Well, I haven't written anything in a very, very long time. Yet I constantly desired to. So...here I am, finally back, at least for now, and at least for one update. Perhaps I will continue this with a more timely update soon.

A lot of things have been happening in my life, recently, but I know I can find companionship in some form in this website. I have all of you, my readers, to thank for reviewing, watching and/or messaging me. I have all of you to thank for the memories I will always keep of this site.

I apologize for that brief period of sentimentality. ^^'

Anyway, I'd like to thank CrazyMuffinAssassin, MoonlightXmas, SoNiCrOxMaIsOx and Snickerdoodle8P for their reviews on the most recent chapter.

I hope you enjoy the newest instalment!

Chapter 3: Reflections Across Time

As slated floor was replaced by scorched carpet, Shadow steadied himself with a thought, reaching out an arm to hold Silver up too if need be. Regardless, it seemed to be unnecessary as Silver managed to rebalance himself without too much difficulty, having been given warning. Shadow's eyes flicked to Silver as the far younger hedgehog managed to stand up straight with slightly unwieldy movements. Shadow idly pointed to an open door to his right in the hallway they stood in.

"The bathroom's right there if you need." Shadow remarked in case Silver's previous sickness returned. Silver, having taken the teleport far better this time though, shook his head.

"No, no. I'm alright this time. Still, is there anywhere I can lie down?" Silver asked, his voice sounding far clearer than beforehand.

Shadow ran his eyes over the hedgehog, taking him in for the first time. Silver's near-ivory fur was streaked with tiny portions of ash, other areas mildly singed. Underneath the fur, hidden unless someone were to look while as close as Shadow was now, Silver's skin was riddled across the body with tiny red scratches, with larger bruises covering other parts of his body, though through all of the body fur the only indication of them were the patches ever-so-slightly darker shades of fur.

Silver's eyes flitted about, taking in so much about the area they were in, to an almost paranoid level as if expecting an attack to come from any location. His face, at such a close range, was also seen to hide scratches and other minor damage, which Shadow knew for certain must have been from the fight with Solaris which - to Sonic and Shadow's perceptions - was a whole two weeks ago.

The overly-pale skin betraying how sick the young hedgehog truly was earlier was already returning to a slightly more natural colour, and aside from the minor damage across his body the young hedgehog appeared to be without permanent harm. His sickness seemed to be - not unlike sickness tends to with Sonic, Knuckles, Rouge and most therianthropic species - passing quickly without too much effect.

His face held the touch of a frown, one that had almost always been on for the time Shadow had known him, but Shadow also knew that Silver's unusually frail body hid the powerful energies the hedgehog could command at will, though it didn't take a genius to see, with the lack of colour along the lines in Silver's garb, and with the hedgehog's awkward movements and slightly unsure stride and actions, that those energies that normally supported him at will were gone, possibly from the exertion exerted when he fought alongside Sonic and Shadow.

Shadow registered all that he saw in an eyeblink, and let out an imperceptible sigh as he started to walk down the corridor, not looking back at Silver as he spoke.

"The bedroom's right next to you, opposite the bathroom." Shadow replied, adding an afterthought, spoken seriously, "You're not in your time anymore, Silver. Iblis isn't going to suddenly rise up again and attack."

Shadow couldn't see Silver's silent, grimacing nod, but he did hear the squeak of a doorhandle and Silver's steps as he turned to look into the room. Shadow was interrupted by Silver's voice as the dark hedgehog reached the end of the warm, carpeted corridor, about to descend the flight of stairs there.

"Shadow...this is your room, though, isn't it?"

There was something in Silver's voice. Uncertainty, Shadow decided, uncertainty and confusion. Shadow let out a grunt, calling back without breaking his pace as he went down the stairs.

"Yeah, I don't usually need to sleep, though. As far as I'm concerned, the house is yours for the night. Kitchen's downstairs if you need something, I'll be back sometime tomorrow." Shadow explained, finishing as he pulled the front door to the house closed, and he was gone.

...

Silver's next words died on his lips. He didn't understand. There was so much he still meant to ask, so much that didn't make sense.

