Chapter Text
As it would turn out, Tom arrived back home just before the two of them were finished with the first level of repairs. Sonic was up on Maddie’s shoulders, and with their combined height, they had been able to reach the last couple of bullet holes at the very top of the wall.
“You guys look like you’ve been working hard,” he observed, still standing in the archway that led to the dining room.
“Tom’s back!” Sonic’s dismount from Maddie’s shoulders was quick and rather ungraceful—he let himself fall backwards and somehow managed to flip over and land on the table. Tom was a bit too impressed with his recovery to scold his recklessness. The excitable hedgehog rushed over to stand in front of him, asking more questions than Tom was even able to process, let alone answer.
“Hey, no shoes on the table.” Maddie lifted Sonic up by his underarms and gently placed him on the ground.
He craned is head back to look up at her. “Sorry!”
“No need to be in such a hurry, kid, we’ve got all day.” Tom laughed. “What’s up?”
Sonic was quick to ask. “How is everybody?”
“Everyone’s doing just fine. I told you, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“They’re not mad at me?”
“No, not at all. As far as the general public goes, they think you’re the hero.” He reached over to ruffle up the fur on the top of his head. “And you were so worried!”
“Ack! Nooooo, don’t mess up my quills! I spent so long making them look nice today!” He batted the offending hand away, not unlike a cat.
“What, you tryin’ to impress someone?” Tom snickered, only laughing more when Sonic glowered at him in irritation.
To spare him from Tom’s teasing, Maddie directed the conversation elsewhere. “Well, we certainly made some progress in the past few hours. All of the holes in this room should be patched now, from this side.” She beckoned him to follow her over to the wall. “We still have to sand it, obviously, and I think a second pass would be a good call, but it’s looking a lot better.”
“Definitely. You said you bought paint, right?”
She nodded and directed his attention to the can in the corner of the room. The label showed that the paint was blue, similar to the previous color of the room, but at the same time it was a richer, darker shade. “Stone Blue” was written on the label in big white letters.
“I know it’s not much of a difference, but it’s what caught my eye. It’ll be a subtle change, you know? As much as I liked the blue from before, I felt like it might be a little much to do the same thing again, especially given the, you know, circumstances.”
The someone in question—namely, Sonic—was still standing by the leg of the table, arguing with himself under his breath. “Maybe I don’t have to have an excuse to want to look nice. Oh, hush, Sonic, you know he was joking! Yeah, well, maybe it wasn’t that funny to begin with!”
“He’s not listening to us at all,” Tom noted. The kid had the tendency to get stuck in his own head.
“I don’t blame him. I think I’m about to zone out for a while, too. I’m tired of staring at the wall.”
“After having to reign him in, I’d believe that,” Tom murmured, smirking. “Either way, such wonderful news is deserving of reward, no?”
Almost immediately, Sonic swiveled his ears in their direction. He looked up and watched Tom curiously as he disappeared around the wall, heading to retrieve something from the other room.
“The oh-so-generous Donut Lord has come bearing a delicious surprise!” Tom announced in an exaggerated, booming voice. He walked back around the corner with a large white box, dramatically revealing the contents to be two rows of glazed donuts.
Sonic brought his hands up to his cheeks, delighted. “Wow! The Donut Lord brought donuts!”
“Fitting, isn’t it?” He made eye contact with Maddie, who had crossed her arms and was now staring at him skeptically. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. It was a gift!”
She narrowed her eyes knowingly, but amusement showed through the smile that cracked on her face. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
Tom scoffed, pretending to sound hurt by her words. “Nonbelievers don’t get donuts. However, since hard workers do get donuts, I suppose I can make an exception just this once.” It was Maddie’s turn to roll her eyes. He offered the box to her and she took one.
“Thank you for your generosity, mighty Lord of Donuts.”
“Of course.” He stooped down and offered the box to Sonic. “Help yourself, kid.”
It took him a second to register that Tom was talking to him. “Wh—you’re just letting me have one of these?”
“Well, sure! Why wouldn’t I? You did good work today.”
At the positive reassurance, a big smile crossed his face. He selected a donut from the box and looked up at Tom. “Thank you!”
“No problem.”
Maddie found the encounter in front of her to be quite adorable, but she still had a question on her mind. “Are either of you ever going to explain where the ‘Donut Lord’ name came from?”
