Chaos Born

Lightning Strikes Twice

They hadn't long got back home.

Rouge sat in her chair, sipping tea and watching Knuckles as he ferreted about the place, fetching his wife an assortment of treats. Peace-offerings, she thought in her head. After all, it was always the guy's fault when these things happened, wasn't it?

Logic wouldn't explain why, but apparently it was.

They had gone for another test and the doctor seemed almost certain that Rouge was carrying a baby echidna. She had been expecting Knuckles to kick his heels and go skipping down the hallway and whistling like she saw people do on their way home from work on a Friday. 

Instead, he had kept up an extraordinary poker face and hadn't let slip the tiniest emotion.

Typical Knuckles. It was starting to make her nervous.

"You happy?" she asked quietly as Knuckles plumped her heart-shaped pillow and squashed it behind her back.

"Well," Knuckles admitted, "seeing as you live here as my married wife, I no longer have to worry about the Master Emerald being taken by you so... OW!"

Rouge had some sharp claws on her hands so when she slapped anything, there was always a 30% chance that you got scratched as well.

"Are you happy?" she repeated, cuddling herself back down. Knuckles rubbed his smarting bicep.

"What after being slapped?"

"Are you happy?" Rouge's tone of voice was serious so Knuckles bit his tongue and left his 'wound' alone.

"...Are you happy?"

The bat's teal eyes faltered and she stared into her tea. 

"...Truthfully?" she squeaked.

Knuckles said nothing in reply to that. He knew that when she was younger, Rouge had turned her nose up at the thought of having children and the thought of being a mother wasn't one that she even considered. Had this... 'accident'... not happened, Rouge would likely have remained child-less and Knuckles had accepted that, bottling down his hidden paternal feelings. 

"...You know when you listen to a new song or eat something new for the first time and you kinda hate it? Then, after a while, you keep trying it and trying it until it... doesn't seem so bad?" Rouge sipped the tea again and then, to Knuckles' enormous relief, started to smile. "I guess I'm starting to think that the idea of a baby isn't so bad," she admitted, "Plus, I get to help out with preserving the echidna species so there's that. D'you think I'll get rewarded for that?"

Knuckles rolled his eyes with a smile and went into the hallway.

 "...I think you definitely will," his voice spoke from the archway.

"Yeah?"

"Mm-hmm."

The red guardian returned with a small box, dumping it unceremoniously into Rouge's lap. The bat's eyes glittered excitedly as she drained her cup and tore through the ribbon like a predator with a carcass.

For someone so graceful, Knuckles had thought, she's certainly a carnivore when it comes to shiny things. Inside the box, you see, rested a ruby necklace set on a polished silver chain.

Rouge's eyes softened. 

"Knuckie!" she crooned, "You little red, grouchy, mean-faced brute, you!"

Knuckles twitched his nose. "...You're...welcome?"

Rouge had immediately put the necklace on and was now jutting out her chest to admire her new adornment. Her brief pleasure was short-lived as she then realised her previous question had been left unanswered.