ATTENTION-- EDITED VERSION; only in spelling and grammar. It's amazing how some misplaced words and a few additions (like cloaca) can polish this up.

Warning: This story contains explicit material that may not be meant for all audience to see based on age, or life principles.

Salutations everyone and just in time for Valentines Day!

This is a one shot short I did thanks to a dream I had when I was really sick. One's mind does tend to venture out there and reach out to lands and images that we lock away for the safety of our innocences, and in this case, of the trueness of our heroes. This is also my first time writing a lemon type story. I'm pretty versed in painting pictures of combat, candid moments, arguments, and well, quarreling couples, but never have I written anything on this level. So this will be a new endevou, and one I'm sad to say, am not experenced in with my...well...

But this for me was a spark of my imagination that I thought was so beautiful, I had to venture forth to satisfy my own inner turmoil and wonder to see this come to life. I've always thought about Julie-Su and Knuckles when Lara-Su complicated their lives. How they managed to protect her and yet live the joy of becoming parents. Then I thought further about it, my dream kinda helping me along, and I realized that these two make the world's most beautiful scene...two virgins exploring each other for the first time.

This takes place, well, sixteen years earlier from the M25YL arc, and before the reset. I tried my best to picture how the characters are in this time frame and followed up with the description that I knew would make them...well, them. I also wanted to explore both of their point of views in a third person setting, so I tried a new approach that I hope doesn't loose any of you. I hope you can spot the view changes rather than get lost.

Please review, shoot for that matter, give me pointers so when I touch on this "subject" in my bigger projects, I can paint it better and make it more enjoyable. But please, send me a PM when it comes to the descriptions, please leave it off the review board. And DON'T give me your e-mails either! I'll admit, I was at a loss for words so some redundancies are going to exist. Partially I didn't use any vulgar language or slang in this (which surprised me when I got through with this.)

So...please enjoy this.

And like always, I thank you for being my audience.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the two main characters portrayed in this work as my own and I respect the rights of the original creators in that I don't stand to gain any profit.

The Space Between

By: Mauser

He couldn't understand himself.

The glum, wringing sensation he felt his face depress into brought home this despaired notion of his current being, standing alone while fostering the sight of what he hoped would bring more light to the turned down room, if the moment would come...if she would come.

Maybe it was the room itself bringing this gloom. Maybe he should turn up the lights for his own reprieve.

But if I do, I'll lose sight of what I want to accomplish, he sullenly professed.

Two lone candles gave the glow to a less than sturdy table that his inner turmoil was dwelling over, and it seemed now around the edges of it as well. He was so lost within his stare and ravaging with his thoughts that he found himself not remembering what he had prepared that was steaming on top of a tablecloth that had once been a curtain to a window. There was no color to it...such as he felt his life had become. For the brief dance of a candle flame he thought to turn on the infrared of his replaced eye, to see the splendor he had created in hopes to please himself just on the whim of pleasing another. But he stopped a whisk of a brainwave to activate it. He needed comfort...the darkness was his safety, his ally.

Where did he find the time? Why couldn't he produce a smile on his face after striving so long for this achievement sitting in front of him?

Will she even care? Will she even see me the same way as before with this gesture...this token I've made?

He tried to put a reference point on how he came to the here and now, but he didn't know where to begin. Between the rebuilding of the city his own kind was named after and the one this very room resided in inside his own home, his own hands and power ending a war he had fully participated in, unlike the one before, and somewhere in the middle of all this, coping with the passing of his father and his natural eye, he should've felt amazed he could afford the time to do what he toiled over in the small kitchen just behind him. But he didn't. He should've felt pride in the bigger achievements he had done aside from his inner strife; his own kind flourishing back to where they were almost a decade back, and to actually be able to stand in a building that has working commodities instead of living amongst the skeleton remains of the once famed city of Echindalopis–his own building that was his home...their home.

But yet he didn't.

What was holding him back so strongly? Why couldn't he push or pull himself free from these grotesque feelings? The guilt he had of not being there to stop the slaughter of his people had long since passed. He had even forgiven himself, for he had ended the conflict that brought his civilization to its knees. And now to his utter confusion, those same people were now standing, even looking to him now for the guidance they needed to revitalize their culture. In their humble eyes he had become their new example in every light the sun could cast upon him to continue on, to hold onto what hope they have and invest it in the optimism that was now paying off with an amazing abundance of interests in life and prosperity. He was older now than when he first met his culture face to face. Older from the times he had felt he was alone on his Island in the sky. The war had made him partially this way, but his body magnified this complection as well, and with all of this, he should have been bursting with confidence, with determination of who he was and why he should stand up straighter in his new attire that gave him his matured presence to his people.

But he didn't...and it was why he couldn't understand himself.

He bit down his growing anger, his hands unknowingly tightening into fists, shutting his lone left eye and forcing his biometric ocular to snap to the blackness he wanted to see. And just as fast as all of this transpired, he opened them to a different world he felt himself lapse into. The tranquil table in front of him became the focal point of his boiling rage that he hadn't touched in so long...so long that he felt his natural eye well up in frustration. If only his replacement eye could shed a tear. If only he could feel a stream of water fall across the right side of his face again.