Tom answered for both of them. “Nope. Top secret. It’s completely confidential.”
“It’s just a nickname,” Sonic explained around a mouthful of donut. “Like the one I gave you!”
“Oh, right… wasn’t mine ‘Pretzel Lady?’ What was that about?”
“Because you don’t have bones! I don’t know anybody else flexible enough to do that contortionist stuff you do.”
It took her several long moments to piece together what he was trying to say. “…Oh! You mean yoga?”
“Didn’t know it had a name.”
“Is there a reason all your nicknames are food oriented?”
“What can I say, I’m a growing boy!” He put his hands up as if he were confessing to a crime. “I like to eat.”
“But at least his actually has something to do with donuts, right?”
“Well, yeah! I came up with that one when—“
“No no no,” Tom shushed him. “That’s top secret information, bud. Remember the confidentiality agreement?”
He narrowed his eyes skeptically. “What ‘confidentiality agreement?’”
“The one we just agreed to. Right now.”
Sonic blinked at him a few times. “You know, all you really just did was give me blackmail material to use against you. But okay, if you say so!”
Maddie broke into laughter. “See, this kid’s got the right thought process, Tom.”
“I will take that secret to my grave.”
“Then I guess it’s something I will never get to know… such a shame.”
It was Sonic’s turn to roll his eyes. “You guys are so dramatic.”
Maddie tilted her head at him. “And yet you were the one lamenting about how the world didn’t recognize your interior design skills.”
“Not the same thing.”
Tom clutched a hand over his chest in a melodramatic gesture. “Ah, the woes of a tortured artist…”
“Speaking of that… I thought you wanted to show me your cave?”
“Oh yeah! I totally promised to show you, didn’t I?” He tapped a finger against his chin thoughtfully. “Well, we’re done working for today, right? We could go now! And Tom could come, too, if he wanted.”
“Tom thinks that sounds like a fine idea,” Tom announced, taking special care to enunciate his own name.
“Alright, alright!” Maddie gave in, laughing at her husband’s antics. “Just give me a moment to put our supplies somewhere where Ozzie can’t get into them, and then we can go.”
Sonic cheered excitedly, bouncing up and down.
——————————————
After dog-proofing the living room, the three of them set out. Sonic—the beacon of patience that he was—led them along, feeling the need to remind them that they were too slow not just once or twice, but three separate times.
“Does he think that encourages us?” Maddie whispered to Tom.
He shrugged. “It’s probably better not to ask.”
After about fifteen or so minutes of walking, Tom and Maddie finally followed him into the place he had called home since his arrival. They found themselves in a fairly small but well-lived space. Every part of the room reflected the personality of its designer with frightening accuracy: the comic books strewn all over the place, the road signs that had probably been stolen, the foosball table, the broken appliances, the empty soda cans lined up across the homemade ping pong table, and, of course, the giant bean bag that sat directly in the center of the cave. Sonic was overjoyed to take both of them on a tour of his home of ten years, explaining every last detail with familiarity and childlike wonder.
And that’s just what he was, they realized: a kid. One who had lived in isolation for most of his formative years. A kid who had been robbed of the chance to grow up with a normal life, without having to worry for his safety each time he dared to leave the house.
As he finished describing the origin story of the washing machine with vivid detail, he noticed they were both preoccupied with staring around the room and studying all its pieces. Maddie in particular was wearing her guilt evidently on her face. In a very sudden shift in attitude, Sonic’s gloved hands interlaced timidly and he flattened his ears. It seemed like his excitement had quickly withered away, but after what revelation, neither of them were quite sure.
Tom was quick to notice this. “Hey, what’s wrong, buddy?”
“Nothing,” he said, faster than usual—which was, surprisingly, not a hyperbole. “I don’t wanna bore you guys with all this stuff.”
Tom pressed his lip into a flat, contemplative line. Whatever it was that was actually bothering him, he clearly didn’t want to talk about. “You’re not boring us… this stuff is obviously important to you.”
Maddie had a hand over her mouth, still glancing around the room. “You’ve just been living here, while you’ve been on Earth?”
“Yup!” He seemed rather proud of that fact. “Built it from the ground up, ten years and counting.”
That made Maddie do literal double take, as if it took her a beat of silence to process what he had said. “Ten years? How... how old are you..?”
