Watchful Glory, a sonic the hedgehog fanfic

Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were.

Continuity: SatAM.

A/N: For my anonymous lurker on LiveJournal, who requested Sally/Lupe, and who shall henceforth by known as Nonny, for the sole reason that I can then legitimately say "Hey, Nonny Nonny" without risk of a thrashing. While the pairing isn't obvious in this fic, I did the best I could with the canon and characters who fought my intentions at every turn. Durn characters.

Influences: Robin Jarvis's Deptford Mice Almanac, and A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett.

Feedback: Yes please! My SatAM fics rarely get many reviews (which is to be expected, since the canon is thirteen years old), so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Watchful Glory

Knothole slept under a blanket of thick snow. It had actually stopped snowing two days ago, but the temperature had been such that what already lay on the ground hardened until a beast could be fooled into thinking he could walk across the top without breaking the crispy outer layer and falling into the treacherous drifts underneath. Storybook weather, in other words. Weather that lent itself to cosy armchairs and fireside tales.

It was also the perfect weather for raiding Robotropolis. Robotnik's operations could combat icy conditions, but they were still hindered by the extremity of recent weather. Oil and coolant froze, caterpillar-treads found little grip, and SWATbot patrols slipped and slid and crashed without the Freedom Fighters needing to do a thing.

Unfortunately, these same conditions had ground Knothole to a standstill, too. The little village was self-sufficient all year round – in Spring, Summer and Autumn different crops fed the villagers, as did bounty from the Great Forest itself. In Winter they ate mostly stored foodstuffs, which they prepared earlier in the year. Rosie had taught Sally from a young age how to pickle cabbage and cucumber, how to salt and smoke fish, and a hundred other ways to make perishables into the imperishable. Sally had, in turn, taught the rest of the village these valuable lessons as she grew older. Sometimes Knothole exchanged goods with travelling traders for more exotic fare, but traders were few and far between this close to Robotropolis, and far too unreliable to be part of any long-term survival plan. Nobeast wanted to be caught alone and in the open with Robotnik's wide patrols on the loose.

For the most part, Knothole could outlast any type of bad weather. Which wasn't to say that they just shut their doors and sat on their hands until Spring. Quite aside from Freedom Fighter duties like guarding their borders and raiding Robotropolis, there were still ordinary tasks that needed attending to. Baby kits needed birthing, feeding, changing and caring for. Sick and elderly beasts needed tending. Floors needed sweeping. Huts needed maintenance. The village chronicler needed to take down a record of their lives for future generations. Snow just created new jobs. It meant digging out doorways, fracturing the millpond's surface to break out the wheel, repairing roofs and leaky huts, lagging pipes and organising temporary privies when the regular ones were frozen.

For Sally, this also meant putting together a roster and making sure everybody stuck to it, which meant touring the entire village as well as completing her own chores. Just because she was a princess and a Freedom Fighter didn't mean she didn't do her share. In Knothole, everybody worked. When the sun set each day she was exhausted.

Things had been easier since the Wolf Pack arrived to share the load. Normally reclusive, the wolves, led by their Alpha, Lupe, had come to Knothole after the first snowfall. They said it was a tactical decision, so they could better confer with the Freedom Fighters about Robotropolis's wintry vulnerabilities. However, Sally knew that this was only half the real reason. The wolves were spiritual creatures, married to tradition and greatly influenced by customs that seemed ancient to most Mobians. This time of year was close to what they called 'Escobar', the period when Midwinter Death pressed His closest. Seeking companionship in other packs was how wolves of previous generations had 'put Him off' and survived Winter's stark grip, but those wolves who hadn't been roboticised in Robotnik's takeover had turned in on themselves, cutting themselves off from the rest of the world. Now Lupe was tentatively trying to break her pack out of dangerous habits by resurrecting the old customs and putting a new, inter-racial spin on them. It was innovative, and very tentative, but she was slowly winning the older pack-members around to her ideas.

