Angel and Devil

“He was just skin and bones!” Silver hugged his knees close to his chest. “For six months he was just locked in a cell and- W-why couldn’t I have gone back to earlier? I could have- Maybe I could have done- I don’t know…Something.”

Whisper’s wisps cuddled close to him, their voices warbling with concern. He knew them now. Recognizing them during the War had been jarring and Silver had had to suppress an urge to approach them. From their perspective he was a complete stranger and Whisper, despite her moniker as the Guardian Angel of the Battlefield, wasn’t very trusting.

Silver wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Mephiles was as unmoving as always and he hadn’t commented on Silver’s presence at all yet this visit. They’d had a late frost that winter and the rose bushes were late to bloom, leaving the demon’s crystalline body uncovered to gleam in the sunlight.

“When I arrived, Infinite had already kidnapped Sonic and Tails was missing. Amy took one look at me and you know what she said? Not oh Silver, it’s so great you’re here.” He attempted to mimic the pinkette’s voice. “Not even This must be serious because Silver is here.” He sighed.

The wisps looked at him expectantly.

“No.” Silver huffed bitterly. “She said why didn’t you save him? Why did you let him die?” Silver’s snout wrinkled. “Everyone thought he was dead. And she…and they…blamed me for not saving him.”

Mephiles’ deep snickering filled the space, making the bare garden feel even more empty and cold. “You and I both know that fool wouldn’t let death stop him.”

Silver remembered Princess Elise in her white gown and feather laurel, kneeling over the hero that everyone thought was gone. By some magic, she’d reattached Sonic’s soul and then the resurrected hedgehog has led his compatriots to defeat a rampaging god. At least, that’s what they did in another world, another time.

In the past, Elise was a Queen now and had united the human territories to resist Eggman during the war. Silver had stayed with the mobian Resistance, but he’d heard the reports. He wondered if she still wore white.

“In a lot of ways, Sonic came back from the dead again.” Silver rubbed his burning eyes. “Descending from the heavens to lead the Resistance to victory against that devilish jackal.” He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Amy apologized to me, of course she did. I know she meant it, that she’d been distraught and in mourning when she said those terrible things to me, but…her words still hurt.”

Silver leaned back to stare at the grey, overcast sky. “And it wasn’t just the words. I felt like I had broken a promise I don’t remember making. Like whenever I show up, I have to solve a problem or bring hope. Like it’s a price I have to pay to be in that time. I can’t just…be me.”

Why was he saying all of this out loud? He was a hero, just like Sonic, right? Sonic didn’t lay around complaining about his responsibilities. Sonic threw himself at danger over and over again just for the fun of it. Silver grimaced.

He wasn’t Sonic.

“When I go back now, the first thing I’m always asked is ‘what’s gone wrong now?’.” Silver growled at the wisps. “It’s like I’m an ill omen. Either I come too early and ruin everyone’s mood because they know everything is about to go wrong, or I come too late and they ask me why I didn’t come sooner. I- I can’t win!”

Silver gripped his quills. “I don’t know why I even bother anymore.” He admitted quietly.

“Why do you still go back?” Mephiles interrupted the conversation Silver was having with himself, his voice more hollow than usual with no greenery to reverberate off of.

Silver frowned, the sudden challenge inspiring stubbornness. “Because it the right thing to do. I have to protect this future.”

“Even though you don’t belong here?” Silver hated how infuriatingly nonchalant Mephiles’ always sounded, as if everything was less than nothing in his eyes. Paltry. Juvenile. Inconsequential.

“Well, I don’t seem to belong back then either.” Silver responded bitterly.

“Why do you burden yourself with concern about belonging when it brings you such pain?”

“Because…” Silver began to respond and found he wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t know. Loneliness, I guess. No place feels like home.”

The garden rumbled with Mephiles’ laughter.

Silver’s ears pinned back. “I keep forgetting you’re not just an evil demon, but a massive jerk, too.”

“You and I are alike in so many ways, Silver. I find the fact amusing, nothing more.”

“I’m nothing like you.” Silver rolled to his feet, squaring up with the reposed figure.

One acid green eye watched him. “You miss Iblis, just as I do.”

Silver opened his mouth to deny the ridiculous accusation but froze. The fire and ash. The dead and darkness. With horror, Silver realized he was homesick for the terrible place he risked his life to erase. His stomach churned. That couldn’t be right. Who could want to go back to- to- to all that terrible, horrible…

“That’s not true.” He heard himself lie. No, he didn’t want to go back where he belonged. That would be stupid.

Mephiles watched him in silence for a long moment. Silver looked at his boots, but saw nothing. What was he doing here? In this garden. In this time. In his life.

“Despite your insistence on disrupting my eternity,” Mephiles spoke finally, “I find myself looking forward to your brief, if infantile, visits, Silver, so I will make you a deal.”

“No!” Silver snapped, sounding shamefully petulant.

“You would dismiss me out of hand without hearing what I have to offer?”

Silver turned away. “You have nothing I could ever want.”

Mephiles’ chuckled and the fur on the back of Silver’s neck rose. “This habit of lying you’ve developed is very disappointing, Silver.”

“Stop saying my name.” He said through gritted teeth.

“How much longer will you keep fighting?”

Despite his better judgment, Silver turned back to face Mephiles. “What?”

“When you are then, you are fighting, and when you are now, you are waiting to fight. For how much longer will you continue to fight?”

All these questions were making Silver feel tired. Great. Another place he didn’t feel comfortable. He was running out of place he could just sit and not be hounded by something. “I…I don’t know. Until I can’t.”

“Until you die?”

Silver stilled. That would be how he would go, wouldn’t it? In battle against the countless threats between then and now. He’d fight until he got sloppy and slipped up at the wrong time.

Sonic grew old and disappeared. Shadow lived happily as an benevolent immortal. Amy had her large family whose descendants still existed today. Tails’ legacy made the sustainable, glittering cities of today possible, his name plastered on his inventions and countless university buildings. The bats still preserved Knuckles’ legacy by protecting Angel Island and the Master Emerald.

And Silver fought the past’s battles until they inevitably killed him.

His shoulders sagged. “What sort of deal are you offering?”

“I will remain here to listen to your pain and your whining-”

“You already do that.”

Without warning, Mephiles’ head turned to face Silver and the white hedgehog nearly leaped out of his skin. In all the years he’d been visiting the rose garden, the half-god had not moved once. “Do not mistake my stillness for disability, Silver. I am no more tethered to this spot than you are.”

Silver gulped.

“I will remain here to bear witness to you and in return, once you are done, once your body has reached its limits, once you can no longer bring yourself to fight the battles of a past you cannot live in for a future that does not want you, I will ask one simple thing of you, Silver.”

“What is it?”

“Burn for me.”