“Well, minus the ten years on Earth and what was probably a year of world hopping before that…” He did some quick math by counting on his fingers. “I think I was three when I left Mobius?” Maddie was very visibly distressed by this information, and in an effort to distract her, he kept on rambling. “But it kind of complicates things, since I don’t know when my exact birthday is. Even if I did, I don’t think it would translate well into your Earth calendar, anyways.”
“Gregorian,” Tom corrected. “It’s the Gregorian calendar.”
“Same idea.” Sonic waved him off. “I’ve always judged my age by when summer gets here, so I’ve been here for ten summers, now. But who’s counting?”
There was a moment of heavy silence, until Tom dared to break it. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear? Just because you’ve lived by yourself for so long, it doesn’t mean that you have to keep it that way. I do mean it when I say that people think you’re a hero. You don’t have to keep hiding from them forever, yeah?”
He nodded shyly. “Yeah… it’ll sure be different, though. I’m not really used to people knowing who I am.”
Even if their guilt wasn’t necessarily deserved, both Tom and Maddie still felt partially responsible for the damage that the solitude had caused. Sonic was clearly doing everything he could to make them feel better about themselves—and that the isolation he endured was a completely normal and justifiable thing—but even he was struggling to find the words to explain himself.
“I-I feel like I should help you guys fix your house up, at the very least… it’s kind of my fault that it’s full of holes.”
Tom half-frowned. “Well, I’m also the one who shot you with a tranq gun, so if you wanted to call us even, I’d get it.”
Maddie let out an awkward chuckle, covering her face with her hand. “I still can’t believe you did that…”
Sonic was almost back to his regular self in an instant, eager to poke fun at Tom. “Well I definitely can. ‘Cause it actually happened! To me!! It felt really weird.”
“Okay, I get it! Mistakes were made, I’m sorry. In my defense, you’re the first talking hedgehog I’ve ever met, Sonic. It’d be nice if you could cut me some slack for being a little startled.”
“A little? You shot me!” He scrunched up his nose and grinned smugly. “And you’re supposed to be a cop…”
“I told him not to get out that tranquilizer, and look what happened…” Maddie muttered, struggling to keep her composure amidst her laughter.
With the humorous road the conversation had taken, the three of them were able to put the heavier conversation topics aside—at least, for the time being. They all knew it was something that they needed to talk about, but that was for another day.
“We probably should get headed back, soon,” Tom noted, glancing at his watch. “There’s still a few things to take care of.”
“I want to help,” Sonic insisted. “Even if we are, well… even.”
“If it will make you happy, then sure.”
Maddie smiled. “We’d be happy to have you.”
They soon left the cave and made the journey back to return to the Wachowski house with Sonic being notably more patient this time around. Ozzie greeted the three of them with bountiful energy and dog kisses once they had arrived.
The three of them spent the rest of the day boxing up everything else that had been damaged, taking note of what would need to be replaced at a later date. Tom decided to put a tarp up in front of the broken window, since it would be another day before he was able to get someone to come out and look at it. Maddie made a point of adding “picture frames” to the whiteboard shopping list while Sonic was watching, hoping that it would put his mind at ease.
“That’s enough hard work for one day,” Tom decided, overlooking the dining room. It still wasn’t in great condition, per se, but there was less of a draft coming through now that the holes had been partially patched. It almost felt as if all their hard work had barely put a dent in the list of things they needed to do, but hey, it was a start.
Sonic, who normally had enough energy to make up for the other two combined, was running on fumes. “Phew, I can’t even believe I’m saying it, but I’m super tired. I can’t imagine how you guys feel.”
“Exhausted,” they both said in unison.
“Well, way to leave it up to the imagination, I guess,” Sonic laughed.
Then came the stalling period, they would soon realize. All of them—Sonic included—were more than happy to put off coming to any sort of proper conclusion on what they were going to do with him and his situation. For now, all they knew was that they would keep Sonic in hiding.
“We could put on a movie,” Maddie suggested, smiling when she noticed the hedgehog’s ears perk up in response. “I think we all deserve to take it easy for the rest of the night.”
“Sounds good to me,” Tom agreed. “I’ve got to give the window guy a call, but while I’m doing that, you guys could pick out one?”
“Ooh, dibs!” Sonic had zipped into the other room before anyone had a chance to interject.
Maddie found it to be quite adorable. “Someone’s excited.”