Sally was grateful. Having the Wolf Pack around meant her own people weren't stretched quite so thin. She didn't have to worry quite so much about the amount of work left to do each day, and the strain on everyone to get it all done. Sonic complained that the wolves threw off his groove, but Sally knew him well enough to understand that he, too, was grateful for the help. Sonic would show off and complain by turns, but he would work himself into premature old age to preserve Knothole's idyllic way of life. It'd be so easy to let him do too much, as Sally knew she did more than was good for her. She had to force herself not to rely on him – or on anyone else, for that matter. Everybody worked, but nobody did more than was healthy.

Except, maybe, for Sally herself. It was a leader's prerogative to try and do too much, because there was nobody above them to still their hands at the end of the day.

Lupe was surprisingly good company. She was sharing Sally's hut, and though she often appeared distant and enigmatic, she was anything but cold-hearted. Lupe was also a leader. She knew what carrying that sort of burden was like. Though Sonic was the Freedom Fighters' official leader, everyone and their kid brother knew it was in name only, and that Sally actually did all the work. Sally was the strategist. Sonic was the hero. Lupe was both for her pack. Having her around was … comforting. Reassuring. Even heartening. Lupe had been Alpha for nearly eleven years, and she hadn't broken yet. Plus, when Robotnik had taken her father, so she also knew what it was like to lose a parent to that madman. The kind of shared experiences between them helped take the edge off any depression that threatened Sally's state of mind while the skies were dark and Mobius was dark and frozen over.

Right now, however, she was too tired to be depressed. It'd been a long, long day. Claire Piffle had finally had her twins, but the birth had been difficult for both mother and kits. The Wolf Pack's midwife, Regeane, and their shaman, Medicine Father, had done what they could, but Sally had still been on tenterhooks until she heard the two little ferrets squealing. An upper level of the guard tower had collapsed when one of the ropes snapped under the snow's added weight, injuring Antoine, who'd been on watch at the time. That needed repairing, as did the schoolroom, a relatively new set-up devised to keep Knothole's kits and the Wolf Pack's pups occupied and out of trouble. In truth, the schoolroom was Dulcy's Winter quarters, but she didn't need them during the day and they were snug but roomy enough to contain a dozen young ones and their teachers for the day. Sally had 'supervised' the repairs, lugging timber and heating foul-smelling resin-glue until she was needed elsewhere.

Everything ached, from her muscles to her fingertips to the roots of her fur. All Sally wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep until Spring.

Her hut was warm when she pushed open the door. Someone had lit a fire in the grate. Above it hung a copper kettle on a hook attached to a metal rod, both ends of which were embedded in the brickwork of the little freestanding inglenook Rotor had insisted she needed three Summers ago, when it was far too hot to even think about frost. Sally inhaled deeply as she shut the door.

"You are late," said Lupe, emerging from the back room. "I have already turned down your bed for you. Now you are back I will warm the bedclothes."

"You really don't need to," Sally said, stifling a yawn. "You're my – hurr – guest. Ooh, excuse me."

"You are kind to house myself and my packmates, to let us eat your food, share your homes and use your village as our own. It is the least I can do." Lupe had a proper leader's voice she could slip into at will. It was a voice you didn't argue with.

She picked up what appeared to be a spear topped by flying saucer, but was in fact a metal dish with a perforated lid on a pole. She'd brought it from the caves where the Wolf Pack usually spent the Winter. Caves were notorious difficult to heat, since bare rock leeched away all warmth, and so the wolves had engineered a means of bringing the fire's warmth into their bedrolls before getting into them, when their body heat could do the rest. She flipped open the top of the dish and pushed it into fire, angling it this way and that to gather up ashes and embers, but not flaming wood. When it was full she flipped the lid on again, sealing it, but at that moment the kettle started to shriek. Instead of removing the warming pan, Lupe grabbed an oven glove, lifted the kettle off its hook and poured hot orangey-brown liquid into a waiting cup and saucer on the kitchen table.

"Sit," she instructed.

Despite wanting to argue, Sally sat.

Lupe pushed the cup towards her. "Drink. It is hot mint and comfrey tea. It will soothe your aches and pains."

Sally sniffed the cup. Her brows pulled together a little. "Feverfew?"

"To reduce your headache."

"But how did you know I have a … " she trailed off at Lupe's Look. There was no need for words. It was all there in that Look. Sally raised the tea to her mouth and blew off the steam. "Thank you."

