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There are days, where the light refracts in glass at just the right angle, when the rustling of leaves spin melodies, when the stars align just so, where Knuckles nearly reaches out towards Sonic, his hand hovering by his shoulder, truth buried beneath a heavy tongue, seconds closer to unfurling.
But the moment will pass, faster than Eggman’s mood swings, faster than Shadow’s Chaos Control, faster than Sonic spinning on his heels, faster than the way the odds in their favor go from one in a million to a million in one, faster than a shifting tide. The moment fades, the light falters, the leaves go silent, the stars remain infinite and infinitesimal.
They’re laying side by side together, a rare moment of peace settled across the entire world. A harrowing adventure finally put to an end, and now they are able to relish in the riches of their labour. Another spat with Eggman and an ancient evil, another thousand close calls only a prelude to a thousand more, another day of saving the entire world, perhaps the entire universe. Another Tuesday.
Sonic’s dozing right next to him, exhausted from a job well done. He pushed himself, Knuckles knows, using the emeralds as frequently as he did. They usually only use it once in an adventure, saving it for the big bad that their adventure had been culminating towards defeating, and yet he used it four times consecutively, each titan already pushing his limits. Knuckles also doesn’t know how long he was on the island before he ran into him, but since he seemed to have saved Amy first, and Knuckles knows from his own adventure with Sonic on that island that Sonic didn’t sleep despite the day turning to dawn… Sonic also probably didn’t get mush sleep, if any, during his adventures with Amy and Tails.
They had flown off Starfalls Islands just hours ago, invigorated by their experiences, but also completely exhausted physically and mentally from all that they witnessed. Amy and Tails left Sonic and Knuckles back on Angel Island before heading home; Knuckles was struggling not to fall asleep during their mundane chitchat before the two finally left.
Look, Knuckles is going to get off Angel Island eventually, but for now, what he really needed was to rest. His hopes and dreams had perhaps been rekindled, but not his energy. He’ll figure out how to better balance his duty as a guardian and his desire for adventure after a good nap.
Amy and Tails left, leaving Sonic and Knuckles behind. Sonic claimed that he wanted to go for a bit of a snooze cruise, and that if he waited any longer he was going to fall asleep on the wing of the plane. Knuckles suspects it’s a bit more than that, though he doesn’t push- well, he threatens to push Sonic off his island if he causes any problems, but for the most part, Sonic’s been true to his word.
He’s dead asleep beside Knuckles, curled slightly on the staircase to the emerald altar. It’s not the first time they’ve done this, and Knuckles hopes it won’t be the last. Knuckles fell asleep earlier, not long after Sonic, but he hadn’t been able to stay asleep, his thoughts wandering and racing, trying to connect everything they had learned.
The Ancients were apparently aliens from across the galaxy, the universe. The Chaos emeralds were once native to their home world, until a terrible enemy struck, destroying their entire world in just a matter of seconds.
They raced against the great enemy, hoping to flee this dreadful war, searching far and wide to find a new home, until they crashed on Earth. Despite the emeralds being native to their home world, the Master Emerald wasn’t, and it caused their ship to crash.
But the corruption followed them onto this planet. They were only able to seal it away, at the cost of nearly all of their lives.
It’s a tale as old as time, Knuckles finds. A great calamity strikes, an evil is sealed but not truly defeated, and the last few survivors are left to straggle about in the aftermath until time withers them away and picks them off one by one, until they’re all alone. Until they’re the last one standing.
History cycles, Knuckles is aware. Time and time again, tragedies strike, calamities destroy, and survivors slowly fade. History repeats itself, viciously, cyclic and violent, an ouroboros.
Power always invites greed. Greed always destroys. Good prevails but it is a momentary victory, fleeting in the grand scheme of things. It is a victory that always comes at a price. It is a bandaid on a gushing wound, a few sticks trying to dam a rushing river.
Adventures like these always remind Knuckles of his purpose. To stave off tragedies like these for as long as he can by protecting the emerald, by keeping its power out of greedy hands. To protect this entire world, by protecting a single emerald.
It’s his duty not so much to conquer evil but to avoid it. It’s his duty to keep the emerald safe at all costs, to stave off this cycle of power and greed and violence. It’s cyclic and never ending and sometimes Knuckles can’t quite comprehend why he even bothers. It’s futile, it’s inevitable.
