Furious, frustrated, and exhausted beyond reason, Knuckles shoved the blue hedgehog as hard as he could. Shoved with more than even enhanced physical strength. Shoved with all the glittering chaotic energy that leaped and flickered around him. Shoved with all his will to have the hedgehog out of sight, out of mind.

Off his Island.

Shoved so hard he stumbled, startled himself at finding his hands empty, Sonic gone and Tails and Amy both screaming. Wailing. Shrieking at him.

"What have you done!"

"Where's Sonic? What have you done to him!"

"What did you do!"

Knuckles whirled to face the fox. Flames flickered before his eyes as his spines whipped across his face with the speed of his movement.

Tails hurtled at him through the air and chaos-fast reflexes meant this time Knuckles did catch him in mid-air, grabbed him by both wrists as Tails kicked and snapped at him.

"Let him go!"

It was Amy's voice, Tails seemed beyond speech and when Knuckles turned to look, still holding Tails off without effort. There were tears streaming down the pink hedgehog's face.

"Let him go, Knuckles!" she shouted again, then lowered her voice. Slowed it.

"Knuckles. Let go of Tails."

Knuckles stared at one then the other. At the sheer shock and horror on both their faces, at the fear and the anger.

How many?

The words echoed in his mind again.

How many, for the sake of your controller?

He let go of Tails.

Flames still danced in his fur and he was cold. A deep, empty cold that numbed his limbs and his mind. He stood staring past Amy, while Tails rained ineffective blows on him until she pulled him off. He couldn't look at them, couldn't bear to see again the same fear and hatred that the other echidnas held for him. That he'd just demonstrated he fully deserved.

"Knuckles." Amy's voice was still quiet and slow. The voice you'd use to talk to a wild, possibly dangerous, low-animal you were trying to soothe for long enough to run away.

"What did you do?"

The cold had knives in it. Icicles twisting up inside him, freezing his heart, his voice, that small horrified corner of his mind that still quailed at any question asked angrily enough.

What had he done?

Abruptly the cavern was filled with new voices, shouting, laughing, calling his name, and Sonic's name with such cheerful abandon that it was almost as shocking as the past few minutes all over again.

Vector led the Chaotix in the chamber.

"Hey! There you are!"

"Get out," Knuckles choked. "Get out of here! Get off the Island!"

"Uh..."

Vector hesitated, clearly prepared to refuse, but Amy was waving him off. "Go. Really. I'll explain but go."

The alligator frowned. "Right. Well if you say so. We'll be back when you feel more yourself, Knux."

The others also looked ready to argue but backed up behind him anyway.

Knuckles shook his head. "No. Go and stay gone." He sounded flat even to himself. Tried to find the anger that would warn them he meant it. "I don't want you here."

"We'll come back," Vector repeated. "When you're feeling more yourself."

They cast anxious glances at Amy and Tails then left.

"Knuckles, Where's Sonic?" There were tears on Tails' face too, matting his fur. His voice shook. "What did you do to him?"

Amy looked anxiously from Tails to Knuckles and back then opened her mouth but hesitated and closed it again.

For once Knuckles had no problem interpreting their reactions. Amy thought he'd killed Sonic. Tails clearly wanted to think otherwise but was afraid of the same thing.

And he himself... didn't know.

Couldn't be sure.

He hadn't intended to, not consciously. He'd wanted him gone. Gone away. And he'd pushed. Pushed not just with his hands, expecting to send the hedgehog tumbling across the chamber, but with that part of his mind which was constantly attuned to the Master Emerald. Where intention was turned to action by its power.

But chaos was a poor interpreter of intention and he'd acted on pure emotion, without thought, without a plan, and he had no idea what it had done.

What he'd done.

"Where did you send him?" Tails was insistent but his words didn't make any sense.

"Send him?" Knuckles repeated numbly.

"That was chaos control wasn't it?" Tails' voice shook, took on a pleading note. "Wasn't it? So where is he?"

Knuckles stared at the reflected light shifting and playing across the floor and didn't answer.

Control.

That was a bad joke. Whatever it had been control was the very opposite of it.

Even now he hadn't been able to let go. The light he was staring at was coming from him. He couldn't look up from it, couldn't face them, couldn't tell them he didn't even know what he'd done. And why would they believe him anyway? Guardians were untrustworthy, everyone knew it. Untrustworthy and dangerous.

But Amy seemed to have taken Tails seriously.

"It did look like it," she said thoughtfully. "The way he just vanished. Knuckles?"

He stood motionless, frozen, unable to lift his head, much less to speak to dash the hope in her voice.

He could feel their eyes on him. By the silence he knew they were as motionless as he was. Eventually they'd work out the reason he couldn't answer. Eventually they'd know what the village echidnas had known the moment he hadn't returned. He was Guardian still and damned by it.

The silence was broken abruptly but not by any of them.

The radio in Amy's skirt pocket shrieked with feedback before a voice issued forth from it.

"What."

The first word was enough for Amy to drop the handset in shock. It bounced at Knuckles' feet.

"The hell."

Knuckles stared at it, unable to quite process the voice or believe what he was hearing.

"Was that?" Sonic asked over the radio amid another burst of feedback.

Amy and Tails were shouting again, jubilant, triumphant sobs and yells. Amy scrabbled on the floor for the radio, yelled Sonic's name into it.

Knuckles staggered back out of her way. He was shaking, drowning. Distantly, he knew he should be relieved, but he was drowning. Drowning in the cold and the darkness that pulled him down out of the flickering light, muffled the sounds of relieved celebration, distorted them like echoes in a cave, like hearing through deep water. He was falling, but hadn't fallen, suspended, shining, pinned to his place by the light as the darkness rose to smother him and he fought for breath, for consciousness, for control.

"Sonic!" he gasped but any answer came in fragments, everyone talking at once, and he was falling away from the words.

"...that Knuckles?"

"...hear me? I don't..."

"Tell him..."

"...shock I..."

"...fire-hose...and his flames too!"

"...he..."

"...Knuckles..."

He forced himself to look round at the sound of his name. Amy and Tails, worried looks on their faces. No Sonic. But Sonic was alive. Unhurt enough to shout and curse.

It was dark, the cold blue-green glow of the Master Emerald the only light.

"Knuckles." It was Amy repeating his name.

"Find him," he said, quickly, before she could ask him anything he didn't want to hear. "Go and find him."

They both moved at once towards the passageway, both hesitated.

"What about you?" Amy asked. "Sonic was right, we can't just..."

Knuckles shook his head, cutting her off. How could they possibly still think that was any concern of theirs?

"Leave," Knuckles finished the sentence but turned the single word into a demand. Almost a plea.

"We'll come back," Tails said.

"Don't."

"Sonic will!" Tails insisted.

"Tell him not to."

Amy and Tails looked at each other, still pausing.

"Please. Just go."

"Okay,"Amy said after a moment. "If that's what you want. For now."

Knuckles watched them leave the chamber, felt them leave the Island's ground, felt the silence, the emptiness.

He reached again for the Master Emerald. Again flames flickered in the air, but only for a moment. This time he cast them outwards, circling, ringing and encompassing the Island, a barrier to keep out any and all intruders. He'd rarely done so, always believed that the more he could fulfil his role with the minimum use of the power the better, but what was the point of that now? It had made no difference to how completely he was under its influence.

He turned to face the Emerald, staring for a moment into its depths unsure of exactly what he was looking for. Then he lay down where he was and as he had once longed to do again, curled up on the smooth stone and slept.