Lupe nodded, picked up the warming pan and went into the bedroom.

The tea wasn't something Sally was used to. Bunnie liked tea, and bartered for it when traders passed through, since Knothole couldn't support the plants used to make the leaves. Yet the sweet brew Bunnie preferred was nothing like what Lupe had made. To tell the truth, Sally wasn't all that keen on Lupe's tea when she first tasted it, but she would admit that it sort of grew on you after a few mouthfuls – like verdigris on copper. It was certainly better than the crab-apple and woodruff tonic Rosie plied them with as kits. Rosie swore by that stuff, and would still shove a spoonful down the throat of anybeast silly enough to complain of a headache within earshot.

She'd just about finished the cup when Lupe reappeared. What followed was a well-worn pantomime, wherein Sally argued that she had work she needed to do, and Lupe insisted she was too tired to do it and should just go to bed. No matter that she was right, Sally still felt obligated to check the morning's roster one more time, to jot down a burning idea about how to wound Robotnik's operations, to confer with Nicole about something – until Lupe just gave up and shoved her into bed, boots and all.

Once under her blankets Sally felt the insistent urge of sleep increase, but still she couldn't bring herself to just give up. Her brain was too full of the day's events, her thoughts too disorganised. Her body needed rest, but her mind couldn't let go of the day until it was satisfied she hadn't wasted its final precious moments.

"What have you got for me tonight?" she asked sleepily, pulling off her boots and dropping them over the side of the mattress. They each made a heavy 'plunk' as they hit the floorboards.

Lupe stood by the simple wooden dresser, apparently playing with something Sally couldn't quite make out from her bed. She strained to see as she wiggled out of her vest and slipped on the nightdress from under her pillow.

Eventually Lupe turned around and presented what Sally could only think was a tangled mass of string and twigs strung between her hands. When Lupe came closer, she saw that it was indeed a tangled mass of string and twigs, but there were also other things threaded into the complicated web. Feathers trembled in the breeze created by her progress across the room. A tiny green stone with a hole in the middle slid from side to side. Twisted up in the middle was what looked like a tuft of silver-grey fur. Lupe constantly moved her fingers, changing the pattern of the string and making the other things move about, but the fur always stayed at the centre of the jumble.

"What is … that?" Sally asked, peering at it. Did that stone just pass through that piece of glass? Impossible, but she could've sworn she saw it happen. I must be more tired than I thought.

"It is a Luck Catcher," Lupe informed her. "We use them to - "

"Let me guess, catch good luck?"

"Among other things." She gave a small, fierce smile. "Also bad luck, depending on how they are made and the intentions of the maker. Luck is luck. It is not good or bad; it is the consequences that are good or bad. Luck Catchers are guides. They attract possibilities. This one I made quickly, but it is still effective. They are made of whatever is to hand at the moment of construction. I used what I found on my way back to your hut today. For this reason, no two Luck Catchers are ever the same."

Sally blinked. "But that stone, I saw you wearing that just this morning. It was on a string around your neck."

For a second Lupe almost looked … embarrassed. It was an unfamiliar expression on her face. She wasn't meeting Sally's gaze, too intent on working the Luck Catcher into new and interesting shapes. Her fingers flew without snagging a single string or dropping one bit of bark from the twigs. When Sally pointed out the stone, her eyes fixed extra hard on what the index finger of her left had was up to.

Wolves on Mobius were always insular, even before Robotnik. Wolf culture was complicated, but centred around something other beasts called 'wolflore', but which the wolves called simply 'the Lore'. The Lore was sacred, a mixture of history, ritual, belief and the core traditions that made the wolves who they were. It was a guide for living. Few outside the secretive packs ever learned more than the fact it existed, and those who did learn more generally picked it up from interaction with the pack, so their knowledge was patchy and often inaccurate.

During the Wolf Pack's time in Knothole, Lupe had begun to teach Sally some of the Lore. Sally had been surprised – especially since Lupe said it was mainly a bribe to make her get some rest – but fascinated by what she had the opportunity to learn. In many ways the wolves believed similar things to herself and the villagers, but in others they were like aliens from another planet. She was perhaps a little worried that Lupe broke convention for her so flippantly, but Sally's inherent thirst for knowledge made her shut up and listen, even if she did still argue to stay working instead.