Tragedies can not be stopped, only slowed, and only healed. They will keep taking. They will keep destroying. They will keep going until the universe collapses, until powerful things no longer exist, until all life ends.
It’s a heavy burden Knuckles can’t help but curse. He sits up, staring out across the horizons, the entire island stretching for miles and miles beyond his field of vision. It seems so infinite, so vast, so all consuming, but Knuckles has long since learned his island is a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. A small blip in the universe. Not even noticeable on Earth.
It grows smaller every time he steps off the island. He has found, on occasion, that it is nearly as suffocating as his position as the guardian of the emerald.
He long ago used to curse his ancestors. But Knuckles has come to the conclusion that perhaps, it’s not their fault. Not in the grand scheme of things. Did they truly understand the consequences of their actions, when they longed to steal the emeralds? Did they truly know just how much power those emeralds held? Is it fair for them to have been punished so severely for one moment of insatiable greed?
The Knuckles clan had been peaceful, long, long ago. A matriarch, one that was nomadic and kind, who traded with different clans, who remained on the defense, never the offense. Until Pachacamac assumed the throne, and turned all of their grains of wheat into spears.
Is it fair, that Pachacamac’s actions lead to a devastation of the echidna clan?
It is karma, perhaps, that keeps Knuckles stationed to his island, which keeps Knuckles devoted to a fruitless endeavor. Irony, that gives Knuckles the position to stop people like his ancestors from causing untold destruction.
But it is a cycle, Knuckles knows; people fail, no matter how good their intentions are, no matter how valiantly they act, because evil prevails, even if only for a moment. Chaos knows how often his emerald has been stolen, Chaos knows how the emeralds have been abused long before the ancients and how they will be abused long after Knuckles and Sonic and this age of heroes. It is futile, and can Knuckles truly curse his ancestors for succumbing to destiny?
The Ancients weren’t even able to overcome their destiny. A foolish, vile evil simply known as the End had chased them across the galaxy, searching for their emeralds, greed and gluttony blinding the beast into wanting to devour the entire universe. Like Knuckles, the Ancients were given an impossible task- defend and protect the power from greed.
And so, they eventually save the day, but not without a great, great cost.
Knuckles sucks in a deep breath, peering at the Master Emerald, before his eyes rest on Sonic, slumbering away on the steps of the shrine, just a few feet away from the very thing Knuckles was sworn to protect.
Fate has been cruel to all those it interacts with, except for him, Knuckles has learned.
Knuckles bows to fate’s whims like a tree in a hurricane, bowing and swaying to the harsh rain of destiny. He’s rooted here on Angel Island, objects hurled at him, unable to dodge but only to endure.
Fate throws everything it has at Sonic, and he instead overcomes, throwing everything he has right back at the cosmic forces that keep sending adventures their way. He fights, and he wins, over and over again, seemingly breaking all sorts of cycles of tragedies. Bringing peace to the Ancients and stopping the End from stirring up more trouble. Saving the world from Gerald’s wrath. Saving the world from Chaos, and soothing him so he could finally find peace.
He fights and he breaks and he destroys, but he destroys chains and weights and collars. He destroys in the same way fire gives way to lush. He burns in the same way a fire keeps you warm during a storm.
Fate calls upon him, and Sonic will answer, but he always does it his own way, always does exactly what he wants, when he wants. Fate calls upon him, and Sonic only answers the call because he thinks it’s fun, because he’s kind to his core and could never let the world end, not when he still stands, not when he still has places to visit and people to meet and smiles to teach.
Jealousy has always struck Knuckles when he looks at Sonic for too long. There’s a distance between them, spurned by a rough history, cultivated by the realization they were never met to last. Fate brought them together, Knuckles knows, but Sonic once again defies fate by bringing them together again and again. They weren’t meant to be friends, ideologically opposed, as different as night and day, fire and water, sun and moon.
There’s a distance here, because Sonic is so far away from him despite every attempt to reach out, because Knuckles knows what he is, because Knuckles realises he has known him all his life, has known him before he even stepped foot on the island a handful of years ago, has known of his legacy before he could even speak.
