These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. They're short stories inspired by songs. I discovered Scribbler doing something similar with the Kingdom Hearts Videogame series, and decided I'd like to give it a shot.

The title of this chapter translates as "The Future You Dreamed Of, the Future I Dreamed Of". It's Wormmon's song from the Digimon Japanese "Best Partner" series and is perhaps the cutest thing I have ever heard in my life. Well, okay. Second cutest. Behind that song in Dumbo… It's also a song that very much sounds like it suits Cosmo. This chapter is sort of technically a sequel to chapter 34. Technically. And yes, my Knuckles-Cosmo shipper is on the loose again.

Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated.

36. Takahashi Naozumi, Kimi ga Yume Mita Mira, Boku ga Yume Mita Mirai

There's a forest growing around the Master Emerald.

Knuckles can't even try to explain this. Apparently the Planet Egg returned to them having forgotten every aspect of its world's original geography and is making everything up from scratch. At first, nothing much occurred, except that the grass started to grow again, the trees stopped looking as if they'd been stripped bare for winter, and the population of the planet had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

On the first day of the second week after their return from space, the spring flowers began sprouting. The daffodils were coming up six months late, but that's only to be expected. He remembers how Cosmo had struggled to get hold of whatever pretty, alien plant she could on every planet they visited, to use as decorations for the party she was not-so-secretly-planning. There had been no daffodils, she told him disappointedly afterwards. There really ought to have been. One of her sisters had been a daffodil...

Knuckles had decided it better not to ask. Now he rather wishes that he had. Because Cosmo so rarely volunteered information, that it's only now, three months too late, that Knuckles realises how significant the statement "Galaxina says that gardening in great therapy" really is.

On the second morning, Knuckles awakens to find that there are berry bushes where there once was grassland, darker patches of green littering an otherwise flat horizon, all the way to the mountains. He tried to explain his concerns to Sonic, but the only thing he seemed to care about was the fact that the berries weren't ripe yet.

Some people had no sense of prioritization.

On the third day, there is woodland. It surrounds the temple with a soft, green shade, honeysuckle grows across rocks and tree roots, and wind rustles between branches that were definitely not there a day earlier. The Chaotic visit and enjoy the shade, but curse the unexpected increase in pollen.

Since when did crocodiles get hay fever anyway?

Quite frankly, it's getting a bit ridiculous. Though Cream does appear to be having an absolute field day. She's making flower crowns again. Lots of them. For everyone she knows, Sonic, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, Espio, Cheese, Rouge... Hell, at this rate, Knuckles figures she's going to start giving them to Eggman's hence-robots.

On the fourth day, Tails comes to visit, and explains that the rest of the world is undergoing an equally bizarre transformation. Swamps are bubbling in the middle of what used to be parking lots. When Tails arrives he trips regularly over sprawling vines. The Temple is surrounded by creepers.

'Nature's getting its own back, that's what I think, Knuckles,' he says, brushing creepers away from his ears. They sit together in the cool shade of the new forest trees gathered around them, the glow of the Master Emerald at their backs and the calls of Flickie birds in the air. If Knuckles didn't know better, he'd think the vines themselves were reaching out to them. 'If I were the planet egg right now, I'd want to grow and grow and never stop. It must be good. To be back home, I mean.'

'I'm not sure the planet egg is capable of having an opinion,' Knuckles mutters tersely in response.

'Well, sure it is. How else could it make all the flowers and trees grow?'

'Humph,' Knuckles remains convinced. People who evolved from flowers and end up turning into trees are one thing; sentient planet eggs are quite another, 'Are you trying to suggest that the planet egg is sentient?'

'Why not?'

'Because it obviously has no sense of convenience.' Knuckles mutters. 'There are creepers all over my usual seating spot, there's pollen all over my quills and if Cream shows up with another flower crown I may just have to... raise my voice to her.'

Tails sniggers. 'I don't think it'll be like this for long, Knuckles. This is just the planet making up for a few lost months of growth. I'm sure the ecosystem will balance out eventually and all of these creepers and plants and things will start to die down again.'

