Archive of Our Own

Silver learns to weave. It is one of the most important things he will ever do. 

One day to the next. It doesn’t matter.

Silver either eats, sleeps, fights, or scavenges. Occasionally, when he remembers, he’ll breathe, but even that skill seems to escape him sometimes, when the smoke gets too thick and his chest starts to clench. 

He searches for the Chaos Emeralds in the burning rubble. When he finds two of them- if he finds two of them -he’ll achieve something to justify being born. 

Thrown into another cycle. Eat. Sleep. Fight. This time “scavenge” is replaced with “socialize”. It’s still a matter of navigating. He knows enough by now to say things that won’t make them worried. 

Defeat the bad guy in Sonic’s time. Trudge back to his own time. Find everything still on fire. Find the Chaos Emeralds amongst the rubble again. Repeat until he gets it right. 

Sonic always offers for him to stay a little while. He doesn’t take it. The sooner he gets back, the sooner he can try again. He can’t afford to overlap.

One day to the next.

Angel Island is a regular stop. 

It’s rare for the Chaos Emeralds to ever gather. In Sonic’s time, they only gather if either Sonic or Eggman force them to. And after Eggman is inevitably defeated, the Emeralds scatter, and it’s back to the familiar game of scavenging. 

Silver is very bad at this game. 

(He’s pretty sure the Emeralds hate him.)

So, only having to collect one and then travel to Angel Island to use the Master is a boon. He lands on the center plinth, asks Knuckles for permission, and waits to put his hand against the glassy green skin of the enormous gem until Knuckles gives the okay. The time portal opens. Hardly a word passes between them. 

It’s nice. 

Nice, until one day where Knuckles grabs his shoulder.

“Sorry, forgot to ask permission, thought we were past that?” Silver sputters.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine.” Silver flashes a smile. 

“Sonic didn’t say anything?”

“No, because I’m fine.” Silver lied. 

“Alright.” 

Knuckles lets him go. He can’t disappear through the time portal fast enough.

Okay, maybe Silver’s hideout would be a little appalling to anyone else. 

Wedged in between the concrete supports of an old supply closet in a high-rise building, it’s the most secure spot he’s found in (days, weeks, months? can’t remember, doesn’t matter). A few sooty blankets on the floor are enough. Not worth the time to scavenge more. 

The pile of cans in the corner threatens to overtake some of his footroom. Though he’s happy to curl up to sleep instead of stretching out. Better than stacking them, which leads to them falling over, which leads to noise, which leads to. . .

Best not think about that now. He lays down. The floor digs into his sore shoulder- he tweaked something in his fight against Eggman back in the past, but it’s no use in complaining about it now -and he shuts his eyes, stubbornly, until darkness overtakes him.

He dreams of a cool breeze blowing through his fur. He wakes up still tasting the hot dog Sonic gave him. He’s actually just chewing on his arm. 

He scowls and gets up. It’s no use thinking about that. He doesn’t deserve to.

“Hey man, you feeling alright?” Sonic asks.

“Better than ever! We sure showed that punk who’s boss!” Silver is pretty sure he’s using that slang right. 

“We sure did.” Sonic smiles a little less strongly than usual. “Still, you look tired. Why don’t you sleep over tonight?”

“No can do, I’m afraid. Need to get back to make sure nothing has gotten into my hideout.” 

“Woah, deja vu. You’ve definitely said that before.”

Another world-shattering plot foiled. Another cycle, come and gone. He’s got another pair of Emeralds again.

But now Silver’s head aches. 

Something like liquid fire. He can’t remember if it’s from some forgotten blow in the past or in the future or if the universe is personally trying to snuff him out like a match. He can barely crawl beneath his blankets- and a bit of soot falls into his eyes. 

He claws at his eyeballs but it’s no use. Something in his stomach gives a vague warning and he has just enough time to bend over before he retches.

The pair of Chaos Emeralds taunts him from across his hideout. If he doesn’t use them soon, they’ll wander off and find something better to do with their time. 

He spent enough time finding them as it is. 

It doesn’t matter that he can’t stand without the world spinning. 

He wakes up on the floor and looks up to find Tails hyperventilating over him. The poor fox and his smooth, perfect orange fur can barely sputter out a few words before Silver picks himself up off the ground. 

“Sorry!” the volume of his own voice irritates his head but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. “Where were we?” 

But Tails doesn’t hear him. He holds a phone in his trembling hands and dials a number. 

“No, no it’s fine.” Silver takes the tech from his hands and crushes it before it can send a signal off. 

“You fainted!” Tails cries. 

“That’s normal.” 

“That’s not normal!”

“No, seriously, it’s normal for me. I promise.” 

“That’s even worse!” 

A sonic boom rattles the workshop and milliseconds later Sonic bursts through the door. Silver makes for the window; he gives his best guess where Angel island is.

He doesn’t remember when he got here, but now he’s standing in front of the Master Emerald and Knuckles isn’t here yet. Silver looks down at his hand only to find that he doesn’t have the other Emerald required to even make the jump back to his own time. There’s something he still needs to do here and he ran from it, like a coward.

The memory of traveling back to the past in the first place is hazy. He coughs, and he sucks in more oxygen to nudge his brain in the right direction. Robot attack. . . some city. . . some new superweapon maybe-? 

“No.” 

Silver whirls around and wrenches the intruder off the ground, squeezing until-

Knuckles grabs the teal aura off his own fur and tears it apart. The feedback sends Silver to his knees. A few wary blinks in and he’s vomiting all over the ground again. 

He wakes up and above him are leaves. There’s. . . something in his mouth. It’s bitter. He jerks upright and spits it out. 

Knuckles catches his chest and doesn’t let up until Silver lowers himself again. Then, with a dexterity that doesn’t match his huge white mittens, Knuckles plucks the thing he spat out off the ground and tucks it into his mouth. 

“Keep it in. It’ll reduce the fever.” 

“Fever?” Silver mumbles. 

“You’re burning up.” Knuckles replies. 

“Where’s the ibuprofen?”

“Huh?”

“To get rid of the fever.”

“You don’t want it gone just yet.”

“Then let me out of here!” Silver sits up again. 