As Tom started dialing on his phone, he mouthed, “Good luck.” Maddie simply rolled her eyes at him and followed Sonic into the living room.
The excitable alien initially wanted to pick Speed, but since it had only been a few days since she and Tom had watched that one, Maddie managed to politely persuade him to settle on something else. He had to pick another Keanu Reeves movie, of course—once he saw they had a copy of The Matrix, he became dead-set on it. Thankfully, Tom approved of his decision once he returned from his phone call. Before the movie got started, Maddie offered to go out into the kitchen and make some popcorn, to which Sonic eagerly agreed.
As the sun began to set on that first day, the three of them sat around the coffee table, watching The Matrix and enjoying their rest after a day of work and problem solving. Sonic was seated a comfortable distance away from the two of them. Not unreasonably far, but just far enough that it was clear he was still working up the confidence to be more comfortable around them. And that was perfectly fine, in their eyes. This was a new experience for all of them.
——————————————
“What are we supposed to do?”
Sonic had fallen asleep on the couch about an hour ago, just after the movie had ended. He was now dozing peacefully, partially curled up in a ball. It was only now that Maddie’s emotions finally caught up with her and she willingly let them bubble to the surface. Though Tom wasn’t showing it as much, he was clearly feeling the same guilt as she was. They had moved their conversation to the kitchen, hoping to avoid waking Sonic.
“He’s… he’s just a little kid.”
Tom nodded silently from his seat at the dinner table, tapping his fingers along the edge of the surface as a mindless distraction.
“I don’t think I could let him go back to living in that cave. Not with a clean conscience.”
“I don’t think I can either, Maddie.”
“What if… what if we had found him sooner?”
He stood up suddenly and crossed the room to embrace her. She hugged him back tightly.
“There’s nothing we can do about that now. We just have to worry about the present, okay?”
“We can make up for lost time, right? That’s the least we can do…”
He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, of course. Of course we can. We can try.”
The couple was facing quite the dilemma. They had absolutely no idea what they were going to do next. Obviously, Sonic treasured the memories of his cave—if that wasn’t clear enough, with how excited he had been to share them all. But the cave lacked the type of companionship that he had been denied for nearly all of his life. All of them knew this.
“We could try to ask him what he wants to do,” she murmured against his shoulder.
“You know he would never just give us an answer. You saw how he was acting earlier.”
“Maybe he just needs some time.”
Tom sighed. “I sure hope so.”
They decided against leaving him alone in the living room, and so Tom volunteered to stay with him through the night. He attempted to stay awake for as long as he could, keeping a careful eye on the kid, but no amount of television background noise nor late-night book reading could prevent him from falling asleep. Tom still managed to wake up before the hedgehog did, but not without a crick in his neck. He was painfully reminded that sleeping on the couch was not usually a pleasant experience.
After fixing himself a coffee and grabbing a donut, he found his place on the couch again and decided to read through the local newspaper instead. It was amusing, reading about the rumors of supernatural occurrences, conspiracies, and genetically-enhanced raccoons, knowing that much of the town’s mysteries could likely be attributed to the resident Blue Blur.
That was when Sonic awoke suddenly and bolted upright, eyes darting all over his surroundings.
“Hey, buddy,” Tom greeted him warily. “You alright?”
His emerald green eyes quickly settled on Tom, filled with surprise. A sheepish grin found its way to his muzzle. “Oh! Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m fine. Great, actually!”
“You sure? Have a bad dream or something? You looked pretty startled there, kid.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just…” He hesitated, mulling over his words cautiously. “Part of me thought you were gonna make me go back to my cave.”
“And you thought I was going to wake you up in the middle of the night to tell you that? Come on, now, I’m not a monster.”
With that, Sonic seemed to calm down a bit, chuckling. His posture relaxed and he leaned back into the chair so that he could stretch. “I guess that’s fair…”
“Sleep well?”
“Yeah! It’s kinda nice to sleep indoors for a change. Rare that that happens twice in the same week for me.”
Tom frowned. “You know… it’s not like the couch is going anywhere. You’re welcome to spend the night here, whenever you want to.”
His expression softened. It was somber, but appreciative. “…Thank you guys. For being so nice to me.”
“It’s no trouble at all, kid.”
