#willow.hc

[acespeon]

everyone thinks Pepa is the scary one but you’ve never pissed off Julieta so much that you get plain arepas instead of healing arepas or Bruno who, despite his frail appearance, is capable of being very scary if you mess with his sisters (or niblings, much later)

[acespeon]

some Wachowski family hcs while I’m at it:

Knuckles ends up taking the basement while Tails rooms with Sonic up in the attic. Sonic doesn’t mind, and it means Knuckles gets his own space and peace and quiet. Knuckles’ bedroom is decorated with foliage and ferns to make it feel like home, and they made a rammed earth feature wall that his nest sits up against. He’s silently touched. That doesn’t stop him from setting traps that get strung up when Sonic tries to sneak in. Maddie knows how to sidestep everything.

Of course Tails wants to run experiments (of the friendly kind) to gauge their powers but they’re both separate and yet similar in kind. Knuckles will sit and explain chaos theory to him in terms of Master Emerald but not divulge all secrets until Tails unleashes the puppy eyes. Maddie and Tom come home from work and Sonic is strapped into a big hamster wheel Tails whipped up out of old parts and Knuckles is bench pressing Maddie’s weights like it’s nothing.

Maddie and Knuckles share a love of yoga and meditation. Sonic is quite jealous but he just can’t sit still long enough for it, so Tom takes him and Tails to the baseball pit while it’s meditation hour. They also encourage the other three to eat healthily, which induces groans of disapproval.

Knuckles takes to keeping the Wachowski garden in shape.

He gets sensory overload when Sonic, Tails and JoJo are in the same room and is allowed to excuse himself from the family before things get out of hand.

He goes through a boxing bag a month.

Knuckles is very prickly about Eggman manipulating him in general and gets angry when Sonic brings it up (in a ‘at least I didn’t’ kind of way). If Maddie and Tom aren’t around when they argue it turns into all out brawls to start with before he starts learning it’s not his fault.

Has abandonment issues not unlike Sonic but in an entirely different manner (if he’s the last of his kind like in the games). Whatever happened to his parents/people/culture is unknown atm. Sometimes he wakes up from nightmares but won’t talk about it.

The Hat is one of Tom’s that Knuckles gets during a father bonding moment that I haven’t figured out yet. Touch his Hat and die.

[acespeon]

hc that Tails now needs to leave post it notes on the things that he makes because half the time they are high powered weapons, otherwise Sonic and/or Knuckles end up picking them up and accidentally setting them off by playing with them

it happened a total of once with Ozzie and Tom and Maddie made a new rule about Tails not leaving his things around

[acespeon]

hc that the Green Hills ice cream parlour is run by a local and it's not a chain store, so when they learn that Knuckles is disappointed about the lack of grape ice cream they start experimenting, and the next time the Wachowskis come in, there's a grape flavour they made especially for him

[acespeon]

Bruno was suspicious of Felix and Agustin at first, let's be real. He's looking out for his sisters, and himself because people in the town didn't generally try to befriend him (at this time they were already distancing themselves from him and his prophecies).

But they tried being his friend before they fell for Pepa and Julieta.

Felix was local, his family little known, and once he randomly asked him to look into his future. Bruno, slightly confused because had Felix not heard that he killed someone's goldfish?, but he does it. It's a rainy day in the vision, wind blowing and clothes fluttering, but Felix and Pepa are clearly in it, clearly happy despite the weather bearing down on them. Bruno finds relief that it's the first happy prophecy in a long time, and Felix, sheepishly, asks for his blessing in courting Pepa. Bruno says it's up to Mama, but smiles in a way that lets him know he knows he has Pepa's best interest at heart.

Agustin is a little more difficult to read because he's an outsider. He tumbled into town one day, falling down the mountains, in a way befitting a clumsy man. Bruno is there when they bring him to Julieta, covered in bee stings and thorn scratches and he notices the delusional look on the foreigner's face as his sister feeds him an arepa. It's not the usual 'wow thanks' look that townspeople give her, but a look of wonderment as though he discovered the holy grail.

Agustin is allowed to lodge with a man down the road, but comes back. Bruno sees the way each time it's for even just minor things like scratches, but his immediate thought is to find Julieta. Julieta is the town healer of course, but his intentions change each time. Mama looks at him with suspicion - he bears the same kind of skin as the murderers who killed Papa, is from the outside world. Of course she's suspicious, but Bruno, quiet Bruno who can slip between the cracks in the house walls, can tell that Agustin only has Julieta's best interests at heart.