He smiled softly and sadly to himself, looking around the corridor and the room he'd just opened. Though he could tell from the currents of warm air that the house must be somehow heated, it was far colder than anything he was used to; day and night were hard to distinguish between in any sense with a sky constantly filled with smoke and clouds, the city of Soleanna bathed purely in the light and warmth of the endless lava flows that he was used to.

In a time that has never occurred, and will never occur.

It wasn't hard to tell that the room he looked into was Shadow's; the bed was lower to the ground than what Silver was used to, the remains of the more common beds designed for human use. Furthermore, a single painting lay on a wall, and a single photo frame lay face-down on a bedside table. A nightstand.

Silver stepped into the room. He had expected more of a scent, considering its use as someone's bedroom. But then, Shadow had implied he rarely used it, and Silver couldn't remember any particular scent from Shadow anyway. Strange. Pushing it out of his mind, Silver stepped further into the room to examine the painting from a different angle.

Silver had few opportunities to appreciate the old, surviving artwork from where he lived, but he always held a fascination. The painting here was a mesh of liquid patterns of blue and red...when Silver blinked, he could've sworn he saw a face emerge in the twisting shapes and tones of the two colours. Staring further, he could almost imagine some kind of vaguely human figure.

Well it was certainly a nicer place to be than the freezing cell from before.

As his headache chose to make itself known again, Silver closed his eyes, moving to sit on the comfortably low to the ground bed. It was too much; he was tired, but what was he to do?

"It's like some dream. Something that never happened, that if I sleep now it will all be gone forever."

He said the words aloud. He could feel his mouth move, and hear his voice. It anchored him in this surreal world he knew so little about. His old world was gone.

Suddenly Silver smiled, weakly at first, but strengthening as he finished a train of thought. They...had won. Shadow, Sonic and...him. They'd done it; they'd saved his world, all of the worlds. They'd made things right. Silver stood up with newfound strength, going over to the curtained windows of the room and drawing them back. He couldn't help but gasp as he realized he was truly back to this heavenly time.

He looked at the long grass outside the window, down a story of the house; the nightly wind causing swathes of it to bow and weave in patterns of shade and movement. The forest that seemed to ring around the house, each one a feature of nature as they twisted and shaped themselves individually into creations of life and beauty. The bright moon – is that what it looked like? – that gave light even in the beautiful shadows of the night. Movement betrayed the specks of life, of animals foraging and running, of sustenance. A realm of life and beauty that had been gifted to all, shared by so many; this part his and his alone to hold and nurture.

If only Blaze could have seen it...

Silver looked around the window's frame, managing to work out how to slide it fully open. Doing so, he ignored the cold gust of wind he felt as he did...in many ways, even such a sensation of the crisp, clean air was luxury and amazement of the highest order. Clean of smoke, of sweltering humidity and singed metals, brimstone and...flesh. He swung his legs outside of the window, feeling no discomfort at the ten-foot drop beneath him, perching on the cold windowsill and looking out, steadying his small body with hands on either side.

"If you're there, somewhere, Blaze...I give this to you. It's thanks to you this is here, this land, this life." Silver's head lowered, clenching his eyes shut as tears stubbornly leaked through regardless. For the first time since he fought Solaris, he cried without reserve, his body heaving with sobs.

Blaze had always said to let tears out. She never said that much, really, but when she did say something...it deserved to be said, to be listened to and followed.

Tears ran down the face of the hedgehog. He missed her, he mourned her. As was his right...and as she deserved to be. He remembered the times he angered her, and every time she forgave him. Even the times when she apologized when a remark cut too deep. When they fought together...he'd lost count of the times they had saved each other's life in the destructive world they lived in.

Even as his tears ran short, his body chilled, Silver remained on the windowsill. He sat for hours, thinking, as the moon travelled across the sky. Wiping what remained of his tears off his face, Silver turned to heave himself back inside the relative warmth of the room. With a thought, he directed his powers to shut the window behind him.

Nothing, again. No twist of perceptions, no unseen manipulation of the world.

Of course.

