Chapter Text
“Are you happy now?” Sonic felt himself say quietly, barely audible over the dusty wind and crackling of endless fire as he stood next to his enemy, his kidnapper, his torturer; his last companion on the entire planet. Even the Ultimate Lifeform had fallen before this man. “Is winning and ruling the world all you ever dreamed it would be, Dr. Robotnik?”
The Doctor was silent. They both knew the answer. Tears dripped down Sonic’s cheeks and he swallowed thickly. He didn't want one of the last living voices heard on his beautiful planet to be the pathetic sound of his own wailing. He sat down next to his unspeaking enemy, his legs hanging over the edge of what used to be the Doctor’s stronghold.
The sunlight, barely visible through the clouds of dust and ash, faded slowly as day transitioned to night, then eventually day again. Time dragged on like molasses. The world had ended, but the sun still rose and set, taunting him. Why was he still here, why had he deserved to be spared?
All life had gone; plants, animals, humans, mobians, and everything in between. It was only a matter of time before Robotnik starved to death, and eventually himself as well. With how Sonic’s last year had gone, he knew he would be more than half there already (stick-thin and desperately thirsty, covered in injuries and scars) if Shadow hadn’t……but he still didn't have it in him to move. How long had it been? Two days? Three? Did it even matter?
With Shadow’s chaos energy melded with his own, Sonic knew that if he took care of himself, he could live forever. He wasn't immune to illness or injury like his once-rival; he could die from those, he could just tell, but why would he even want to? Everything he had to live for was blood and ash and bones, now.
They just sat. No more titles, no more purpose. Ivo Robotnik and Sonic, all alone as they watched the world burn. Sonic didn't even pull away from his ledge when, as the sun set again, the clouds opened up and dropped acid rain on the scorched earth below.
It burned, God it burned, but at least he could feel it. He watched spiritlessly as the acid sizzled at the skin and fur on his legs and feet. His shoes were long gone, somewhere in the rubble. He let himself lean into the pain, more tears dripping silently down his face. He felt Robotnik stare at him that night for hours, but Sonic never glanced his way.
When the pitch black faded again, making way for the dusty red of what he now considered Day, Robotnik moved. Sonic finally, finally turned to face his adversary, now looming over him. The battered man sent him an expression that felt loaded with too much emotion for words. Pain, fear, anger, guilt, sorrow….and determination.
Robotnik opened his mouth to speak, and Sonic flinched, not opening his eyes again until he heard the doctor’s mouth click shut. The human’s eyebrows had furrowed, but he didn't move to speak again, instead turning on his heel and walking deeper into the ruins of his facility. Sonic watched for a moment as he walked away, until the man stopped and looked behind him at the former hero and waited.
It took a moment for it to dawn on Sonic that Robotnik wanted him to follow. He blinked. For what? But the longer the staredown stretched, the more uncomfortable the blue hedgehog became until he sighed, stood, and followed. The doctor took a breath, nodded, and continued his trek.
The tunnels below the facility were almost endless. Sonic felt his heart beat faster as they descended deeper and deeper, eventually stopping off in a storage room to grab a flashlight so Robotnik could see more than a foot in front of himself. He didn't trust the doctor at all, but in the end, what was he going to do? Kill Sonic? Didn't sound so bad, after everything, he thought darkly.
But despite his apprehension, no attack was sprung. The Doctor reached a large door at the end of a long hallway and pried it open. And inside sat a room with two chambers on platforms. One was shut with steel security doors covering its contents. The other, however….
The Master Emerald. Surrounded, amazingly, horrifyingly, by all Seven Chaos Emeralds.
Sonic stopped in his tracks. Could the power of the emeralds even–?
“No, they can’t.”
He flinched, hard, at the sound of Robotnik’s voice. “What–?”
“They can't bring the earth back. They can't bring back what is already dead, Hedgehog.”
Sonic’s heart shattered just a little more, more tears burning his eyes.
“Then why did you–,” he croaked, looking almost pleadingly at his greatest enemy as he cleared his dry throat, “--why did you bring me here?”
The doctor stepped to the side, toward the chamber that was sealed shut. With no power to the building, though, the doctor simply grabbed the hard metal door and dragged it open as well, releasing a rainbow of light from within.
Sonic shielded his eyes for a moment, then squinted as his eyes watered to get a look at the glowing, opalescent crystal within. “What…is that thing?”
