Speedy's note: In my mind, this is something of a relatively early timeline fic, somewhat shortly after Sonic Heroes. Definitely before the first Sonic Riders, if you include that as canon.
Originally, this started as a brief idea, intended to be an about 1k words piece to post before Christmas. It had a mind of its own, and now it's 7 times as long. (Yikes!)
Best Intentions
Knuckles the Echidna didn't quite grasp the surface dwellers' concept of vacationing.
He could, in some distant way, understand the value of gaining experience through travels. Of broadening your horizon. While he himself had rarely ever travelled for reasons other than necessity, in the course of these travels he had seen sights and places and made experiences he wouldn't have made had he stayed on his island.
When it came to the island itself, he even enjoyed a change of scenery and as such took pleasure in scouting the forests, ruins, tunnels, caves, valleys and summits of his home. It was also part of the guardian's duty, but he liked it nonetheless.
As such, he could somewhat relate to Sonic's apparent love for travelling. The main difference was probably that the hedgehog travelled not out of necessity, not out of the same half-duty, half-enjoyment Knuckles put into travelling around Angel Island, but on entirely whimsical notions, like "It'll be fun!"
It had been exactly that formulation Sonic had used when presenting him with the proposal to join him and Tails on one such travel.
Knuckles' reply had been an empathic "No".
Sonic's reply to that had been a raised eyebrow and a grin, followed by Tails launching into a lengthy account of how it was almost mid-winter and how instead of celebrating at home, they'd take a trip for the occasion this year, and how it wouldn't be the same without Knuckles attending this celebration.
As a young echidna, Knuckles had learned everything he knew, including morals and manners, from ancient records of his lost people. Part of these morals was that understanding and tolerance be extended to other cultures, no matter how odd their customs seemed from an echidna's position. Back in the day, it had been necessary to keep friendly relations to neighboring tribes, and if primarily to secure easy trading conditions. Later, it went down as common courtesy.
He didn't exactly have the best record of living up to his own moral standards, especially where Sonic and this particular circle of acquaintances were concerned. Knuckles had a temper problem, something he'd been entirely unaware of until he met the first surface people, and with them all the stress and irritation they brought to his previously rather ordered and simple life. As it turned out, when something unforeseen once again upended the very foundations and circumstances of his until then quiet, predictable, solitary reality, he often failed to react in a calm and thoughtful manner, as would befit the High Guardian.
The realization had spawned the idea that he could at least make the attempt to be more civil when the world wasn't ending around them. Now was one such time of rare peace. Eggman had just been defeated and would take some time to lick his wounds. The winter season itself was probably the best for the Master Emerald's safety, given the frequent storms at the high altitude that made finding and reaching the island a lot more difficult.
For anyone but Sonic and Tails, apparently. Not really a surprise, given the former's stubbornness and the latter's piloting skills.
Tails also possessed a downright scary ability of looking up at Knuckles in a way that made it feel like almost a crime to say no to him. An expression Sonic termed 'puppy dog eyes'. Knuckles wondered if they shouldn't be called 'puppy fox eyes', after all, Tails was a fox, not a dog? Well, they were related species, right? The surface people's language tended to be often rather imprecise in the echidna's opinion anyway... Or his acquaintances didn't make use of its full capacity. Knuckles suspected Tails did, at least at times, but those were also the times when he understood one word in twenty.
In the end, Knuckles had bowed to the puppy dog or fox eyes whatsoever, not even entirely grudgingly, and agree to join their trip and celebration. The last celebration they'd made him attend, a strange custom involving a decorated conifer, had been surprisingly pleasant. Maybe this trip wouldn't be so bad either.
It started pleasantly enough. His friends planned to stay at a cottage, apparently belonging to some guy Sonic knew from somewhere who owed him a favor. It was high up in a mountainous zone that even looked a little bit like the glaciers of Ice Cap at home. It was remote enough to be quiet. Unlike some other trips to the surface with its crowds and noise, Knuckles actually suspected he would be able to sleep at night here.
The first day was spent decorating a tree and lazing away the evening in giant plush arm chairs in front of a half-round fireplace that took up half of the living area of the tiny house. Knuckles was carefully beginning to think he might like holidays.
Then, naturally, Sonic got stir-crazy. As a result, he dragged Tails and Knuckles down a snowy path until they found an area with lifts and houses and smells of odd foodstuff and many, many other people. Knuckles didn't like crowds.
Generally, Knuckles liked skiing. He also liked snowboarding, and racing Sonic downhill.
But he liked it the way he liked almost all interaction.
In small doses.
By the end of the day he was more tired than the exercise warranted, he was grumpy and irritable and not so fond of holidays anymore.