They sat there for a moment, each keeping their thoughts to themselves as they mulled over their words. It was a hard subject to talk about, and Tom was doing everything in his power to keep himself from intruding too much.
“So,” Sonic began, sitting forwards. It was hard to tell whether it was an intentional subject change, or if it was just what was on his mind at the given moment. He wasn’t exactly the best at keeping his internal monologue to himself. “What are we doing today?”
“Nothing, yet.” He took a sip of his coffee, now that it was cool enough to drink. “Maddie isn’t up yet, and I’m more than happy to sit here and enjoy my breakfast before worrying about everything else.”
Sonic slumped into the chair, clearly somewhat disappointed. “Ugh.”
“Patience is a virtue, kid,” Tom laughed. “It’d do you some good to enjoy the morning. There’s still a lot of donuts left in there, if you—“ A streak of blue rushed to and from the kitchen. Sonic reappeared in the chair near instantaneously with a half-eaten donut in his hand.
“You’re full of good ideas, mighty Donut Lord.” He bowed his head dramatically.
“I try.”
He went back to reading the newspaper as Sonic finished his donut. When Tom noticed he was getting a bit antsy, he handed him the remote and suggested that he surf through the channels until he found something interesting. He ended up getting more entertainment out of it by seeing how fast he could flip through the entire roster of channels than actually watching what was on screen, which was surprisingly fitting.
When Tom got to the local conspiracy column of the newspaper, he decided to poke a bit of fun. “You wouldn’t happen to know the guy who stole a sheet of cookies off of Ms. Garett’s windowsill, would you?”
Sonic brought a hand up to his chest in faux-offense. “That sounds like an accusation against my good name.”
“You sure took that personally, for someone who wasn’t involved.”
He stared at him and his eyes widened a little, realizing that he’d practically confessed before he was even accused. An embarrassed flush of pink slowly appeared across his muzzle, and the hedgehog let out a defeated huff. “Well, shoot. Uh… guilty as charged? H-how’d you even know about that?”
“There’s an entire column in here dedicated to the accused crimes of the freakishly intelligent raccoons that supposedly live around here. And I know you’re not exactly a stranger to breaking and entering, so I figured there might be a connection there.” Strangely, Sonic withered under his teasing, which prompted Tom to backpedal. “Hey, I’m not mad. I’m messing with you more than anything, I promise.”
He looked away, finding some sort of comfort in the TV. “It didn’t feel good to steal from people. But I didn’t really have any other options…”
That was yet another painful reminder of the many years of isolation that the kid endured. “I believe you, don’t worry.”
Silence.
“I know you’re not a bad guy, Sonic. I mean, you’re helping us fix our house. That’s not your problem, and yet, here you are.”
He fiddled with the remote in his hands mindlessly. “I still feel kind of responsible for it.”
“…And you’re doing something about it,” Tom finished for him. “Which is an honorable thing to do.”
There was silence again, but it wasn’t nearly as heavy.
“One of these days, we should make some cookies ourselves. They taste way better when you make them yourself.”
“Yeah?” Sonic perked up at the idea. “Or should I take them to Ms. Garett and apologize?” he chuckled at his own suggestion.
“Well, apology cookies are a thing, so yeah, that would probably work.”
“What other kind of stuff can you guys make?” Sonic asked curiously. That spark childlike wonder had returned to his eyes again.
“All kinds of things. If you’re talking baked goods, that’s Maddie’s forte. I tried to bake a cake for her birthday once, and, needless to say, it did not end well.”
“But you’re the Donut Lord!” Sonic laughed.
“I like to eat donuts, sure, but that doesn’t mean I know how to make them.”
Sonic proceeded to ask him about every desert known to man, following the same pattern of questions every time: have you made it; is it any good; when is it seasonally appropriate; et cetera. Tom made sure to take a mental note of what Sonic himself had never tried.
——————————————
The second day was dedicated to finishing up the wall repairs. This time, Sonic was responsible for sanding, which he took to with surprising ease. It was an amusing sight, to see him running around with a dust mask that would barely stay on his face—they had to haphazardly strap it over his quills, since his ears were too high up on his head. Mercifully, he hadn’t been too stubborn about having to wear one.
He returned to his cave that night—he insisted that he missed it, but they could both tell quite easily that he felt guilty over possibly infringing on their hospitality. And yet, a few hours later, he had showed up again, shyly knocking on the back door. Maddie had been downstairs, loading the dishwasher, so she was the one to open it.
