Disclaimer: DiC, Archie and Sega own them all. I'm just playing with their toys without permission. I promise to put them back with minimal damage when I'm done.
A/N: First bit of Sonic fic I've written in a while, so please be gentle.
Continuity: SatAM (though Julayla belongs to Archie, but I like the idea that she somehow escaped to Knothole and met Rosie and the kids there).
Feedback: Yes, please!
Uneasy Peace
© Scribbler, June 2006.
Sometimes Sally wonders when it became a case of 'us' and 'them' in Knothole. The politics of the place have grown so much more complicated than when they were kits – when it was just her friends and herself, her nanny and her mentor, huddled together in a royal-retreat-turned-refugee-camp.
They made strong bonds back then, adopting each other as family when they finally grasped that their own weren't coming back. In many ways Rosie and Julayla were parents to the little lost children of the court, but in many ways they were simply the adults of the group. They didn't need regular labels – they were together, safe and well, and that was all that mattered.
Then the children grew, and things got so much more complicated. They were never simple – not after Robotnik – but somehow the simplicity of youth had a much shorter lifespan than anyone expected. They started taking notice of what they'd lost beyond simply their families. They missed things. Resentment bred. They started wishing they could fight back. They started wanting to wreak revenge for what had been done to them; what Robotnik's empire had taken away.
Rosie and Julayla tried to halt the oncoming freight train of adulthood, but it was rather like trying to stop a soggy biscuit from crumbling into a mug of hot tea. No matter how much of their innocence they saved, there were always bits coming loose, bits falling off and back into the boiling anger that would have been simple teenage angst in a normal world. When Rosie discovered eight-year-old Sonic and Sally discussing the best way to kill a SWATbot, she scolded them and sent them to bed without dessert. When Julayla found Sally researching guerrilla warfare instead of doing her sums, she kept her back to write lines while the others went out to play. Unlike Rosie, she didn't seem all that surprised when everyone chose to stay in with Sally instead, staring at the front of the room while the scritch of pencil on parchment filled the air. Rather, Julayla seemed quietly fatalistic about the whole thing – and well she might, having known Sally since birth and being fully aware of how stubborn and headstrong the young princess could be.
"You'll learn a great many things, in time," she said over and over again, ambiguous to a fault, until Sally wanted to scream.
Couldn't Julayla understand? Didn't she know what they were trying to do? Surely she, of all creatures, could grasp the importance of stopping Robotnik's poison. Julayla had been there when Robotnik rounded up their people and dragged them into the Roboticisor. She'd heard them screaming. Julayla had scrabbled out of the palace through the sewer system, dodging SWATbots and cutting her feet on the refuse of the dying capital. She'd staggered through the Great Forest, shocky and disoriented, eventually arriving in Knothole, where she was safe. She was the only one other than Rosie and her charges who had made it that far without being caught.
"You'll learn a great many things, in time," was all Julayla would say when Sally tried to plead her case. She didn't tell her she was too young, as Rosie did.
And Sally did learn things. She learned that the Mobotropolis she used to play in was no more. She learned that what had replaced it was a dank, sinister place, full of oily shadows and smog that wrapped around the metal buildings, and hugged the ground tighter than the newborn fox kit they found lying in a pool of garbage the first time they snuck back there. The kit had two tails – evidence of the chemicals Robotnik's factories pumped ceaselessly into the water supply of the once-great city – but he was healthy enough that Sally wondered if there were still people living somewhere amongst the refuse.
She learned that if there were people there, they were well hidden. She learned that roboticisation was a terrible thing when she saw her first true Robian – a mouse with a steel tail that bullwhipped hard enough to cleave concrete. She learned that revenge wasn't a good enough reason to journey into Robotropolis. While it was enough to get you across the border, revenge fled the moment you faced down a SWATbot's laser rifle, leaving only the sour taste of fear and survival instinct. The reasons for fighting Robotnik had to go deeper than vengeance – they had to come from both the heart and the head. And she learned that recklessness cost more than a few scorched tail-hairs when Bunnie, her only girl friend, had to be carried home because she couldn't make her new metal legs work.
"You'll learn a great many things, in time," Julayla had said.
Sally sort of understood what she meant after that.
