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Mephiles was not a father.
He knew this. His fellow gods knew this.
It was a fact. To say otherwise would be utter nonsense.
‘Father’, and moreover ‘family’, was a mortal concept. Mortals required care. Companionship. Especially in the earliest years. They gave love freely and needed love in turn. A kind hand to guide them so they could grow into the best form of themselves.
Mephiles could not provide this—would not.
He was a god or rather half of one, he conceded. Iblis was the passion, the heart. Mephiles was just the mind.
Apathetic, the Emeralds once whispered to him.
The mortals created many words to describe what one like Mephiles may be, but yes, ‘apathetic’ was one he could agree with. He did not care of others or what fleeting emotions they had. All he needed to know was what worked toward his goal.
Those three holding such selfless love for him went against reason.
He did not care for the children, for how could he? Perhaps as Solaris, yes, he could have, but Mephiles was cold. He calculated issues and solutions. He used logic and factual understanding.
Iblis was the heart.
Protecting those three within his darkness was a logical choice. They were young, not even capable of speaking yet. His meddling with time had already backfired drastically, resulting in those three meeting long before they should have. Mere babes, barely able to retain memories. Therefore, it was his responsibility to ensure they survived. They were important to this world and imperative for his revenge. He would let them get strong enough to put up a proper challenge, just like before. But he wouldn’t repeat his mistakes. This time, this time, he would unite with Iblis properly and win. He underestimated them before, ignored the Emeralds’ claims that they were more than capable.
This time, he would know they had the power to take on Gods. It was an impressive feat, he had to admit, but he and the other Gods already knew such chaos-imbued individuals were inevitable. Solaris must have known, must have known all of this, so then why-
Irrelevant. To linger on such matters was pointless. At this moment, all that Mephiles had to focus on was his inevitable rematch with those children. Ones that could and would stand against him.
Ones that nearly did win. Had he not split at the last moment, Solaris would have been scattered. Reliant upon a much slower regeneration that would take eons. He was not offended by this. They were mortals merely fighting for their survival. If any beings held his ire, it would be those humans-
Ire? No, he held no ire. He could not be irritated.
Mephiles felt nothing, after all.
Those humans who separated Solaris merely needed to be used as an example. Mortals must learn the consequences of trying to meddle with Gods lest they grow bold enough to do so again. Most species at least knew not to tamper with the natural forces of the universe. The humans were a strange experiment for this world, one that was growing more troublesome with every generation.
Mobians were the opposite.
Mother Chaos lent her power to these children in particular, more than other mortal species. Chaos flowed through their veins, in some more than others. It was likely due to this that they held a greater connection with the natural forces. A greater respect, a greater understanding.
None were as great as his three, however.
His?
No, not his. Those three. He would never claim those mortals as his.
He did not create them, he did not modify them, and he did not even raise them.
Yet… Father?
He searched the world for this word, searched for its meaning and function. It only solidified his thoughts.
A ‘father’ was kind. They provided for the child, raised them. Helped teach them how the world worked so that they may one day navigate it themselves. A supportive, guiding hand at a child’s back, there for the youngling to fall back on or be pushed onward.
Mephiles did not do this. Those three did not need him. What they could not learn from others, they would learn on their own. All before their bodies would even reach full maturity.
But Mephiles was not so ignorant as to deny why the three might be confused.
A father, or any other parent for that matter, encompassed multiple roles at once. Mephiles just so happened to have provided one of those roles for those three children.
Therefore ‘Protector’ would be more accurate.
Those three needed to live, so Mephiles ensured they would be pulled into his shadows whenever they were in danger.
It started with the youngest, born in a world far in the future from the other two. Time was a fickle thing, something Mephiles knew all too well. With the other two being in critical times, he had to pay close attention to the one so far attached. Even the smallest stone could irreparably alter the future’s fate.
He possessed merely a fraction of control over time than he would if he were whole, and so he could not tell the consequences of his meddling. He could not predict which events could kill the children.
So he did not risk it.
For a toddler, it was strangely observant. It stared into the darkness and babbled incoherently, yet obviously asking for something. For someone. For him. For a long while, the half-god ignored him, often simply sending the tiny thing back to the real world as soon as the danger there passed.