“Hey,” she greeted him, offering as welcoming of a smile as she could at twelve in the morning—in her defense, she was tired.
“I-I know I said I was leaving for tonight, but… is it okay if I spend the night here? I’m having a bit of trouble falling asleep…”
“Of course it is, Sonic. Come on in.”
He was quick to settle in, and had already fallen asleep by the time she finished putting everything into the dishwasher. Before she headed off to bed herself, she placed a blanket over his shoulders and was sure to leave a lamp on for him.
The third day was mostly uneventful. Tom was a little surprised to find the hedgehog asleep on the couch when he went to make himself breakfast, but it did put him at ease, knowing that the kid was safe. A window repairer was finally able to come by and assess the damages, meaning that Sonic had to hide out in the attic for most of the day. When he finally left, the family spent a couple of hours getting started on the task of repainting the dining room. They quickly learned that Sonic could not be trusted with a paint roller, so they tasked him with applying painter’s tape along the trim of the room and around the window. The whole time, he was grumbling about how the job would get done so much faster if they’d just let him do it, but he had a smile on his face.
Sonic would end up returning to his cave the night after that as well, much to the couple’s dismay. It was peculiar—he always seemed so appreciative when they mentioned to him that it was an option, but when the end of the day rolled around, something prompted him to excuse himself and quickly leave.
“Are we not making it clear enough?” Maddie asked Tom later that night. “Does he know that we mean what we’re saying?”
“Well, we’re dealing with a fourteen-year-old space creature who’s only started interacting with actual people about a week ago. I think he’s just having a bit of trouble getting used to it.”
“We’re not pushing him too much, are we?”
Tom furrowed his brow, thinking. There were many unspoken things that both of them knew to be true. It was going to be a challenging adjustment period for the kid, no matter the pace.
“I… I think I’ll stay down here a bit longer, in case he decides to come back like he did yesterday.”
Maddie dipped her head in agreement. “I hope that he does… it’s a bit chilly out.”
“Yeah, I do too. Hopefully soon,” he added, in a more lighthearted tone. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake.”
It earned a gentle smile from her. She turned around to head up the stairs. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Tom leaned over the table to grab the TV remote, but when he looked back up, Maddie still hadn’t gone upstairs. She had hesitated on the second step.
“Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“I…” Maddie suddenly decided to abandon the staircase and return to the living room, coming to a stop in front of her husband. “I don’t really know how to explain it in a way that makes sense, so I’m just going to be upfront about it, okay?” She placed her hands together and brought them up to her face, inhaling a sharp breath. “I want Sonic to come live with us.”
Tom was quick to respond. “I do too.”
“R-really? I… was expecting to have to try to explain myself a bit more than that, if I’m honest…”
“I’m actually pretty glad that you were the one to bring it up first… made it easier on me, that’s for sure.”
The fact that they had so unanimously agreed on the subject was just as endearing as it was absurd. They shared a laugh in between the lull in conversation.
“I meant it, though,” Maddie murmured, her voice returning to a cautious level. “Do you think that it would be pushing him too much, to do something like that? He does seek some sort of comfort in us, right? In this house?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“I just don’t want to imagine things that aren’t actually there…” Her voice trailed off, as if she were thinking over the logistics.
“It’s a lot to think about.”
“How would this even work? He can’t just live on the couch.”
“Well… there’s the attic, right?”
Her eyes widened, as if she hadn’t even considered it.
“We could fix it up nice, into a proper room,” he explained. “Maybe we could even bring over some of his own stuff? It might make it easier on him, to bring over all the memories of his old place.”
“This is crazy,” Maddie whispered. “Absolutely crazy, even for us.”
Apparently in agreement, Tom started to laugh. “That’s certainly saying something. This past week has been pretty insane.”
——————————————
Evidently, they were just crazy enough to actually go through with their proposed plan. They would have to be rather quick about it in order to keep it a surprise, but with a strategic rotation of hedgehog-supervising duty—Sonic loved to tag along with either one of them, regardless of how trivial the task was—it seemed like it was possible.
The fourth day proved to be the most opportune moment to get most of the heavy lifting done. Sonic never ended up coming by in the middle of the night. Instead, he showed up early in the morning, looking visibly exhausted. Tom doubted that he had even managed to sleep at all that night, but he never commented on it.