Knuckles puts his arm over him like a bar. “No. You’re cooking yourself alive right now. A controlled fever will help you fight the infection.” 

“It will?”

Knuckles furrows his brows. “That’s it. You’re staying here until you’re better.” 

“What? No! No, it’s fine!”

“Is someone waiting on you in the future?” Knuckles lets Silver go. “Are they in trouble?”

“No, it’s just-”

“Then you’re staying here.”  

Knuckles pushes him back down in bed. Silver gives up far too quickly. Everything aches. His eyelids droop from the strain. Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.

“Let me out.” Silver says when he wakes up again. He removes the bundle of herbs from his mouth and sticks it between whatever strange bits of bedding he’s laying on.

“No.” Knuckles says. He’s stirring a pot of something or another over some mild coals. 

Silver can’t smell it over the snot in his sinuses. “I can rest in the future. I’m wasting time here.” 

“How long do you spend between your journeys into the past?”

“Oh, you know. . . a few weeks?” Silver lies.

Knuckles looks at him and furrows his brows.

“It’s hard to tell time in the future. There’s no clocks.”

“The sun?”

“No sun. Just smoke.”

“All the more reason to stay here then.”

Silver sits up. “You don’t understand! If I’m here now, then I can’t travel back here without causing a paradox! I need to get back or else I could miss-”

“You can’t help if you’re dead.” Knuckles whirls around. He wields a spoon full of liquid- soup? -and shoves it towards Silver’s mouth. 

“You think I don’t know how to take care of myself?” Silver knocks the spoon away with his hand.

“You look like it.” 

“I’m not the weakling you all think I am!” 

Silver forces his body out of bed with his mind and swats Knuckles against a wall. His shoe kicks the pot, sending the soup spilling all over the coals. 

Silver bursts outside. He looks up to avoid the brightness of the flames- only for the startling reminder of the sun to pierce his focus. Pain like knives against his temples. He falls to the ground. Where is the Master Emerald? Up on the hill. There’s a dirt path surrounded by green. Looks crawlable. He stubbornly puts the idea that Sonic is currently fighting whatever world-ending menace that he originally came back here for out of his mind and focuses on making it up to the incline. 

His pulse throbs and jostles the invisible knives in his temples. He sucks in the cool breeze- until his lungs sputter. Somehow they’ve managed to catch even this clean air wrong, and they begin to tighten. He coughs.

He collapses against the hillside and lets himself wheeze. 

“Nice try.” 

Even if his throbbing head could allow him to come up with an insult back, his wheezes would’ve stolen it from his mouth anyway. 

“I’m going to pick you up now. Don’t thrash.”

Silver spits at him. He hopes that gesture for try me, idiot, is as ancient as it feels. 

It’s no use; he feels Knuckles’ firm hands grip his sides. He thrashes, weakly, but by now the world is spinning again. The last thing he wants is to faint, so he stills. 

Knuckles takes him back inside under the leafy roof. Lays him out across the bed again. Then he starts cleaning up the spilled pot. 

After a few minutes, Silver’s lungs decide to cooperate again. Knuckles is still fussing with the floor. The spilled soup, probably. 

“Mop it up with a sponge or some old foam. Then squeeze it back into the container.” Silver says. 

Knuckles turns around and gives him a puzzled glare.

“It’s not all dried up, is it? Any chunks left?”

“Look around.” Knuckles says. “Do you think I have a shortage of food?” 

Silver eyes the leafy boughs above him. “It’s called ‘not being wasteful’.” 

“I can make another batch.”

“No. I wasted it, so I’ll eat it.” 

“No, you won’t.” Knuckles replies. 

“I will. You think I won’t?” 

“And that’s why I’m not letting you go yet.” Knuckles turns back around and continues cleaning up the perfectly good food off the dusty stone floor. “Not because you’re a weakling.”

Silver can only watch blankly in response. 

“I have plenty here.” Knuckles continues. “So I’m ‘sharing’. Heard of it?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Then stay put. Let me get more from my root cellar.” 

“Fine.”

Knuckles doesn’t make for the door. He only sits there and stares at him. 

“I said okay!” Silver replies. 

Knuckles sighs, then walks across the room to a large clay vessel. He takes a ladle, then grabs some spongy moss off the wall. He rinses the moss, then thoroughly soaks it. 

“Close your eyes.”

“What?” 

“You still have that headache?” 

“Sort of.” 

“Then close your eyes.”

He obeys, and he feels Knuckles tuck a blanket on top of him. It feels. . . nice. He still feels freezing, no doubt from the fever. Before he can open his eyes again, a wonderful cool weight settles across his eyelids and droops down his temples. He sighs in relief before he can stop himself. 

“Keep it on. I’ll be back.” 

The door creaks open. The tiniest bit of sunlight peeks through his eyelids, but the moss blocks out most of it. 

He falls into the darkness of sleep before he can even realize it.

Silver opens his eyes. His body aches. The door is open. Moonlight, instead of sunlight, spills in. The air is cold, too cold. He tucks himself further under the blanket and shivers. 

“Hungry?” 

Silver blinks. Knuckles is sitting on a mat against the wall. He holds something in his hands- but looking too far to the side of his vision sends pain shooting behind his eye sockets, so Silver doesn’t study it too much. 

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those who sleeps with his eyes open. . .” Knuckles shakes his head to himself. 

“Finished with the new batch?” Silver replies. 

Knuckles looks back over to him. “Yes, and then you didn’t wake up for it. I was told you didn’t like to be wasteful, so I’ve been keeping it stewing. Now it’s dinner.” 

Knuckles puts whatever he was holding aside and stands. He approaches the pot. Silver can hear the thickened stew slosh into a smaller bowl. 

He comes back by the bedside holding said bowl with a wooden spoonful of stew. 

“If you hadn’t knocked everything over last time, I’d let you do it yourself.”

“Fine.” Silver says. 

He tells his body to sit up, and eventually his sore muscles cooperate. Knuckles lowers the spoon to his lips. He opens his mouth and slurps up the stew. 

“Mmm.” He sighs before he can help himself. It’s rich and salty and savory- it’s almost too much to process. 

“You don’t have to complain.”

“No! No, please, more.” Silver snaps. 