And that thought was the surplus push that the compassionate side of his brain wished he hadn't experienced, shoving, it seemed, his feet across the carpet and raising his right hand, readying it to brush the prepared dinner to–

The room was suddenly reborn in a wash of invading light. He froze in his assaulting stance, but only to have his face draw away from the anger he was about to relinquish, feeling it become replaced by a horror filled substance that glared on through the now open doorway. What came with the light was a shadow standing just at the foot of the passageway. A brilliant, white glow floated up under his sight, demanding his eyes to stray from the door and at his chest to see what it was adding to this moment of despair.

It was his birthright that shown through the black shirt he wore, burning his retina with the crest of his born charge in his complex life.

"Knuckles?"

He looked to the figure waiting at the door upon hearing his name, wishing his muscles to relax from the malicious stance he had assumed, and begged for calmness in his eyes. Her voice echoed the fright he had instilled between the two of them...why the desperation he felt to achieve his newly found wants. But even as he strained his natural eye, depriving his replaced one with its enhanced functions, he still couldn't descry her features he had come to know so well.

He still held his pose...she still stood at the door.

"Knuckles, are you alright?"

Her questioning, scared voice leaped at him like a pouncing indigenous predator, making him feel helpless in a situation that was beyond his control even if he was the one who had arranged it.

"Julie?" he struggled to say, almost scaring himself with his own voice, though it was only above a whisper. But his fright seemed to relax him enough to digress himself to what he wanted her to see him as. "I–I–"

"Can I..." He searched hard for her eyes, trying to find the question she stopped asking, but the light drawing her elegant figure through door was all he could make out, and in a way, all he wanted to see of her in the stillness of the moment.

She took a breath. Just the sip of air she sounded to take in was torturing him for the most inexplicable reason. "Can I come in, Knuckles?...Is it alright?"

His mind raced to nowhere, leaving himself more hollow of his true feelings.

"I..." He closed his eye, squinting it hard for the sake that a tear might dwindle down his face. But yet he didn't want it. How could he look beaten from an unknown foe within himself in front of her? "I–I would be happy if you may?"

"If I may?" she coyly suggested. "Knuckles, you invited me here." He sensed her smiling, feeling a shyness exude from her lips as her voice carried it to him. "The letter you slipped under my pillow said this room, remember?" Her shadow had shifted. She was leaning with one hand on the doorway now. "So why all of this and you asking me, if I may?...I live here too, you know."

His left hand was trembling, threatening to convulse if he couldn't stop it, if he couldn't gather his thoughts of what he wanted her to do: to come in...or to leave him with his misery so he wouldn't share it with her. For her to spend the night again in her own room, dining by herself without him as he fought to sleep like all the nights before this, wondering if she was crying in her dreams as he was in his own, came as a bawd option to him. Should he consider it? Should he use it to derail a coming travesty in his own wake?

Yes! He'd made his decision fast enough so his brain wouldn't have a moment to fall back on it; afraid that it might protest it and bring on his guilt. He would tell her to go to bed, that tomorrow was another turbulent day of rebuilding, that he had made a mistake–

The shadow at the door crept closer to him, close enough that the automated door closed on its own, suffocating the room in its previous darkness before the candles bled their light into focus for the two pairs of eyes to adjust.

He could now see her...and it frightened him. Her dread-locks had grown longer, like his except her hair had lengthened with them, bringing out the more feminine appeal her former soldier-self had hidden away from him, the one he had taken away from her, and made her more of a woman than a half cybernetic girl. She'd say she'd let it grow until she was satisfied with the length, her bangs were cresting above her forehead, the small of her back almost covered with the full body of her hair and dreads.

Under the shadow of the candlelight her face radiated a smile that he could now see, seemingly brightening the room where the glow had failed. Just why couldn't he smile back? Why was he so stiff with fright, with frustration...with worry? Was it her eyes? Was it their long stare through the dark yonder to his eyes? Was it the slight turn of her brow that brought out a haunting gaze, yanking out his heart and holding it in her stare for the both of them to see? He was alive enough to keep looking at her, remembering at how her body had filled out...like his had. The cloths she wore at this very moment gave away their years of being together, and yet, holding the picture of their naivety to each other, keeping distances from places they were both scared to venture for. But her tank-top vest, the one he first remembered seeing her in when they met, face to face, fist to fist, neglected to age with her, shedding away from her body into looser fitting cloths: a cut blouse with the sleeves squeezing tightly around her arms; jeans, from what he allowed himself to see, falling to her calves, speckled with dirt, grim, and the overall trials of the day and the ones before.

She had become a woman.

And he still felt like the boy he figured he would always be, for he was standing before her now as he always felt he would.

"I think this was a mistake, Julie-Su," he softly professed his inner feelings, his heart inching to a stop in his already throbbing chest.

This softened her eyes, watching them gleam a disappointment he wished he didn't have to bear witness to.

"Knuckles," she began, her tone calm, almost silent of pain he knew he had inflicted. "Don't let this go to waste. Look what you've done." He didn't move. And it hurt her. "Knux...why the change?...I thought this was what you wanted?"

"I thought I did too, Julie, but I–I...please," he willed himself to say, offering his hand towards the chair closest to the kitchen door, his other cupping under her left arm and assisting her forward. "Just sit down for me, please, Julie."