Then one day, the chaos child was caught in a storm.
That was the second toddler he pulled into his darkness. It was only by coincidence that the youngest was there as well.
Mephiles watched curiously. Even in the void of nothingness, they found one another.
Again and again, whenever fate would have it, the two would be in his void at the same time. No matter how far he tried to place them apart, they were drawn to one another.
He watched as their crawling and stumbling turned to waddling and, eventually, running. Even the air, once only carrying sounds of childish babbling, soon turned to coherent words.
Mephiles eventually stopped trying to separate them. If they communicated with one another, then they would surely forget him, no?
He was wrong.
They still sought him out, still asked for him. Still talked about him. They made a game of trying to grasp his smoke.
He told them it was pointless.
They still tried.
Then the youngest’s powers appeared. In his panic, he flew into the air so high, Mephiles had to pull him into the void before he could fall to his death.
The hoglet shook with fear, his heart racing at a speed Mephiles knew was not healthy. He told the child this, told him to breathe correctly. The child did not listen. He curled further inward, his still young spikes poking out in defense.
This was… beyond him.
Returning the child to his world in this state would likely make it worse and if the child was unresponsive, he would not be aware of any imminent danger.
For the first time, Mephiles summoned one of the children for a need beyond imminent death.
The children possessed empathy, able to calm, comfort, and distract the other.
Those two overcame the fears of their own abilities by themselves, with each other’s support. He did nothing.
With an infectious passion, soon enough both were rushing through the void, one running, one flying. These races became the norm. A new game for them to play while in his darkness.
Hmm, the darkness.
Strangely, they loved his darkness.
This place, this void, it was something made of his own power… what little he had. Contained within the shadows, a space in-between and unaffected by time. Only Mephiles could manipulate the looping infinity. Only he could allow passage to and from it. However, as the shadows were his domain, he could not access anything beyond them.
The children associated the shadows with protection, which was inevitable, he supposed. The shadows were not only a better place to hide, but also meant he could pull them easily into his dimension should danger ever approach them, be it from outside forces or the elements themselves. They hid in them, slept in them, and, eventually, even began running into them, calling for Mephiles in fear and panic. Not by name, no. Rather they called for him by the title they bestowed.
‘Dad’.
He always answered, of course. Their lives needed to be preserved for the sake of the timeline, after all.
It was this way of thinking that he knew he wasn’t a father. A father would have saved them for the sake of saving them. Fathers did not need a reason.
Mephiles did. He used reason for everything he did.
Which was why he never corrected the children either.
If they wished to address him as ‘father’ or ‘dad’ or any other variant, so be it. He would not tell them his true name, for he did not wish for them to remember him in the future. He did not correct them on the address, not even when the third one picked up on the habit, because he did not care to.
A father would have cared. Mephiles did not.
He did not initiate conversations with them, he only answered when addressed. He did not show his face, remaining as a formless smoke to give their memories even less to latch onto. They raised each other as much as they raised themselves. He never corrected them or directed them. They made mistakes and they would learn from them. He would only interfere if their ignorance backfired disastrously.
None of them even realized they were from three separate eras. That only worked further in his favor.
They would forget all of this, he was certain. Mortal minds were fallible, fleeting. Especially so when they were this young.
When one day the young hero exclaimed it was his birthday, Mephiles was startled. Not by the announcement, no, but because when the other children wondered how old they were, Mephiles answered.
He knew their age. He had been aware enough of how much time had passed that he knew how many years they existed.
Solaris was always aware of time. Its passing, its changes, its fate, but never before had it been so involved in time from a mortal’s perspective.
Mephiles had been aware of time passing on such a vivid level, and he knew this was only because of the mortals. Had he not been so involved with these mortals’ lives, he would merely let time continue flowing by him as he always did, waiting in a sort of half-dormancy.
He was so involved in these three’s daily lives, he was moving through time by mortal standards.
Just how much time had he spent with the children exactly?
He studied them.
They were bigger now, yes. Their bodies more developed and their quills solidified into a proper defense. The third one... When had the third joined? Why had Mephiles pulled him too into his darkness? That one was in no fatal danger. Injured, yes, but the humans valued him too much to push that far. No, they were humans. That was answer enough. They were curious and unpredictable enough, thus he could not risk it.