Lupe picked a topic a night and explained its significance – both to her ancestors, and to her own ravaged generation. In this way Sally had learned of Wulfin, the only other female Alpha in the history of wolfkind, who had waged war against the warlord Smilodon and his savage cat army a thousand years ago. She learned that the hazel was a hallowed plant, the symbol of wisdom, and how wolf pups put a spray of catkins under their pillows in the hopes that they would grow wiser as they slept. She learned about Midwinter Death, the spirit that stalked the land claiming unwary souls at the end of each year, when the boundaries between this plane and the spirit world were at their thinnest. Lupe taught her how to see the Great Wolf constellation in the night sky, and told the story of how the Lady Moon gave birth to the first wolves out of her own moonshine, explaining that this was why wolves howled at night, so the Lady could hear them. She told of the knobbly krekka-wood cudgel each pup received at birth, so they might clench their hands around it each day and harden their palms into calluses that could stand up to hard work. She talked of many things, and Sally couldn't help but think that the rest of the pack might resent an outsider knowing so much, so she didn't repeat what Lupe told her – not even to Sonic when he asked.

"Aw, c'mon, Sal. You two talk way late every night."

"MYOB. Mind your own business."

"This is my business! Anything you do, I gotta know about. So I can keep you safe."

"No, you don't need to know, you want to know, and you want to know so you can keep your curiosity satisfied."

"That too."

"Don't be so nosy, Sonic. I'm not drawing up any battle plans without you. Believe me, if I came up with anything important like that, you'd be the first to know."

"Even before Lupe?"

"Yes, even before Lupe."

"Promise?"

"Wait a second, are you … jealous?"

"Uh, no! Of course not!"

"You are jealous! So-nic, can't I talk to my houseguest – who's been extremely helpful all Winter, and hasn't complained once, unlike some who aren't standing more than two feet away from me that I could mention – without you thinking I'm replacing you?"

"Sure you can. But you're not, right? I'm still your go-to guy?"

"Honestly, you are positively the most infuriating hedgehog who ever lived!"

"Now that's just dumb. You haven't met every hedgehog who ever lived."

The Luck Catcher was just the latest in a long line of fascinating things Lupe had shared with Sally, but it caught at her imagination. She sat up in bed.

"That pendant was a gift from my father," Lupe said after a moment, and Sally wasn't sure, but she thought that there was maybe a hint of guilt in the usually calm voice. "I used the string to make the Luck Catcher. As I said, I used things I had to hand."

"You shouldn't have!" Sally cried, horrified that something so precious should be used just so she could satisfy her curiosity. She felt as bad as Sonic – or as bad as she liked to imagine Sonic felt about his incurable nosiness. "That's too personal a thing to waste on our lessons-"

"But that is the point," Lupe cut in, flicking her thumb so that the stone jiggled and ran up against a long black feather. "Everything that goes into a Luck Catcher must be personal. It is a personal thing, and a present one."

"Present? Like a gift?"

"It is about the … the moment, I think is the best way to put it. The world as it is at the precise time the maker ties a knot that links the two ends of the string. The one who makes it does not do so lightly. Though it is not magic, it can tempt magical forces. It cannot be prepared. It must be made quickly, without planning. It cannot capture a moment, but it can focus it. You can see a moment in a Luck Catcher, the forces acting upon you in that moment, and perhaps lure other forces to you. Past, future, but above all, the present." Lupe's voice caught like cloth on a rusty nail on these last sentences.

Sally looked up at her sharply. They rarely talked about their fathers. It was more of an implicit thing – they had both lost them, had both assumed their responsibilities because of that loss, and were both working fervently to get them back. Since the Luck Catcher was made up of something that tied Lupe to her father, Sally assumed that this was one of the 'forces' currently acting upon her. Lupe was fighting Robotnik because he was evil, and because it was the right thing to do, but also because somewhere inside was a part of her that was still a child crying out for its parent. Sally knew because that child was also in her.