Knuckles looks confused for a second, before smiling. “Heh. Sonic and Tails usually bring their own lunches. They don’t like what I make.” 

“They only eat chilied dogs. They don’t know any better.” 

“Exactly! That’s what I’ve been saying.” Knuckles nods. 

Silver eyes the bowl.

“Right.” 

Knuckles gives him another bite. Silver doesn’t even feel hungry right now- the opposite, actually -but the flavor and the feeling of something warm in his mouth is soothing, almost. It kicks a memory around in his head, but he can’t catch it fast enough to remember what it might be from. 

No matter. He eats as many more bites as his stomach will let him, then settles back down against the bed. 

“It’s good that you still have your appetite.” Knuckles says.

“No, it’s more like going without food is a death sentence.” Silver replies.

“Exactly.” Knuckles nods. “And water.”

Silver sits up again. Knuckles goes to his vessel of water and retrieving a ladle. 

“Freshly boiled and filtered?” Silver asks.

“Boiled. No need for filtering. Comes from the spring just outside.”

“Spring? Like, from leaves?”

“Water from the ground. The rocks filter it for you.”

That sounds fake, but Silver expects not to understand the logic of water-gathering on an island that floats in the sky. Knuckles holds the ladle forward and Silver gulps it down.

“Need more?”

“No thanks.” 

Knuckles puts the ladle away. 

“Close your eyes and get some more rest.” Knuckles says. “It’s late anyway.”

“I already got mine. I can keep watch.” 

“The Master Emerald will wake me if there are any intruders.”

“Sure it will.” Silver scoffs. The Emeralds never offer him such luxuries. “But what about animals? Collapses? Fires?” 

“We’re safe here.” Knuckles gestures to the door. “I normally sleep outside when it’s not raining.”

“Are you insane?” Silver sputters, before another coughing fit overtakes him.

Knuckles waits until he stops. “Do you think I’m stupid?” 

“. . . no.” 

“Exactly. So trust me. Get some sleep.” 

Silver wakes to flashes of light piercing the dark night. He knows the sounds. They’re not thunder. He chokes on non-existent smoke. He throws off the blankets and stumbles out of bed and he’s halfway to the door and maybe once he’s outside he can find some debris to throw if only this stupid throbbing headache would go away and-

Knuckles catches him with one hand as he falls against the door. 

“I told you to get some sleep,” he says.

Silver smells blood. 

He throws himself out of Knuckles’ arms and crawls back onto the bed. He checks himself for nicks or wounds, before the realization dawns that he’s not the only thing that can bleed around here in the past. 

“You’re bleeding!” Silver hisses. 

“‘s fine.” Knuckles mumbles. “Go back to bed.”

“What happened?” 

“The usual.”

Silver can hear every beat of his own pulse in his ears in the pause that follows. Knuckles doesn’t notice. He turns his back and begins pawing through various baskets, but only with one hand. He holds his other arm high above his chest. 

Silver stands. He wobbles over- patheticpatheticpathetic -and grabs his shoulders.

“What?” Knuckles snaps.

“Sit down. Put pressure on it.” 

A pause. Then a sigh. “I know.”

Knuckles turns around and sits on the ground. He holds out his palm, and in it is a spongy moss and a thin ribbon of textile. Silver takes both and runs his fingers along his arm until he finds the wound. A quick puff of his power helps illuminate the area and he wraps the bandaging, weaving the strand around itself into a secure hold. 

“You’re good with your hands.” Knuckles remarks.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Silver replies. “Think I just sit around all day?” 

Knuckles snaps forward. “I don’t just sit around all day!”

Silver crawls backwards until his back hits the bedframe. A knot in the wood digs into his spines. Knuckles’ eyes shine purple in the dark. 

Silver swallows the stupid lump in his throat. “What happened out there?”

“Attack on the Master Emerald.” Knuckles says. “Like I said. The usual.” 

 “How often-?”

“If you think it’s so easy, then go ahead, try it!” 

“That’s not what I-” 

Knuckles sighs. “Get back in bed. We can argue in the morning.” 

Silver grabs the edge of the bed and strains, his muscles shaking as he lifts himself. Knuckles only watches. He can feel his eyes burrowing into his back. 

They don’t argue in the morning. Silver stays quiet. He watches Knuckles make a mixture of greens, grind it, then feed it to him. He stands over him for a second, as if waiting, before wandering off to the side of the hut.

He gathers materials. Both are fibrous, and one pliable, like certain kinds of plastic. He begins working it with his hands, bending the not-plastic around the stronger frame to make loops and knots. 

“. . . sorry.” Silver says. 

Knuckles looks up. 

“You should let me go back.” He elaborates. “So you don’t have to watch me.” 

He looks back down and continues his work. “No difference being out there vs being in here.”

“Huh?”

“That’s why I built this so close. Keeps the rain off, but I’m close by just in case.” 

“It gets attacked often.” Silver concludes.

“It depends.” Knuckles tightens another strand around the frame. “Sometimes months go by. Sometimes it’s every other week.”

“Every day?”

“Not usually. Not unless it’s an all-out invasion. Sonic and Tails help me forecast that kind of stuff though.” 

“That’s. . . nice.”

“Yeah. It is.”

A moment of silence. Silver waits for Knuckles to speak again. He doesn’t. He watches the echidna’s hands work the fibers. A structure begins to take shape. 

“What are you making?”

“Wait and see.”

“A mat?”

“I told you, wait and see.”

“A plate?”

Knuckles frowns at him. 

“A shield?” 

“Sure.”

“Why won’t you tell me?” 

“Why are you so impatient?” 

“I’m not impatient, I’m out of time!” Silver sits up in the bed. “If I don’t get back, and something happens, it’s all over!”

“Can’t you just time travel back to get more time?”

“It’s not that simple! None of this is that simple! I have to-” A jolt from his headache saps the words and strength from him. He groans, leans back into bed, and closes his eyes. Pathetic. Pathetic. “Pathetic-”

“You’re not pathetic.”

Silver feels the whistle of the word leave his mouth and swallows it. 

Knuckles sets down his work and stands. He towers over the side of the bed. “I don’t get you.”

“What?”

“If you really did need to go back I’d let you. You said so yourself that nothing’s waiting on you. So why are you so upset?” 