Her eyes never left his, though Knuckles' pupils went to the chair, and quite possibly to the floor to avoid her's. She fished a smile from her heart but again, he didn't see it. He was concentrating to hard with something within himself; something that told him to keep going when the little boy she could see guiding her to the chair was struggling to hide something.

Or are you trying to find that something you brought me here for, Knuckles? she pleaded to the air.

When she gently fell to the chair, her gaze never leaving his troubled visage, an upheaval of abandonment mauled at her very soul as Knuckles' touch escaped her arm, taking away the feeling of safety that seemed to surround his very presence when he was by her. She couldn't stave off the chill crawling up her spine. She couldn't stand the cold she saw him plunge into, taking her with him by her own choice. The shadow lines of his face were clearer than what she wanted to see of him, watching the dancing of the candles etch a self-resenting texture on her equal...her beloved. Even the way he struggled to move to his own chair in front of her magnified this profusely dark-overtone portrait that was the spark of her love light from when she knew she could cultivate the notion that the switch ever existed.

What could she do? When this sort of detachment of himself slithered into his body and conquered the voices of reason he came to respect and revere, it became a dire struggle to free him from the depths of his strife. But he invited her here, left a short written, however warming note, carelessly on her pillow. Come to the guest suite tonight, I want to treat you to something deserving for the both of us. And that was all.

Was this all as well?

Just be yourself, girl. came her strong-willed voice. Maybe that's who he wanted to show up at the door...yourself.

But where to begin? He hadn't the foggiest. His forehead began so soak in moisture from the edge of his hat. He couldn't stop his perspiration; that was a fact of life he realized, but so was she, sitting in front of him, drilling a smile at him that made him more lost from finding where his desires had disappeared.

"I–I..." His stammering was annoying himself more than possibly her, keeping his voice low so maybe both of them couldn't hear it. But it drew more of smile from her, and he couldn't understand why. "I...tried to remember what always pleased you–what you loved to order when we ate out together before the war."

"It's here, Knuckles. You did perfect," she said, watching her words free him of one apprehension. The candlelight was just strong enough to show the gleaming shift in his eyes to the steaming pan of apple-cobbler, beside it a full stem of grapes and a billowing dish of turkey. It was all he could gather, all he knew how to prepare, she surmised. "And you even decided on wine?" she mused gently, her voice sounding sweet as the caramel the apples were bathed in.

But his was wet, fighting for control so his vocal chords didn't sound gritty of the anger within himself. "I was...I didn't know if we could have it. I don't even know if my choice is going to be good."

Her lips glistened in the flicking warmth of the candlelight. "There's only one way to find out. Besides, we're old enough, Knuckles." She held a pause, hoping her words were chasing away the depression that so suddenly invaded him. "Do you have an opener?" she asked. He nodded timidly, lifting her spirts and motivating them to keep assaulting him with her gentlewoman dexterity. "Well, go ahead, there's no one here to stop us," she bantered gingerly. "You've given us our time, sweetie...I'm here to enjoy it with you."

Like always, she added only to herself.

Clutching his fist, as if making sure there was blood rushing through them to adhere to his commands, he reached over to his right for the black object laying on the table cloth, resisting the cruel thought that he was picking up a weapon as he slipped his other hand a little further over, clasping the bottle of wine that was next to the opener, and moved it to his lap. With the cork-puller posed to pierce the top of the work of glass-art he bought, he tried to take aim of where he wanted to spear it...but his hands were quivering, the zippers on his gloves rattling as he desperately fought to gain control of his inborn weapons. He thought to squeeze his fingers, hoping the fleeting tactic might defeat the shakes. No, he screamed to himself, reasoning in an instant to breathe out his frustrations and shouting the fear that he could very well crush the bottle in the end, and not his tormenting conscience.

His eyes lifted to the woman in front of him, the girl he wished she still was. Could she hear the clanging of his new mittens? Could she see the inner fight he was trying not to lose?

She could...and she wasn't going to let him falter.

Pressing her feet to the floor, her calf muscles flexed as with her thighs from the command of her willpower echoing her thought to stand. Her stride was bathed in a gracefully glide, taking her to her equal in his time of despair. Her hands were like discarded feathers from a flying dove, floating to the quaking ground that where his own, gently touching them before her fingers spoke loudly the strength she felt seep into his, aiding in a push of the bottle-opener towards the cork.

"Now you twist it," she said thoughtfully, like a teacher who found her favorite student.

His hands still resisted her turns, however, almost feeling like they were separated from their nerves to respond to his wishes. But as the bite of the bottle-opener dug deeper into the cork, the wings expanding as the twists began to turn harder, a firmness exhumed from his grip, speaking to her's, telling that he'd found a way...a way back to tonight. A way back to himself. A way back to her!

Letting him hold the bottle, she relinquished her touch of his hands and pressed down on the wings of the wine-opener, pulling the cork out halfway, enough that she didn't have to use a twitch of effort to extract the wooden seal the rest of the way.

The aroma overpowered the scent of the candles, spreading a flavor of ripened grapes into the air that lingered like a halo that only she could feel wrap around them.