Consequently, he'd decided to stay at their temporary house the next day. Sonic, interestingly, didn't seem mad. He shouldered his board and claimed he'd be back later.
Dumbfounded by the unexpected lack of conflict, Knuckles sat near a window and gazed out into the gently falling snow. He didn't quite know why Tails stayed back along with him, and said so.
The fox grinned. "Sonic's an adrenaline junkie. He needs action, action, action, all the time."
Knuckles raised a brow. "And you don't?"
"I might just be a healthy medium between you two." Tails laughed.
For a moment, Knuckles wondered if he'd been stealthily insulted or not.
He realized only that he was staring at Tails when the fox cleared his throat. "Spit it out."
"Huh?"
Tails' double namesakes made a swooshing motion behind his back. "Whatever's puzzling you like this. Maybe I can clear it up and explain. I don't have much to do, Knuckles; I'm on vacation. I have time to humour you."
Knuckles blinked. Well, if this went as well as most of their conversations where Tails explained something, it was promising to be downright enlightening.
The young fox grinned at him across the small table. "Oh please, stop radiating sarcastic disbelief. I'll leave the quantum physics out of it, I swear."
Knuckles leaned back in his chair, arms folding across his chest. "You could apply physics to vacations?"
"Physics can be applied to anything. Ski ramps are a great life example for the conservation and transformation of energy." Tails gave another laugh at the look of near horror Knuckles failed to keep off his face. "But really, this is a vacation. No complex math and stuff. I'll keep, whatever it is, simple. How's that sound?"
"Like a threat."
Tails resolved into a brief fit of giggles. "You win this round," he said, eyes twinkling with mirth. "Okay, what's your problem?"
Knuckles took a moment to look out the window again before he gave up. "I don't get it. This vacation thing."
"What's not to get? You go to a nice place, with people you like, to do things you enjoy."
"But what's... What's the purpose? Is it a tradition?"
Tails leaned his forearms on the wooden table between them. "It's not really a tradition, I think. More like, a common practice, you could say?" He sounded musing now, then the blue eyes returned to look at Knuckles, and suddenly the echidna noticed that Tails was currently applying the same patience with foreign cultures to him that he was struggling to apply to them. "The purpose is to get a break from your daily life, to rest and recuperate, to take your mind off things for a few days, so you can return from your vacation more relaxed. Don't echidnas do that kind of thing?" There was curiosity now.
"Sure. Resting so you can regain your strength makes sense. But..." He shook his head. "If it's about resting... What about the chaos of yesterday do you guys consider restful?"
Tails laughed. "Yeah, I can see your problem there..."
"Do you now?" Knuckles was skeptical at best about that.
Tails visibly forced himself to stop laughing. "It's the taking your mind off things part, you see."
Knuckles didn't, and bluntly said so. It earned him another laugh from Tails, but somehow it didn't seem like the fox was laughing about him, and the echidna found he didn't feel mad.
He was about to actually make another attempt at communicating his lack of understanding of surface culture and its practices to Tails when the door to the cottage banged open, letting in a flurry of snowflakes and a blue hedgehog fairly covered in snow quills to toes.
"Guys, guys, you have to see this!"
Knuckles exchanged a long-suffering look of sudden perfectly mutual understanding with Tails. "Have to see what, Sonic?"
"And close the door, the snow is best kept outside," Tails added with a strangely indulgent grin.
Sonic blinked, then knocked the door closed with a nudge of his foot and leaned the snowboard he was carrying against the wall next to the door where it proceeded to drop snow melt into a rapidly growing puddle on the rustic wooden floor.
"I've gone exploring uphill," Sonic started talking, still quite excited and still quite a bit too loud for an indoor conversation held over small distances in a rather tiny room. "Found a couple of nice slopes, completely untouched for free riding. We could go tomorrow, more space for us and no idiots standing in the way. No lifts, either, but if you're up for going back uphill by yourself..."
Tails threw Knuckles a look and wink. "I think we are."
Sonic's face lit up as he grinned. "Awesome! And for the rest of the day... There's a glacier up there. I looked around a bit, and I found an ice cave, all blue lights and stalactites the size of trees, I tell you! It's totally awesome! You have to come see!"
If there was one interest Sonic and Knuckles shared, aside of obvious things such as stopping Eggman from destroying the world and a mutual competitive streak, it was a liking for nature and its beauty. With all their differences in background and personality, they still shared a love for remote places of nature in all their forms.
"There are glacier caves in Ice Cap Zone," Knuckles noticed.
"Not like this one, I think," Sonic gave back, all but bouncing on the balls of his feet. "'Cause if you have something like that and never showed us, I'm gonna be mad, Knux."