Even so, the third was growing artificially. Within a few years, he would reach the proper age. But he was under constant watch, constant surveillance.
The first two were confused. They wanted to see their third more frequently, so Mephiles explained humans. Their selfishness, their moralities. How they kept their ‘brother’ under constant light, from beyond Mephiles’ grasp.
They accepted his words without further question but counted every month that passed. Always awaiting the next moment they could play with the third.
Mephiles was not one for counting time. It simply passed.
Yet, the children counted. They marked every month, every day, every hour, and every second. And thus, by simply observing them, Mephiles too kept track of time.
Enough to finally notice just how often the children were in his void.
Often enough for them to be familiar. Often enough for them to find comfort in his presence. Often enough for him to know their habits and quirks and predict what they would do or say. These were facets of a ‘family’, a term the children had been throwing around for-… When had that started?
But ‘family’ suggested a bond. There was no bond. Not between him and those three, at least.
In other times, he had killed them. All of them. Killing was not something family did.
They didn’t know of this, of course, but it did not matter. Mephiles had killed them before and he could very well do it again. In another time, he and Iblis had destroyed the world they loved. There were many horrible things he had done to them and would do again. Planned on it, even.
But he reminded himself that they did not know any of this. They did not know what he was capable of. The destruction he would bring them one day.
Those three only looked toward him with adoration and trust.
Not the adoration Solaris’ followers held. That was reverence. Something born from awe and a slight hint of fear. When Solaris was prayed to, it was with the expectation of something in turn. Good fortune, a blessed harvest, a kingdom that would not fall, a child to grow into full maturity, a promise of better times ahead of them.
The adoration of these three was not like that.
It was more intimate. Warmer. More personal.
Father.
Mephiles was the mind, not the heart. He felt nothing at all.
Even so, that word seemed to haunt him, taunt him. If he could feel, he was certain it would be annoyance.
He was many things. Lier, manipulator, traitor, monster, murderer, demon, but that? That word was not his. It did not belong to him nor describe him.
Those three were children. Older now than before, but still children. They did not know the meaning of the word, so he could not fault them for using it incorrectly.
Mephiles only gave them a safe haven from physical danger and nothing else.
Shadow still fought for his sentience, enduring prodding and judgment from the humans who owned him.
Sonic still ran faster and faster, from authorities and from concerned adults, living between alleyways and forests.
Silver still starved, malnourished, and terrified, hiding from Iblis’s half-formed creations and survivors branding him abnormal.
They grew and grew in these conditions and he did nothing to stop it.
Mephiles did not stitch their wounds, Silver did.
Mephiles did not teach them about people, Sonic did.
Mephiles did not show them how to fight back, Shadow did.
He watched as they played, argued, talked, cried, and slept in his void… but never once did he interfere.
All of these things they would have always learned on their own anyway. They had in the last timeline, so it was always inevitable.
Mephiles did not see the signs until it was too late.
When living through time by mortal standards, it was fascinating how it both moved so slowly and yet so fast all at once.
Being in the presence of mortals had warped his reality. He had been lenient, compliant. He had grown passive by the routine. Years had come and gone. Too many years. How many? It did not matter.
The boys had long since grown enough. They did not need Mephiles to pull them away from danger anymore.
When had he begun pulling them just when they called? When had their mere request become enough of a reason, rather than any risk to their lives? It was illogical, it was too comfortable, too routine, it was-
He sent them back. Back to their times, back to the real world. He heard as they called out to him in confusion, he did not answer. He never would. They had learned enough to fend for themselves, they did not need him to protect them.
Mephiles fell back into unawareness. They would forget him, he was sure. He was faceless, often voiceless, over the years. A figment of their imagination. They would dismiss his void as mere dreams or hallucinations. They were young enough. Their memories would be blurred with time, he knew, fragile as they were. He did little to impact their lives, only prevented them from ending too soon.
Soon enough, he would wake again to destroy the world, no matter who opposed him.
Even if it were those three.
Mephiles was not a father, after all.