Silver trembled. He felt the cold more than ever, even now that he was inside. He turned around, and dragged the window closed, groaning softly as he had to exert arms that were unused to physical effort. He was so...tired.

Silver stumbled backwards, falling backwards to land on Shadow's double bed horizontally. Breathing heavily, he laid there for minutes as his strength slowly returned. His skin was warmer, and as a further mercy, he felt remarkably stable. He didn't feel all that much, he'd put up a wall against his pain at least for now.

Pushing all thoughts from his mind; Silver sat up, moving pillows over the white blanket and piling them up against the headboard. Sitting against them, he concentrated on the comfort to his body, on the warmth of the room. He absently ran his fingers through his fur, wincing as he felt bruises and cuts. Nothing he hadn't taken before.

He bit his lip as he sensed his emotional wall falling. Looking for something to occupy his mind, Silver looked around, his eyes settling on the bedside table in the room with nothing but a lamp and a face-down photo frame on it. Reaching out an arm, he carefully lifted the photo.

He didn't know what to expect, considering how little he knew of Shadow. From their brief time together, Silver knew he didn't speak much and had little patience. He was more suited to combat than Sonic, yet both could use the Chaos Emeralds to devastating effect, Shadow perhaps more so. Sonic's eagerness to do good was obvious, Shadow's, however...Silver wasn't as sure, but the black hedgehog had 'rescued' him from Eggman.

There was a lot Silver didn't know about Shadow... Rouge hadn't cleared much up in the chance they'd got to talk back at that Guardian Units of Nations facility. Silver still didn't know what Shadow's status as the "Ultimate Life Form" meant...was it a title? Metaphorical?

But from everything Silver knew about Shadow, he didn't know what to make of what he saw, what he saw on the photo made no sense. It was clearly dated, it's somewhat less-than-crisp colours suggesting many decades before the twenty-first century, but what was in it was astonishing.

A human girl; far younger than Elise, at an age Silver would guess to be about eight. He didn't know any humans in his world, but there were plenty of records from them and about them. She wore a blue dress, with equally blue eyes and surprisingly bright blonde hair. She looked happy.

Silver smiled once again. That expression on her face, of simple innocent joy, was contagious. It was the best he'd felt since he'd woken up in a cold cell that Eggman had thrown him in. Standing next to the young girl was...Shadow?

He didn't look a day younger, though his shoes and gloves were clearly of a different make at whatever time the photo was set. He didn't even reach the young girl's shoulders as they stood beside each other, but he stood with a sort of relaxed form that Silver had never seen in him before. He wasn't smiling, as such, but he looked content; somehow happy to be there, in that photo opportunity with this human girl.

Who was she? How come Shadow looked the same? The picture raised more questions than answers. Respectfully, he turned the picture face-down again, feeling his temporary happiness evaporate with it.

'I should sleep.'He decided, closing his eyes as he leant back against the pillows. The bedroom light glared through his eyelids uncomfortably, and he opened them to see the light switch across the room.

Silver reached out, with his powers, willing the switch to turn. Fatigue flooded his veins, hid body growing tired even as nothing happened. He closed his eyes to focus.

'I'm not going to give up this time. I will not be helpless; I will not.'

Silver determinedly kept his focus. The hero, the slayer of Solaris, and he can't even stand, can't even turn a light on or off. After all, who was he without his powers?

'They are not gone. I can do this. I won't let my weakness hold me or anybody back again.'

Sweat formed under his fur, causing cuts to sting.

'Blaze would be alive if it weren't for my weakness. I won't fail her again.'

Blazing lines cut across his vision. For a split second, everything went black, as he strayed to the verge of unconsciousness.

'For Blaze.'

Silver fainted, falling back into the black abyss as his body lay slumped against the headboard, lifeless if not for his laboured breathing.

Click.

...

The pillows were so much softer than usual, the mattress so much more forgiving...It felt nice on his fur.

Silver dragged himself, semi-consciously, further under the covers. They were much softer than they normally are, too. It was a little...chilly, though. He rarely felt cool in a morning, or indeed at any time, unless he flew or stayed some distance from the lava flows.

