All was quiet next to the power ring pool where Sonic sat. He hadn’t wanted to be alone for a long time; not when his father was attacked and almost killed, not when Sally and he got into their public shouting match on the eve of his return to Knothole, not even when Sally all but ended their relationship. He had never quite gotten back on good speaking terms with her. He felt as if he had to walk on eggshells whenever she was around, for fear of invoking another bout of verbal abuse. Sonic Hedgehog was never the most observant when it came to the emotions of others, he was the first to admit that. He could be as dense as a cinder block when he had to deal with other peoples’ emotions.
No, Sonic hadn’t felt the need to be alone for a good long time. But tonight, he just wanted to get away from everyone else. His parents were glad to dote on him and Tails, and were always concerned for him. He tried to assure them that nothing was wrong, that he could handle himself. That he was “cool”.
Therein lay the problem. Sonic always had to look cool. Never show weakness, never show emotion, and perpetually be the skilled fighter he grew up as.
No weakness…
Part of the reason he was out here today was because his weaknesses had caught up to him and he couldn’t just will them away as he had in the past. He had talked to Sally again. He tried to confront her about their relationship. Sally rebuffed him and excused herself to continue working.
Sonic had a very little grasp of the mechanics of the female mind. Sally’s behavior was an enigma to him. He told himself that if she still loved him as he did her, she would have reacted differently. She would have at least tried to talk to him. But he just couldn’t understand why she was so insistent on pushing him out of her life, unless she really did not love him anymore.
And that was the reason he was out here tonight. Not since he thought Knothole destroyed by Dr. Robotnik’s Ultimate Annihilator and Sally dead by his own hand had he felt so…empty. In a way, this was almost worse to him. When he thought she had died, he had known he would never see her again. But to know that she was still so close and yet so far was painful to him. One often laments what one cannot have.
Sonic sat up from his position on the cool grass, and grasped a small flat stone that lay on the edge of the lake. Taking a moment to admire its shape and weight in his hand, the hedgehog grimaced, reeled back his arm and hurled the stone out towards the middle of the lake, taking some grim satisfaction in the smacking sound it made as it skipped across the water once, twice, three times, and then plop, as it sank. Abusing that small rock would have normally made Sonic feel better. Venting his frustrations through simple activities like rock throwing was therapeutic for him. But frustration was not his plight tonight, and as Sonic watched the rock, he didn’t feel any better. He felt the same way he felt before, empty. Like there was a hole in his stomach that was growing by the minute.
Sonic’s gloved hand closed around another rock, and his eyes closed. “Sally…” he muttered, as he picked the rock up, pulled his arm back. “Why?” he asked almost angrily, throwing the rock. This time, there was no elegant skipping. This time, it struck the water and simply sank.
Bunnie Rabbot had been carrying a solemn look on her face for months now. Everyone in Knothole knew it. And everyone also knew why. The half-rabbit half-machine hadn’t completely gotten over the shock of her breakup with Antoine, King Acorn’s new favourite soldier. She was unable to explain the strange, sudden change in attitude the young coyote had gone through, from a loving, caring companion into a cold, ruthless soldier. The worst part of it was his complete inability to express love to her. He had ignored her, he had yelled at her when she tried to talk to him. He even had the gall to call her a freak. That stung her the hardest. She had a choice whether to try and go back to normal or to make her bionics permanent, and the choice was heavily influenced by his love for her.
She remembered it vividly. She asked him what he would prefer, and he told her that it didn’t matter as long as he could be with her. She had never been happier in her life than to know how deeply he loved her. He gave her the strength to give up what she had wanted ever since she got her robotic parts.
And now he was gone.
Bunnie was never the same since the breakup. Even her best friend, Sally, had noticed it and tried to offer her support. But Bunnie never felt right asking for relationship advice from Sally, knowing the problems she was having on her own. She was a good friend. Bunnie wished she had more time for her friends like she did in the old days of the Freedom Fighters and, bless Sally’s soul, she tried to help. But even Sally’s support was not enough for her. It was times like this that she wished her parents were still around. She watched the relationship Sonic had with his parents with greater envy more than her other friends. Rotor had a family, but he rarely saw them. Sally had a family, but they were of regal blood. They were far from a normal family in her eyes. Even Antoine had his father. But she envied Sonic the most. He had a mom, he had a dad, and he had an uncle. He even had a surrogate little brother in Tails. And they were close. To her, they were the ideal. An ideal she had not known for a long time.
