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The war to take back the planet, as Knuckles has heard most people calling it, ended a while ago so Knuckles has long since headed back to Angel Island. The Master Emerald got through the war just fine, hidden away by Knuckles in the tunnels underneath the ruins. For once, his preparations held.
Since then, Knuckles figured he should excavate more of the tunnels, since that plan worked so well. Knuckles also quickly realized that, unlike the buildings above ground that have nearly all fallen to ruin, these tunnels have been preserved a lot better. He’s found intact pottery, and artworks – murals and sculptures. Some of them even have writing on them. Writing!
Knuckles knows so little about his ancestors, even having lived all his life in these ruins. The Master Emerald communicates with him, but it’s not exactly with the clearest of descriptions. Or any instructions either.
He’s made a project of excavating more of the ruins and writing about his findings. To share with his friends and ideally with others who’d be interested too, but mainly for himself. He’s the person who most wants to know about his ancestors, after all. And he’s the only one left to document or remember any of this.
It’s part of his duty, as the last of them.
It’s as Knuckles is copying down the latest mural in his notebook so he can look at it later – or show it to Tails, maybe, if he visits anytime soon – that Knuckles starts to get suspicious. He’s seen this mural a few times by now, has looked at it pretty intensely, but not outright tried to copy down the most important parts before. Well, what he assumes are the most important parts. He’s doing his best, and he’s dedicated.
Anyway, it’s only now that he’s noticing how... strange the person depicted in the mural looks.
It’s not a golden, flying hedgehog this time, either. No, this one’s depicted together in a mural with an ordinary echidna, only he stands out from the rest of the scene. Noticeably.
The murals are covered in grime and dust, even as much as Knuckles has managed to wipe off, so the hedgehog is a dusty, tan color. But, squinting suspiciously at the mural and holding his notebook closed with his other hand, Knuckles steps forward and starts to scrub at the hedgehog with his glove. As more grime comes off, one fact becomes clear: that hedgehog is definitely supposed to be white.
Or silver.
With a distinctive crest of quills on his head, and though he’s also wearing some period-typical clothing, his boots and gloves are entirely out of place compared to what the ancient echidna is wearing. Or what anyone should’ve been wearing at that time.
Knuckles squints at the mural for a moment.
On the one hand: that is obviously Silver. On the other hand: what?
Grimly, he pulls out his comm.
Knuckles kept his comm that Tails created, even after the war. Best to keep it on hand, he figured. And here he is now, calling up Silver. The time traveler had decided to stick around even after the war, to help with the rebuilding – at least, that’s the last Knuckles heard of him.
“Hi Knuckles!” Silver sounds cheerful when he picks up. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Hey Silver,” says Knuckles, still staring down the mural. “Think you can explain why you are in a mural made by my ancestors?”
“Huh?”
“Oh,“ says Silver, later, staring up at the mural in question. “I guess… that’s really supposed to be me?”
Every single echidna depicted has had the same earthy fur colors and styles of clothing, traditional, the same as Knuckles (mostly. Well, not so much the clothes). The mural, after Knuckles has wiped it off a bit, nearly glows with how bright the figure is.
“Yep,” says Knuckles flatly.
Silver touches the mural, but – Knuckles concedes – very carefully and just with the tips of his fingers.
“So,” begins Knuckles, who still wants some answers already. “How were you around in the time period to end up included in this mural?”
The simple answer to that question is the one it always is: “I went there to save the future.”
People usually react with disbelief or hostility when Silver first shows up. The ancient echidna hadn’t been too happy with him at first, either, but Tikal had vouched for Silver. She was the chief’s daughter and also the one who tended to the altar. Silver recognized the altar when she brought him there, even if it actually looked pretty different from how it looks now in Knuckles’ time. Long ago it had a roof, and well, there were a lot more buildings around…
But the Master Emerald was just the same.
“I don’t think they liked me at first. At all. Except for this girl named Tikal-”
“I know her.”
“Huh.” Silver pauses. “How though?”
“The Master Emerald showed her to me,” admits Knuckles. Then he doesn’t elaborate with anything more, so Silver doesn’t push. Knuckles can get testy.
