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Silver’s head was spinning. Dozens of people seemed to rush past him, their faces all blurring together. Amy tilled the land, Charmy unpacked new mulch, Shadow planted new tulips; none of it was harmful, but it felt like too much was happening with his small garden.
“Having second thoughts?” a voice asked, snapping him back to reality.
“Ah! Oh. Hi Blaze,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not sure. I mean, I thought I wanted to open this place up to everyone, but now…”
“I understand. I, too, find it odd to see Omega in gardening gloves,” Blaze said with a smile.
“Haha! No, it’s not that. It’s…well…”
“You would rather the garden be yours?”
“No! I like having friends here, I just…don’t want it to all be for nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was hard enough trying to manage this all on my own- thank you for helping, by the way- but I really want to make something that lasts, and I don’t want so many people to help me just for me to mess it all up.”
Blaze sat there for a moment. “...You want this all to still be there when you go back.”
Silver reached for one of the yellow roses growing on a nearby bush. It was so pretty, so alive, and yet at the same time had thorns so sharp and aggressive. Something that painfully beautiful, it was exactly what made Silver want to start that garden in the first place. It was nothing like anything he had seen in his time.
He turned back to Blaze, beaming. “And after that, too! This is the kind of thing that should last forever.”
She let out a small sigh and smiled, brushing off her dress and taking a seat on the dirt ground. “And within less than a minute, you’ve already talked yourself out of what you were needlessly worrying about.”
He sat down next to her. “Do you really think this was a good idea? To share this with everyone?”
“I think if you believe it to be a good idea, then it is. Perhaps we could all use a little break to garden every once and a while.”
———✿❀✿❀✿❀✿———
No one seemed to get that break for a long time. The garden was officially opened, but soon after Neo Metal Sonic was defeated and Blaze left, a new threat was introduced: The Metal Virus. Infecting both flora and fauna, it threw the whole world into disarray, leaving everyone to pick up the pieces when it was finally gone. And while towns had buildings, landlines, and even entire foundations torn up and broken, there was one place Silver really wanted to check up on, and he was lucky enough to be accompanied by five friends.
As he arrived with Sonic, Tails, and Team Dark, he found his garden left in a much worse state than he had last seen it. Every plant that wasn't trampled was uprooted, the old shack was in shambles, and the dirt walls around the garden looked just one earthquake or tornado away from crumbling and caving in.
“YOUR GARDEN IS VERY FAR FROM ‘DECENT,’ AND EVEN FURTHER FROM ‘IMPRESSIVE.’ HOW DO YOU PLAN TO FIX THIS?” Omega asked as they approached the crater.
“Everything will need to be replanted. We cannot expect to grow these dead plants,” Shadow stated.
Sonic gave him a small teasing nudge. “And when did you become a plant expert?”
Shadow’s face scrunched up. “I’m working to repay my debt to the world from when I…” he seemed lost in thought. “...Don’t make me change my mind, hedgehog.”
Sonic’s smile only grew wider. “Yo, Silver! So do we need to pull up all these old plants?”
Silver looked around the garden. It had looked so good before the Metal Virus, but perhaps that was just the way of the world. Regardless of anything, it would never look good again if they didn't replant.
He let out a sigh. “Yeah. The whole thing will have to be completely redone.”
“You hear that Shadow? I bet I can pull up more dead plants than you can!” Sonic said, nudging Shadow with his elbow.
“No one said this was a competi-” but Sonic was already off. Shadow grumbled something under his breath, and raced after him.
Omega (excitedly?) joined in the competition, his giant robot claws tilling the land as a bonus. Silver was about to join them, but then he was stopped by Rouge.
“Wait just a second, hun,” she said, and then she stepped out of Tails’ way. “Go ahead, tell him what you were talking about earlier.”
“You heard that?” Tails asked.
“Oh, hush. Just tell him.”
Tails took in a deep breath, and then showed Silver a small potted plant. A sapling.
“After the Metal Virus was cured, I figured you might need to replant around here, and…this…she…has been sitting in my workshop for too long. I figured you would be able to…” Tails looked like he was struggling to get the words out “...take care of her better than I ever could.”
Silver was at a bit of a loss for words, so he just took the pot from him. “…I think a tree is just what this place needs.”
Tails smiled and gave the pot a small pat before he flew over to help Sonic.
“Do you have something you’d like to add, too?” Silver asked when he realized Rouge was still there.
“Not unless you happen to have one of those flowers that grow gems. I’m just here on…curiosity, is all. I always wondered when he’d finally move that old plant out of his workshop.”
Silver gave her a look. “I never thought you as the type to care about that sort of thing.”
She shrugged. “I’m not, but what kind of a treasure hunter would I be if I didn’t keep good tabs on one of the world’s most likely to have a chaos emerald at any given moment? It’s an eye for details, Silver. I’m sure you understand,” she said with a wink as she flew off to watch the growing competition between Sonic and Shadow.
In no time at all, the whole garden was uprooted. A blank slate. Silver dug up a small hole near the edge, and with Tails’ help, planted the small sapling. A small sapling to jump start the grand return of the garden.