“This, Sonic, is something I like to call the Paradox Prism. We…I have been researching it for over a year now.”
“What does it…do?” Sonic asked, stepping closer and feeling its power reach for him.
“It’s some kind of interdimensional, time-space conduit. We harnessed its almost limitless energy to power the Mind Beam, though you know how that turned out. But in our experiments…”
The doctor trailed off as he glared at the crystal in deep thought.
“Uh. Hello?”
The doctor startled out of his rumination, an arm flailing, which elicited another harsh flinch from Sonic.
“Oh, yes, in my experiments, it gave me glimpses of the future, the past…and of entirely different realities.” He turned to look at Sonic.
“Different–what?”
“Realities, hedgehog. Other universes, parallel to our own. Some similar, some wildly different. There was one reality though, that piqued my interest. So similar….but with a key, and dangerous, difference. You.”
Sonic sighed. “...Me. And?”
“That world’s Sonic….he was rotten from the start, just like me.” The doctor said, looking distinctly proud. “A true villain. Heh, betrayed his little friends so early on that he’d barely met the little fox and the pink one before he turned to my side of the law, if you get my drift.”
It rankled heavily at Sonic that even now, after he’d murdered them, Robotnik never even bothered to learn his brother and best friends’ names. Before he could voice it though, the doctor continued.
“That one’s simply dastardly, from what I saw of him. I’d hoped to work with him someday, not that that will ever come to pass now.”
Sonic growled.
“Why are you telling me all this? Why did you bring me here!?” He demanded again, feeling so much grief and guilt and rage. “Did you just want to show me I'm a failure in every universe or something? Torture me a little more as your last hurrah? What’s even the point anymore?”
“The point, my rodent friend,” he said, barrelling onward in his speech as Sonic hissed and took a threatening step toward him at the term of endearment, “Is that as things are, we are both going to die here on this fiery husk of death that I created. I have seen that world’s future and I know it will go the same way. Unless.”
“Unless what?” Sonic asked, impatient and exhausted.
“Unless I do one last good deed, and throw them a curveball.”
“A curveball.” Sonic stated skeptically, crossing his arms.
The doctor nodded, looking at Sonic. “Only a being with enough chaos energy can make it through the portal the prism creates. And someone has to hold it open from this side.”
“You’re not making any sense!”
Then, without warning, Robotnik grabbed the Seven Chaos Emeralds, rising as they spun around him. Sonic shouted, panicked, and dashed for him, only to be blown back and watch in mounting horror as the Master Emerald and the Paradox Prism rose from their podiums.
The room shook, dirt and dust falling from the ceiling as the ground rumbled. Bits of broken metal fell to the ground as energy swirled around the Doctor.
The human spoke, voice echoing with a thousand others as the Paradox Prism floated to his hands, “You’ll need a boost to ensure you make it. I won't apologize for what I've done to you, hedgehog, that’s just not my style. That said, try to be happy, I suppose. You get a new chance to save the world, even if it’s not this one. Don't say I never did anything for you.”
Before Sonic could fully comprehend what was happening, the Master Emerald flung itself toward him with a wave of Robotnik’s hand, shrank, and turned itself into a pendant around the Hedgehog’s neck.
There was an echoing chuckle, “Your boost, Hero.”
Sonic felt his body lift, and he struggled, terrified, as he was dragged toward the Paradox Prism. The last thing he saw, before the shifting of colors like northern lights dragged him into unconsciousness, was a bittersweet smile on his enemy’s face.
“Don’t waste your chance.”
—
Bright light seared through his eyelids, making him scrunch his nose and cover his face.
He had gone from pure, pitch darkness, to a cacophony of brightness and noise in what felt like both an eternity and no time at all. Even at gunpoint, he wouldn't have been able to describe the feeling of being stretched and dragged through reality itself, scattered and whole and nothing and everything all at once, only to be crushed back into himself.
As he lay where he…landed?...and settled back into existence, for lack of better phrasing, he tried to catch his breath. His heart was pounding and he was scared, so scared, of what Robotnik had done.
It had been so abrupt, and the man had been so vague about it all. A different world? Doomed future? A curveball? Try to be happy? An evil doppelganger!?
Oh, God, he was the curveball.
And all at once, out of the shock, panic, and numbness, came rage.
He bit his lip, scrunching his eyes shut even tighter as he resisted the angry tears. Even to the end, doing his last ‘good deed’, Robotnik didn't give a single shit what Sonic wanted. Did he really think that plopping him into some other reality where other versions of his family were alive somehow made up for murdering, destroying everyone and everything Sonic ever loved?