Her eyes fell to his, looking up at her in a transfixed gaze, searching her out but missing her completely. She startled him when she released the bottle from his grasp. Here, still watching him, she felt with her other hand the wine glass closest to them, gently wrapping the tips of her gloveless fingers around the base of the cup, moving it in front of her so she could tip the bottle at the brim. The wine was red as it poured out of the bottle, her excitement sipping it before her lips could taste it. She didn't know how but she held a smile she'd never felt her face melt into before as she did this, as she repeated what seemed like an effortless endeavor to pour her own portion of wine in her own glass after retrieving it. Her cheek tugged tightly at her lips when she sat the bottle down, casting it to Knuckles, his own countenance still reposed in an emptiness she thought she had filled to the brink of going away.

Why are you being so hard...why can't you return the joy I want you to have?

Her contemplation drove her to turn around...to step away–

He snagged her hand, stopping her suddenly that she turned in surprise from his firm grasp. The last thing he saw before he dropped his whole face to the floor was her eyes dispatching a message to his that either he didn't want to hear, or couldn't bear the meaning of. His visage elapsed into a bitter frown, glad beyond measure that the floor was receiving the full brunt of it and not his equal.

Are you still...will you be here after tonight, Julie? Why can't I– His eyes were a whisk away from welling. Why can't I... His heart was wedging inside his throat. The air was becoming thick, thick enough he could swallow it down. This was a mistake...for you, for her.

"I'm sorry, Julie," he whispered, defeating the weeping notion he felt his lungs raging for.

"For what?" she asked with fright mixed in her voice.

"I'm..." The bleak blackness of his eyes shutting in utter futility of losing the words he wanted to say. Were they hallow, meaningless to the real sensation he was now clawing at his mind?

"Knuckles," came Julie's pleading, soft tone.

It broke his concentration, feeling an indescribable emotion wash over him that expelled the sudden ache in his heart, but leaving another. He looked to her, her mouth agape as well as his. "Julie, I don't know anymore."

"What do you mean?" she festered fearfully.

"I..." Another forceful look at the ground. A hand finding his forehead but retrieving back to his lap. "Are we...are we losing our soul-touch to each other? Are we losing ourselves from our maturity?"

Her mind was taken off-guard, her body becoming stiff, as if lightning had struck right beside her, freezing her in fear. A thought to take a sip and clear her throat came but died stillborn before the nerves in her arm could process the command to lift the glass to her trembling lips on the perchance that it might send a riddle she didn't want her equal to dwell on. "Why do you say that, dear?" she almost demanded, keeping her composure in her voice.

She still felt his soul touching her's. She could feel it now more than ever.

"I can't...I can't explain it, Julie-Su," he replied in an honesty that scared her, perhaps even himself. "I don't feel us drifting apart but somehow I feel that we are. Like we're not being held together by something that we're missing, that we need to fulfill ourselves to ourselves."

Her eyes finally left his, falling to the floor where he had wallowed in and found the painful words he poisoned her with. Or was it the other way around? Was it her words, her principles and beliefs of her own upbringing from a family that disowned her because she disavowed them? Had she poisoned him, leaving the elixir in remission until a spark of gratefulness came to him and offered it to her? Like tonight?

She gathered her words carefully, hoping they would chill the air enough to cool the room and not force anything to her equal she might regret. Her lips fought to open. Her eyes struggled to raise.

"I've always believed in your word, Knuckles. I've always cherished it, and it's why I am here tonight with you. Why I've always been there for you and for our friends."

His face drifted up to her's, his complection showing sincerity, but still conveying affliction. Both his forearms were hovering over his thighs.

"But why can I not express the same devotion now as you've given me?"

"You are," her heart reasoned aloud. "This dinner...this setting you've strived so hard to make for me–for us–it's showing your devotion–"

"Maybe it was a show that I'm fading away from you?"

His brittle voice scrapped at her soul, bleeding away as tears.

"No, my love...please don't mean this," she whispered in a drowning tone. "You're wrong. Please see that you are."

His eyes cringed within his frustrations, his voice sounding the same, "I can't. Something is missing that I can't deny the feeling of in my soul, Julie. I'm so afraid that it's going to tear us apart and leave us both out in the cold rain with our hearts forever at war in the end of it all." She could see the tears coursing across the left side of his face, washing down his cheek as the glimmer in his natural eye brought on his true conviction of what he was saying to them both. "I don't want us to turn out like my parents, Julie. I don't want you to suffer that kind of silent detriment that my parents held for each other, and worse, in my presence when I was young."

Her legs had had enough, calling her to move forward and fall down to his level of inner suffering. Her hands were a magnetism to his, seeking them out and squeezing the last drop of blood back to his beating, yearning heart. "What if we find what is missing? What if it's something that might keep us together?"

"And if it's marriage?" he shivered back. "Then what, Julie? I go against my word, and I force you to do something you don't believe in?" A vivid shake of his head, his eyes never leaving her's. "No...my word to you was that I always respected you–that I will always respect who you are and your own scruples."

Her voice was pressing, loving, "And you have loved me for who I am, Knuckles."

And yet he didn't respond to her hidden call to come to his devoted senses. He just kept staring into her eyes, his lips emotionless, but his breathing increasing in depth and rhythm. He was searching for the words in her...watching them fly from her and picking out the ones that wouldn't cause the most damage.