———✿❀✿❀✿❀✿———
Silver tilled the dirt around the tree, which had already grown to be about two-thirds of his height. The rest of the garden had grown around it with similar speed, expanding far past the small crater in the road it had started as. It wasn’t just some small project anymore, it was…it was a garden.
It had been a while since Silver had the chance to take care of the place. When he was in the future, he was…hesitant (scared?) to go look at it, and the last time he came back to the past (after having a very helpful chat with Espio) he had to deal with the Egg City Crisis, and after that…well helping the Chaotix out with cases wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but he did miss his garden.
He set his hoe to the side and began pulling up weeds. They were all beautiful in their own way, but they kept other plants from growing, so they had to go. He pulled up a cluster of dandelions to find the roots went much deeper than he had thought. In fact, something was off about them. They were…orange? He reached down to pull it up, but found it grabbed him instead, pulling him down to the dirt. “ACK!” he yelped, using his powers to throw it up in the air, only to find…
“Sticks? What are you doing here?”
“Ahm wookin fow maggohfs,” she said, throwing a few white bugs into her mouth.
He gently set her back on the (now uprooted) dirt. “You’re looking for what?”
She swallowed the bugs in her mouth and held one in front of his face. “Maggots! They’re small animatronics filled with itty bitty cameras that the government sticks in people’s gardens to destroy them.”
“What? That’s awful!” Silver exclaimed. His garden was just starting to look good, the last thing he needed was some weird little robots ruining it. “How do you get rid of them?”
“Well, the only thing that can destroy government property is acid, so the easiest way to get rid of these things is to-”
“Silver! It’s so good to see you!” Amy interrupted, graciously saving Silver from being convinced to eat bugs.
“Amy! I heard you went on some island vacation or something. How was it?” Silver asked, giving his friend a side hug.
She took a seat on a nearby makeshift bench. “It was lovely,” she sighed. “Going to a beautiful new place, seeing how powerful love can be even tens of thousands of years ago…it made me want to go out on my own adventure.”
Silver took a seat next to her. Sticks went back to digging through the dirt.
“I wanted to come here first, though,” Amy then said, handing Silver a small potted plant. It was a magenta poppy, and its petals shimmered with a faint light blue light. “This is a flower I picked up from the islands. I figured the ancients would like it if their flora was able to live and be loved somewhere else.”
Silver shifted the pot around in his hands. Its light blue shimmer gleamed at him, and it almost looked like it was…smiling? Like it was happy to be there. He rubbed his eyes, and it was gone.
“I don’t know who the ancients were, but I’m sure they’d love that! Here, there should be a little space in between Espio’s hakusai and Tangle’s sunflowers.”
Amy followed Silver deeper into the garden to a small patch of dirt.
“I hope you don’t mind me inviting some friends to the garden,” Amy said as he dug a small hole in the earth just big enough for the flower to snuggle inside.
He used his powers to gently lift the flower up from the pot and above the space. “Of course not! It’s nice to see other people care about the garden just as much as-”
“Mr. Silver! It’s so good to see you!” Cream shouted from the distance, snapping Silver out of his focus and causing him to drop the flower on the ground, dirt breaking off the roots as some of the roots broke as well.
“Ack!” he exclaimed as he scrambled to gently pick the flower up with his psychokinesis again.
“Oh my! What’s that?” Cream asked, plopping down next to Silver and watching as he carefully set the flower into the ground, correctly this time.
“This is one of the flowers I brought back from the Starfall Islands. Would you like to be the one to water it?” Amy told her.
“Oh, yes ma’am! I think I still know where the watering can is in the shed. I'll be right back!” Cream shouted, and she was gone faster than she arrived.
“It’s nice to have this here for when she grows up,” Vanilla said, sitting down next to Amy and Silver. “Think of how much more abundant this whole place will be by the time she’s your age.”
Silver looked over at the Tails’ tree sapling. How much would it grow by the time Cream was as old as he was? How much of his garden would grow without him?
He blinked and Cream was back, Sticks right behind her. “Mr. Silver! Ms. Sticks helped me get the watering can and a bunch of worms!” the rabbit girl said as she struggled to carry the full pail over to the plant.
“They aren’t ‘worms’ they’re Wriggly Operations Roaming Through Soil: a common misconception. These things are secret servants of the queen of the mole people in the planet's core that fight to restore evil damage done by maggots!”
“...worts…” Amy mumbled under her breath.
Cream carefully tipped the watering can over, lightly watering the poppy, and Sticks released the worms W.O.R.T.S. into the soil.
Silver carefully packed the soil around the flower. A blue shimmering light flew across its petals, and then out into the sky, as if it was someone trying to say “thank you.”
———✿❀✿❀✿❀✿———
“Have you visited it?” Blaze asked, snapping Silver out of his thoughts. He hadn’t even noticed he had spaced out, much less that Blaze was here.
“What do you mean?” he asked, trimming thorns off a nearby rosebush. That’s what he was doing: trimming thorns.
She took a seat up against the shed. “Have you visited the garden in the future?”
“Oh. No.” He snipped off another thorn.