Knuckles leaned forwards, elbows on the table, raising a brow at Sonic over steepled fingers. "So?"
"Well, we won't know if your cave compares to Knuckles' unless you show us," Tails cut in, pushing back his chair with the scratching noise of wood on wood.
"That's why I'm here! What are you wanting for?" The blue hedgehog waved an arm at the door. "We still have several hours until sunset."
Exploring a cave and taking a trek through snowed in mountains sounded more like Knuckles' idea of a good time. He shoved his chair back and reached for his scarf. "Lead the way then."
Sonic beamed.
As they made their way up the hill, not running but in a relaxed walk, Knuckles remembered his initial liking for the scenery from when they arrived here. The height allowed for a far view, and up to the horizon the world was white with winter's coat.
Softer waving hills took turns with groups of sharp, high summits that poked tips of naked grey rock out of the blanket of white and blues that lay over the rest of the landscape. To Knuckles, used to his island ending in a sharp edge surrounded by clouds and sky, so much land to see, so much boundless space that wasn't sky but ground to walk on was fascinating.
The few minutes of quiet watching and contemplation didn't last however. "When we get back, we should build a big ski ramp," Sonic announced out of the blue.
Knuckles shot him a look. "Why?"
Sonic's eyebrows hiked up rather far into his brow in an expression of utmost disbelief. "Why, Knuckles, so we can go down it and fly through the air on skis," the hedgehog intoned slowly, mockingly.
"You want to speed down a hill on two flimsy little boards, jump off to... fall off at the end and keep falling who knows how far with the things, what for?" Knuckles too could pull of that mocking tone like an expert by now.
"Duh, for fun! Don't it seem fun to you to fly like that?" Sonic had actually stopped his trudging though the knee-deep snow.
"Doesn't, Sonic," Tails interjected with a long-suffering smirk.
"What?" Distracted, the blue hedgehog turned away from Knuckles and from their discussion to stare at Tails.
"It is 'doesn't it seem fun', not 'don't it'," the fox elaborated.
Sonic blinked. "Yeah whatever. Anyway," he turned back to Knuckles, but stopped again in mid-speech, a sheepish expression darting across his face. "Where were we?"
"Your ski ramp," Tails helpfully supplied from the sidelines before Knuckles even had a chance to.
"Right. And how much fun it is flying down it." The expressive green eyes fixed on Knuckles again, daring him to contradict.
Knuckles was rarely anything but daring. "I don't see what I need a ramp for. If I wanted to fly, I could just jump off a hill and glide. You know that, don't you?"
Sonic threw up his hands. "Of course you can! But it's not the same and -"
"Technically, it's not flying either of you do," Tails piped up cheerfully, interrupting Sonic. "Flying is when you use a power source of some sort to stay in the air. What Knuckles does is gliding, and the ski ramp is indeed more like falling, actually. Knuckles is right there."
"Now whose side are you on?!" Sonic waved a hand at his little brother. "I could really use some help talking this grump into having some fun once in a while, and you have to backstab me like this!"
Tails grinned. "No one is backstabbing anyone; I was just stating facts."
"You are not helping," Sonic insisted.
"I think it's for once interesting what he says," Knuckles noticed. "Go on, Tails!"
The fox shook his head. "This isn't even my weird discussion. You started it, you end it."
"I didn't start it! Sonic did, he said -"
"That he wanted to build a ski ramp, yes, I remember, it was only a minute ago, Knuckles." Tails was still smiling, in spite of his weirdly chiding tone. "And you asked what for."
Knuckles nodded empathically. "And nobody gave me an answer yet."
"Hey, I said it was fun!" Sonic folded his arms across his chest.
"I seem to recall we don't really have the same idea of what's fun, hedgehog."
"Well, aside of the tendency to turn everything into an argument for the heck of it," Tails mumbled.
Knuckles blinked at the fox. "We're not having an argument."
"No? What do you call it then when you're snapping at each other?" Tails smiled all too innocently.
"Um, a discussion, of, uh, principles," Sonic said with a vague, sloppy swipe of his hand.
"And we're not 'snapping'," Knuckles added.
"He's right. Not snapping at all." Sonic nodded gravely.
"A discussion of principles, in an entirely civilized tone, about an important topic, such as the purpose of ski ramps, then?", Tails drawled, and Knuckles realized with some fascination this was the first time he was sure he'd heard Tails so obviously use sarcasm in all the time he knew him.
And now that he heard it phrased like that, it did seem rather... ridiculous. The guardian felt a grin tug on his lips in spite of himself. " Sounds about right." He span back around towards Sonic. "Now, do you have any further arguments?"