Because you love me, Knuckles.

"Because I want you to feel the same way now as then if we find ourselves lost," he said under a dark apprehension, "Why I think our commitment won't last."

"If you're falling Knuckles, I will catch you."

"If I am, don't!" came his hurtful answer.

"I will anyways, and you know it," she said with all her heart. "I'll catch you and I'll lead you along to find ourselves again. To find what is missing."

But he wasn't listening. His head had already shut-out her voice. He had fallen by his own accord and he did it with such timing that she couldn't rescue him. He didn't know what was missing, and at the current air of time, he didn't want to find it. Fear of pain conquered all from the premise of the discovery that only he could see, leaving himself in the pit he'd placed himself in, and to his gratitude, only himself to share his own pain.

It was too bad for all of this self-loathing within him. It was too bad his heart had shut off the light for his eyes to see.

He didn't see the hand that reached so far down to his newly carved out domain that had caught him before he landed in his pool of misery. What had saved him? What had floated down after him and ceased his fall from grace?

It was her light of love! It was her intuition as a growing woman that lengthened the candlewick of her love light that built a raging fire for her to see through the darkness, for her to become the pathfinder for their souls...

...To find what was missing.

She released her hands from his, finding that phantom smile appear across her lips as she gained the willpower to stand. This smile she felt engulf her fine visage, this smile of determination, of devotion and resolve that echoed a warming compassion and burning love, felt stronger than the first time she felt the presence of it, strong enough that her lungs where longing to breathe in more air in hopes to calm her beating heart.

But she wanted it! She wanted her heart to smash through her chest wall, to leap into his and devour it. She wanted it to keep beating hard enough for him to hear it with his own ears.

A hand drifted towards his hat, seeking her fingers to touch the brim of it and with her face still supporting her euphoric smile, she lifted it off his head and offered the power of gravity to do the rest.

His lone purple eye of his lifted up to her's, widening within her's. And before he could speak, before his salivary glands could engage their duties inside his mouth to make his words clear...she sipped the wine glass, swirled the strong sample she took in her mouth long enough to be pleased with before swallowing it, placing the glass down on the table...and walked away from him.

He watched her tail sag as she glided towards the darkness...watching her hips sway with every determined stride she took.

"Knuckles," she called over her shoulder to him in a voice so pure like satin, "the wine...it was perfect..." And she continued away from him, disappearing into an adjacent room ahead of him in the darkness, and not the door leading out of the suite.

Nothing...it was all he could picture in his head. When his thoughts found their way back to him, letting him know he was still in a chair, letting him know that he was sitting in a dimly lit room, he discovered his mouth was hanging in a frown of bewilderment; in a pose of not understanding of what had just transpired.

A moment passed...maybe two before he gathered himself up; his voice becoming the first thing to afflict the air:

"Julie?" he called out in a dry, deep tone. "Julie-Su?" he echoed. But nothing this time, nothing of sound.

Where did you go? Why are you still here from the words I just scared you with?

His answers never came...only the silence and the flickering light of the candles.

Something, however, was pulling at him; tugging at his chest and mind to stand-to and follow her. And before he could make himself aware of his body, he had. His legs were already under him before he could sense his elevation change. His feet did their effortless work across the carpet, taking him to the black abyss that he chose to dive into blindly and to leave his ocular replacement out of the equation of where he was going.

Light shown through the door; a dim, pale-white light that didn't match the resolution of any incandescent light bulb he had in the house. It was the moon, its gilded rays coming through the lone window, casting still shadows across the floor of objects he could scantily make out under the power of his natural vision.

And in the center of this room, before him in a way that was breathtaking to his soul...her, facing away from him, soaking in the swaying moonlight, her hands hidden in front of her, her elbows tucked tightly against her sides, her legs touching each other as she stood at the foot of the bed, as he stood, swaying at the foot of the door. Even with his breathing and shuffling feet announcing his presence to her, she didn't turn away to look upon him. It was like she was giving a blessing, like she was singing a lonesome lullaby to her and her alone.

"Julie?" he softly called to her. "What's the matter?" he asked...but yet, no response. Not even a wavering glance across her shoulder like minutes before, maybe seconds.

Feeling that his words weren't reaching her, he left his post at the door, taking care in his pace and keeping it slow, as if he was afraid to disturb the tranquil silence she was bathing in. When he was a foot away he heard her breathing; loud, deep...eloquent. And when he grew the courage to touch her arm, a sudden rush of warmth radiated through his mittens from her pink-fur.

And when she turned completely around from his touch with a speed so sudden, so breathtaking that it took them both by surprise, she forced her lips against his and tried to retake in the air she expelled out. But she held her's, waiting for his lips open to gasp for air, waiting for her moment.

A gasp of surprise–his lips spreading apart...

...Her tongue dove in, finding his and raking it with a gentleness that swirled her saliva with his, becoming cool as he swallowed his gulp of air and tasting her's.

She backed off, fishing for his hands and finding the zippers for his mittens, pulling the tabs down and in the same stroking motion as her fingers slide down the tops of his hands, scrapping the twin claws atop them, she dropped his gloves to the floor. Not letting his mind force his protest with his now exposed hands, she interlaced her fingers around his, squeezing them gently in hopes he would return the gift in kind.