She is the Princess of the House of Acorn. Although she admits it reluctantly, she is the last remainder of that noble bloodline, and she has a duty to safeguard what's left of her people. She will always carry an amount of guilt that she was too young to be an effective adversary when the coup took place, but since the day Julayla sat on Bunnie's vacant bed and let Sally sob a stream of self-recriminations into her shoulder, Sally has always been careful in how she thinks. She can't let him win, but she can't sacrifice even more to stop him. There's no point in fighting if you're left with less than you started with at the end.
After Bunnie, Sally told her friends they didn't have to fight anymore. She told them that as Princess, this was her battle, and she didn't want them getting hurt because she'd been reckless and rushed into a fight they weren't ready for.
Sonic told her in no uncertain terms where to get off. Rotor muttered something sincere but bashful. Antoine launched into a longwinded spiel about loyalty to the crown and defending her honour. Bunnie just sat shaking her head, her smile tight but genuine.
For a second Sally wanted to yell at them that they were being stupid, that she was giving them an out and would they please take it so she didn't have to feel guilty anymore. It was like tossing a life preserver to a drowning beast who refused to paddle to it.
Then a bolt of clarity hit Sally and she realised that she couldn't control them. They were her friends, her family, but they didn't fight because they were following her; they fought because Robotnik had affected each and every one of them in some way. This was their fight. She could no more deny them their chance to even the score than she could deny them the breath in their lungs.
Perhaps that's why she doesn't argue as much as she could about Tails's involvement. Tails wants to be a Freedom Fighter. It's all he's ever wanted to be (well, apart from a little taller, maybe). Sonic reckons he can do it, too. He's invested a lot of time training the little guy, plying him with encouraging words and talking to him about the very real dangers of going into Robotropolis. Tails has absorbed all of it as effectively as a sponge, and still he wants to be a Freedom Fighter. Sometimes Sally looks at him and sees something burning in his eyes that frightens her, but then she looks again and it's gone, and it's just Tails gazing beseechingly up at her. More often than not she relents, but sometimes – especially when she's just seen Bunnie rubbing salve into the raw redness where metal has rubbed away her fur – she just can't.
Tails doesn't understand her concerns. Sonic already talked to him about how dangerous their fight is, and he knows it's not a game. Sally can hear the oncoming freight train of adulthood as clearly as Rosie and Julayla must once have. She tells him he'll learn a great many things, in time, and then wishes fervently that they'll be finished with this war before that has chance to happen.
It strikes her that not many beasts in Knothole want to get involved in the Freedom Fighter movement. They'll take guard duty, and they'll listen to stories of raids around the campfire, but they never put their names forward to go into Robotropolis. They'd rather let Sally and her friends go – not because they don't feel guilty about letting teenagers and children wage war, but because their fear of Robotnik paralyses them. Sally sees a different kind of light in their eyes than she sees in Tails's. Many Knothole villagers look at her like she's some saviour, put there to save them from having to get their paws dirty for a second time. Others look at her sadly, appreciating what she and her friends have to endure in order to buffer Knothole from the brunt of Robotnik's hate campaign, but unable to unfreeze their nerves enough to do it themselves. She finds she can't resent these creatures for this. She's looked into Robotnik's eyes, and she's choked on the smog of Robotropolis. She can't forgive Robotnik for making her feel afraid all the time, and she won't compel any creature to walk into the belly of the brute if they're not ready.
Still, the divide between 'Freedom Fighter' and 'villager' is growing. Just last night, Sonic made the unprecedented move of asking why it always had to be them putting their necks on the line when there were able-bodied creatures aplenty to help out. Sally just gawked at him – she'd honestly thought he, of all of them, would grasp this – but she could tell by his expression that he didn't (or wouldn't) acknowledge the reasons she gave.
Later he'll come to her, maybe knock hesitantly on her door, or 'accidentally' stumble across her on the bridge, and he'll apologise. She knows he'll mean it, too, because whatever she might say to his face, she knows Sonic isn't stupid. He understands the fear. Still, the fact that he brought it up in the first place demonstrates that the peace in Knothole is built on unstable foundations.
Sally doesn't want things to erupt here. She wants everyone to be content, if not happy – and most of all she wants them to be united. They can't win against Robotnik if they don't stand as one.
She watches as Tails approaches, his jaw set in what she's fast beginning to recognise as his Game Face – the expression he wears when he's being Tails the Freedom Fighter instead of just Tails.
It frightens her more than the thought of tonight's raid.
Things are so much more complicated than they used to be.
FINIS.