Sonic's face briefly twitched with something Knuckles was sure was a grin wanting to spread, but the hedgehog fought it down to instead scowl at Knuckles. "None that you'd understand, you grump."
"I'm not a grump," the echidna insisted. "A grump is someone who's always in a bad mood."
"Yes, like you, never having any fun! Against everything that is fun!" Sonic returned to gesticulating wildly in front of Knuckles. "Like ski jumping! The speed, the wind in your face and all that!"
"Firstly, I am not always in a bad mood." Right now, he was in a quite good mood, odd as it was. "Secondly, you still haven't told me one thing about your amazing ramps that I can't have without them, Sonic."
"Oh, you... It's a sport, Knuckles. It's to have fun, and to keep fit, if fun isn't your thing." Sonic gave him a stern look.
"How would falling off the end of a ramp help me staying fit, now?"
"I dunno, helps you learn to balance or whatever. It's not important." Sonic shook his head. "Why do you need a reason for everything? Just accept that it's about fun."
"You said that stuff about keeping fit," Knuckles noticed.
Sonic groaned. "I don't even know why I put up with you. You're a hopeless case!"
"I didn't ask you to put up with me," Knuckles shot back. "It was you who insisted I come here, and you brought up the thing with the ramp and-"
"Yes, I brought it up. It was you who had to not get it and make it complicated!" He waved his arms. "If you don't want to ski jump, you don't have to!"
"I never said I don't want to," Knuckles noticed. "I just said that-"
"Enough! This is supposed to be a sort of holiday," Tails cut in again, amusement gone, by now he was obviously rather exasperated. "No Eggman attacks, no ancient monsters, no catastrophic events. I want to relax and eventually get to see the cave Sonic wanted to show us." He took a breath. "Sonic, cut Knuckles some slack, he didn't grow up with this stuff. Winter sports are as alien to him as Echidnaen hieroglyphics to you. Knuckles, stop pretending you don't know what fun is. Both of you, stop arguing because you're bored."
"I'm not bored," both hedgehog and echidna exclaimed in near perfect synchronization.
Knuckles shot Sonic a glare at the involuntary chorus. It achieved nothing, except help send the hedgehog into a laughing fit. Also Tails' exasperation was dissolving quickly into helpless giggles. For a moment Knuckles managed to hold onto his seriousness, then he too was overcome with chuckles in spite of himself.
When he and his friends calmed down again, Knuckles found he hardly remembered the not entirely serious argument he'd had with Sonic.
Knuckles could immediately tell when they crossed from the temporary snow shield of winter onto the permanent ice of the mountain's glacier. It was not visible even to a sharp eye, covered in pristine snow fresh from last night and still feathery soft.
And yet, there was something that changed in the way the ground felt under his feet, something different about the way the snow crunched underfoot, something he couldn't quite nail down but that was an absolute certainty nonetheless. Back at home on the island, on the glaciers of Ice Cap on the summits surrounding the hot core of Lava Reef, Knuckles could've put this sense down to it somehow linking to the Master's energy interfusing the entire island, but that he could do it here, so far from the gem and his familiar environment made it clear that there were a lot of things he knew on instinct that had nothing to do with any influence of chaos energy. It was an interesting discovery, and one of a kind Knuckles rarely had the chance to make, let alone reflect upon and assimilate in peace.
It was with quiet, but easy eagerness that the echidna followed Sonic's lead down the slope of the glacier towards the center of the valley it had carved into the space between several sharp toothed summits.
Further down, an avalanche had torn down the steep hill, the track was covered in a shy dusting of fresh snow, but still looked like a scar had been torn into the white field. It carried out onto the glacier itself, up to where it had plummeted into a crevice.
Sonic led them up to the edge of this crevice and the three of them leaned to catch a glimpse into the opening that gaped like the mouth of a hungry beast before them.
The wall on the other side of the wide hole was almost vertical and glazed in the near polished seeming way of solid ice just briefly touched by the sun.
"There it is," Sonic said, pointing across the crevice towards the foot of the slick wall.
Once directed, Knuckles too spotted the cave, as well as the traces of Sonic's first track down there. Again the guardian was struck with a sense that the hedgehog had an utter disregard for heights he might fall down, given that he was of a non-flying species. It was one thing for an echidna to take that path, with his natural gliding ability and the claws to aid in getting a hold in such a wall. From the looks of it, Sonic had pretty much jumped from one precarious foothold to the next.
The entrance itself was looking not quite as spectacular as the way down, just a dark hole tucked into a gracious sweep of the ice slope.
Next to Knuckles, Sonic was bouncing once, twice on the balls of his feet. "You guys coming then?"
"Sure, looks cool!" Tails enthusiastically followed Sonic as the hedgehog made to round the crevice until he reached a spot from where he could jump down and land on a small natural path that idled down towards the bottom of the sleek glacier wall.