It was nights like this, when she just couldn’t stand to bottle up her anxieties, her frustrations, her sorrow, that she just had to be alone. She wanted nothing more than to spend the night with her torrential emotions, and the calm serene forest around her, and just let it all out. She often went out to the ring pool at night, when nobody was around, to just cry, to allow all of her sorrow to just flow from her like water from a broken dam. She knew there was nobody else who could understand her pain. Who else knew the kind of loss and isolation she knew?
As she neared her preferred place near the lake, she heard something. Her long ears perked up as the plunking sound grew louder. Could someone else already be here? Probably just some happy couple enjoying the night air. Just what she needed right now, a reminder of how lonely she was. Bunnie hid behind a tree near to the water’s edge, silently trying to catch sight of who was in her reserved spot. She was surprised beyond hell to see a familiar blue figure sitting at the shore of the lake, hurling stones at the water. She watched as he seemed to put a force into each throw that she only ever saw him turn on an enemy, and then watched his strong form droop, as if burdened by a heavy weight around his neck.
Bunnie was always a nurturing sort. And as such, when she saw the despondent hedgehog wallowing in sorrow, she had a realization.
Perhaps she didn’t really need to be alone right now after all.
Sonic soon found his zeal for rock throwing dwindling almost as soon as it began. Soon, his throws were all anger and no skill, and he seemed content just trying to see how far he could throw them, as he couldn’t muster up the desire to aim properly. He picked up one more rock, tossed it up in the air once, and then flung it out towards the pool. The rock sailed through the air and made a loud plop as it fell into the middle of the lake.
Sonic was shocked from his idle pursuit by a familiar soft southern female voice from behind him. “Got a good arm on you, sugar,” he heard. The hedgehog jumped a bit and his head whipped around in time to catch Bunnie emerging from the tree cover to stand in the clearing by the lake. The rabbit had a weak smile on her face, and her hands were clasped behind her back. Sonic immediately noticed how different she looked now. She had left her side arms, jacket, and that odd cowboy hat she had worn since he returned from space behind, apparently, and now wore the purple outfit he had been so accustomed to seeing her in. The sight was almost nostalgic for the hedgehog, who had become so sick of the unwelcome surprises and changes that had occurred since his disappearance.
Of course, rather than voice any of it, Sonic simply replied with, “Thanks,” before turning his attention back to the water.
Bunnie approached Sonic slowly, and gingerly sat next to him on the soft grass overlooking the lake. “Is this seat taken?” she asked quietly. Sonic shook his head, and proceeded to tug his knees up to his chest and cross his arms over them. “Would you like to talk, sugar-hog?” she asked him.
“No,” Sonic replied gruffly, hoping she would take the hint and leave him to his misery.
Bunnie was unfazed by his tartness, and continued, “Sometimes it can help.”
“Not this time,” Sonic told her. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. You’d be surprised how much I understand,” she told him, turning her head to face him. “I’m not just another pretty face, after all.”
Sonic had to allow himself a small laugh despite himself. And he had to agree with her. For all the time he knew her, Bunnie had always seemed wiser than she let on. She was like the big sister who just knew everything you were thinking. Slowly, the hedgehog hero lifted his head from his arms, and turned to face the rabbit. He looked her right in the eye for a moment. It had been a long time since he had just talked to Bunnie like this. Sure, he had gone on missions with her often, as the two were the most adventurous of the Freedom Fighters. His speed and her strength were a remarkable combination. But he never really noticed before now that she had such deep green eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to be tossed aside like a used rag?” he asked, not in an accusing way, but with a voice that seemed to beg for someone who understood what he was going through. “To be ignored and pushed away by someone you cared for and you thought cared for you? Someone that used to give you strength just by being there? Someone…” Sonic stopped himself there. He was starting to get a bit too emotional for his own good. He had to stay cool, he told himself. He didn’t want to make Bunnie worry about him.
“Someone who used to complete you?” she finished, observing Sonic’s reactions. He looked a bit surprised at her intuition, but simply nodded, suddenly very interested in what she had to say.
“Yeah,” he replied. Sheepishly he added, “I guess you know who I’m talking about, huh?”
She nodded. “I had an inkling.”
Sonic appeared uncomfortable for a moment. He knew what he was supposed to say next, but it was difficult for him. Talking about his feelings with anyone was difficult for him to do under any circumstances. He had problems talking about them with his own parents. But he knew he couldn’t get out of it now. He had started this, and he had to finish it. “I just don’t know why she wants me away from her so desperately. It was never this bad before. She won’t talk to me unless it’s absolutely necessary. Whenever I try to bring up our relationship she changes the subject. She just won’t let me get near her!” Sonic wasn’t even aware that he had raised his voice and clenched his fist. It had just happened. He rarely let go of his emotional reins like this. “I’m sorry,” he quickly added, hoping he hadn’t scared Bunnie. Turning to face her, he noticed she was now no longer looking at him, but now had her hands on her knees and was staring out over the length of the power ring lake. Sonic thought for a moment that looking at her right now was almost like looking in a mirror. The sad look on her face must have been something like what he had been harboring. Something in him told him she knew exactly what he was going through.