We're the same, she and I, Sally had thought more than once – usually when things got so on top of her that she felt like she might drown in her responsibilities. Then she'd look at Lupe, see the proud way she held her head, the capable grip of her hands, and think, No, I can do this. If she can, then I can. It wasn't quite a competition, but ever since the first snowfall, Sally had felt like she had a counterbalance in the village – someone to offset Sonic's manic, unfocused, and precarious dynamism. If Sally was the rock that Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters flowed around, then Lupe was the riverbed; sturdy and resolute.

Lupe took a breath and started talking again. "Each Luck Catcher must contain an Essence. That is, something that ties the maker directly to it. Fur is usual. It represents us in our most basic form, the way we were born and the way we will leave this world. It is one of the things that separate us from humans."

"Like Robotnik," Sally couldn't help from saying.

"Yes," Lupe said after a moment. "Like Robotnik."

Inadvertently, Sally shivered.

"You are cold?" Lupe asked, raising her head. The stone rattled against the piece of glass, spinning in place on one side of a string hexagon.

"No," said Sally, watching intently. The Luck Catcher was hypnotic. It should've been ugly, but it wasn't. It had a funny sort of beauty, like a child's painting. She felt like what she saw in it wasn't what other beasts might see. They might look and say 'It's just a mess of junk', which it was, but it was significant junk. It was junk that meant something. "Why fur? Why not nails, or hair, or-"

"Blood? Blood signifies life, yes? Sometimes, in times of great danger, the packs of my ancestors would construct Luck Catchers using the fur of all their wolves, and stain the fur with the blood of the one who held it. Ramushka, it was called. Palm Cutting. As the holder worked the string, he or she would bleed and spread the blood further through the Luck Catcher. But blood is potent. It attracts strong magic, and we mortals are not always equipped to deal with such forces, even if we think we are. Some of those rituals ended … badly."

There are some creatures who know how to understate while saying everything perfectly clearly. Lupe said 'badly', but Sally could picture multiple unhappy endings, and shook away the increasingly gruesome images.

"So we use only fur from the throat and the chest," Lupe concluded.

Still shaking off her own cursedly inventive imagination, Sally asked, "Why those places?"

"The throat because it contains our breath. The chest because it contains our hearts. Together, they contain our souls. That is effective enough, without also holding out our life-forces as bait for fortune. The maker of a Luck Catcher must have a powerful need of it. Anything less invites trouble."

Sally's stomach twitched uncomfortably. "Lupe," she murmured, watching how the glass flashed in the dim light of her bedroom candle. She wasn't sure she believed, or even understood all of what Lupe said, but she understood enough to be anxious. Admittedly, it didn't take much to make Sally anxious, but this time it was for a whole new reason. Belief was a strange thing. If enough creatures believed in something, they could make it true through the force of their will alone, trampling over sceptics like her. They believed they would one day beat Robotnik. That belief was one of the things that kept her going. "Lupe, why did you make this tonight? It sounds like this is pretty dangerous stuff."

"Not dangerous. Risky, maybe, but not dangerous. Not if the maker has focus. I know my own core, my own centre, my own self. That is powerful magic. It shields me. I cannot be easily manipulated by wayward forces. You have that magic in you, too, Sally Acorn."

"Excuse me?"

"Knowing yourself, your wishes, your needs and wants – knowing how to find your centre in a storm, how to feel for your core when you are uncertain, that is strong magic. That kind of magic can crumble solid stone."

"That's just psychology. Self-awareness."

"So many beasts go through life without knowing themselves at all. They don't think, they only feel. Or they don't feel, only think. To do both, to stand outside yourself and see who and what you are, to question where you come from, why you do what you do, and be able to answer those questions … that is perhaps the strongest magic of all. It is about conviction. It is about trust in oneself. These are the qualities needed to make a Luck Catcher. They are also," she went on shrewdly, "the qualities needed to make a leader."

Sally opened her mouth to say something. Then she closed it again.

Lupe's fingers worked tirelessly. Stone clacked against the glass shard, which jingled the feathers, which made the string hum with tension. The tuft of fur shone in the candlelight, appearing silver and then pale brown, much like the fur at her own chest and throat. Patterns seemed to appear in the flow of the Luck Catcher. You could almost see things in how it moved – not actual pictures, but what you might see if you took physical objects away and just left their essences behind. Holes in the world. Places where events might take place, where creatures might stand, might say things, might do things a thousand different ways. What you might see if the universe was reduced to colours, musical notes, patches of light and dark, all swirling, twirling, twisting forward and back on themselves like a million concentric circles, or a spiral, spinning away into space…

"Run, Princess! Run as fast as you can! Don't stop, and don't look back."

