence. Where Sonic the Hedgehog engaged in a matter of skill, or showed competence, there was one goal that made itself known, time and again.
Metal Sonic would surpass him. He surrendered to the urge that had become knowledge, resigning himself to the new directive. Another way to outmatch his counterpart had become apparent. It would be addressed. Metal knew now, as surely as he knew the RGB values of his paint job, that he had an additional goal in his existence. He would perpetrate romance, and strive at it until he had shown greater success than his organic predecessor.
Move over, Sonic the Hedgehog. You are obsolete, and a new and better [designate: "Boyfriend"] has arrived.