“Tikal let me stay. She didn’t mind my company, so I spent a lot of time around the altar with her – and the Chao! She took care of the Chao, too, watched over them and played games with them. I wish the Chao existed in my time…”
Silver has seen a lot of different apocalypses, and some of them – well, of course they’re all bad. But some of them are definitely a lot milder than others, but even then, Silver’s never seen a single Chao. They always disappear somehow.
He just hopes that one day he’ll manage to create a future where they exist.
“Tikal, though. She said she could tell I only had the intention to protect. She was really nice, but she never let me touch the Master Emerald – just like you, heh.”
Knuckles asks earnestly, “What was it like back then? Were there many people? What about the buildings? How many are left from that time? Did they…”
Silver thinks back and tries to describe to Knuckles, the great temples of stone that still remain, but they’re overgrown and cracked now. They were decorated then, lively, people kept them clean and beautiful and there’s no way for Knuckles to do all that work on his own. Silver flew over the city once, looked at it from above, saw the blue-green water in the canals that ran through the city and the great market that looked like an explosion of color from above. And the many houses of wood that didn’t survive the millennia afterwards, and the plantations of maize and beans and chili, farther out.
Knuckles listens intently, so Silver tries to think of all the details.
It’s kinda nice to talk about it. To describe another time and place that isn’t another one of his terrible bleak futures. Knuckles watches him the whole time, not interrupting, just… soaking it up.
Eventually, though, Knuckles says, “Why were you there to save the world though? Isn’t this time period the one where everything that destroys your future happens?”
Time is much twistier than that.
“There was this super important object which was destroyed many thousands of years ago, which turned out to be the only solution to a really weird apocalypse. So I had to go back and stop that from happening.”
“’Important object’?” Knuckles echoes. “Huh. What was it?”
Well, that apocalypse hasn't happened yet, Silver is almost sure. And if it hasn’t happened yet, he shouldn’t tell Knuckles about it – that never ends well. Never. Silver can show up just in time to help when things have already started going wrong, or he can go poking around so far back in the past from the event that he’s unlikely to mess something up, but that’s it. Warning people a few years before something is set to happen always seems to cause something bizarre to happen, which then makes it unbelievably difficult to fix the end of the world.
Instead of saying all that, Silver says, “I took care of it. Um, anyway, that answers your questions, right?”
Knuckles rubs a hand over the mural, frowning. Finally he says, “I suppose.”
They both look at the mural. It really does look like Silver, that hedgehog. Well, it pretty much has to be him… but to see himself in a mural? Who would’ve thought him worth having painted?
Silver then looks at the other figure portrayed, the echidna. It’s a girl, he can tell from the clothing, and her fur is lighter than most echidnas’ fur had been. Perhaps that’s an artistic choice, or… she does look an awful lot like Tikal, now that Silver’s thinking about her.
Tikal…
“Do you think it was Tikal who had this mural made?” Silver blurts out.
He can’t think of anyone else who would’ve even wanted it made, but then again, what does Silver know? He doesn’t even know what happened to Tikal after he left – she was disagreeing with her father at the end, there, but he doesn’t know how they resolved that. Silver hopes Tikal managed to convince him – with her open heart and faith in others, she must have.
Knuckles frowns. “Maybe. Maybe not. It sounded like you two were good friends.”
“I don’t know about that…” Silver sure likes to think they were friends, though.
“Silver.” Knuckles turns to him, chews on his words for a second. “Thank you. For telling me, and… for remembering.”
“Hmm?”
“You’ll remember the echidnas, even after I’m gone,” says Knuckles. “So I won’t be the last one.”
It’s a responsibility – it’s obvious, with Knuckles looking at him so seriously as he says it. Silver remembers timelines that have once been and now never will be, so many ruins, ruins upon ruins, broken cities and destroyed temples – and no one else will ever remember them. It’s just Silver.
So Silver hopes he can keep it when he promises, “I will. And I’ll try to keep others remembering, too.”
Knuckles claps him on the shoulder. “Good.”
They look at the mural, again, and Silver makes a decision. “Actually I… could I help with your excavation? My psychokinesis is precise enough to lift a lot of dirt without destroying anything, and I care about this history, too…”
Knuckles looks at him, taken aback. Then he smiles. “Yeah. Yeah alright, you can help.”