“Maybe neither of us sit around all day.” 

“You’re not sitting around. You’re resting.” 

“I can rest in the future!”

“Can you?” 

Knuckles’ eyes burrow into his own. Maybe even reaching his brain to scan it directly. Silver tries to look elsewhere, to the wall, to the ceiling, but it’s no use. 

Knuckles trods off. The door to the hut opens, then shuts. He returns some minutes later with another handful of fibers. 

“Can you sit up against the wall?” He asks.

Silver puts his hands against the bed and begs his muscles to cooperate, but they don’t.

“Better question- are you willing to wait until you can?”

“No.” Silver smirks.

Knuckles sets down the fibers, then pulls Silver into a sitting position with his feet hanging off the bed. He stuffs some of the bedding behind his back so he doesn’t have to lean against the bare wood wall, then lets him settle. 

“Hold out your hands.”

Silver obeys. 

He places one strand of fiber in each palm. 

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Knuckles looks him in the eye again. “I’ll let you leave early if you help me.”

“You want me to make whatever it is that you’re making.” 

“You’re a quick learner. Once you’ve finished a basket, you can go. Deal?”

“Done.” 

Silver grasps one fiber and starts trying to bend it. It’s stiff, really stiff, and the aches in his body begin to complain long before he’s made any progress.

Knuckles takes the fiber from his hand, “That’s the wrong one.” 

“What do you mean ‘that’s the wrong one’? You’re bending the fibers, how hard can it be?” 

“Well these are the spokes. That’s your first problem.” Knuckles grabs the other fiber- the other piece of wood as well. He arranges them in a cross shape. “You use these for the frame.”

Knuckles holds the wood in specific angles. Silver wraps the more pliable plant fiber around them to attach them to each other. He doesn’t know the correct knots. The fibers keep slipping out from between his fingers. He pulls too hard, one fiber tears; Knuckles supplies a new one without a word. 

The angles feel chosen specifically to make Silver’s arms tremble like a torn old flag in a thunderstorm. Knot by knot, until the combined piece takes on a radial structure similar to an old hubcap. 

Knuckles makes him rest after, and in that time he prepares yet another meal. He gathers ingredients from various baskets, grinds and cuts and processes them down, then spends so long sitting by the side of the fire, stirring and stirring and stirring against the clay pot and adding things and taking out others.

It takes such a long time. He’s completely absorbed in it, completely stationary. 

It feels wrong. 

“Now you have to thread the strands back and forth, like this.” 

Knuckles bent one of the thinner pieces of wood through each of the spokes. The circle he creates is evenly spaced and precise.

Silver grabs the next piece and imitates his motion. The wood keeps slipping out from between his fingers and snapping against his gloves. If even the thought of precisely wiggling the tiny wooden string up and down didn’t threaten to make his headache worse, he would have tried using his power instead. His fingers are thick and filled with concrete in comparison. 

The circle Silver creates is crooked, with a massive gap between it and the one Knuckles wove. The echidna shakes his head, then with precise movements he unravels the whole thing. 

“Try again.” 

Silver snaps the piece from him and begins the process again. Again. Again. 

His eyes reject all attempts to move them, so he tries to weave a line or two by feel until Knuckles takes the frame out of his hands and pushes him down into the bed to rest. Then he wakes again and it’s past Knuckles’ evening meal. Knuckles feeds him the leftovers, then decides it’s his turn to sleep. Silver can’t generate enough light on his own to work with how his head is hurting, so he sleeps also. 

The night is quiet. He can hear insects crawling on soft leaves and soil instead of skittering across concrete. 

He feels better by the time the sunbeams stream through the small gaps in the frond roof. Marginally better. He leans out of bed and grabs the frame of the basket from its spot on the floor. 

“Keep working on the base. I’m going out.” Knuckles says before ducking out the door. 

Silver almost yells at him to wait. What if he messes up another weave and Knuckles isn’t around to correct it? But then he thinks harder. He stands from the bed, slowly, as to not let the blood rush down all at once and cause him to topple. 

He searches the nooks and crannies and other baskets and rudimentary drawers that line the walls. He finds Knuckles’ abandoned weaving project. The base is tight and beautiful and the sides are about halfway done. Silver toys with the loose end, then gives it a pull. The current weave slides out. Maybe even enough to be convincing.

But there would be no place to dispose of the old base; Knuckles probably knew this whole world better than he did, let alone this island. And Knuckles probably wouldn’t buy that he’d figured out how to build up the sides on his own. 

So Silver kicks Knuckles’ basket back down to the floor and stumbles back over into bed. He nearly lands on his own project. He takes a moment to thank the universe for the small snatch of pity and takes the base into his hand again. He grabs another strand and weaves it through. 

By the time Knuckles returns, Silver has completed the base. 

“Look.” He holds it up to him. 

But instead of coming around, Knuckles pauses. Steps out of the way of the door and lets the daylight shine in on it. 

“There’s a hole here,” Knuckles traces a point where the weave refused to behave with his thumb, “and this part is too loose. It won’t hold.” 

“Sure it will!” Silver snatches the base back against his chest. 

“No, it won’t.” 

“I won’t let you destroy it! This is all part of your plan, isn’t it?”

“Relax,” Knuckles inches closer. “I’m not going to destroy it.”

“Prove it.” 

“There’s a way we can try to tighten it. Gimme?”

Seconds pass. Eventually Silver relents. He holds the base out to him, but keeps a tight grip on the opposite spokes.

Knuckles slides off his mitts and grabs two small nibs of the weave. Silver can feel the pressure against his own fingers as he begins to slide them around, adjusting them with sharp but minute gestures, and like something paranormal the hole disappears. Knuckles repeats a similar process with the other area he claimed was imperfect before stepping back.

It’s a precision Silver doesn’t have a description for. He’s never seen anything like it. The idea that someone could hold such exactness somewhere in the memory of their fingers feels impossible to him. Maybe he still has a fever. Maybe telling what is and isn’t supposed to be possible was never his strong suit. 

“Next, we stake up the sides.”

Knuckles hands him a new bundle of material that’s similar in thickness to the spokes. Silver studies them, then remembers Knuckles’ abandoned project. It’s difficult to tell in his mind’s eye how the stakes attach to the base, but he eventually tries slotting one of them between the undulations of the base’s weave. 