One of Silver's eyes creaked open, before closing again. It was particularly bright...bright yellow light, rather than the red glow... It reminded him of his time in the desert with Amy. It was so...beautiful and fresh; an unmarred landscape. The memories began to wake him up, as his mind began to work again.

The world was comfortable, beautiful... They'd done it. Blaze and him had finally beat Iblis, beat Solaris, and had saved it all.

Silver sat up, suddenly, everything flooding back at once. Eggman, the G.U.N base, Shadow's house, Shadow's bedroom...

And Blaze isn't here. Blaze is...gone.

Silver sighed out. He had achieved some state of calm over yesterday, but not nearly enough. Blaze, who was always there, was now gone. It was as if half of himself just disappeared, leaving him stranded. Confused and alone. Silver pushed the blanket off of him, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, waking quickly. He supposed he could...what was the term for it? "Sleep in". His psychokinetic powers made him too busy, too sought after as a fighter or scavenger, to usually have such a luxury in his world. It would have been years since he had overslept for the sake of oversleeping, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to break the habit if he tried.

Silver looked around the room, remembering details that he'd noticed last night; getting his bearings. It was bathed in a warm, yellow light from the window. The sun...no longer obscured day and night by choking smoke and clouds, but there for the world, day after day. Silver stood to look outside the window. He heard what he had learnt before to be birdsong, and to recognize the strangely beautiful feathered creatures in the trees to be the birds. Trees and their leaves, such defined brown and green, colours of life that the grey and black husks of trees lacked, the grass vibrant... and visible on the lawn outside the house ringed by forest, a familiar face. A yellow therianthropic fox, shorter than Silver, and clearly recognized by his unusual duo of tails. Silver heaved the window open, feeling somewhat stronger than yesterday, beginning to learn not to instinctively use his powers. The movement of the heavy window attracted the fox's attention, who had appeared to be peering through a window on the ground floor.

Looking up directly at Silver, the fox suddenly waved enthusiastically.

"Silver! It's Tails, we heard that you came back!" The fox cried out. Silver had barely registered the use of the word 'we' before, in a blur of blue, a hedgehog not too different from Silver or Shadow stood beside Tails.

"Hey, bud! Good to see you're still around and kicking. Rouge told us GUN picked you up from Eggman, but didn't say how you got back here in the first place. Mind unlocking the downstairs door? We brought some food." Sonic called out cheerfully, waving an arm in greeting. Neither Tails' excited smile nor Sonic's wide grin showed any sign of baring ill-wishes to Silver, despite that almost all of the occasions that they crossed paths were in battle.

Silver was about to reply, but upon realizing he didn't know what to say or where to begin, he instead gave a short wave back and turned to run from the room to open the front door for the two. He gritted his teeth, not in annoyance, but in regret of how little he knew of what passed as polite social graces in this world. He felt awkward and embarrassed already, mentally kicking himself for not being able to think of anything to say rather than to just wave.

Silver stopped his train of thought for a moment to glance at the light switch before he passed through the doorway, frowning.

It was switched off.

'Did I do that with my powers last night? I didn't think I had...maybe I'd woken up later to turn it off and I just didn't remember. Or Shadow turned it off in the night. Probably.'

Eliminating his own hope, Silver returned to running as fast as he dared on his tired, bruised legs until he made his way to the front door, recognizing it as being immediately able to open from the inside despite the lock from the outside. Doing so, he let the door swing in to the yellow and blue figures. Only now Silver saw the plastic bag in Tails' left hand – presumably the food they mentioned. Sonic was the first to step in, cricking his neck to each side as he did so.

"Wow, it's been awhile since I stepped foot inside this place. Shadow really doesn't care to keep it clean, does he?" Sonic noted, eying the floor. Silver turned to look as well as Tails stepped in after the hedgehog.

