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This wasn’t the first time, and he was sure it wasn’t going to be the last. He hammered his fist with unbridled force onto the trees of the island he cherished so dearly. It wasn’t the tree's fault, it was his fault like it always has been. If only he wasn’t so stupid.
The first time he barely thought anything of it. He was only an honorary member of Team Sonic at the time. Team Sonic wasn’t a thing anyway given three is needed for a team. The point being, he was new in these friendships, he was new to relationships in general. So when he stated he couldn’t read with any prior thought or hesitation, he wasn’t expecting a pair of incredulous stares from the hedgehog and the fox. But it rolled right off his back, they had a job to do and this time, no farce was going to get in his way.
The second time came not more than a month later. He was given a simple direction: turn left at the fork in the road. So he did as he had always had. He brought his hands before his face to where he had them where he could clearly see them. Then he balled his fists, letting out his thumb and his index finger so that both hands would form a capital L. And that’s how he always did it, he looked for which hand formed an L and that’s how he knew which direction was left.
His new companion, Tails, gave him a strange expression. One he couldn’t exactly place his finger on it, at least not at the time. Sonic was already too far off to notice his strange reaction to the objectively simple task of turning left.
That same precocious fox kit had insisted Knuckles see him at his cottage once they had started to become properly acclimated. Now that he, a known loner, had accepted his new title of friend, he was equipped with a communicator.
Tails wasn’t as a custom to schooling utterly clueless individuals in regards to technology as he would later grow to be. Being acquainted with an ageless alien hybrid with a 50-year gap in his memory, a time-traveling optimist from a forever doomed future, and the aforementioned loner who spent his life banished to a lonely island in the sky would teach anyone how to properly explain the concept of a communicator as if the pupil was a newborn infant.
Tails didn’t teach in this fashion because his disciples lacked intelligence. It was quite the opposite actually, despite the kit’s brilliance, he couldn’t deny it was impressive for all of the minds he had the pleasure to have known to so quickly acclimate to the rather complex topics he presented. No, he taught in this fashion because it’s much easier to understand concepts when working from the ground up.
“So, uh, yeah that’s all you really need to know.” Tails smiled warmly to the confused echidna as he inspected the gadget he’d just been gifted. “Why don’t you try texting Sonic?”
Knuckles replayed the fox’s earlier instructions regarding the communicators texting function in his mind. Easy enough, he thought. But when he was met with the keyboard, prompting him to type out a message, he was at a loss.
It was then that the hedgehog introduced himself into the room in the abrupt, slightly obnoxious way his name would suggest.
“Hey, Knux!” He greeted, almost instantly disregarding Knuckles’ personal space, not that he took notice. “Whatcha got there?”
“Tails thought I should have one of those communicator thingies.”
“Yeah!” Tails interjected, a smile finding a way on his face. “Knuckles was just about to text you actually.”
And so, he was faced with the device again. He knew by now how to navigate the text function but the prompt of texting something was a daunting task. He felt oddly anxious feeling his teammate’s eyes seemingly blaring into him. So he attempted to text Sonic. He attempted to text “It is Knuckles”, but it came out as ‘Kuckles’.
Sonic giggled looking at the text. “Well hello to you too cuck-les” He accentuated the
first syllable of the name causing Tails to laugh as well. All Knuckles could feel was his cheeks heating up to be almost as red as his fur in frustration
“What’s so funny?” Knuckles blurted out in a violent mix of embarrassment and confusion.
“Nothin’, nothin’ just thought the typo was funny.” Sonic smiled, still getting rid of some of the giggles as he waved off Knuckles’ nerves. Knuckles scoffed, not willing to admit his obviously simple mistake.
Tails offered a more empathetic approach to the situation. “Don’t worry Knux! It happens to the best of us.” Little did he know, it was more complicated than that. Seeing as this mistake was obnoxiously frequent considering it seemed it happened every time he attempted to spell.
He would be relaxing at his favorite place in the world, underneath the faint glow of the master emerald when the sudden beep his communicator would send a sudden shock of anxiety down his spine.
It wasn’t always this way, despite his introverted tendencies, being on a floating island left one awfully lonely so he’d jump at the chance to burn off some energy with his friends. But his messages always garnered strange reactions. Sonic would find them comical regardless of context, and Tails seemed to be left offering pitiful expressions.
It was around this time that the little inkling of insecurity was born, incubating, securing itself in the back of his mind. Was he stupid?
The third instance arose when he was called for ‘reading lessons’. It was painfully obvious that he was less than proficient when it came to that particular skill. Admittedly, he made a fool of himself while attempting to read to the Chao of the hero garden. His reading was choppy at best as he had to take intermittent breaks to redirect himself. His eyes were often lost in the sea of words, he would look to the next line to continue his reading only to find he was back where he was before. The harder he looked, the more the words seemed to dance on the page, waving and intermingling in a devastating taunt. It wasn’t long before he had a headache.
He was lucky enough to have his savior in pink take the reins, seeing as he was visibly struggling with the words on the page. She offered a sympathetic look through downturned lids and soft, emerald eyes. He knew it wasn’t disparaging when any of his friends offered him that look, the look of pity it wasn’t to belittle him, but it didn’t help the growing seed of self-loathing that had embedded itself in his mind.
He took notice of just how simple it was for her. The words slipped out of her lips like it was second nature, a startling contrast to his clumsy attempt to narrate the book to the cooing Chao.
“Thanks for helping out today Knuckles!” Amy beamed, looking over to her red-faced companion.
“Helping?” Knuckles offered a slight frown. “I didn’t do much of anything.”
“Sure ya did!” Amy presented her ever intoxicating cheer, but it was evident that Knuckles was immune. “The Chao are always excited to see you! What’s gotcha down?”