“Good guess.” Knuckles puts his palm against Silver’s hand before he can insert it further. “You’re going to want to do it closer to the spoke to make it stronger. One on each side.” 

Silver attacks the weaves around one of the spoke, but the stake material is too thick to penetrate much into the tighter weave. He takes the stake material and chews off some of the end before inserting it. 

“How’d you figure to do that?” Knuckles asks. 

Silver spits out the woody remnants and gives the best expression that Sonic once called a ‘cocky glare’ that he can muster. 

“You can do it with a knife too.” Knuckles adds. 

The tough chewing is hurting his head, but when does his head not hurt? And the astonished look on Knuckles’ face is worth it. Silver continues with his impromptu modification of the rest of the stakes before shoving them in around the spokes. 

He’s learning to hide the shaking of his arms as more excited gestures, and the gasping from his lungs as thoughtful hums. Knuckles doesn’t make him slow down. Finally! 

When all the stakes are inserted into the base, the next step feels obvious. Silver bends each stake up to form the frame for the walls. All Knuckles does is tightly lash the top spindly bits together so it doesn’t slide around as much.

The transition from the flat weave of the base to the vertical wall is painful and awkward, but far less so than having Knuckles hover over his progress, so after the echidna demonstrates the first part, Silver keeps quiet and makes up the rest as he goes along.

His stupid head is pounding, his fingers keep finding new ways to hurt that he’s never felt before, but none of that matters. There is progress. He is finally getting somewhere in this stupid little leaf hut. Sure enough, the solution to this was exactly the same as every other. There’s no room for pathetic excuses like illness or distraction. 

Maybe Silver could start to see the appeal of this. Keeping one’s self productive even when one is physically incapable of moving. 

Knuckles dumps a fresh supply of the thinner weaving materials and then wanders off somewhere unimportant. Silver keeps weaving. Blisters on his fingers pop beneath his gloves.

Knuckles returns from somewhere unimportant. 

Silver keeps weaving. 

Knuckles pulls the half-woven basket from his hands and replaces it with another bowl of stew. Silver’s vision is too blurry to make out exactly what’s in it, but the presence of bean-like shapes suggests that Knuckles is only serving him his finest, most high-energy food sources. 

“You don’t need to go all out just because I’m your ‘guest’.” Silver lays the sarcasm thick on the term Tails introduced him to. 

“I can’t believe I got saddled with the one person on this planet more terrible at taking care of himself when he’s sick than Sonic is.” 

Silver scowls and shovels the stew into his mouth faster. 

When Knuckles finally falls asleep, Silver forces his power to the front of his mind, and gently, gently picks up his work-in-progress and brings it to his bedside. With the light of his power coursing through his gloves, Silver keeps weaving. 

“You’re making great time.” 

“Thanks,” Silver replies. “How tall do you want it again?” 

Knuckles hums. Silver realizes the critical mistake he’s just made. 

With a wavering hand, Knuckles grabs one of the spokes far, far further up than he should. “Here thereabouts.” 

Fifteen more rows up, by any estimate.

Silver keeps weaving. 

Silver keeps weaving.

Silver keeps weaving.

Silver. Keeps. Weaving. 

Snap.

The sound is deafening against the walls of the tiny hut. 

Time stops. Silver stares as the structure of the basket wall begins to sag inwards. The snapped stake rattles loosely in the weave. The other stakes start to bend to compensate. 

No no no no no!

Silver forces the fog in his mind to clear and his focus snaps into the interior of the basket. Cyan glow supports the walls. The top part of the broken stake is easy enough to slip out of the weave, but the part that is connected to the base is still wedged tight. Silver clamps his teeth around it and tears until his jaw muscles are trembling and his head is pounding. 

Focus! The wall of the weave is slipping and he’s running out of time, he needs to get a new stake ready and slip it into the space where the old one was before the weave collapses, the wood of the other stakes is starting to crackle and soon they’ll break and he needs to focus!

He snatches the remaining part of the broken stake with his power and rips it free. The basket trembles. He scans across the room with invisible hands and finds a spare stick suitable for staking. He brings it back and bends it so it’ll fit in the base- no, he needs to thread it through the wall first, pathetic, so he straightens it again with his hands and shoves it down the hole in the weave.

Except it catches. It won’t go in. He readjusts his hands. He pushes it, he shoves it again, he pinches his palm, but his clumsy fingers won’t listen and the hole in the weave is shrinking too much. 

He thinks to widen the gap. His power responds.

The basket shatters. 

Splinters spread across the floor. Brown scraps cling to his fur. The warm coals beneath the empty cooking pot spring back into flames from the unexpected intake of fuel. 

Silver drops everything, flings the pot away, and smothers the flames until his power sputters out as his eyelids flutter. He coughs and he coughs and he coughs.

He rests his eyes against the darkness of his palms and he screams. 

Silver wails, like the pathetic quivering thing he is. Then his throat clenches, and his lungs forget how to breathe. Tightening muscles bind his sobs inside his chest. He falls against the bed. 

Knuckles slides through the door to a stop, fists held close to his chest. Silver can’t speak. Can’t move. Can’t even cough. Can’t stop some tears from falling out no matter how hard he blinks them away. 

“Breathe.” Weaving materials crack beneath Knuckles as he kneels beside the bed. “Just breathe.” 

Just breathe, simple, Silver thinks. And he can’t even do that.

“Will you be able to keep breathing?” Knuckles takes Silver’s hand into his own. 

Silver squeezes his hand.

“Was that a ‘no’ or a ‘yes’?” Knuckles asks. “One squeeze no? Two squeezes yes?” 

Silver fails to blink more tears away. He watches Knuckles’ eyes rove down to his chest, barely lifting with each breath. Then down to the floor, where he’s kneeling on the remains of the basket. Then to the fireplace, where the pot is toppled and the embers are gone. 

Wonderful. He’s put everything together. 

“Breathe.” Knuckles mutters and pats his hand. 

He tries to imitate a breath but ends up coughing instead.