Bunnie lifted her organic hand and ran the fingers through her hair as she watched the ripples on the water surface. “Sally’s just afraid of losing you, Sug’,” she said.
“But we’ve been in life-threatening situations before and she’s never been like this,” Sonic mused. “Why would she start now?”
“Because now she’s in command,” Bunnie answered. Sonic raised an eyebrow as she continued. “Sally’s finally acting like a princess instead of a resistance leader. You both grew up together unhindered by her status, since at that time she was princess in name only. But now she finally has to deal with being royalty. She can’t go with us anymore like she used to. She can’t take the same risks we can. And I don’t think she can handle the idea that whenever you go out without her you may not come home.”
“But what gives her the right to be so selfish?” Sonic asked. “If she still does care for me, why won’t she just admit it?”
Bunnie turned to look at him. “Because she had to choose whether to be a princess or be your girlfriend. She chose to be a princess.”
The two were quiet for a moment. The silence was broken only by the sound of the leaves rustling on the trees above them. Bunnie wanted to break the silence somehow, but wasn’t sure what else to say to him. She looked down at her hands, deep in thought…
Her reverie was broken by the sound of a dull cracking sound. Four of them, followed by a deep sound. Bunnie looked up to see the ripples on the water’s surface, and then up to Sonic, who was now actually smiling a little. He held out his hand to her. In it was another small, flat rock. “Wanna try?” he asked her.
Bunnie couldn’t help but smile back at him. She gingerly reached out with her organic right hand and took up the stone. She didn’t have the strength she did in her left arm, but she was more than willing to give it a go. She pulled back her arm, and whipped the stone out into the water. One skip, two skips, three skips, four skips… down. Sonic let out a low whistle. “Nice throw,” he commented.
“You’re not the only one with a good arm, sugar-hog,” she replied. She was having such fun that she had almost forgotten about her own problems. In the effort to help Sonic through his own uncertainty, she had been given a brief relief from her own. Almost. Her head sank again, and Sonic watched her deep green eyes droop. His turn, he mused.
“You seem to know where I was coming from,” he said to her, tilting his head down to look at her.
Bunnie nodded slowly. “Yeah…I do,” she replied.
“Why not try me? I’m not just another pretty face, you know,” Sonic replied.
Bunnie’s head slowly lifted, and she turned to face her hedgehog companion. She had always noticed the youthful energy he exuded, like he was a perpetual child in a grown-up body. But she realized that before now she had never really looked at his eyes. He had the green eyes of an adventurer, of a person with a kind and big heart, the eyes not of a child but of a man, of a friend. She sighed. “I guess you can already figure out what my problem’s about,” she remarked.
Sonic didn’t need superhuman intuition to tell him what her problem was. “Antoine?” he asked. She nodded. “You guys never did tell me what happened to him,” he added.
“That’s just it,” she began, “we don’t know. It happened so suddenly during the war that none of us really knew what brought it on. It was as if he was suddenly a different person overnight. I just…” She choked up for a moment, before taking a deep breath to recompose herself. She felt Sonic’s gloved hand on her back, stroking it gently as he tried to encourage her to keep talking. The warmth of his hand contrasted sharply with the cool air around them, and she shivered a bit. “When he changed, he just started acting so cold, so distant. Like fighting was the only thing that mattered to him. Not his friends, not me…”
“And that’s when you broke up?”
She shook her head. “No, we broke up after I tried to make it work… When I tried to talk to him, tried to get him to open up to me, he got really nasty… I tried to shake it off and keep going, thinking I could fix things. But then…”
Sonic could see Bunnie visibly shake. He shifted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, holding her against him. He did it instinctively, as if he knew she needed this. “Then…?” he asked.
“He called me a robotic freak,” Bunnie continued, forcing the words from her mouth as if puking up vomit. Sonic’s eyes widened, and his arm stopped moving. “After he said that, I just couldn’t go on with him. Antoine or no Antoine, he wasn’t the same person who sat with me in the hospital and helped me decide to stay this way for good. I just wish I knew why he did what he did.”