He didn't want to open his eyes. He didn't want to accept that his reality was gone, no matter how gruesome it was. His heart hammered and his hands turned to fists. It wasn't fair. It wasn’t fair. He’d wanted to find his friends’ bodies, no matter how long it took, and give them proper burials.
But now he was unfathomably far from them…and they would rot.
He sniffled. He could feel his body shaking, so he curled up and tried to hold himself together.
Everything around him felt overwhelming. Sounds were deafening in his ears and he wasn't sure if the sensation was real or just part of the panic, but he pressed his scruffy ears flat against his head in an attempt to block it all out. The feeling of the wind through his fur and the ground at his back inspired a similar sensation of overwhelm, but all he could do was curl up tighter and tighter still, fetal on the ground and burying his face in his knees, as his whole body trembled and his lungs begged for enough air.
He knew he had to pull himself together. He knew, logically, that there was nothing to go back to except a slow, inevitable death. He knew he wouldn't have had the strength, even though he knew he could keep doing so indefinitely, to live when all that he loved was ash at his feet.
If Doctor Robotnik was truthful, this was a world he might be able to save. It wasn’t His, nothing ever would be again in this new reality, but this world still had lives worth saving in it, His or not. And he wasn't selfish enough to disregard that. He wasn't allowed to be selfish. He was a hero, the hero, and Robotnik had sent him here to save this world. No matter his feelings about the man who had broken him so completely, who had laughed as he screamed and begged for mercy; this world may have a chance thanks to him.
If Sonic could avoid fucking everything up. And that was a big “If.” He didn't have a strong track record. The guilt and grief gnawed at his insides. He shoved the feeling down. He didn't deserve to feel sad. He’d failed them, all of them. Let them die gruesomely.
–
Big went first, only a short month after Sonic’s rescue. As the cat ran from Badniks invading the Resistance base, Froggy was startled and jumped from his arms. Just a split second of confusion was all it took for the bots to close in and rend him in half. The metallic smell never truly left his nose.
–
He’d seen Rouge’s mangled corpse in the rubble. He’d seen her snapped wings hanging limply at her side as she stared blankly into the sky. He’d closed her eyes without a word and then had to leave her behind.
–
He’d heard the sickening crunch behind him as he desperately tried to protect his little brother from a wave of badniks. He’d turned in what felt like slow motion and, to the tune of death, he’d looked upon a huge bot, its foot where Tails once stood, horrible red splashed across it and the ground beneath.
–
He’d had to ignore Amy’s scream as a building fell on her; as he pulled Cream, sobbing her mother’s name, from the way of a crashing car as the world fell apart around them.
He’d let out a wail only minutes later, as an explosion rocked him to his core and Cream’s small hand was ripped from his with a cry, never to be seen again as she’d crashed, broken, into the bay.
–
He’d tasted vomit and blood as Knuckles collapsed on top of him, protecting him from a rain of bullets. He saw the light fade from his strongest friend and he’d closed his eyes and hidden from the pain, like a coward.
–
He’d watched, felt Shadow turn to dust as the last bits of chaos energy drained into Sonic through their clasped hands until he held nothing but empty air.
–
He knew the bodies of his other friends had been out there, somewhere. Any who might have survived the battle itself fell to the power of the Mind Beam. He didn't know what it had done to their brains to end every life in an instant. He wasn't sure if he’d ever want to know, but now he never would.
What he did know was that they were gone.
“Don't cry, Faker. You’re our last hope.”
He was a failure. He’d promised Shadow that he would save all those still alive. He was their last hope. For all the good that did them. How was he supposed to save anyone in this world when he’d let everyone who depended on him down?
He grit his teeth and held fast, clenching his fists and dragging small scratches across his upper arms as he tried to pull himself out of the panic gripping his mind.
Fearful, frustrated tears ran down his cheeks as he yet resisted opening his eyes. Seeing it would make it real and he desperately wanted it to all have been some awful dream or another one of Infinite’s torturous illusions.
Unfortunately, his wishes wouldn't matter.
He took a trembling breath, more of a gasp, as a sob tore through him, unbidden. Then, his breath stuttered to a stop and his heart skipped a beat.
A voice cut through the cacophony of noise around him.
“Over here, guys, just this way. The burst of chaos energy came from near the lake!”
Tails.