Silver hadn't been downstairs until now. The front door and bottom of the staircase were in an entrance hall adjacent to the living room, separated by a small section of wall easily peered past. Both the hall and living room were carpeted, though like the corridor upstairs – the carpet had a multitude of scorch marks. Unlike upstairs, however, various old and torn newspapers littered the couch, coffee table and floor of the room, as well as empty wine bottles and a black implement of a design Silver was certain he'd seen before; but before he could go to examine it; the blur of Sonic's movement passed over the object before heading upstairs and then back to Silver's side within the space of a second or two, leaving a new rush of wind moving through the house. Sonic's face was less cheerful now, instead shaking his head in some form of shame. He'd taken the implement out of sight. He spoke, his voice quiet enough so that Silver's sensitive ears heard what Tails' couldn't from a few steps further away.

"I'm surprised that even Shadow would just leave one of his handguns lying on the carpet. I thought Rouge had broken him of that habit." Sonic muttered, before lifting his head with a new smile on his face completely overriding the discomforting revelation seconds ago, "So, Silver, welcome back to the present! What brings you back?"

"It's the past to Silver, remember, Sonic." Tails pointed out, clearing a space on the coffee table to lay down his plastic bag, shaking his head much like Sonic had done at the remains of such a quantity of alcohol about.

"Um...it's...I don't know. I last was fighting Solaris..." Silver stated unsurely, praying that Sonic didn't mention Blaze. Sonic looked at Silver first curiously, then in understanding. Tails stopped his unwrapping of the food he was beginning to lay out, turning to question Silver.

"Does...that mean you want to try to get back home, then? To your own time?"

Silver shook his head, grimacing. He'd thought about such last night. In truth, he wasn't sure what happened to his time when Solaris was destroyed...it might not exist anymore, since it wouldn't have occurred in the first place, but somehow Silver suspected it was still there. What Solaris did to the world still happened to some level, because some people still remember him...or it. Even if his time was fine and was rebuilding, Silver still didn't want to go back, though.

"There's nothing left for me there. I think I want to stay and...move on." Silver explained, unsure of how to get across all of his thoughts and feelings. What else could he say? That he didn't know anything about this world, but what he had seen is infinitely better than his own? That he only had one person whom he truly cared about and was cared about in return for in his time, and she wouldn't be there? That he had no family to think of, or people who would miss him? That in his world he was merely a survivor, while in this world he could be whatever he liked?

Tails smiled, and finished unwrapping the various rolls he had bought along the way, so the three could eat.

"Well, then as long as you're staying, we may as well get to know you a bit better, huh?" Tails said in an obvious welcoming gesture, even as Sonic clapped a hand on Silver's shoulder.

"Yeah. Welcome back to this world!"

Silver thought over his reply for a second, before smiling back to Tails, feeling some of the awkwardness disappear.

"Yeah...I guess we should. Thanks."

...

Yellow eyes blinked, then opened, awakening from a dream with vividness beyond what imagination can provide. There He was, perched upon an open window. He spoke aloud to a night sky. He spoke to her. He thanked her for the world and what she had done for Him.

She sat up from her resting place on the altar which had saved her from the demon inside. The Sol Emeralds were glowing faintly. They had granted her that dream...no...that vision.

She stood up, allowing herself a soft smile. It was good to know that He was safe. It wasn't morning yet, but she looked around. No threat to the Sol Emeralds perched upon the pillars of stone around the altar had come in the night, or it would have awoken her. No, things were silent, and safe. How they should be.

She walked to the nearest pillar, gently lifting the Gray Sol Emerald from its place and cradling the gem carefully in her hands. It glowed and warmed at her touch, and she looked into it, speaking softly.

"If you can hear this, Silver, then take heart in the knowledge that I am safe. You've done so well, Silver, and you should be proud in yourself. Do not mourn me. One dimension is not too far for those with the power of the Emeralds. We will meet again soon."

There you have it. Thank you for reading up to now. I realize that this probably hasn't been my best chapter...less than usual has happened, for sure. More character exposition than normal. Even so, don't be afraid to criticise, point out mistakes or anything else that's the problem!

As additional notes, I'd like to clarify that this story is set after "Sonic the Hedgehog 2006" specifically, and though it may take elements out of other games (such as Sonic Rush), they are rarely relevant or considered canon for the sake of this story. There's not a strong enough definitive Canon to make a Sonic the Hedgehog story like this that works with every plotline.

Remember that I try to respond to every review! Until Next Time, Farewell!