Sonic could see Bunnie start to tear up. She understood his pain, a lot more than he realized at first. She knew what it was like to be tossed aside. Immediately, he used both arms to hug her to him. Bunnie didn’t care at the moment that this was Sonic, Sally’s beau, one of her best friends hugging her. She just grasped his back, careful of his spines, and started to cry into his shoulder. They remained like that, a tableau of pain and anguish, for some time, while Bunnie sobbed and Sonic stroked her back in an attempt to comfort her. Gradually, Bunnie started to stop crying, and Sonic pulled back a little, holding her shoulders and looking into her eyes.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began. “You know what our problem is?” She shook her head. “We’re clinging onto the past, to things we can’t and may never have again. And you know what I think? Forget them.”
Bunnie blinked at him, lifting a hand to wipe her tears away, looking at him in disbelief. “What?” she asked.
“Forget them,” Sonic said, standing up and glancing over the water. “You helped me realize something I should have thought about a long time ago. Sally just doesn’t want to cope with the idea of losing me, and I just have to do what I think is right. But neither of us can change. I can’t change who I am any more than she can change being a princess. So you know what? Forget it. If Sally can’t deal with it, she shouldn’t string me along like this.” He looked down at her. “And you shouldn’t have to deal with it either. Antoine doesn’t want you anymore? Well forget him. It’s his loss. He’s given up a great thing. You’re a great person, smart, funny, strong, pretty… There’re plenty of guys in Knothole who would treat you much better than he would.”
Bunnie pushed herself to her feet, shaking her head. “That just seems impossible, to turn off our feelings like a light switch,” she remarked. “I don’t think I could do that.”
“We can’t do that,” Sonic added. “I know we can’t. But we can realize that we have to move on with our lives. Dwelling on what they’ve done to us won’t help us at all, it just leads to this,” he explained, gesturing to the darkened area of the forest they had been sitting in. “It won’t be easy at all, but at least we know we’re not alone.”
Bunnie looked at him for a moment, a small smile trying to tug away from her sadness. “No. We’ve got each other.”
“And nothing helps more than having a friend to talk to,” Sonic continued, as his smile started to turn into a smirk, and he began to trot towards the water’s edge.
Bunnie raised an eyebrow. “What are you up to, Sug’?”
“Oh, nothing much… just this!” Sonic exclaimed, as he quickly reached down and scooped up a handful of the cool water and flung it at Bunnie, laughing.
Bunnie let out a quick shriek as the water hit her, matting her fur down, sliding off her bionics. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that, Hedgehog!” she replied, as she rushed for the water’s edge, retaliating.
For 10 glorious minutes, the pain and suffering that filled the clearing was gone, replaced with a pure, euphoric happiness. A genuine delight that filled the both of them, and seemed to wash away all their troubles as the water fight washed the dirt from them. Even the stars outside seemed to twinkle with a newfound brightness as the pair laughed and played beneath their light.
Finally, exhausted, they fell to the ground next to each other, laughing still, and turned to face each other. “You’re soaking wet,” Sonic remarked.
“So are you,” Bunnie replied. “I got you more than you got me,” she challenged.
“No way! I so got you more!” Sonic retorted, rolling on to his side, his pride immediately rising up in defense of itself.
Bunnie casually rolled on her side and replied, “Nuh-uh, sugar-hog.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not times infinity,” Sonic retorted, smirking.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
Sonic was showing a side of him that she had never known he had: tenderness. She felt so special, so desirable…
Neither of them saw it coming. It was almost as if something snapped in their minds, as if the storm of emotions they had shared that evening had decided to go out with a tremendous bang. In a split second, Sonic and Bunnie found themselves kissing. They couldn’t remember how it had started or who even initiated it, but they couldn’t have cared less at that moment. Their mouths were locked together, their tongues playing each other for superiority as their bodies grabbed at each other for support. Their eyes closed as the kiss continued. Bunnie felt something move her, and dared to open her eyes again. Sonic was now off her lips, having rolled her onto her back, his hands working on her purple outfit, but his eyes never leaving hers, and a loving smile greeting her. “What are—” she tried to ask, but was cut off by his lips returning to hers, causing the swirling vortex of feelings to catch her again, her fires stoked at the feeling of his lips moving down her neck.
Her mind drifted to Sally momentarily, how if she were to find out what they did, she would be infuriated. She hated to think of her best friend feeling like that, but at that moment she remembered Sonic’s words from earlier. She had given him up. She knew she wouldn’t have to worry about Antoine. She never had. Sonic was right, they did need to move on. He was also right about something else. There WAS a guy in Knothole who could treat her better than Antoine did. And she now lay with him.
Before she completely let herself go, she heard him utter something to her in advance of what they would share tonight.
“Thank you.”
Smiling, she softly replied, “Thank you too.”
Neither of them said another word the rest of the evening.