Knuckles lets go for a moment and picks up the base of the basket. All of the stakes for the walls are broken off inside of it still, and now the whole thing rattles like. . . some sort of ancient instrument Silver can’t find a name for right now. His chest clenches and a sob escapes before he can snatch it back within himself.

“Hey!” Knuckles tosses the base away and grabs his hand again. “Keep breathing. In and out.” 

Knuckles plants his large hand against his back and starts rubbing circles while taking care to avoid his quills. The touch knocks a dusty memory into motion in Silver’s mind. The lights are dim and someone is singing. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and scrunches his cheeks to pool the tears in his eyes instead of falling down his face. 

“It’s alright. Let it all out.” The voice murmurs above him.

He lets go. The fur on his cheeks grows damp from the torrent.

He isn’t sure how much time passes before chest uncoils from its tightly-woven knot. The soreness lingers in every little readjustment he makes against the bed. 

So, like the tears, he allows himself to slip away, into sleep.

He wakes. Knuckles feeds him warm food. He sleeps again. 

He dreams. He can never make out the words.

The sun rises and sets and the bugs skitter beneath and the universe carries on existing as if he never did. 

“Hey.” Knuckles prods him with his thumb as he’s feeding him. “Want to. . . try getting up today?” 

Silver stares up at the ceiling. He hopes that if he stays silent enough, Knuckles will let him fade on into the background again.

“Come on. It’s time.”

Knuckles eventually realizes it’s no use, and leaves.

For the first time in his life, Silver wonders if his absence would be anything more than a blip in the timeline of it all. 

It’s the middle of the night. Silver dreams of explosions shaking him. He wakes to Knuckles slamming the door open and stomping right past him to the baskets against the far wall. The moonlight pours in from the open door. 

Silver realizes that part of Knuckles’ back is stained a deeper crimson than usual.

Knuckles huffs something ancient under his breath and stretches to reach the injury. He fumbles a bit of moss against it, and with his other hand he tries to stretch out some bandages. Real bandages, not just homemade cloth. The moss slips out before he can wrap them, though.

Silver catches it with an idle thought and presses it against his back again. 

Knuckles turns around. Blinks. 

“Sorry.” Silver whispers. 

He stares at the ceiling again and tries his hardest not to exist again.

“. . . the help was nice.” 

Silver looks back over and Knuckles is holding a fresh handful of moss. 

With a flick of his eyes he picks it up, and Knuckles turns around. He presses it against the wound. Knuckles bandages it tight. 

“Thanks,” he says. 

“Welcome.” Silver mumbles.

Knuckles lays flat on his stomach. Before he shuts his eyes, though, he glances over. “Good to have you back.” 

The sun rises, and a shining ray lands on Silver’s eyelids. 

The universe is back to its old tricks on him. He can’t help but laugh. He sits up, shoulders shaking, core muscles burning.  He coughs, more out of muscle memory than anything. 

Knuckles shoots awake and settles his eyes on Silver. His back twitches, but his facial expression doesn’t show it. Seconds pass before he relaxes again, shoulders slumping forward, exhaling. 

“Breakfast?” He mutters. 

“Sure.” Silver croaks. He coughs again this time from his parched throat. 

Knuckles shambles over to some smaller pots and starts digging through them. Silver can see the water pot just across the hut, with the ladle, along with a single clay cup. With a gesture of his finger, he lifts the ladle, fills the cup, and brings it into his hands. 

Knuckles turns around again with some dried meat and dried something elses, little orbs of red and blue and purple. Silver takes the meat and exchanges the water. It takes Knuckles a moment to realize he’s now holding the cup.

“Thanks.” 

He’s not the one who should be thanking anyone, let alone an ungrateful guest, but Silver doesn’t correct him. He gets to work gnawing on the dried meat instead. 

“These too.” Knuckles hands him the strange dried orbs. 

After swallowing the meat, Silver shrugs and puts one of the orbs in his mouth. It’s sweet, almost like candy, but not overpoweringly so. It’s fibery and complex and it’s when he bites down upon a tiny seed that he realizes this must be a berry of some kind. Dried, just like the meat. Amazing. 

“Sorry,” Knuckles mumbles, his mouth full, “I’ll make something real for lunch.” 

Silver laughs. And he laughs. He presses his palms against his face and feels the wrinkly skin of the dehydrated berries against his muzzle. The smell is jammy as he breathes it in. He exhales and uncovers his mouth. 

“Don’t you dare apologize.” He says, some of the vowels creaking against his dry throat. “These are delicious.”  

Moving again takes days. This is the weakest Silver has ever been. Ever let himself be, he corrects himself. He’s carried himself with his mind where his body has failed countless times. He’s no stranger to every muscle in his body aching with a fury not unlike the flames. When he was too weak to walk, he found other options. 

But not now. Not with the privilege of ample food and water and peace. This little hut has felt like a pocket bubble floating somewhere outside of time and space, and even with the leafy roof filtering in sunlight from above, it’s starting to feel like he's hiding. It’s easy for him to conjure what might be out there in his mind’s eye. Those visions are betrayed by the soft chirps of birds and rustling of grass. 

First is standing, a process in and of itself, then walking, and by that point his lungs are already whistling a warning. 

Knuckles presses his arm against his chest, barring him exit. 

Silver’s mind goes to the usual- swat him away, pick himself up, fling himself through the sky to the Master Emerald. Easy. Simple. The headache is gone, after all these days of sitting around and feeling sorry for himself. 

But it’s exactly this that stops those thoughts. Silver steps back, dips his head a little, then sits back down on the bed. Knuckles rumbles with approval. Silver holds out his hands, ready. 

Knuckles stares at him, brow furrowing at different angles. Confused? Why is he confused? Did he not remember the agreement? 

“I’m not going to let that stupid basket defeat me this time.” Silver flexes his fingers. “Give it to me. I’m ready.” 

“Hold on.” Knuckles says. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What? It was your idea!” Silver flares his quills. 

“It was-” Knuckles cringes. “Forget it. You don’t have to finish anything. If you think you can get back up to strength on your own, go ahead.”

“No!” Silver pulls himself upright into the air. “You thought it was important enough to keep me from going home over it, so I’m going to finish what I started!”

“I taught you because I thought-” Knuckles hisses, glancing at the ground, “-I was giving you some kind of lesson!”