"Yo, Sal!"

"What's shakin', Sally-girl?"

"These schematics don't look right, Sally. I'd like to run a few more tests before I install anything…"

"Mon Dieu! My Princess, you are more the beautiful with every passing sunrise. I am staggered by your loveliness. I am mouth-punched by the exquisiteness that laces your grand self! I am … I am to be following you even when you apparently are not to be hearing I am speaking, my princess!"

"Whaddya mean 'so-so'? That kiss was way past cool!"

"Y'mean there's other Freedom Fighters out there someplace? Well butter my butt an' call me a biscuit!"

"I may be old, Sally dear, but I can still tan your hide six ways to Sunday if you don't sit down to at least one proper meal every day."

"Don't you ever scare me like that again, Sal! If anything happened to you … well, y'know … just don't run off recklessly like that again, okay? What're you laughing about?"

"Sally girl, do me a favour and smack Sugar-hog upside the head, will ya?"

"Aunt Sally, will you tell me a bedtime story?"

"I'm still your go-to guy, right?"

"Daddy?"

"I love you, Sally Acorn."

Sally snapped back into herself. She blinked rapidly, slightly dazed. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her teeth were locked together. She felt like she'd swallowed an entire bottle of crab-apple and woodruff tonic.

Lupe folded her hands and let the Luck Catcher, now just a tangled mess of string and rubbish, fall onto the bedspread. After a few moments flexing cramped fingers, she gathered it up, stood – though Sally couldn't remember her sitting down – and moved to push Sally back onto her pillow. She moved like a mother tending a frightened kit after a nightmare, yet there was something of a profound sadness to her movements. She had also gazed into the moment ensnared in the Luck Catcher.

"Goodnight, Sally Acorn," she whispered. Then she hesitated, came to a decision, and pressed the tip of her muzzle to Sally's forehead in a soft kiss. It was a tiny but significant thing. Sally had a dim recollection she hadn't unearthed for many years; that of a woman she assumed was her mother doing much the same thing as she, Sally, lay in a cradle. Afterwards, Lupe snuffed out the candle and walked firmly from the room, as if she had come to a decision within herself. She left an echo of her scent in the air.

Sally watched her go with some confusion, but her mind was already succumbing to tiredness and tea. If anything, she felt even more tired now than she had before. Sleep lapped at the backs of her eyelids like the sea against a wall, gradually eroding, continually probing for a way through. She'd been fighting it for hours, but fought a little longer as she tried to process what had just happened.

She sensed the crackle of great energies just expended in her room; of decisions made, lessons learned, and knowledge transferred from one generation into another. From friend to friend. From leader to leader.

We're the same, she and I, Sally thought groggily. In her mind's eyes she pictured the proud way Lupe held her head as she carried the warming pan, the capable twist of her hands inside the Luck Catcher. She heard the accented huskiness of her voice, and thought, I can do this. I can survive. If she can, then I can. Because we're the same. We're different, but we're the same in the ways that count.

She wasn't sure if the thought was her own, or if someone else had put it there. Already, what she'd seen and heard in the Luck Catcher was fading, as though part of a dream. Either way, if was comforting.

In the next room, Lupe, Alpha of the Wolf Pack, sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window at the bulbous moon like a pup that'd only recently heard the histories. 'Watchful Glory', the Lore called this part of the Lady's phases. It seemed especially momentous tonight, but though a howl tugged at her throat, she restrained the impulse. Instead, she opened her hand and gazed down at the ruined Luck Catcher, and in particular at the fur she had stolen and mixed with her own the previous night, while Sally slept a sleep so exhausted she didn't even feel the roots comes loose.

A hush settled over the little hut. Lupe did not move from her chair.

In comparison, Sally closed her eyes, relaxed her grip on her mind … and slept as soundly as Knothole under its blanket of snow.

fin.