Knuckles followed with a bit of distance, watching the two descend, Tails primarily flying, Sonic jumping, sliding, running and balancing. It was a display to make someone with more sensitive nerves than Knuckles downright afraid for the hedgehog's life, but on second look it was obvious that Sonic, against all appearances, knew exactly what he was doing. He didn't take one wrong step, every one of the reckless looking leaps was well timed and taken with absolute precision. Knuckles wasn't sure how he did it, but Sonic didn't once slip up on the icy ground.
The echidna himself made it down quickly and without trouble, sometimes gliding, sometimes digging his spiny knuckles into the solid ice.
They reached the entrance almost at the same time. Sonic was the first to enter, quickly followed by an overeager Tails. Knuckles went after his friends more slowly, taking the time to take in the blue light that filtered in through the wall at his left. The ice was thin enough to let in some sunlight. On its way down through the ice it dimmed and turned into a soft glow of deep blue.
The cave they were in continued on as a rather narrow tunnel for almost a minute. Once it got so narrow that Sonic and Tails were forced to walk single file instead of next to each other, then Sonic and Knuckles had to duck their heads. The soft blue light faded into near darkness, then suddenly the tunnel opened all around them.
The first clue to the sheer size of the space before them was the echoing sound of their footsteps. Then Sonic took a step to the side, allowing Knuckles and Tails a free view of the glacier cave.
Cave was an insufficient term for it. The caves Knuckles knew, and he knew several, where all dark and often narrow, winding spaces. This was... This was a cathedral of ice. They could not see the walls surrounding it; they faded away into the gentle darkness without gaining shape.
High above their heads, the ceiling was visible as a distantly faint dome that curved out of the darkness and up into wide curves, towering towards a small, but bright circle of daylight that fell through a hole in the ice of the ceiling. Rays of light pierced down into the dim blue of the glacier's glow.
Growing down from the ceiling and up from the ground were the icicles Sonic had spoken of, but what kind of icicles they were! The size of trees, Sonic had said, and it was no exaggeration. What hung down from the high ceilings, reflecting the bright lights, looked like larger than life swords and teeth awash in an almost ethereal glow.
"I can't even... This is amazing", Tails mumbled in a voice hushed with awe.
"Told ya, didn't I?", Sonic said, and Knuckles could hear the grin in Sonic's tone of voice, even without turning to his blue friend. "Do you like it, Knuckles? Ya don't have that on your island, if your open mouth is anything to go by."
Mortified, Knuckles forced his mouth closed with a snap of teeth, earning a laugh from the hedgehog that reverberated from the far depth of the cave as if the very mountain was laughing with him.
"No," the echidna finally managed, "I've never seen anything like this. It's... wonderful."
"Yes, it is." Sonic was still smiling.
Knuckles' gaze trailed slowly along the glowing giant icicles. "Thank you," he said quietly, briefly tearing his eyes down to look at Sonic.
The blue hedgehog caught his gaze and returned it with a flash of white teeth and a nod of his head.
Next to them, Tails had recovered from the first awed shock and was making his way deeper into the cave, spinning tails drawing him up to fly between the giant icy stalactites.
He waved down to the others already several meters high. "Look at the size of this thing!"
"Yeah, I see it!" Standing next to a stalagmite easily six times his height, Sonic waved back at his little brother.
"I'm gonna fly to the hole!" Tails pointed up.
Sonic nodded. "Sure, check out where it goes!"
Taking up residence at the foot of another huge stalagmite, Knuckles followed the fox's ascend with a smile. Now this kind of vacation, he could get used to.
They spent almost an hour and a half in the cave, climbing on some of the icicles and looking into every corner hidden by their shadows. They even found a spot at the end of the huge hall where a creek flowed down from a wall and along the few meters of ground in the open before it retreated back under a cover of ice. Apparently, there was water passing under and through the glacier in places.
In the end, Tails airlifted both his friends through the hole in the ceiling and they forged a new trail across the glacier's top, slowly heading back to their small cabin.
They casually hiked down the hill, chatting amiably about this and that. The slope flattened out to a wide field of untouched white. Tails in front, they made to cross it.
Knuckles' gaze was sweeping around, trying to figure if this was a frozen lake or something else, when his ears picked up a quiet creaking.
Recognition of the sound came to Knuckles as swiftly it only would to someone who's passed over glaciers so often he stopped counting. Below their feet, the grinding noise spread out on fraying passages.
"Look out!", he shouted, even as he scrambled, carefully, not too hasty, to the side, away from the grinding sensation under his soles.