Knuckles had always been jealous of him, for a multitude of reasons. He was free and unchained, the west wind dancing across a meadow, the summer sun traveling across the great sky. He was unburdened and free, in a way Knuckles was never meant to be, in a way Knuckles can never be. Knuckles once thought that Sonic wasn’t tied to destiny like he was, that Sonic was free from Fate’s curse.
And perhaps, Knuckles admits, he’s jealous of him for having a connection to the emeralds Knuckles had been cursed to protect. The Master Emerald rarely answers his prayers, rarely acknowledges him for all that he does, gives him nothing in return for his thousands of sacrifices. But Sonic can use the Chaos emeralds’s power, like it’s second nature, like it was made just for him, and Knuckles can not help but feel envious of Sonic’s connection to the very ancient relic Knuckles was burdened to protect.
And this connection to the emeralds doesn’t end there; Sonic seems to have a connection to Knuckles’s own culture by extension. A connection richer and deeper than Knuckles, and it sent him fuming on more than one occasion, to realize how much fate seemed to favor him.
Blessed with the power to defeat the very god that destroyed Knuckles’s clan, blessed to bring peace to the creature Knuckles’s ancestors once provoked. It should have been Knuckles’s story, shouldn’t it? For him to have reconciled, for Chaos and him to have exchanged forgiveness- for Knuckles’s ancestors to finally atone for their crimes, and for Chaos to finally atone for cursing his people in a moment of blind rage on both sides.
Sonic stole the show, the emeralds choosing him to rectify the mistake that’s been haunting Knuckles’s people for thousands of years. And Sonic is chosen, every single time! To aid Light Gaia and uncover the Gaia temples, and their connection to the Chaos emeralds. To destroy the Gizoid Gerald had uncovered, the Gizoid Knuckles has suspicions was involved with the Nocturnus clan, the fourth great civilization that disappeared along with the Knuckles clan when Chaos raged. There’s thousands of adventures where the history of the emeralds comes into question, and Sonic’s there to uncover it all.
And even now, at Starfall Islands, it was Sonic who brought peace to the Ancients by finally defeating the End, by somehow escaping cyberspace through sheer tenacity and willpower, by saving the day and uncovering the lore of the Ancients. Because the emeralds have chosen him, willingly or not, because Sonic has always been favored in ways Knuckles can not entirely comprehend, in ways that have always left him jealous, because Sonic was chosen and not him, after everything he’s given up, after sacrifice after sacrifice.
But Knuckles isn’t quite sure anymore if he’s jealous of him, or if he pities him.
Knuckles doesn’t know what Sonic is, but Knuckles knows he’s more than meets the eyes. There’s a thousand questions Knuckles still has about the Ancients, about their history, about their connection to the emeralds, and perhaps to the strange race of the Chao. There’s a thousands mysteries that still need to be explored, but Knuckles thinks of one when he peers down as Sonic, sleeping soundlessly, basking in the light of a crescent moon, looking more human than Knuckles likes.
Knuckles stands up, taking one look at the Master Emerald before walking away, Sonic’s form disappearing along with the gentle glow of the Master Emerald.
And to think, years ago, Knuckles would have scoffed at the idea of leaving the Master Emerald in Sonic’s hands. He was childish and reckless and at many points in time an enemy. He was the antithesis of everything Knuckles was- speed vs brawn, wind vs the earth, steadfast vs fleeting. Knuckles endured, Sonic overcame. They were opposites in every way that mattered, and Knuckles wouldn’t have even considered the notion unless hell was frozen over and Knuckles had died and even then Knuckles wouldn’t have let Sonic even look at the emerald.
Yet here they are.
Knuckles crosses the island, and finds exactly what he’s looking for, having spent most of his youth in this temple, trying to uncover every bit about his history that he could. There was still so much he didn’t understand, so much history he had yet to fully uncover, so much he still doesn’t know, and there’s nothing more glaring than the Hidden Palace’s murals.
A blue and gold figure overshadows him. This is where they had their final confrontation, when Eggman had tricked him into believing Sonic and Tails were threats to be eliminated.
Knuckles had punched the Chaos emeralds out of him- surprisingly easy to do, but only because the emeralds require concentration to use. Sonic was caught off guard, and Knuckles was able to use that to his advantage. He’s not sure he could do it now, when Sonic and the emeralds have forged a bond across time and space, when Sonic’s learned many more tricks than he had known when he first started using them.