Yes! she shouted to the warming air. He wrapped his fingers over her knuckles, her right index finger lifting up from the hallow between his own fingers and rubbed the curved spike that bore his name. Amidst her racing heart, amidst her panting breaths, she dove for his lips again, spearing her tongue in once more and rolling it inside his mouth as her kiss danced with his.

He pressed his face into her's this time, seeking her own mouth with his tongue and experiencing the same euphoric sensation as she was giving.

"Julie?" he breathed in, pulling away from her.

Her finger hushed his lips. Salacious were the gleam in her eyes, her eyelashes batting with a deliberate slowness that was captivating to him; controlling. Her features glowed with a vigor she had not felt before until this night. Before her discovery that he had overlooked and didn't see. One she was destined to show him, letting her hands become the wind of knowledge as her arms took them to his jacket, peeling it off from the inside at the shoulders and letting gravity do the rest of the work. And for her effort, she allowed herself another kiss, this time gentle, taunting.

"Julie?" he managed to get out, placing both his hands at her arms. He could feel her pulse racing against his.

"Don't say a thing...just help me." And before he could ask of what, her hands slid to the hem of his black shirt, her fingers intertwining at the bottom. In a motion that was playful but yet serious, she raised it up and over his head, peeling it away from his chest underneath, and weaving his dreads through the collar ring when his arms reluctantly obeyed her silent requests.

He didn't have time to enjoy the cold air licking at his silk fur and pierce through to his skin. Her hands were still controlling his, guiding his fingers to the bottom edge of her blouse, clasping her fingers with his and forcing them to lift it over her head, and weaving out her hair and dreads. She flung it somewhere across the room; he couldn't tell where–his eyes were treading over her chest, descrying her breasts that he always left alone in their sanctuary of her body. They were heaving up and down with every intake of air she forced down. Her nipples were perfectly tipped, rounded, the lividity colored rings of skin boarding around them. Then there was her silk fur covering her pale skin, only seen if he brushed her hair against itself. If he could will himself to even touch her now.

But her breathing...his breathing. From what started as passion had now turned to apprehension. Their faces exposed this when her top left her chest: their mouths were opened just enough to be noticeable; their lips pulsating with every swallow of air; their eyes asking each other what was next...asking where this was all going. The sensation of time was now a mere figment of their lives as their eyes buried inside each other. Their hands were clasped against one another, how they found themselves there only they could fathom, holding themselves from the edge of a great unknown that all it took was one of them to cross over. But yet, they held their locked gaze, peeling away questions from the past and present, seeking for something to keep them going...to keep them resolute in their convictions.

With a kick at the back edge of her left shoe, she pulled her foot out of it, and with the same motion but with her exposed toes, pulled her other foot from her last shoe and kicked the discarded articles away from their space. Knuckles, however, didn't budge a muscle fiber, standing like a living statue. So she bent her knees and leaned down at his boots, having to brush her hair and a few stands of locks away from her face as she worked to undo the eye holes from his bolt laces.

It was amazing for her...he stepped out of them when she was done with each on his own. His was wanting this at last. Or did he really understand that she was wanting him?

And to his astonishment she tugged at his pants, undoing the twin buttons that held them to his waste, and under his widening eyes, pulled them down.

He was already unfolding from his cloaca. His arousal had started to defeat his sense of right and wrong, of morality and pure passion, of purism and the fear of blemishing souls, that now he was finding himself in the world she took them into. But his face still contrasted with the bewilderment in his purpose of this act. He was looking over his body for the answer, for the cue. But when he glimpsed again at her's, he only sought her eyes instead.

Just one more step, Knuckles. Just one more step and you can sort your purposes out with me.

And she took it–her hands gliding cautiously passed her mid-drift and down to the snap of her jeans, prying it away and dragging the zipper down to the stop. When she thought she was ready to let her coverings drape to her ankles, a breath stopped her cold. Now she was at the edge, wondering whether to take them both across it. There was only themselves on the other side. There was only–

He could see the questions racing through her dilated pupils. He could see the mystery she had solved but was devastated when she defaulted on shedding the truth from him. So he did it for her, stepping forward and then reaching across the fleeting void to grasp at her jeans and push them to the floor. Her nickers were next, his own mind falling victim to the blankness that was numbing their senses. Control was gaining over this hypnotic state. His fingers started to extend from his tightened fist. He was ready...he was ready.

And she was further from the truth than when he had stepped across it. There was no playing, no taunting; she grabbed both edges at the waistbands with the pinch of her thumbs that she had come accustomed to when she started wearing them, and slid her last shelter of innocence past her pelvis, past her hymen, past her tail, then over her firm thighs. And like a window opening to a new day from a humid room, she was totally vulnerable...and at last...

...To him.

A moment wasn't spared when she snagged his hand, pulling him towards her, locking her lips with his before ebbing her kisses down his neck, exhaling on every spot she stopped at before moving toward his collar bone, then straight back to his gapping lips, trusting her tongue inside his mouth. And when she was through, when she stopped to gaze at him with affirming eyes, she lead him towards their sanctuary...towards the bed.