Tails, a few paces ahead, swept up with spinning tails, blue eyes puzzled and concerned at once. Between them, Sonic span to face the echidna, pointed ears perked in alert. It took just a blink for Sonic to catch up with Knuckles' train of thought.
If Knuckles was right, they were right on top of it. "Move!" He pointed in the opposite direction to his own movement. They had to spread their weight.
Sonic's eyes widened almost comically, no doubt at the thought of what was below the ice, then he dissolved into a blur of blue speed. For a detached moment, Knuckles realized he sometimes forgot how fast Sonic was. It felt unreal.
A resonant crack split up from below, and Knuckles too knew when to throw caution to the wind. He ran. He covered two, three, four meters, then it was as if the very Earth was breaking apart under his feet and he stumbled on unsteady ground, slipped and suddenly the ground broke away under him altogether.
The only thing he could do was hold his breath.
Knuckles couldn't recall landing in the water. He remembered the sensation of dropping, the weightlessness shooting through his stomach and up his spine for just the blink of an eye, and then being surrounded by frigid water that instantly bore down on him as a leaden liquid weight.
The shock kicked in a second later, wanted to draw a gasp from his throat. Knuckles fought the impulse down, instead kicked his legs to get back up to the surface.
His head broke the surface and he gasped in a sharp lungful of air, blinking to clear his sight. Blurrily he could see that above his head was a ceiling of ice, shining in translucent blue. As sometimes happened when lakes froze over quickly, a bubble of air had formed under the shield of ice.
His fall had torn a nasty wound into the ice. Knuckles paddled, tried to propel himself far enough out of the water to be able to grasp something. It wasn't far, but he was already trembling too hard to make proper use of his strength. He was starting to lose feeling of his feet and hands.
Panting through chattering teeth, Knuckles strained upwards, desperate to find hold of something, and suddenly a grip wound around his wrist.
Water dropping into his eyes, the echidna squinted upwards and found himself looking into Tails' face. "Hang on, I'm pulling you up!"
He wanted to argue that water-logged as he was he was probably too heavy for Tails to lift, but couldn't find the energy to do so. Instead, he focused on convincing fingers he could see but not feel to grip around Tails' wrist and forearm.
Double namesakes whirling, the little fox was now holding onto Knuckles' hand with both of his hands, a strained frown on his face, but his eyes were narrowed in what the echidna recognized as determination. And really, slowly but surely Knuckles was pulled upwards.
He kicked his legs to try and help Tails to pull him free of the water's hold on him, and suddenly he was out of it, they were flying for a short distance, then he was set down.
The next second he was falling down, his legs unable to cope with the perceived lack of feet and ground contact. For a moment he felt weightless again, but then a pair of hands had caught around his arm and under his shoulder and was pulling him back up.
He blinked, struggling to orient himself.
"Hey! Knuckles! You okay?" Sonic's hands had not moved from their hold on him, in fact Knuckles found his was fairly leaning on the hedgehog, he distantly thought he should mind, but he didn't. Sonic was warm. The wind, just a barely noticeable breeze before, was now shooting icy pins down his entire body.
"Knuckles!" Sonic bumped his shoulder into Knuckles' side. "Say something!"
"'m okay," he pressed out. He was shivering even worse now, and somewhere in the back of his mind he could feel the Master's energy pulse up, a tingle of it pooling in his stomach. Sometimes it did that, when he was injured or something, but he wasn't injured now, he was just cold.
"I think that's a bit of an exaggeration," Tails noticed, still panting slightly from the exertion of carrying him.
Knuckles took a second to realize it was a reply to his own statement and he made an effort to pull himself together. "No, 's fine."
"Uh-huh." Sonic nodded, Knuckles felt the motion more than saw it. "We have to get you back inside and warm."
He was not about to dispute that.
"Do you think you can walk?" Tails was studying him with raised eyebrows.
Normally, Knuckles would insist on it. Now… "Hmm. Can't feel my feet."
"I'm not surprised," Sonic mumbled near his ear.
"How far is it?" Tails was looking at Sonic now.
The hedgehog shrugged. "Not far. Five minutes if we walk normally. Ten if we're slow."
"Okay… um…" Tails nodded. "I'll take care of Knuckles. Run ahead and get us a blanket, and start a fire."
Before Knuckles had quite caught up with their conversation, not to mention their actions based on it, Tails had shifted under his shoulder and pulled him against his side. Knuckles stumbled, and almost missed Sonic's "I'll be just a Sonic sec!" over the attempt to regain his balance.
He had barely succeeded with that when Tails started pushing him along. "We should get moving; you'll only get colder standing around here."
Knuckles was aware of that, too.