But this is where Knuckles likes to think he really met Sonic the first time. It’s the first time that matters, in the end, where Sonic proves he’s not just some punk kid, where Sonic proves his strength and speed to Knuckles, where he finally earns Knukcles’s respect after trial and tribulation. Where Sonic defeats him, eleven years old, silent but cheeky, and more powerful than anything Knuckles had ever seen (and arguably, more powerful than anything Knuckles will see).
They danced, battling for their lives before this very mural, and Knuckles can not help but reach out towards it, fingers tracing the brilliant image like he has so many times before.
Knuckles’s earliest memories are from that temple, small hands reaching up to the mural, little fingers smoothing over weathered glass and clay, still smooth despite all the cracks, despite all the hardships this temple has seen. The figure remains as bright as a campfire, the very story that would be told thousands of years ago around dying embers, the very story that has been told a thousand times and will hopefully be told a thousand more, the very story his mother whispers to him for the first time as she picks him up and holds him closer to the mural so Knuckles can run his small, feeble hands across the blue and gold figure, across stone and clay and glass that have remained smoother than the skipping stones that wash ashore Azure lake.
It’s a legacy greater than many. The temple was older than anything else on this island, his mother had told him. Dedicated to the history of our ancestors. Later murals were added, to depict all the Knuckles clan had come across. The Gizoids, the Noctunrus clan, Chaos…
It matches the ruins he had seen at the Starfall Islands. It’s the same architecture, same style and similar materials, and Knuckles has always, always wondered about he people who lived here before the Knuckles Clan had invaded, had always wondered exactly who the emeralds belonged to before Pachacamac attacked, before the echidna’s fates were sealed.
Because there are ruins that are even older than the flood that destroyed his people. There is technology there he knows his people could not have forged. There are things that have always seemed a bit mismatched about the island, like a quilt made from scraps, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit in the right places.
The Ancients must have built the things on Angel Island, then. The Echidna’s embellished much, adding murals and their own touches to whatever was left standing in the aftermath of their own cataclysm, but it was the Ancients who settled there first, whose emeralds were nearly ransacked by Pachacamac.
And it changes everything Knuckles understands.
“They must have known about you,” Knuckles says to the mural. “Across the galaxy, light years away, they knew you. You’re not a legend of my people, but a legend from theirs. So who are you?”
Knuckles knows, of course, who exactly he is. Except he doesn’t know who he is.
There are statues with his face that litter hydrocity. The mural captures his spikes in a way unimitable by echidna, in a way so foreign from the Chaos-looking creatures the Ancients had been. And Knuckles doesn’t quite understand, never could even without this new knowledge, but now he’s simply baffled.
This alien race predicted something that would happen perhaps thousands to tens of thousands of years into the future to a different race on a different planet. A figure of blue and gold, wrapped in the might of the Chaos emeralds, chasing after a man vying for the Master Emerald. Knuckles wasn’t sure what to make of this scene, anymore.
“Don’t you get tired of looking at that old thing?”
Knuckles spins on his feet, fists formed, ready to punch whoever had spoken. Sonic stands before him, arms crossed, peering at Knuckles thoughtfully despite the sheen of uninterest in his expression. Knuckles drops his hands but doesn’t let go of his fists, turning back to look at the mural.
“We found ruins on Starfall Islands that match the ones here on Angel Island. Remember?”
“Hard to forget.”
“I think the Ancients built this temple, too.” Knuckles furrows his brows. “Some of the murals are from my people, but a majority are not. This architecture, it all matches what we found on Starfall. And I think… I think they made this mural, too.”
Sonic stands beside Knuckles, peering at it thoughtfully. “They could benefit from a few art classes, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t.”
He didn’t really mean to be so harsh, but Knuckles can’t quite convey what he feels about all of this. It was so much to learn in just a handful of days, so much he hasn’t been able to sit down and digest, so much he still doesn't understand. All he knows is that it doesn’t feel quite right to disrespect the Ancients, after all they had done.
Though, they had brought the emeralds here on earth, and Knuckles still doesn’t quite know how they came across the End. Was their destiny perhaps forged by their own hands? And did their destiny knock the dominoes of Knuckles?
He isn’t sure.