The time of sleeping by herself was about to end–all she had to do was give him one hard tug at his arm. Just one hard tug and the collapse of her legs and then her nights of crying alone in her sleep: like the days when he was taken from her in death; like when they had a bitter argument and Rogue was becoming the sincere threat of pulling their souls apart, and like now, before now, when she felt like a princess banished in her own castle, locked away from her lover every night after spending her invaluable time with him–helping him in his supreme duties for others–and bearing nothing of fruit she could savor from her solid devotion–just one hard, gentle pull of his hand, and all of those pains were going to end.

And he forever becoming her's.

There was only one breath of hesitation. Then it was it, pulling him as close as her strength could muster and letting his weight crash on top of her into the unwrinkled bed, the cotton sheets taking her breath away when the cold touch to her fur ravaged her mind.

And in a blink of his eye, he was on top of her. He felt her hands slide up to his face and felt the only space of open skin on his broad face. His heart was more than racing, it was forcing itself out of his chest. His member throbbed with every cataclysmic punch, the head tingling in the open air, engulfing his senses to the verge of taking him to a whole other level of sensation. And when he thought he was getting used to this estranged feeling from an organ that had never exposed itself until he his twentieth season on this emotionally scarred planet...

...She gently wrapped her fingers around his shaft, feeling the lips of her pleasure zone with her stray hand and readying herself for what she knew was going to be pain at first; but pain she could endure for his sake...for their sake. Her inner walls were becoming moist with her love juices. Her breasts began to enlarge, feeling them swell against her chest, taking in the hardening of her nipples further from when she offered their existence to Knuckles.

But he wasn't moving. He wasn't taking the chance to go inside her.

Her eyes forced the question to him. His only answering back with a vacantness that couldn't last long.

"I don't want to hurt you," he whimpered forcefully.

Crying? Why are you crying, my love?

And she realized she was too. From the wetness that overwhelmed her in an area so new to her, she didn't feel the tears streaming across her panting face.

"You won't, my equal," she whispered, squeezing his shaft and gently stroking it, letting the loose skin touch the head of his member, rubbing a lone finger over it in aim to excite him further. "You never have, and you never will...not even this night."

Pressing his arms on the bed, he rose up on his forearms, still keeping his eyes locked to hers. "But what will this do for us?" he wept straight into her soul.

A tear from his cheek fell away and struck her's, calling upon her freehand to reach up and wipe away the rest that would come from his face. "It will keep us together...it will bind our love forever. Trust in me with this!"

Both of their chests rose and fell.

"Get inside me, Knuckles," reverberated her soft, wet voice. "Please, get inside me–I want you...I've always wanted you. What you're missing is in me. Get inside me and I'll show it to you."

Three intakes of precious oxygen through his mouth fostered his self-convictions. His face tightened with wonder, and yet, fear also enveloped his whole physique. She still had her hand clasped at his shaft. She was still caressing his face. Her gentle touch erased his indifference within himself; it washed away his heartaches and frustrations of the current battle with self-preservation...it threw away his regretful words in the other room.

And with her guiding hand to place him where she now wanted him, he pushed his member through the lips of her womanhood, and felt the head of his shaft rub tightly against the moist walls of her canal.

"AHHH!"

Her screaming-moan was enough to frighten him to pull himself out of her...but she held on to his rod, tugging at it, telling him to enter her again.

"It's okay," she breathed out, winded from his first thrust. "It's okay, my love...get inside me." She watched him swallow his emotions, she watched him with widened eyes as he bowed his head, his pupils glistening in the moon light.

He heaved himself into her this time, stroking back and forth under her wishes, finding his penis resisting at first, but as her juices soaked the skin of his shaft, his hard, forceful thrusts became easier to push inside her.

Her walls trembled with every rub of his member, the sudden pain causing her to release moans from her throat. Another thrust brought on more juices. Another thrust brought on more moans, bringing with him deep sighs of pleasure. And yet, from the look in his eyes, it was still frightening to him.

With the alarm coming on to her, and his current penetration falling shallow, her option came from her hands, clasping at his dreads and ears and shoving his lips to hers. His locks fell over their heads, locking them away in a cage where they had the sincere notion to throw the key away and keep to themselves.

His tongue was in her mouth faster than she could think, his insert of his shaft sending a convulsion inside her zone of ecstacy that she almost bit down on it. And for him, her saliva was mixing with his, tasting the small sip of wine she divulged in, every thrust he made seemingly adding to the passion she was rekindling in his heart.

Her head arched back, pulling her lips away as she readied herself for another deep penetration– "AHHRREE!" His member was swollen from the excitement, his girth pushing against her walls, expanding them...bringing on more pleasure than pain. His lips ate her throat, tracing down her brachial artery, breathing down her neck as his kisses brought him closer to her breasts.

It excited her more, moving his rod, while it was still thrusting inside of her, up and down, rubbing his shaft over her clitoris. The sensation exploded in her mind, collapsing her hips, crushing Knuckles' shaft within her canal. She wanted him to go faster, to go deeper. She began to push into his thrusts, however to no avail when her tail jammed up right at her tail-bone.

And reluctantly she let him exit her.

His breathing was now unstoppable, his fur soaked in his own sweat as his member was washed in his soul-equal's love juices. His muscles began to fail him, causing his legs and arms to rollover and collapse on the empty space next to her.

