Atonement

-: A Sonic the Comic fanfiction :-

I'm not a hero.

Yeah, I know if I said that out loud somebody would object and hey, it might even be you - shouting at me, saying I'm wrong, that because I fight Robotnik time after time with no reason and nothing to gain that it has to make me a hero.

You're wrong.

You have no idea how wrong you are.

Okay, so I might have freed you from a badnik shell, from that metallic prison that Robotnik puts innocent people in before sending them out to try and kill me and yeah, that makes us both seem like victims, but honestly, doesn't that just make it clearer?

He puts you in there to attack me.

Sure, Robotnik might've put you in there, but he's still trying to destroy me, which means you're enslaved and imprisoned because of me.

So, am I still a hero?

No.

I'm not.

You still don't understand, do you?

Yeah, I guess I can see why - I mean, Robotnik is evil and he attacked me first, I had to fight back to save my own life, then kept going to save other people because I was the best person for the job and if I was you and that was what I knew, I'd have a serious case of hero worship too - but I'm not you. I'm me, I know a lot more and I bet that if you knew what I know, you wouldn't call me a hero ever again.

So, you want to know the truth? I'll tell you, but I can't promise you'll like it.

I know you won't.

Anyway, it might sound dramatic, but the beginning of Robotnik starts with the beginning of my own life when I was sixteen years old.

Confused?

So was I.

I can't remember anything before I crashed through the roof of Kintobor's place in Emerald Hill, apparently rambling about chaos energy then collapsing and I woke up to find myself in a warm bed with sunlight coming through a window and a glass of water being handed to me by a tall guy with the weirdest moustache and hair I've ever seen. He asked if I wanted to stay with him, said it would be good to have some company and since I had nowhere to go, I agreed.

You might say it was fate.

Huh. More like fatal.

We talked about my past, but I couldn't remember anything - and when I say nothing I mean nothing. It was like my head had been sucked dry of any memories that might have been there - no home, no parents, no siblings, like I'd appeared out of thin air and what made it worse was while it did feel like something was missing, I couldn't feel anything - I had no emotions at all - nothing that might have given me a clue where I'd come from.

I just felt empty.

I didn't even have a name.

Still, it wasn't long before that problem was solved. I mean, haven't you ever wondered just why my name is Sonic?

I was trying to prove I was well enough to be out of bed - which I wasn't - and thought Kintobor's eyes were gonna jump out of his head when I ran from one end of the laboratory to the other in a split-second. He started babbling something about chaos energy and abilities and had I known that I could do that, which to a guy who couldn't remember anything is a pretty stupid question, but I was just confused - a few seconds before I hadn't even known I could run that fast, but now that I did, it felt natural - as if a piece of my past had been unlocked.

It turned out to be the only piece, but at least I had a name.

Kintobor was working on the Chaos Emeralds. I don't know how he got them or how he figured out they were real since they were meant to be a myth - which was all I knew about the emeralds back then, before Knuckles and the Floating Island - mystical gems meant to hold great power which Kintobor wanted to use to help Mobius using a machine he called the ROCC. I was impressed when he explained what it was meant to do - I mean, after getting past the weirdness of actually sucking the evil from the planet - because it just sounded so cool, so much like a mad scientist that I teased him for it endlessly.

That feels like a lifetime ago.

Heck, weird is normal for us now.

Anyway, since I was staying there, I helped Kintobor. He already had the emeralds, so mostly I just fetched and carried and trained on the treadmill he'd invented to try and measure exactly how fast I could run. That just got me another nickname - the blue blur - when I broke the sound barrier, lost some of my spines and turned a completely different colour because the treadmill couldn't cope.

Sonic 1 : Treadmill 0.

Heh, it was all fun back then until Kintobor finished the ROCC and everything went wrong.

If that's all you know about me and that's pretty what the public would know if they looked closer I can understand why you'd still see me as a hero, because who you see is Sonic the Hedgehog, an innocent victim of circumstances, using his extraordinary talents to try and save people from a man who had taken him in when he had nothing. Maybe it makes my story even more touching, maybe you're even more sympathetic because of my connection to Kintobor.

You still don't know the full truth though - I didn't even know it until a few months ago.

See, you might think a future with Robotnik is bad, but I've seen one without him.

Remember the Mettalix?

Whatever you know about them isn't the truth, because I changed it.

They'd turned on him and gone back in time using the time stones - which yeah, I know is another myth - to stop Kintobor from using the ROCC and that should have been a good thing - after all no ROCC meant no Robotnik - only the Mettalix were as evil as the man who'd built them and took over instead. Don't ask me about what I saw, just trust me when I say it was worse and believe me when I tell you we're lucky.

Still, I don't think you'd forgive me for what I did next.

I went back in time, I stopped the Mettalix there and then I stopped them from getting rid of Robotnik.

So that's why Robotnik exists - because of me.

You thought I became a hero because I wanted to help? Well yeah, I do. I like being able to help you, that's why I started fighting Robotnik after all, but back then I also did it because I thought that since I was there when he was created, I was partly to blame.

Well I was wrong.

Now I know it's my fault completely.

It was always my fault.

I hate time travel! I really hate time travel! I want to smash those stupid stones into a million pieces if I wasn't afraid that something worse would happen, but knowing my luck lately, it would.

So that's it. I'm not a hero. I don't want glory or fame. I just want a chance to atone for myself because every day of my life I live with the knowledge that Robotnik exists because of me, and the thought that maybe, if I defeat him, I might just be able to start to make up for what I did - not completely, but enough to sleep without nightmares and to have a normal life, even though I don't deserve it.

Honestly, there are better people to call heroes. You - for putting up with the terror you feel every day, the people who pick up the pieces after Robotnik has destroyed homes, the doctors who treat people who've been hurt. The other freedom fighters because they don't fight him for redemption, because none of them have anything to do with Robotnik's 'creation' but fight him anyway.

I really wish that was why I do, but I don't - I'm just trying to make up for past sins.

I'm Sonic the Hedgehog.

I don't want to be a hero.

I want to be free.

Authors note: When I began writing fanfiction, it was going to be based solely on 'Sonic the Comic' and while this has changed - my main fanfiction series using very few of the strips, though still retaining the idea of them being on Mobius as well as the characters - I will always love the comic despite the slump it went into towards the end.

This particular one-shot was altered from a very old story I wrote around five years ago. I have taken some liberties regarding what happened to Sonic before meeting Kintobor, but on the whole I feel I've remained true to the comic.