“Why not?”
“It’s all so much.”
“Are you still worried it won’t be there?”
Silver paused. “No, I don’t think I am. I’m starting to be pretty confident in it, actually. With every new thing added, it’s slowly becoming its own ecosystem, slowly starting to feel more and more…familiar. Does that make sense?”
“Not really, but I understand what you’re getting at. What I don’t understand, however, is why you’re trimming thorns when, as bush roses, they will just grow back.”
“...The Chaotix are coming to the garden in two hours.”
“Oh, so you’re trying to impress. I see,” Blaze said playfully.
He nudged her away. “Oh hush, you.”
She stood up and stretched. “Ha ha! I’m not just here to make fun of you, though. I have something I would like to show you.”
“Oh?” Silver said, putting down his clippers.
“Come on, it’s a visual.” She grabbed his hand and guided him through the garden, all the way to the tree (that was beginning to grow at an impressive rate) , which had a small silver plaque in front of it. It read “Victory Garden” at the top of the stone in large letters, and the rest was…names? Silver the Hedgehog, Blaze the Cat, Miles Prower, Amy Rose, was it-
“It’s a list of everyone who has helped to work on the garden,” Blaze chimed in. “It’s a list of all your friends,” she added after a moment.
“Blaze…this is so cool,” Silver said, tracing a finger over the lettering on the plaque. He was almost speechless.
“This is the kind of place that deserves to be remembered, Silver. You created a peaceful garden in times of unrest, and have been able to uphold it with friends despite everything. That’s worth celebrating,” she said, smiling at him.
He kept tracing his finger over his name. Something in his mind clicked.
———✿❀✿❀✿❀✿———
“FINE. YOU WILL HIDE AND I WILL ‘GO SEEK.’”
“You have to close your eyes! It isn’t fair if you can see me!”
“I AM A ROBOT. MY VISUAL RECEPTORS DO NOT CLOSE.”
“Fine, just do this,” Silver said, pushing Omega’s creaky and rusty limbs to where his hands covered his eyes. “And now you count to one hundred!”
“ASSESSING: SHADOW TOLD ME TO ‘WATCH’ YOU. I CAN NOT DO THAT IF I CAN NOT SEE YOU.”
“Dad will be fine! Trust me,” Silver said, putting a hand on the robot that towered over him.
“I CAN NOT ‘TRUST.’ BUT IF YOU ARE ASKING TO OVERRIDE SHADOW’S ORDER, THAT I CAN DO. BUT ONLY FOR ONE HUNDRED SECONDS.”
Silver giggled. “That’s the spirit!”
Omega began counting, and Silver ran off. He rushed into the nearby city, with tall buildings of pale gray, blue, and red. The streets were bustling with people, and there was a tree on every street corner. He kept running, trying to find the perfect hiding spot, when he tripped and fell on the pavement.
He stood back up slowly, brushing off his oversized shirt, and looked back at what he tripped over. It was a large tree root. He followed it with his eyes, and saw it led to the biggest tree in the city. It was taller than most of the surrounding buildings, and put all other trees in the area to shame.
It was perfect.
He climbed up the vines surrounding the tree, scraping his shoes on the moss that eclipsed the trunk. When he got to the top, he shuffled across a branch to peak through the leaves and see how beautiful the city looked from so high up.
He briefly lost his footing for a moment, his foot slipping off the branch, but he was able to cling his body to it before he fell. When he gathered himself together, he noticed he was staring down at a beautiful…garden?
CREEEAAKKK
He snapped his head around, and saw the branch he was dangling on begin to slowly break. He barely had any time to process before he was pummeling to the ground. He tried to catch himself with his powers, but he wasn’t nearly experienced and he barely had any time to get his thoughts in order.
He faceplanted into the dirt.
He brushed his shirt off and shook his spines out when he was face to face with his name. He stumbled backward for a moment before taking a second look at the stone in front of the tree. It said “Victory Garden” at the top, and then had a list of names, with his being the first. He scanned the list to see if he knew anyone else, and the only names he recognized were…“Shadow the Hedgehog” and “E-123 Omega.” Why would he, his dad, and his strange robot uncle be on some weird stone in the middle of a garden in the city?
A voip in the distance followed by a “Silver? Where are you?!” Uh oh. He was in trouble.
A few voips later, and Shadow had found him, towering over the six year old hedgehog. He was giving him that grumpy Shadow look.
Silver wasn’t even going to attempt to explain himself. “Dad! Dad! Look! This thing says my name! And yours too!” he said, tugging on his leg.
Shadow looked down at the plaque, and his eyes widened. He crouched down to get a closer look, and ran his hand over the list of names, feeling the groves in the stone.
“What is it?” Silver asked, mesmerized by the way Shadow was mesmerized by it.
He stood back up, assuming what Silver liked to call “ultimate thinky face.” “It’s something you’ll understand when you’re older. Come on now, how about we go get some apple rabbits at that new snack place?” he said, offering Silver a hand.
“Hooray! I love apple rabbits!” Silver shouted as he left the garden with Shadow, sparing a glance to the flower that smiled at him on his way out.