But she was still full of energy; full of vigor that she could only dispense of with the passion she felt burning through every vein, every nerve of her body, feeding the raging fire between her legs.

Rolling over, she wrapped her legs around Knuckles' chest, squeezing his ribs as her hands found his shaft. She was still wet, but she was still going to mount him gently–

"ERRHH!"

She collapsed right on top of him, her willing a hand free to clutch at his birthright, her voice drowning in a scream from the pain and sheer pleasure that leaped into every craves of her body. And before he could wrap his hands around her arms she was already pumping up and down his shaft. His own sensations peeled away at his senses: the head of his member twinging from every fall she took, from every rise she struggled to attain for.

He went for her hands, interlacing his fingers around her's and rocked her arms when she'd pressed up for another fall over his rob, he, himself, relaxing when she would fall into him. There was no counting now...there never was. She was pumping him so hard that she appeared to be under a spell of pure erotic frenzy. Like her own willpower was taken from her as her mind kept wanting more and more of the feeling she was drinking. And he too. He realized from the sudden fall on his penis that penetrated deeper into her tight tunnel that he was helping now, thrusting upwards with every lunge toward the bed. Her moans were increasing, sounding more like she was begging for her explosion, as his was boiling to erupt.

It was hard to discern now where she was, only that she didn't want this sensation to stop but intensify. She needed a boost, and she had the key to it. With her hands still interlaced with his, she moved them towards her breast, letting her pumping ride rub his palms over her nipples, massaging and tickle them as she rode him faster, harder...enough that her back arched from a direct secret command that she couldn't understand.

And now he was hearing his own moans...his own grunts of his body wanting to dissolve with every penetration of his member.

Her walls were pulsing, convulsing around his penis, making her wriggle with every pump she found the strength to energize with, shooting euphoric punches to his mind that he was on the verge of exploding into her.

"AHHH!"

Her scream was it–the tip of his member blew and he couldn't stop his mind from telling him to pump faster, to thrust harder into her. Every jolt he felt, every deep penetration he shoved into her, intensified her screams. Her clitoris had swollen, her breasts were on fire...her walls were spasming so hard that her screams become ones transparent to those of pain, and his member was sucked into her, swallowing his seeds inside her.

It seemed like their time in eternity had elapsed into silence, save for the deep breaths they were inhaling. Of the times he'd know her, of the night he knew he had strong feelings of love for her, he never dreamt that it would ever come to this; to a place that his parents and friends only talked about and shied him away from, and leaving him only to question whether he would ever experience it. But it had just happened. It had just taken place inside his own dwelling, inside his own sanctuary, inside the girl who has always been there for him. And when she dismounted from him, feeling the head of his member twitched from the over sensitiveness of the nerves and wetness, he was grateful she'd lured him into this forbidden place they had been both scared to tread within and discover its hidden nature...its hidden pleasures.

She fell over to his left side, inching closer to him, pressing her breasts against to him while laying an arm across his chest. Warm air wafted at his ear, her nose exhaling as she nuzzled closer to him:

"I love, Knuckles," she whispered in a tone that was both passionate, but yet crying. "You took me when I was against you. You looked after me when I went on my own. You stayed with me through all our turbulent times...and I'm giving back your full devotion to me with something that you've been needing.. After tonight, I promise you that I'm forever your's...my Guardian. I'm forever yours."

"But–"

Her finger landed on his lips, her other hand finding his and squeezing it, dancing her fingers over the spiked extension from his hands. He'd never seen her eyes shine so brightly into his. For once in his life he'd achieved a different plane of existence, and for once in his life, he achieved it with the one that truly mattered to him. "Sleep, Knuckles. That's all I want you to do..."

Denying her request meant for her to be unhappy. Somewhere he felt her yearn touching his own, to obey her wishes of this night...

...And of this night, as his eyes closed away from her's, he began to understand himself.

The moon had drifted away from the window...but it still pushed enough light into the room, illuminating the bed that she could see her equal sleeping peacefully beside her. For Julie-Su the tide had turned; the safety she felt from Knuckles was now in her hands, her fostered charge to keep him at peace, knowing in his dreams that she was there, that she was never going to leave him. Her smile conveyed this as she looked upon him. Her eyes traced every lock on his head that either draped across his mouth, his shoulder, or his back. Hope sprang from this picture...hope that more nights like this would follow, either just being with each other or letting themselves go.

Yet, another mosaic sprang into her musing mind...a now not so far off illusion that would come as the everlasting bonds that her Knuckles was seeking for. She was true to her heart when she whispered that she was forever his. When the day would come he would know the joy of her love, and her the same with his. She knew this, she knew that their time here of this night will forever keep their hearts locked to each other. Their missing piece to hold them together...if she dreamed a little harder, the time for that piece to enter their lives could be lying there between them now, suckling on her thumb, rolling around as her dreams took her away from the barbarity of the real world.

And their daughter would be the bond to keep them together. To keep the promise her mother made to her father, true with the conception of her life.

And by morning, for Julie-Su and her sleeping Guardian...

...She will be with them.

I hoped you all enjoyed this as much as I had in creating this. Happy Valentines Day everyone.