Trigger warning for Child Abuse, Neglect, Death, Bullying, and more as this series progresses.
Hello! I took canon and threw it into a blender with several headcanons and out came Unlockables! This gives some backstory on our heroes in my AU. I hope you enjoy!
Story Unlocked: SONIC
"Oh, Jules, he's perfect." The new mother held her baby close as he cried. Tiny paws gripped onto quill locks as the baby squeaked and squirmed in his blanket on a furry tan chest. "Look at those precious little feet kick," she cooed.
The father, Jules, held tightly to his wife, curling around her and his newborn son. "He's going to be quite the athlete if he keeps it up," he chuckles, looking on fondly at the new life he and his wife created. "Our handsome Olgilvie. You look just like your mother, son. What do you think, Bernie? Think that grey fur is gonna grow more violet like you?"
Bernadette nuzzled Jules's chest. "No. I like to think he'll be more blue, like his father."
The birth of Olgilvie Maurice Hedgehog marked a time of happiness for the Hedgehog family. Jules and Bernadette showered their son with affections and showed him off to the other residents of their village.
But not everything lasts forever.
Olgilvie's bright green eyes, while adored by his parents, made several of the villagers steer clear of the small family.
"Don't you see how different he looks from Bernie and Jules?" several would whisper. "He has the eyes of Chaos himself!"
The new parents ignored the rumors best they could. How dare their neighbors say such things? Don't they realize how hurtful they're being?
As the months continued after Olgilvie's birth, however, his light grey newborn fur began to be replaced with deep blue patches that resembled the waters of the open ocean. It was a stark contrast to his father's coat of misty grey-blue and the pale lilac of his mother.
Jules continued to call his baby "a precious gem" and "a handsome young hog" in spite of the ever-growing suspicions of everyone around them, even after his own parents and in-laws stopped coming by to visit. Bernadette still smiled at her son, but sweet encouragements and gentle touches were becoming less constant as time continued on.
By the time Olgilvie turned one year old, the villagers began to complain to the family about "bad luck".
"Farmer Abley had most of his crop die this year," one said. "He's never had a poor harvest in all forty years he's had that field."
Another came storming to the Hedgehog family's door late at night. "Why did he have to survive while my daughter couldn't even breathe her first breath?!" he drunkenly shouted. "Take pity on us and kill the little monster before he kills us all!"
"Bad luck!" they all cried. "The Chaos-born has cursed us all!"
Jules tried to go to his parents for help when the store stopped selling food to the little family. "Please," he begged, tired and hungry. "All I'm asking is you help Olgilvie. For Chaos sake, he's your own grandson!"
"I have no grandson," his father spat at him. "And until you break this curse you've brought on us, I have no son either. I won't let my family turn into pariahs by assisting the likes of you."
"You'll regret this!" Jules yelled, banging on the front door that had slammed in his face. "One day you'll see how amazing he is, because I won't abandon my boy like you have! You'll see!"
He returned home that night covered in mud and arms filled with fruits and herbs from the island's jungle.
"I'll go to another village for work," he told Bernadette after dinner while he played with his giggling baby. "Hopefully they won't know about Olgy and I can bring home some money and food."
"And until then?" his wife asked.
"We won't go hungry, don't worry. The jungle has enough and I will scavenge everything I can find for us."
Thankfully, word of Olgilvie and his family hadn't spread outside of the village. Jules was able to get a job in a village two hours away. Every morning he left early and every night he came home late, but he kept a grin on his face as he went knowing his wife would be up waiting for him and that he could still share those special moments with his son.
"Dada!" his boy had learned to say. He would cry it in the morning as his father would leave, would squeal it while playing on Jules's off days, and would mumble it around his thumb as he would be put to sleep.
No father could be prouder.
Bernadette thought that her husband was going to sprain his face from his smiling the day Olgilvie walked the first time, but nothing could prepare either parent for when their son discovered how to run.
"Mama, look me!"
The mother turned around in time to see her now two year old son disappear before her eyes. She paled at the shock of it, turning back around immediately at the sound of pottery crashing.
"Owie! Mama!"
"Olgilvie! What did you do?!" Bernadette took her son's bleeding face in a shaky paw, using the other to grab a handkerchief to press on the small cut on his forehead.
"I go fas', Mama!" Olgilvie proudly shouts. "Go supa' fas'!"
"What's with all the commotion in here?" Jules's head poked into the living room of their home, taking in the shattered vase and his shaken wife holding onto their son. "Bernie?"
"I go fas', Dada!"
His father eyes brightened, taking in his son's excitement. "Oh yeah, champ? How fast? Super fast?"
"Supa' dupa' fas'!" Olgilvie squealed, making his mother flinch and release him. He sped over to his father almost as to make a point of how fast he could move. "See? See?"
"I sure do, buddy. Wow! I'm," Jules fumbled for a word, "speechless. Hey, how about you use that speed to go get cleaned up for dinner?"
"'Kay!"
"Jules," Bernadette began as her son sped off again, "Do you think what the others are saying-"
"I'm gonna stop you right there, hon." Jules firmly interrupted. "Our boy is not Chaos. He isn't 'Chaos-born'. And he certainly isn't the reason for others' hardships. He's a boy. Our boy. Our special boy at that. Don't listen to those old hags. Their husbands can't even form their own opinions anymore from the years they've been around those ninnies." He took his wife into his arms and held her tightly. "We're going to make it, Bernie, but you have to have faith in me. Okay, love?"
"Okay."
And she would continue to have faith in her husband as he traveled back and forth with that ever-present smile on his face.
Until he didn't come back one night.
Bernadette sat in her home by the fireside until it grew cold and the sun rose again in the horizon, but her husband never came home.
Olgilvie woke up that morning. They had breakfast. Bernie cleaned and chased her son around until lunch. Olgilvie took his afternoon nap. Bernie worked on her knitting. They had dinner. She put her son to bed. She lit a fire. She waited until she would fall asleep.
Day after day. Night after night.
Jules never came home.
Eventually Bernadette had to leave to scavenge for food. The villagers were not kind as they watched her go from her home to the jungle and back. They whispered how her husband finally gave up on them. That the bad luck finally killed her Jules and would take her next. That it was all Olgilvie's fault.
It was always Olgilvie, no one else.
"Mama, when Dada com'n home?" her son would ask.
"Soon, sweetheart" she would answer.
Olgilvie noticed when his mother stopped smiling at him. He missed her petting him on the head, even though those times had been rare. He missed his father's hugs and wrestling with him.
Mama would leave him alone for a long time and then come back with food to eat. She hated when he would run and would shout at him to sit down, to stop bouncing his leg, to stop tapping his foot.
She stopped talking to him as much and barely looked at him. One day he couldn't take it and as she had been scolding him again for moving too much, he snapped at her.
"I wan' Dada! He nicer than you!"
Wrong thing to say.
Bernadette took him by the shoulders and shook as she screamed in his face, "He's gone because of you!"
She threw her son back into his chair and locked herself into her room for the rest of the night. Olgilvie cried himself to sleep under the table.
The next morning Bernie apologized and held her son tight, but he didn't hug her back.
(I want to start out by saying that I do love Bernadette in the comics and this version of her is not me hating on her! Bernie is a great mom, just not here.)
Remember that inside of you is a spark of creativity just waiting to be set free. It's just up to you to decide how to use it.
~ Bless, Alpha 3