He was ashamed to say it, too focused on keeping his pride intact seeing as he was in the presence of a professional reader. He wasn’t the world's best liar by any means but despite times called for desperate measures. “Just.. Rouge bugging me, that’s all.”
Amy simply wasn’t convinced. She might have been if she hadn’t tried to organize a shopping trip with Rouge and Shadow the day prior, only to be met with an automated message explaining that the entirety of team dark was out on a week-long mission and wouldn’t be back for the next few days. She understood his dishonesty however, it couldn’t be easy admitting illiteracy.
“Well, Tails is teaching Silver how to read tomorrow. Apparently, all the books get burnt in the future or something. Maybe tagging along will cheer you up!” Amy offered.
Knuckles had to admit, he’d only be in attendance as an ego boost, and maybe to secretly pick up a few pointers along the way. What he didn’t expect, however, was to be practically at the same reading level as Silver by the four-hour session. To add insult to injury, this was not Knuckles’ first encounter with reading but it was Silver’s.
That was one week ago, so here he stands today, ripping apart trees in hopes to quell his nerves and drown out the doubt. Tails had requested he return to his workshop. He was vague on the details but Knuckles was already well aware of what was to come. So, for now, trees would be his outlet.
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When he found himself at Tails’ workshop, practically his second residence, it was only him sitting patiently at one side of a work table. Knuckles took his seat across Tails, noticing the rather thick textbook labeled ‘DSM-5’ amongst other words that he didn’t bother to decipher.
Knuckles shifted his violet eyes to gaze over the hulking book. He swallowed a lump of nerves in his throat, “You want me to read that!”
“Oh!” Tails quickly picked up the book and dragged it over to himself. He flipped to a page he had dog eared. It took a moment, but Knuckles understood that the title was the word ‘Dyslexia’. But, he figured he had read it wrong since it sounded foreign. “That’s for me haha.”
It started with Tails asking him the definitions of words, which quickly got on Knuckles’ nerves since he already knew these words, it just felt like an insult to his intelligence. Seeing as Knuckles had no difficulty regarding word recognition, Tails quickly moved on to something else.
“Ok Knuckles, you think you can write down this sentence for me?” Tails asked rather politely.
“Ugh, why can't you do it yourself?” Knuckles scoffed, leaning back in his chair. He was getting tired of being coddled really quickly, Sonic always called him paranoid but he could tell Tails was scheming. But, it wasn’t long before he was writing down whatever came out of Tails’ mouth after being subjected to those oh so precious puppy dog eyes.
Knuckles completed the task, handing the slip back to Tails. He was on pins and needles waiting for Tails to complete his assessment of the sheet of paper. He had dashed from multicolored highlighters all over the slip. Eventually, Tails pulled out a paper of his own writing down different phrases. He wrote about the many discrepancies he found on Knuckles’ paper. ‘Writing Phonetically’,’ Reversed Lettering’,’ Chicken Scratch’ amongst other things were scribbled down as Tails continued to read Knuckles’ writing.
Finally, the frankly painful silence was broken when Tails requested Knuckles read an excerpt from a book for him. Despite the chapter book’s thickness, or lack thereof, Knuckles had difficulties with the passage. Frequently he would mindlessly replace words in the passage with others as he read out loud. Other times he had to stop a moment to look away so the words would stop… swimming. When he finished the excerpt, Tails clicked off his stopwatch.
“Do you know what Dyslexia is Knuckles?” Tails smiled.
“Huh?”
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“Hey, Knux! How ya been!” Sonic smiled as he plopped next to Knuckles at the master emerald shrine.
Knuckles grumbled, “Just busy being stupid.”
Sonic cocked his head “What?”
Knuckles reluctantly handed him the booklet that was given to him by the psychiatrist. The hedgehog took a quick thumb through the packet. Knuckles brought Sonic back to the present with a barely audible whimper.
The echidna leaned back onto the shrine. “It says I’m stupid right?”
Sonic cocked an eye ridge. “Who told ya that? It says your dyslexic, you ain’t stupid.” Sonic could see the confusion splayed across Knuckles’ face. “Oh yeah, forgot you’re from the wilderness.”
Sonic took the time to explain a little bit, he elaborated on the symptoms, treatments, coping mechanisms, whatever he could through a google search. Then, he slowed down a bit after a painful realization hit him.
“Oh..” Sonic started, suddenly adopting a look of guilt as he scratched the back of his neck “..I guess I owe ya an apology.”
Somehow, quick as lightning, Knuckles’ mood turned on a dime. “Did you touch my emerald!” He hollered.
“Woah chill Knucklehead!” Sonic took a deep breath, dropping his usual confident demeanor. “I just wanna say I’m sorry for all those times I bugged ya for your spelling, never knew it was a disability. Won’t happen again! Please tell me if I’m bein’ rude or anything.”
Knuckles punches Sonic in the arm, a bit too hard, his own form of revenge. “Don’t worry about it Sonic!” Knuckles smiled, he knew Sonic well enough to know he didn’t mean any harm. He can be a jerk, but there are lines he had no intention of crossing.
Sonic continued. “Also your not dumb! If any ones here it's gotta be me cuz I have no idea how you find chaos emeralds so fast! Like you take less than half of the time it took me! Also, how did you even learn all that ancient language, culture stuff?” He gave a smirk. “Don’t let this get to your head though.”
They joined in laughing at his last joke. It wasn’t long before they were engaged in an arm wrestle. Maybe Knuckles wasn’t the best reader, maybe he’d never be but he sure as hell was the best arm wrestler and then some. And at least he could say, he wasn’t stupid.