A/N: I decided to take (another) little break from my other story, Until It's Gone, to write this little two-chapter thing. I'm hoping that dabbling with other things simultaneously will get my creative juices flowing for UIG. I also have some unedited parts of a Sonic/Star Wars crossover (where the Sonic characters act out the roles of those in Star Wars (check my profile for more info)) if I ever get around to doing that. Oh well. Hope you guys like this one.

Chapter 1: Here Without You

"How can I make you understand?"

Knuckles jerked uneasily in his sleep. Grunting in his state of unconsciousness, he rolled over, trying to find some peaceful sleep.

"I must do something!"

A chill traveled down his spine enough to make his long red dreadlocks quiver in their slumber. Cringing his eyelids, the guardian silently pleaded for rest.

"Please, you must stop him!"

Knuckles suddenly jolted up, his eyes wide open and deep breaths clutching his lungs. Looking around frantically, the echidna was somewhat relieved to see nothing out of the ordinary: the mountain jutting up into the night sky, the clouds hovering not 100 feet above the floating island, the distant trees of forests sprawling the island, and, of course, the Master Emerald, beaming like a green sun in the twilight of a cool summer night.

But Knuckles could sense much more than just the light shimmering from the powerful stone beside him. He could feel a pulsing sensation tingling his senses as he gazed at the large green gem lying atop the shrine with him. It was not painful, but it was unnerving enough to keep him from lying down again to try and get some sleep. Stubborn as he was, however, he fought against it, embracing the stone summit on which he slept, denying attention to his anxieties. But it was no use.

The echidna squinted as the wind began to pick up, drying his eyes as he struggled to shut them for longer than a few hours. He lay sprawled on the summit of the shrine of the Master Emerald, the breeze blowing through his hair and over his back and along into the night air. But even with the gust in his ears, Knuckles could still hear a distant voice ringing with fear and desperation.

"I knew this would end in disaster!"

Knuckles brought his gloved hands to his ears and tried to bury his face into the stone surface beneath him, doing anything to bar the voice and the image from his head. But while he managed to shut out the rest of the world around him, he could not stop her from finding him.

"Why didn't you listen to me?"

"Aaaaahhh!" cried Knuckles as he suddenly rose to his feet. He brought a tightly clenched fist into the air and then drove it downward with a force so powerful it cracked through the rock at his feet. Then, with a vicious look burning in his amethyst eyes, he turned to the glowing Master Emerald.

"Why are you haunting me?" he demanded, his fist directed at the source of his nightmares and the reason for his being. "What do you want from me?"

The Emerald made no reply. Not even the voice of the ghost inside his head dared to answer him.

Knuckles could only close his eyes as he faced downward and crossed his arms, trying to make sense of these images. "We stopped Chaos," he muttered in an attempt to reason with the spirit. "The guardian of the Chao is at peace now. All that can be done to make up for what happened thousands of years ago has been done. Your father's mistakes have been atoned for."

Now he opened his eyes and stared directly into the Master Emerald. "So why do I still hear your voice?"

Knuckles waited several minutes for an answer. Of course, he thought. When I want to hear from you, I can't. Seeing no benefit of looking for something he would never find, Knuckles gave up and turned away. He sat down, arms rested on bent knees as his hands hung helplessly in front of him. Looking down at the spiked gloves he wore, the echidna thought for himself and tried to answer his own question. Why was that echidna girl—Tikal, that's right—on his mind so much lately?

He admitted, at least to himself, that he had had a desire to know more about her after the whole Station Square fiasco. But Knuckles had always longed to know more about the ancient people of his tribe. He felt it was only common to have those aspirations. But there was something undeniable about that girl that Knuckles couldn't help but long to think of.

He didn't really know very many girls, and he only felt truly comfortable around a few of those. He didn't think a whole lot of Amy. Her blind love for Sonic drew her to certain danger far too often for her own good, and Knuckles usually found her tagging along with the rest of them more annoying than anything. Cream was a friend and manner-minded girl, but she was young and quite ignorant concerning several worldly principles, and Knuckles did not associate with her all that much. And Rouge…Knuckles' eyes narrowed just thinking about her. He had never known a more conceited individual, and her mysterious mind games were always driving Knuckles crazy. Still, he had to respect her as a rival treasure hunter and martial artist. Knuckles liked to think she put on a show of being independent and carefree while secretly harboring feelings of compassion and the desire to do good. But that didn't stop him from frequently becoming flustered in her presence.

So what did he see in Tikal? For someone who had never even met her, Knuckles felt as though he knew, or envisioned, much about her. He saw her as kind, caring, brave, and pacifistic. She was very principled and stood up for what she believed in. She was sweet with the small Chao that lived in the gardens surrounding the Master Emerald shrine of the ancient times and friendly with the Chaos creature that protected the Chao. She hated only violence and greed, but would oppose even her own father when he overstepped those boundaries. She had a calm, soothing voice that only rose in desperation. She was void of anger. And she was very beautiful….

Knuckles stopped and realized how hot his cheeks had just become. Also noticing his shoulders were tensed up, he took a deep breath to relax himself. He was baffled by why he should be uneasy thinking about a girl he would never know. He did not believe it was his opinion that she was stunning, but that it was mere fact. What was wrong with him thinking about that? If he knew it to be true, why should he have trouble dealing with it?

After some more thinking on the matter, Knuckles came to realize how much he missed Tikal. A strange feeling for never having even acquainted her, but Knuckles could not escape that reality. He had seen those images of her telling him of the fate of her tribe—their tribe—and found himself wanting more of her, as though he were tempted by mere dreams of the echidna girl. He knew she was only a spirit now after all these years, but he still felt as though she were a part of his life somehow. Knuckles had never felt this way about anyone before—not even about those he did know.

After moments of being lost in thought, Knuckles came back to the present time, and felt his body grow fatigued again and his eyelids grow heavy. Confident that he could make it through the night now, he allowed himself to collapse to his sleeping position beside the Master Emerald once more. But before he drifted off, Knuckles resolved to himself to find a way to cope with his dreams and his feelings beginning tomorrow. The guardian of the Master Emerald would not be subject to torturous images and sounds of a girl long gone.

As he felt his eyes finally close for the night, Knuckles could see once again the image of Tikal in front of him, clear as day, pleading to him to save her from her fate.