Disclaimer – Nothing here is mine, alas.

Timeline – SatAM, although there are strains of Sega Sonic and some Archieverse mixed in, too.

A/N – The 'five things that never happened' device is one used by many authors – usually to great effect. However, in approaching it, I decided not to just create five wildly AU worlds that have nothing to do with the original material beyond character names. I mean, where's the fun in that? Instead, I picked five points in Bunnie's past that were real turning points for her, and sent her in the opposite direction to see where she ended up. The result is this fic. Sometimes the change is subtle. Sometimes it's colossal. All I can ask is; give it a chance to make sense and it will.

Feedback – Dear God, yes! Please review me!


Five Things That Never Happened to Bunnie Rabbot

© Scribbler, January 2005


1. A Twist of Fate


Bunnie stood by her window and looked out to the horizon. In the dying sun, branches reached like arthritic fingers, and a thin rime of frost had already begun to form everywhere.

She felt Knuckles coming up behind her, his movement stirring the air ever so slightly. His footfalls were soft as the beat of a butterfly's wing, despite his boots, and his scent rose about her like fog. His was a distinctive aroma – musk and turned earth and that disgusting acorn coffee that nobody else liked.

"Hey."

He didn't answer. He'd been quiet ever since he and Dulcy got back from the Seeing Pool. Bunnie hadn't asked, and he hadn't volunteered any information, but she knew he'd been successful. He'd seen the person he might have been. And it had added new wrinkles to his brow.

They stood in silence until he asked, "Have you eaten anything?"

"I think there's an oat farl hangin' around here someplace." She gestured at her desk, which overflowed with charts, diagrams and other bits of paper.

"If it's hanging around here, then you haven't eaten it."

She shrugged. "Guess I got distracted. I'll find it before it goes green. Probably." There was no apology in her voice.

Knuckles grunted and pressed something into her hand. She looked down. It was a wedge of cheese and some bread with butter on.

"Not quite a royal banquet, but - " He made a flaccid gesture with one glove.

"It was sweet of you, all the same." She pecked him on the cheek. He received it, then all but pushed her into a chair and watched her eat.

"You haven't been taking care of yourself lately," he admonished.

Again, she showed no remorse for her actions. The cheese was rubbery, but the bread was fresh enough to still be soft in the middle. It smelled of flour and crushed sunflower seeds, and reminded her of when she was four and snuck down to the castle kitchens to steal enough cinnamon rolls until both she and Knuckles felt quite sick. Their fathers had thought the resulting tummy-aches punishment enough, and let them moan and groan their way to the childish promise that they would never, ever, ever eat cakes again.

The memory made her pause. She turned the cheese over in her hands, then put it down and rubbed her fingers over both sets of her own knuckles. Her fur was coarser than it used to be – a result of hard labour and unrefined soap. She was getting bald patches on her right thumb and index finger where her pen pressed in. Even with Nicole, she still wrote too much. There were reams of spidery scrawl scattered about her hut that evidenced it. She found things stayed in her brain more when she could picture them in her own handwriting instead of computerised digits.

"Do you reckon he'll come?" she asked suddenly.

She didn't look up to see, but she felt Knuckles raise an eyebrow. "Sonic? I don't know."

"He knows how much we need him."

"I know how thick his head is, too."

She shot him a warning look. "If he does come, you give him less of that lip, or he'll run right back to that island of his."

Knuckles let a breath out through his nose. "I still don't see why we can't handle this on our own - "

"It's too risky. With his speed, we might just stand a chance of breakin' the back of this ore shipment. Without it… there's still a chance, but it'd be a lot slimmer." Her hands balled into fists on her thighs. "An' that's not a risk I'm willin' to take."

He didn't need her to spell out what she was thinking. She thought about it so much, it was difficult for him not to guess and be right every time. And besides, he'd been there when they pulled the body free, when they ran from the complex, when the smog gave way to sunlight that ruffled fur and bounced off smooth, hard metal…

It wasn't Knuckles's way to kneel beside her, or put an arm around her shoulders, or even pat her on the head. His claws were his greatest weapons, but a childhood with them had made him jumpy about physical contact in case he accidentally hurt someone. If anything, since ­his father set up the power rings for him – a contingency plan finished right before he himself was roboticised – Knuckles had only got worse.

It made things interesting when a rescue involved carrying someone from a scene.

"Sally was in here earlier."

He shifted his feet slightly, as if wanting to touch her, comfort her, do all the things he'd never let himself do. But he stayed where he was.

"She's been cuttin' her hair again. Barely covers her ears anymore. She says it's better she don't have nuthin' obscurin' her vision on such a big mission."

"Rotor said she's much better at using her leg implants now." It was the closest thing he got to reassurance. And it wasn't enough.

"I know." It was the closest Bunnie got to thanking him for the attempt. And it wasn't enough, either. "He tightened the bolts in her arm this afternoon. After this is all over, he's maybe going to be puttin' some extension implants in below her elbow, too. She says… she says she asked him if it were possible. She asked him." Bunnie closed her eyes and breathed like one of those meditation techniques Sally had showed her. It was supposed to help calm her down, but she might as well have been trying to turn invisible, for all the effect it had.

"Sally knows what she's doing."

"Does she?"

"It isn't wise to start with this tonight."

"You… no, you're right. You're right." Bunnie sighed and got to her feet.

The cheese was left uneaten, but Knuckles didn't say anything about it.

The undercurrent of guilt was still present in her mind, but she packed it away and shelved it to peruse another time. It sat alongside a host of other, similar memories: times she'd been too young, too slow, too inexperienced, too weak to help, and the consequences of each.

And there would be another time to think about them. There always was. And there would be until the day they found a long-term treatment for roboticisation – with or without deposing Robotnik first.

Knuckles stayed at her shoulder as she rummaged through her paperwork and exhumed Nicole. He pointed to her under a graph of West Continent Robian to Mobian ratios. "What would I do without you around to drag me back to Mobius?" Bunnie asked, not of the computer.

"I'm here to serve, my princess," Knuckles replied softly.