“I can hear you thinkin’,” Sonic says. Despite the playful tone, his voice is gentle, respectful of the quiet atmosphere around them. “Better cut that out and leave it to Tails. I don’t think there’s enough oil in the world to help your rusty gears turn. And we don’t want anymore screws comin’ loose.”
Knuckles doesn’t reply, for a few moments. There are a thousand things he wants to say to him, a thousand things he wants to acknowledge and confirm and fight about. There’s a thousand emotions right on the tip of his tongue.
Sonic looks over at him, eyes blazing, a brilliant green. It reminds Knuckles of when he saw the Master Emerald for the first time, hand scraping across the surface, feeling electricity just beneath the surface smooth artificial cage of glass, watching as it glowed when Knuckles walked towards it.
“What are you thinking about?” He finally asks, and Knuckles thinks that Sonic already knows, that Sonic knows more and less than he will ever let on, that Sonic has the same questions Knuckles does because he doesn't know everything despite always being called on, despite being favored by the emeralds, because Sonic doesn’t care about the past, he only ever walks forward, but because he’s so human in the end despite all that he’s done, despite fighting gods and men and monsters, because even he has a curiosity about what his own connection is.
And Knuckles ruminates, for just a moment, about how he used to be so jealous of Sonic. Free to choose his own destiny, free to deny the call of fate, free to be who he is without a care in the world. Free to forge his own destiny, his own person, his own life.
But Knuckles was born with a purpose. A heavy, heavy purpose, one he can not escape from, but all the questions Knuckles has, at least, all the ones relevant to his destiny, to his fate, to his purpose, are answered. Knuckles knows who he is and what he is meant to do and where he stands. He couldn’t forge his own fate, but at least he knows it.
Sonic drifts, restless and fleeting, and Knuckles can’t help but wonder if it’s worse to not know your own purpose.
They stare at each other for a moment, and Knuckles can feel the tides change. It’s one of those moments, he realizes, where the moonlight drifting through the roof of the palace refracts in glass at just the right angle, when the rustling of leaves spin melodies, when the stars align just so, where Knuckles nearly reaches out towards Sonic, his hand hovering by his shoulder, truth buried beneath a heavy tongue, seconds closer to unfurling.
There are thousands of things he wants to say, to answer Sonic’s question with hundreds of his own.
“What are you thinking?” he had asked, in a moment of blissful ignorance or perhaps genuine curiosity, a moment of uncertainty, a moment that stretches to eternity as thousands of words nearly fall out of Knuckles’s mouth.
That I have known you before you stepped foot on this island. We were destined to meet, foretold by aliens who had not and will never meet us. Aliens who were from another planet across the galaxy, who brought the emeralds you have a connection to to this planet.
That my story is only one of millions, that thousands of societies have chased after power, and thousands of others have sought to protect it, and no matter what, it always ends in ruins for either side.
That you were chosen by these emeralds to carry out all of their desires, that you were chosen and not me, despite all that I’ve given up and done, that you’re the face carved on the temples my people worshipped, that you can defeat the god my people were killed by, that you continue to grow in strength and power and I can’t ever hope to compete for the emeralds favor when you're their Champion.
… that perhaps the fate you carry is one worse than my own.
And Knuckles reaches out, hand nearly settling on Sonic’s shoulders, their eyes meeting for just a moment, and Knuckles thinks everything he wants to say has already been said and will probably never be said, and Sonic looks back at him, impassive green fires burning, nearly blinding.
The moment passes, faster than Eggman’s mood swings, faster than Shadow’s Chaos Control, faster than Sonic spinning on his heels, faster than the way the odds in their favor go from one in a million to a million in one, faster than a shifting tide. The moment fades, the light falters, the leaves go silent, the stars remain infinite and infinitesimal.
And Knuckles looks away, breaking their eye contact, hands drifting back to his side. “What does it matter? I think there’s just some things we aren’t meant to figure out.”
“Doesn’t stop you from trying though, does it?”
“Never has.” He lets out a laughless laugh, turning his heels on his first friend, and Sonic follows after him without another word. “Let’s go back to sleep. This has been a really, really weird few days.”
Sonic snorts. “You’re telling me. But I’ll never pass down the opportunity to snooze.”
There’s a million things Knuckles could do or say. He sticks to what he has always done and said. “Let’s get back to the Master Emerald before Eggman, or worse, Rouge, shows up.”