Walking seemed to help. The Emerald tingle was spreading outwards from his stomach, radiating an illusion of warmth into his muscles. Detachedly he was aware of the illusionary nature and the danger it carried, but he couldn't quite care too much about it at the moment.
Sonic suddenly stood in front of him, an apparition of blue speed, startling him enough to make him jump. The hedgehog grinned sheepishly and stopped Knuckles' complaint by unfolding a large blanket and draping it snugly around him in a movement so quick it he couldn't follow it. Almost instantly, the biting wind stopped freezing his skin. Knuckles couldn't contain a sigh of relief.
"Was about time," Tails said at his side. "Did you take the scenic route?"
Sonic gave an apologetic shrug. "No, I had to make sure the fire would stay on, and I put some water to boil."
Tails nodded. "Good idea; he's a walking ice cube."
"Really? I didn't notice."
Sonic's quip drew a disbelieving chuckle from the fox, but it seemed to relax him, too, and the two of them took Knuckles in their middle and shoved him gently downhill.
Smoke was rising from the chimney of their cottage and Knuckles smiled, thinking of the fireplace and the huge plush chairs grouped around it. Right now, it sounded heavenly.
Once inside, Knuckles was pushed into one of the wooden chairs at the table, Sonic stole his blanket just when he was finding himself grow rather attached to it, and he was somewhat buried in towels.
Rubbing at Knuckles' quills without bothering to ask him about it, Sonic looked down on him. "It's certainly not my thing, but I hear it's good when you're cold. Do you want a hot bath?"
"Absolutely not!" Both Sonic and Knuckles turned to Tails at his near panicked exclamation.
"Why not?", the hedgehog asked.
Tails had pulled out one of his handheld computers and was aiming it at Knuckles. "According to the temperature scan, he has a core temperature of barely 28 degrees Celsius. That's the onset of severe hypothermia. We have to be very careful warming him up slowly!" He looked up at Knuckles from his device. "How are you even conscious?"
Knuckles blinked. He did feel very cold, yes, and a bit drowsy, but he'd been cold before, and he didn't think it was severe, or actually that dangerous. "I'm okay, Tails. I'm cold, but I'm not dying. I'm sure."
Sonic studied him critically for a moment, but resumed rubbing water out of his fur, now along back and shoulders. "He already looks better than out there, I think."
"Thermometers don't lie," Tails insisted. "And subjective perception of being warm or cold are impaired when you're hypothermic."
Contrary to Tails' concerns, now that he was drying off and no longer exposed to the cold weather, feeling was returning to Knuckles' hands and feet in a painful tingle, and the nudging Emerald energy was dwindling down to a faint echo in the back of his awareness.
"I'm fine, Tails. I can already feel my hands and feet again."
Tails frowned. "Are you dizzy? Tired? Do you remember what happened? Do you know where we are? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"No, a bit, yes, yes, and three. Really Tails, you're panicking."
Behind him, Sonic snorted in the attempt to keep from laughing.
"You're irritable," Tails said. "That's also a sign of hypothermia."
"Well, actually, he's normally irritable," Sonic remarked, tossing a wet towel over the back of an unoccupied chair.
"Sonic, this is serious!" Tails was indeed looking pretty desperate.
Knuckles took a fresh towel from Sonic's hold and drew up his left leg, slipping the wet, cold boot off his foot and wrapping it in the welcoming dry warmth of the towel. "I didn't say I'm not hypothermic, just that it's not severe. I'll be just fine, Tails, I promise."
Tails took a slow breath, then shot a look down on his device's screen. "You're getting warmer," he allowed. "Okay. Okay. Tea?"
"Yes. Thank you." Knuckles accepted another small towel from Sonic to dry his other foot. Then he decided he would now sit in one of the comfy chairs by the fire, even if it gave Tails a heart attack.
Sonic watched him critically as he got up, hovering near his elbow as he made his way across the room.
Knuckles shot him a glare. Deep down, he appreciated the concern and care, but they didn't need to act as if he was gonna drop dead any second.
Instead of taking offense, Sonic grinned and pulled a large pillow and what looked like a heavy, thick quilt from a pile on one of the plush chairs. "Want some? You can hog all the blankets."
It didn't sound like a bad idea for once.
Within a minute, Knuckles was curled up on one of the huge chairs, leaning into the pillows Sonic kept producing from somewhere. Drawing up his knees, he burrowed his toes under a particularly large pillow and leaned back into a second one. Sonic had stirred the fire into bright and high flames, and Knuckles turned his face to catch the warmth on nose and cheeks.
When Tails returned with a large steaming mug, he handed it to Knuckles without much words before taking one of the other arm chairs, alternating between looking at Knuckles and the small computer that was back in his hand.