The window repairman was set to return in the morning, and both Tom and Maddie were supposed to head into work—with Tom’s shift being in the early half of the day, and Maddie’s in the latter. Tom decided to use the opportunity wisely and offered to let Sonic tag along with him in his cruiser. Unsurprisingly, he agreed before Tom had even finished asking the question. Though he was still technically supposed to be away from the public eye, Sonic didn’t question the offer even once. It was likely that he was happy to be included at all. It was equally likely that he had already completely forgotten what they told him. Either way, it worked out in their favor.
Because he wanted to keep Sonic from being seen by very many people, Tom opted to take surveillance duty. It involved cruising around the town and making sure nothing looked off or out of place. Some of the time was also spent sitting at the various speed traps just on the edge of town. All the while, Sonic was seated in the passenger seat, looking around with wide eyes and asking Tom questions whenever he thought of them.
With Tom keeping Sonic busy, Maddie had a bit of time to use to her advantage once the window repairer had left. In the time she had, she was able to rearrange the attic into a more livable space and move some of the storage items into a single corner of the room. On top of a small pile of boxes, she found an unopened package of fairy lights. She ended up deciding to line them along the wall and part of the diagonal ceiling, finding the homey atmosphere they gave off to be endearing. But there was only so much progress a single person could make—the alarm she had set on her phone went off, letting her know that she needed to get ready for work.
Neither she nor Tom wanted to leave Sonic alone—partially because they wanted to include him whenever they could, and partially because they didn’t want to risk ruining the surprise—so they spoke on the phone and agreed to have Maddie stop by and pick up Sonic on her way to the vet’s office.
Miraculously, only one person had ended up seeing him during the entire outing. The receptionist was the only person they had to cross paths with to reach Maddie’s office, and thankfully, she was rather calm about the whole thing. Sonic, who was not quite used to the attention, hid behind Maddie shyly, offering the receptionist a slight wave and a quiet “Hello” when she smiled at him.
Tom was responsible for moving Sonic’s belongings. With the help of a couple of his coworkers—and borrowing one of their trucks, since his was totaled—they drove out as close as they could to the location of the cave. It was still a small distance inside of the forest, but it was overall much less of a journey than it would be to try to navigate the stuff back to their home on foot.
With the extra help, they were able to get all of the major pieces of furniture moved out of the cave and into the attic before Maddie was set to return home. There was still more stuff to be moved, but Tom figured that one of them could get the smaller things on their own time. He thanked his coworkers for their help and appreciated their promise to keep quiet about the whole thing. Around the time she was supposed to come home, Maddie called him and notified him that she had to stay a bit later than intended. “Maybe another hour or so,” she had said over the phone.
“Works for me,” Tom told her. “Now I have time to grab everything else. How’s it going out there?”
“It’s quiet. He fell asleep a little while ago.”
“Actually?”
“Yeah. Crazy, isn’t it? I don’t think he got much sleep last night.”
“I think the universe is working in our favor,” Tom joked.
It ended up that Tom was right. He had plenty of time to transport the last of Sonic’s things—small trinkets from over the years, as well as his impressive comic book collection—back to their house.
Maddie arrived home later that night, carrying a sleeping Sonic in her arms. She placed him on the couch gently and covered him with a blanket, running a hand through his quills once affectionately. He made a sound that was some sort of mix between a sigh and a purr. Once they were sure he wasn’t going to wake up, they headed upstairs and started to rearrange the pile of his personal belongings sitting in the attic.
It was on the fifth day, in the early hours of the morning, when Tom and Maddie were putting together the last few pieces of the room. The two of them worked together to assemble the race car child’s bed that had long been boxed up in the attic—it was one of Tom’s old belongings, and he was still rather proud of himself for coming up with the idea to use it. They had just finished putting it together and had stepped back to view their accomplishments when Maddie started to laugh. A beaming smile overtook her expression. “You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“It’s this. The fact that this is really happening.”
“You’re, uh, gonna have to be a little more specific than that, honey.”
“The last time we looked at this bed. Don’t you remember? Your parents dropped it off here with all that old stuff of yours, and we talked about it for a while. Talked about if we were ready to have a kid or not.”
