Notes: Stop telling everyone I'm dead!

Wrote this a few months ago so a few of my assumptions are wrong, but oh well. I'm officially a shipper and sonuckles will kill me one day. (I've already written over 100k words of sonuckles on various projects...) This is gonna be a collection of loosely connected stories. I don't know how the game is gonna go (though I do have a few good guesses), so this isn't gonna be delving very deep into that stuff. It's mainly just scenes-from-the-bunker. Gay scenes-from-the-bunker.

Forward!

Breaking Point

Ch. 1: Reunited

The world is falling down around them, Eggman's face is everywhere, and they're living underground. Silver's there, that's a thing they all just have to deal with, and Amy is itching to fight, barely listens when instructed to "no, wait, we have to wait..." Tails has sequestered himself into the small corner of the bunker he's calling his lab but it's really nothing more than a computer balanced on his knees and a hanging lamp with a bare bulb. He mutters to himself there, sometimes about science, sometimes about faith (which has to do with Sonic), sometimes about physics, sometimes about math, sometimes about linguistics; he distracts himself with hard facts because it's better than the alternative.

And Knuckles? Well, Knuckles is trying to be a leader. The problem, of course, is that he's not a leader. Sure, he's hardheaded and good under pressure, but he's also a loner and he's... Well, he's selfish and all he really wants is to shove Chaos back into the Master Emerald one molecule at a time if he has to and get back to the Island. Sure, he wants to help his friends, but if he has to pick between his friends and keeping the Emerald safe and Chaos contained, he has to go with the Emerald if only because Chaos is real threat here, so. So, there's that.

(There's also the tiny part of him that's fractured off and spun into space, but that part's been missing for a while so he can pretty much ignore it. They all have parts like that, small, Sonic-shaped parts that stab and twist just like the real thing, except these stabs and twists cause internal bleeding that won't stop no matter what. And that— That's hard to ignore but they do it.)

The sunsets these days gouge yellow and orange out of the gray, smoggy sky, and it all seems a little fake. There's a film when they're above ground, an artifice that Knuckles can't see through, and it turns the buildings into hulking shapes that loom, trees into reaching, grabbing creatures, and people into crusts, like corn husks, freshly picked, withered under the hot summer sun. It's hard to go up, but they have to. They have to keep fighting, even if they're slowly losing, because if they won't, who will? Eggman can't win, not after everything. Not after—

"I'm picking something up on the scanner," one of Tails's gearheads says. It's dusk and the sky is on fire. Whether it's the sunset or something more sinister they can't tell yet. Smoke clogs lungs, but they're used to it, and Knuckles has stinging eyes but he refuses to cry. He's done that already, months ago, when he felt that piece dislodge and shatter, and he won't again. He's moved on; he's coping.

"What is it?" Knuckles asks, gruff, hands on hips, feet spread, a power stance. Tails taught him when they realized no one was taking him seriously.

"Not sure." That's Tails, peering at the gearhead's tablet. "It's heading right for us."

"How fast?" Knuckles surveys the terrain. They're in an open area, what used to be a forest but was obliterated long ago, so there's nowhere to hide. They're not completely defenseless though. They have a few of Tails's shields left, and if he has to, Knuckles can burrow them a hole in a few seconds.

"Fast," Tails whispers, and his voice sounds cracked, like an ice shelf under too much pressure, too much heat. Knuckles turns and then aborts the move when he sees Tails's face, stained with confusion, elation, shock, awe. "It's so fast, Knuckles."

Knuckles doesn't get a chance to hope, because there's a concussive boom, a blur of color, and a kick of dust. A gritty storm of brown that spins around them like a cyclone.

Everything goes quiet. Everyone turns to stone. The color, the boom, it all snaps into focus.

The only thing Knuckles hears is Tails, "Sonic!" and then the sound of a pair of fox feet, running toward a familiar, blue shape.

o0o

It's not that Sonic and Knuckles were together, officially. They flirted a lot, Knuckles spent the night in Sonic's room a few times, but it was all behind closed doors. In public, they made sure to keep feet between them at all times because they weren't ready for everyone else to know. It was theirs, for a while, just the two of them, something to nurture and cradle between them at night. Tails probably knew, but no one else did, and it was like a globe of spun glass—perfect from every angle, fragile, but perfect.

When Sonic went missing, that glass slipped from Knuckles's fingers and shattered.

It was natural for him to assume Sonic's position as leader, both because they were more similar than either was willing to admit and because there was this heaviness in the way Knuckles approached the world, something they needed when Sonic's airiness was missing. They would hunker down with the person who knew Sonic, not as well as Tails, but who knew him well enough.

In Knuckles's mind, it was the least he could do, considering how broken he was. If he could pretend to be Sonic, maybe he wouldn't be gone completely, could live on from within Knuckles somehow.

It worked, but only barely.

o0o

Okay, so Knuckles is fond of Sonic, as loathe as he is to admit it in public, but when he sees him, standing there, fur mangled, quills misshapen and uncut, hugging Tails with the desperation of an isolated, lost man, he almost hates him. Yeah, there's relief, and his chest lightens, almost as if there had been a hand strangling him this whole time, but there's also anger and irritation.

Because how dare Sonic do this to them.

Tails is crying, loud sobs that rattle from deep in his chest. They're so big they seem like they can't possibly belong to him, but they do, and it shakes Knuckles up even more. Sonic has his head buried in the fur on Tails's head, fingers grasping at Tails's shoulders, and Knuckles can see him shaking from here.

And here's the problem, the problem that Knuckles won't ever admit: he's emotional, but it's always the fiery emotions that he reacts to first because the blue, milkier ones don't feel as good and they last longer. Anger, for all its danger, at least comes and goes with a quick snap. Sadness, grief, melancholy—those stick around like angry ticks.

Sonic looks up and makes eye contact. No one moves. Then, he grins, lopsided, relieved, Tails still crying in his arms but he looks so damn happy to see Knuckles and—

Knuckles could punch him.

o0o

Knuckles punches him. It's not his finest move, but Sonic approaches with arms held open and he (Knuckles) rears back and wallops him (Sonic) so hard he spins around a few times before he goes down. Everyone else (Tails, Amy, Espio, Vector, Charmy, Silver, Blaze) gasps, but Knuckles's world is narrowed to Sonic. Sonic as he groans, as he gets onto his hands and knees, as he holds a hand to his lip and it comes back a bit bloodied, a split lip, nothing more because Knuckles took it easy on him. Sonic as he sits back on his knees, smiles again, winces because the lip, and says, "I missed you too."

And it's that easy. The fire turns to clouds, puff, gone, replaced instead with an ache that he can't quite explain. He feels himself falling to his own knees, right in front of Sonic, and he's not crying but he's close, so close. Sonic reaches for him and Knuckles falls further, would crawl into Sonic's ribcage if he could because he's sick of being alone. His whole life, alone and then finally a few blissful months of notalone and then alone again but aware of it, stronger for it, a leader.

Sonic's crying, something so strange that it nearly shocks Knuckles out of his own sorrow, and he looks up to see him still smiling, tears drawing small pathways through his filthy fur. "I missed you too," he repeats.

It's one of the most earnest, honest things Sonic's ever said. Knuckles cracks a smile and laughs, finally feels like they have a chance in this war.

And, just to make sure, he socks Sonic in the shoulder again. To prove a point.

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