“A lesson?”

“To slow down!” Knuckles grabs at his quills. “For once!” 

Because you’re used to having all the time in the world? Silver thinks, but knows better now than to believe is entirely correct. Still, the fury pulsing in his temples doesn’t leave. He can feel the many fragile crafted things in the hut tremble against his power. 

Knuckles steps out of the way of the door and Silver leaves. He remembers to look down at the earth instead of up at the sky; the sun warms his head as if placing a warm palm instead of stabbing at his eyes. 

The hut that’s defined. . . however long of a time that it’s been, is camouflaged beneath a gnarled gap in tree roots just to the left of the path leading up to the Master Emerald’s plinth. The tree is the gateway to a dense forest full of plants he couldn’t name if he tried, other than ‘tree’ or ‘smaller plant’ or ‘flower’. And ‘berry’, he thinks, though he remembers Tails mentioning that some were poisonous, so he shouldn’t try his luck. But regardless of his thoughts about them, all the plants sway in the breeze, and the light filters through all the individual leaves like if some great hand was catching the sun’s rays through a sieve. 

It’s beautiful. It’s all so beautiful that it aches, somewhere deep in his core, beneath his shoddy lungs and pounding heart. 

He lowers himself to his own two feet, depressing the long stalks of grass beneath. He lets other strands brush against his arms and the wind ruffle through his fur. It’s only a matter of time before his legs start to wobble, of course, but he holds out until they fail before catching himself with his mind, cocooning himself away from it all again.

Every second he spends back here wastes another second chance for this place to exist at all. He misses the cool breeze already. He knows how much everyone else will miss it too. 

He brings himself back over to the hut and knocks on the door. Knuckles opens it.

“I have to go now,” Silver says. He can see the way Knuckles’ expression drops, but he continues anyway. “I will repay you someday.”

“No. Just one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“Stop if it hurts.” 

Silver sighs, and deflects with a “stop what?” 

“I mean it.” Knuckles’ gaze turns steely. 

An eternity. Silver wishes he could feel the wind blow by again to break it up. But eventually, he knows his reply. “Okay.”

Knuckles dips back inside the door for a second and reemerges with the cyan Chaos Emerald in his hand. He hands it to him, gestures with his head towards the Master Emerald, then closes the door again.

Silver flies himself to the plinth. He places his free hand against the Master Emerald and asks both crystals to open the time portal to where he left off in the future. Both oblige. The portal opens. He flies through.

The portal dumps him out directly into his hideout, and before he realizes this he flies knee-first into the closet wall.

He holds his knee and blurts out all the curses that Rouge taught him sometime or another, and the harsh consonants do make him feel a bit better. He sets himself down onto the sooty blankets, only for something to squish beneath his feet. 

Oh. Great. He’d vomited sometime onto the sheets while he’d been sick, hadn’t he? And now it’s been sitting for what could be weeks. It’s impossible to know how long it’s been. He takes a clean (well, clean-er) part of the blankets to wipe off his foot before bundling them all up and tossing them out the nearest window. He watches them flutter downwards, until the flames catch them and start tearing them apart. 

He returns to his hideout only to find that it can’t really be called a hideout anymore. The only thing left is his food and water supply, cans and bottles piled all around. The exposed gray floor matches the exposed gray walls.

Doesn’t matter. He’s slept on worse. He should start searching. He should. . . 

He lowers himself until he’s kneeling on the floor. When he lets go with his power, the concrete bites into his now-bruised knee. He brushes the surface with his hand. 

He huffs. He closes his eyes and pulls himself back into the air. 

Fifteen floors down and the building is sweltering, the smoke leaking through cracks in the floor, but he finds a pair of antique couches staring at each other in a hallway. He picks them up and takes them to the elevator shaft, and it takes a fair bit of maneuvering to get them inside but once he does, he takes them to the floor of his hideout.

He spends too long stripping off their burnt skins with an old sharp can lid before he extracts their treasure- foam padding. A little sooty but unmelted. He stacks it all in a bed-shaped form and lets himself sink into it. Not as comfortable as Knuckles’ bed, or any bed in the past, he’s sure, but his back and his knees don’t protest. 

To think that such a treasure was only a few floors beneath him. He never knew. 

He begins the search for a pair of Emeralds again. Swooping along the skyline, diving through windows, fighting off the flames. He searches, projecting his senses as far out as they will go, pressing his mind against every shape above and below, hoping to feel the Chaos energy buzzing against his temples. 

No luck yet.

It’s become the highlight of his day to fly home and collapse into that sweet, plushy foam. Although his eyes can tell that it’s beginning to mold into his shape, it still feels as new as the day he got it. 

Today is the same. He sneaks back into the building his hideout is in, takes the elevator shaft back up and arrives at his floor. He actually lands for once, allowing his feet to take him past the stripped skeletons of the couches on the way to his closet. He opens the door and steps through; his shin catches something and he falls face-first into the foam. 

He hears the chink-chink-chink of a can against the concrete before another falls down with a bang. He does not flinch. Does not move. Does his best to imitate his lungs on a bad day- that is, barely breathing. And he waits, listening in the silence for hours.

Nothing comes. Lucky. Very lucky. 

Eventually he plucks the fallen cans from the corner they’ve rolled into with a wave and sets them back into their spots. He shakes his head. Suffering from his own success, apparently, and the thought makes him snicker. 

Where else could he move his food supply? Outside the door? Hardly. He wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them. Hidden somewhere else, maybe that smaller closet he found across this floor before he’d found this one? But then he’d have to travel to get food and water in the evenings, and he knew himself too well for that. He’d start bringing multiple cans back with him every time and soon he’d have this pile again. 

It would be better if there was just an easier way to store them. 

A few days later, his searching is cut short when he finds an entire package of water bottles squirreled away under the twisted remains of a desk. Silver grabs the treasure and carries it close while he beelines back to his hideout. 

There’s no room inside the closet, not with all the cans scattered about. He wishes he could stack them against the wall. . . 

He remembers the skeletons of the couches outside. 