Knuckles focused his attention on his drink instead. When he finished it, he was beginning to feel really comfortably warm again, and increasingly fond of staying in this cocoon of blankets for the remainder of the day, if not for the entirety of the vacation.
He leaned to place the empty mug on a small table between his chair and the one Sonic had slouched into sideways, feet crossed at the ankles dangling down from the armrest.
The hedgehog smiled when he met Knuckles' eyes. "Better?"
"Yes, a lot." As a testament to the truth of the statement, Knuckles found himself actually smiling back.
"You're still way too cold, " Tails noticed, throwing a short glance down on his device. Unlike Sonic, he sat rather upright in his chair. "32 degrees is almost 5 degrees less than is normal. That's a lot."
Knuckles frowned. Now that he stopped to think about it, it didn't make sense. He didn't feel cold anymore, and said so.
"Maybe your thingy is broken?", Sonic suggested. "He looks okay."
Tails shook his head. "It shows both you and me having normal temperatures. Also the feedback it gives when I aim it at the fire is within range. Only Knuckles isn't. He was getting warmer at first, but now he isn't anymore."
"Could you stop talking about me as if I'm not even there?" Knuckles shuffled back deeper into his nest, pulling the topmost blanket up to his chin.
Paying him no mind, Sonic shrugged, folding his arms as he looked over at Tails. "Not all species have the same temperatures, right?"
Tails nodded distractedly. "Yes. Reptiles for example are ectothermic. Mammals, and echidnas are mammals, if a unique sort, usually have similar core temperatures."
"Maybe he's hibernating."
Knuckles glared at Sonic. "I can hear you."
Sonic grinned. "Not hibernating, then."
"Mobians don't hibernate anymore." Tails was back to ignoring the both of them in favor of studying his computer. "But maybe echidnas just are naturally colder than most species. It's possible with how old and isolated the species is."
"Tails!" Sonic laughed. "Relax. He'll live."
The fox looked up, and the blue eyes were still troubled. "Yes, this time. But think about it. We don't even know his natural body temperature. What are we gonna do if something is actually wrong with him? We know almost nothing about what is normal for him. How do we know if he gets a fever or something?"
Knuckles sighed. "Will it help ease your mind if I say I'll tell you when I have one? You tend to notice when you have a fever."
Next to him, Sonic chuckled again.
Ignoring the hedgehog, Tails was looking at Knuckles. He finally put his computer away and leaned slightly into the cushions of his seat. "I'm sorry for panicking. And weirding you out. We know too little about each other."
"It's okay." By now Knuckles felt very cozily warm, and the physical relaxation was calming his mind. He had never really been mad at Tails, just a bit annoyed. Now, he found himself unable to even be annoyed. "I know you meant well, Tails."
His friend nodded, finally a smile returning to his face.
Knuckles shifted, stretching briefly before settling deeply into his blankets in a position that ended up with him all but disappearing under the fluffed up heap, but that turned out to be so perfectly comfortable that he let out his breath in a sigh and closed his eyes.
For a few minutes, it was quiet, only the crackling of the fire and the faint sounds of wind from around the small house drifting to his ears. Knuckles enjoyed the warm silence; he already couldn't really remember the cold anymore.
He thought of the glacier cave instead, of the surreal blue light and the large icicles, and was beginning to forget the others were still there, but then soft words drifted over to his position.
"With the way this is going, he's never gonna go on holidays again," Tails said quietly, and even in the low tone of voice he sounded distraught.
Sleepy with the full return of warmth to his body, Knuckles shifted just enough in the oversized chair to lean his head more deeply into a pillow. "Jury's still out on that," he murmured.
"Oh?" Now Tails sounded hopeful.
Soft, socked footsteps padded over to Knuckles' spot next to the fireplace and Sonic's hand brushed a blanket back far enough to enable the hedgehog to look at him. "What can we do to make the jury decide in our favor?"
Knuckles tucked his blanket back into place. "You could shut up."
Sonic laughed, Tails mumbled something too quiet for Knuckles' ears to catch over the crackling fire, and two pairs of feet quietly retreated to the kitchen area of the cottage without further word.
Satisfied, Knuckles burrowed back deeper into the cushions and blankets, letting the familiar sounds and warmth of the fireplace lull him into slumber.
Maybe, just maybe, this vacation thing wasn't all bad, he thought.
Speedy's note#2: I drew a picture of the glacier cave (the cover image, too); you can look at it in full size on my DeviantART account if you like.
Concerning echidnas (a truly fascinating species), it's true that their mean body temperature is only 31-33° Celsius, as opposed to the 35-38° of most other mammals. It's been suggested that it's one of the reasons why they turn relatively old in comparison to their small body size; they're energy efficient.