One night after dinner, Agustin helps him with the dishes.

"You love her, don't you?"

Agustin blanches in a way that throws his glasses askew, bringing a soapy hand up to adjust them as Bruno continues idly wiping down dishes, looking at the plate in his hand nonchalantly.

"I...pardon?"

"You love Julieta, don't you?"

"W-well I suppose I..." Agustin fumbles for his words, much like he fumbles for steps. "How did you figure it out?"

Bruno gives him a deadpanned look. "Not a lot of people hang around me just for me. I don't know if you've noticed but nobody talks to Bruno just for Bruno."

"...I'm sorry." Agustin sounds genuinely sorry. "Your mother doesn't like me very much and your sister Pepa and her husband..."

"This isn't about them." He placed the plate down, turning to face Agustin full on. "Do you love Julieta?"

"I...yes."

"Then that's all that matters." Bruno turns his attention back to the dishes, calm and quietly high fiving himself in his head. His rats do it on his shoulder. "But if you hurt her, my rats will poop in your food."

"Understood."

That was how Bruno became a tio.

[acespeon]

okay but Knuckles courting Sonic in a manner that his ancestors would do for their prospective mates, and everything he does just goes over Sonic's head because hedgehogs have very different courting rituals

Amy has to take Sonic to the side when she notices all the hard effort Knuckles puts in and the fact that he's starting to look very frustrated that his courtship isn't going to plan, and explain things in hedgehog terms that make him fluster and splutter and ask her for help

Amy standing nearby Knuckles as Sonic tries his hardest (romance doesn't come to him easily) and informing Knuckles just wth is going on

also just Amy being instrumental in setting Sonic up with someone else and being the best wing gal

[acespeon]

some Knuckles/echidna headcanons:

echidnas in general are a gender nonconforming society. there are no traditional gender roles - female echidnas have the capacity to be warriors and male echidnas have the capacity to be medics. their names are chosen based on specific things (i.e; weapons, gem names, jewellery). naming a child after a deity is considered honouring the deity. Knuckles carries the name he does because he is the last echidna and the last of the Knuckles Clan.

speaking of gender, Eggman was the first one to refer to Knuckles as 'he'/'boy'. previous to that, it hadn't crossed his mind, and with Sonic and Tails it stuck.

Knuckles was selectively mute as a kid, considering he wasn't around others of his kind or anyone else that talked. He got used to spending lots of time by himself, though would sometimes talk to the critters that he encountered in the emerald chamber like flickies, chao, squirrels and mice.

there is literature that survived Chaos' impact on the tribe, and while thousands of years old, it has been transcribed into fresh manuscripts by more recent echidnas until Knuckles was the last. he has painstakingly learned how to read it and is in the process of writing translations in his own memoirs for when his time comes, including instructions on how to look after the Master Emerald, what traps there are around the island and how to set/release them.

sometimes he tells Sonic and Tails tidbits of information about his culture, because overtime he's learned that the best way to preserve it is to pass it on. Tails is helping him digitize echidna lore.

fruit is his favourite thing to eat simply because of its ease. there is no need to hunt it nor cook most of it. root vegetables are also in his diet. it wasn't until Sonic that he'd even knew what a chilli dog was.

per his "treasure hunter" status from SA onwards, there are several sites on Angel Island where Knuckles has conducted his own searches for information and digs for echidna remnants. if he could handle modern society, he'd be an archaeologist by trade. Marble Garden, Hidden Palace, Sky Sanctuary and Sandopolis are the major sites.

being Guardian of Angel Island means guarding everything as well as the Master Emerald. he settles disputes over territory, food, 'he said, they said' and others among the speaking population while maintaining a social distance.

when he was younger he used to wonder about his purpose, why he had been chosen to do this, and it used to make him cry when he wasn't able to stifle the emotions any longer.

he talks to the Master Emerald, and from SA onward, Tikal, in a spiritual manner.

[acespeon]

tbh I like the idea that Agustin was an explorer ala Milo Thatch who pretty much tumbled down the fucking mountain into the Encanto on accident and was taken to Casita Madrigal to Julieta and she healed him and kept going back to her with minor things like cuts and major things like bee stings and they fell in love