He scoots some of his foam aside, sets the water bottles down, then rushes back outside. He traces his fingers along the material of the skeletons. The legs are a particle board that would crumble if he tried to shape them. The frame of the seat is hollow metal. But the surface stretched between the metal that once held the foam is made of coarse cloth and bendable plastic. 

It takes him well into the night, and he has to open another can to get a sharper lid, but he’s able to cut the plastic into strips. 

The next day, Silver ties the base spokes together before he heads out to search for the day.

The day after that, he begins weaving the cloth into the circle. The less-rigid fabric is easier on his hands but more difficult to space. Another day, and holes start to appear in his pattern. But none of them are wide enough for a can to fall through. He can work with that. 

Another day, and he finds himself eager to go to sleep, itching for tomorrow to come sooner so he can wake up and resume his work. 

Silver weaves.

Silver is weaving and his head hurts. His eyes feel just as sharpened as his stakes do, into fine points drilling into the weave. His head hurts. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t- 

It hurts.

He. . . promised to stop when it hurts. 

He’d be lying if he said he felt Knuckles’ presence in the hideout with him. He can’t imagine the red echidna without the accompanying green of plants or the Master Emerald. Knuckles isn’t here; Silver is so close to finishing this row; he’ll just finish this row real quick. 

No. His head hurts. The last thing he wants is to lose focus. The mere thought of the plastic shattering under his fingertips makes his stomach drop. 

But he’s so close. He can finish the row. Then it’s only a few more rows and it’ll be ready, completed, for once in his worthless life he’ll have actually succeeded, his hands tremble, his sore fingers forced pliable again by his willpower, and he picks up the basket and his head throbs and-

No. 

It hurts.

He is stopping. 

Silver sets the basket down and leans back into his bedding. 

After a few minutes, the world seems to lighten. His back stops aching. His fingers stop burning. His headache dies down, as if the universe itself is grateful to him.

That’s not a feeling he’s used to. 

Progress is slow. Slower than he’d like. Many more days pass by. The searching’s been fruitless, but he can track the time by each row he completes. 

Then one day, the last row bends into place and Silver ties it off. 

He holds the basket in his hands. Then he sets it down. He grabs each individual can, feeling the heft in his hands, before stacking them into the basket. When the basket is full, he lifts it. The fabric creaks, but the weave holds. 

It’s only big enough for half of his food stores. Still, the walkway to his bed is clear. 

He hugs it against his chest.

In the morning, he stretches his hands and rubs his temples. Both feel good, so he goes out to the skeletons of the couches and begins stripping parts for the next project.

He finds the first Emerald after he finishes weaving the new base, and the second only three rows into the walls. He bids the work-in-progress arrivederci as he opens the time portal. 

He steps out into Tails’ workshop. 

“Hi!” Silver says. When Tails frowns, he shrugs and adds, “surprise! Thought I’d lend a hand. Next week is a real nasty fight.” 

Tails’ expression lightens. “Good! Glad it’s nothing particularly grim.” 

Silver fakes a laugh.

“Lookin’ good, Silver! Nice to see you again.” 

Silver turns around to see Sonic leaning against the wall by the stairs. 

“Thanks.” Silver smiles back. 

The fight goes well. Not being memorable is in this case a good thing. Soon Silver is scavenging around for an Emerald in Sonic’s time, and manages to snag the purple one from the bottom of a river not that far from the city where Amy lives.

Then it’s back up to Angel island. It’s not in its usual spot, so he tracks it down towards the middle latitudes of the world. He’s tired by the time he sees it hanging in the horizon. He lands in the grassy field short of the path to the Master Emerald.

Against the setting sun, he sees Knuckles’ shadow sitting atop one of the ancient pillars surrounding the enormous Emerald. Silver gives him a wave, before flying up to meet him.  

“How’s it going?” Silver asks. 

He sees Knuckles scan him- not head-to-toe, but focusing on his face and midsection. The usual problem points. Silver fiddles with his hands; he doesn’t know whether to thank him or snap at him to stop. 

“Good to see you.” Knuckles says with a small smile. “Ready to head back?” 

“Sure am.” 

Knuckles hops down and approaches the Master Emerald. Silver lands beside him and presents the purple Emerald. They each place a hand against the Master’s glossy surface and the time portal swirls open.

“Wait.” Silver says before Knuckles steps back. “Can I. . . show you something?”

Knuckles tilts his head, before shrugging. 

“It’ll be quick. The time portal should stay open as long as I’m concentrating.”

“Long as we’re both concentrating.” Knuckles says. “Alright, let’s go.” 

The portal dumps them a few floors down from Silver’s hideout. Silver leads them to the elevator shaft. He gestures, offering him a lift, but Knuckles instead climbs the side of the shaft by embedding the spines on his fists to create his own handholds.

They arrive on Silver’s floor. Knuckles stares at the now mostly-deconstructed couches outside, but follows him to the door of his hideout. 

Silver opens the door and kneels down on his foam bedding. He drags his basket out of the corner. “I made this.”

Knuckles stops. He rubs his eyes. 

“There’s probably a bunch of mistakes, and it’s ugly, and it took forever- but it’s mine.” Silver curls his hands around it. 

And Knuckles smiles, wider than he’s ever seen him smile before. 

“It looks good.” 

“You’re just saying that.” His throat tightens and he’s not sure why. “But I don’t care. It’s mine.” 

Knuckles kneels down. “You did good. I mean it.” 

Silver smiles back. He smiles back and his eyes water. He rubs his eyes and catches any stray tears with the fabric of his gloves. 

Then Knuckles puts a hand on his shoulder and all the tears slide out anyways. 

In the months that follow, new baskets appear in Silver’s hiding place. Then bowls- no more tinny taste from the can every time he eats. Then a mat, hung on one of the walls, sparkly clothing scraps from the ruins of a mall he found intertwined with plant fiber from Angel island that Knuckles called “yucca”, and dotted with beads as blue as the ancient sky, donated from Amy.

He runs his hand down the textures during the difficult evenings. His fingers catch in the holes and gaps and mistakes he didn’t fix before tying everything off and calling it finished. Maybe he’s never going to weave as well as Knuckles does. Maybe he’s being cocky like usual, but he still thinks it’s the most beautiful thing this bonfire of a future will ever see.

Silver learns to weave. It is one of the most important things he ever does.