It dawned on him immediately what she was referring to, and what this bed meant in this situation. At the end of that previous discussion, they had determined that they weren’t quite ready for such a sudden change, and so they had chosen not make a decision on what to with the bed just yet. They boxed it up and shoved it away in the attic, promising to come back to it later if they ever decided its fate. Finally, a year later, the race car bed was free from its box, centered in the newly decorated room and bathed in the sunlight that shone down from the window above.
“I guess we are sort of ending up with a child at the end of all this, aren’t we?” Maddie murmured.
“Yeah, I... I guess you’re right.”
She wrapped an arm around him in a gentle side hug, and he returned the gesture. She tilted her head to rest against his as they both observed their work with thoughtful silence. The room was heavily populated with Sonic’s interesting choices in interior design—they worked with what they were given, and it just so happened that most of his decorative belongings were road signs—but the meaning of it all was still quite powerful. It was undeniably a child’s room, through and through.
“We have no way of telling if he’s going to want this or not,” Tom mentioned suddenly, breaking the silence.
She hugged him tighter. “I think we’ve made the right choice.”
——————————————
As luck would have it, later that afternoon, when everyone was awake—Tom and Maddie were in the process of repainting the dining room, and Sonic was sitting nearby, playing with Ozzie—there was a firm knock at the front door. There were only so many people that that knock could belong to, and since it had been almost a business week since the fiasco with Dr. Robotnik and they still had yet to be confronted by a government official, they had a good idea of who it probably was.
Tom looked over at Sonic, who had immediately perked up at the noise. “That’s your cue, kid. Duck and cover!”
He mock-saluted and dove behind the couch in the living room. The couple braced themselves for the worst and slowly opened the door. Sure enough, it was the Commander himself. An array of military vehicles were stationed outside.
One quick conversation and an arguably lackluster bribe later, they returned to the living room. Sonic crawled out of hiding and they all got a laugh out of the strange circumstances. It seemed like the government had no ill intent towards him, and that was all that they could hope for.
Both of them ended up committing to the joke of it being a school night, and that it was time for him to go home. Sonic’s sleep schedule had been incredibly inconsistent to begin with, but three in the afternoon was quite the stretch. Surprisingly, he had taken them completely seriously and tried to leave. He probably figured they didn’t need him to stay, now that the stakes were gone. Tom stopped him before he was able to leave, much to the hedgehog’s confusion.
“You said I have to go back to my cave,” he pointed out, as if it was obvious.
The couple made knowing eye contact. “We did,” Tom clarified. Sonic only looked more confused, glancing between both of them like he knew there was something he wasn’t getting.
And so they ushered him along to the pull-down stairs and encouraged him to go see for himself. They could nearly see the gears turning in his head as he tried to guess what could possibly be waiting for him upstairs. They followed him up the stairs once he had stepped into the attic.
He was staring around the room, slowly, with wide eyes. His gaze traveled over every single item sitting in the room, all while he was mumbling his thoughts aloud like he always did. “A-are you kidding me? I can’t… this is… how did you..?” He looked so overwhelmed with emotion that Maddie felt compelled to speak up.
“I hope you don’t mind that we stole your thunder with the decorating,” she preemptively apologized. “I know that’s sort of your thing.”
Tom nodded. “But we tried our best.”
“This is… it’s all here…” he murmured, awed. Within the blink of an eye he was dashing all over the room, investigating every last inch of the room while practically bursting with joyous excitement. The couple watched—with pride?—as he darted all over the place, recounting all of his personal items before he flopped onto the race car bed. “I love it! I love it!”
The two humans joined him on the bed, seated on either side of him. He looked as if he didn’t know quite what to say, but the gratitude he felt was prominent enough that they could see it was there without hearing it directly.
Maddie smiled at him. “Welcome home.”
“Thank you,” he said, looking up at them both. “Thank you so much.”
Tom closed the distance between the three of them when he wrapped an arm around both Sonic and Maddie. It was probably the closest Sonic had physically been to either of them throughout the past week, and its meaning was not lost. For the first time since Tom had met him, it seemed like a barrier had been broken down.
Ozzie came thundering up the stairs, eager to see what the commotion was all about. Sonic hopped up and tried to shoo him out of the room. His room. He had called it his room.
There was something about the way he had accepted it so quickly that the couple found incredibly heartwarming and reassuring. The last bit of doubt that clouded their minds had quickly faded, and they knew for certain that they had made the right call.