'And the forest?'

'Well... that you might be stuck with. I don't think these trees will disappear.' Tails chuckles, presumably at the look on Knuckles face. 'Oh come on, Knuckles, we've got a supersonic hedgehog on speed dial. I don't think a living planet egg is that much harder to believe, do you?'

Knuckles doesn't answer.

'There really ought to be peonies too, don't you think?' Tails says eventually, petting the heads of a honeysuckle. That's what she was. Well, what she was descended from, anyway. A Paeoniaceae, to be exact.'

'Really.'

'Mmhm. I looked it up. Amy has so many books on growing plants, it's ridiculous.'

There's a new rule that they all have amongst each other –when Tails visits, you don'tever, under any circumstances, mention the flower pot. But Knuckles mentions it anyway. Partly because he knows he can get away with it and partly because...

Well, because he wants to know the answer. 'So, how did it grow?'

Tails doesn't answer for a few moments. The silence is all the answer Knuckles needs, really. He hadn't been aware of the rise in his heart, but he feels it sinking again very acutely. It's an awkwardly familiar feeling.

'It's a peony.' Tails says eventually. 'The seed she left, it... it grew into a peony.'

'Oh. Just...?'

'Just a normal one,' Tails shrugs, pointedly not looking in Knuckles direction. 'We're e gonna plant it in Amy's garden next summer, when it's a little stronger. It's... it's really pretty, though. And there are no thorns at all.'

'I'm not surprised.' Knuckles says, and realises to his surprise that there are no thorns here at all. Not a single spiny cactus or a single sharp-pronged thistle. 'Tails, I'm—'

'It's okay,' Tails shrugs, and something in his eyes, while sad, tells Knuckles that it really is. 'I guess I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up, it's just... I kind of couldn't help it.'

None of them could, Knuckles realises. Tails had wanted so badly for that flower to grow into Cosmo. Knuckles learned a long time ago that life quite simply wasn't that fair.

Knuckles is an echidna. Echidnas knew little about fair, even when they numbered in the millions. Life is tough; battle is commonplace, and people die and don't grow back afterwards. He is used to hard stone ground for a pillow and the energy of a storm overhead, and that's just the way he likes things. Cosmo was built for softer things like gardening and gentle rain and tea parties with Cream. Cosmo could make an explosion lookgentle.

Cosmo was no weakling, however easy it might have been to mistake her for one. Cosmo could fight when she had to. But that wasn't the kind of world she was made for. She photosynthesised for crying out loud. The mere fact that a creature like Cosmo spent her entire childhood cooped up in a world made of metal and artificial lightning is almost deplorable. But she had her family. Her mother and her friends who grew from seeds and had daffodils for hair.

This world; this place of forests and trees and disturbingly self-aware seeming creepers... this is the kind of world that Cosmo should've grown up in.

Knuckles, however, would very much like his hard, stone seating place back.

Tails lies back on the temple steps (he's one of few people who's allowed to do that) and folds his arms behind his head. 'It'll be a shame when winter comes. It'll seem really dull around here without all of the greenery.'

Knuckles, as much as he wants his stone seat back, silently agrees.

And then the fifth day comes.

Knuckles wakes up one morning to see nothing but red.

This worries him, at first, until it dawns on him that the redness smells of roses and that there is pollen tickling his face. When he sits up there are petals everywhere, flickering across the glade. It takes several seconds for Knuckles to wake up enough to walk down the temple steps. Several seconds longer to work out exactly what all of these petals are coming from.

Peonies.

Peonies everywhere, hundreds of them, climbing the steps of the temple in ways that he's fairly sure that kind of flower isn't supposed to grow. It seems that the laws of physics have been completely averted so that they can grow sideways and upside down and spread their petals over everything.

Knuckles sits down on the temple steps and laughs until his stomach hurts.

It seems like Cosmo has gotten her message across

Oboeteru? deatta hi

Me wo tojireba soko ni

Afureru namida hitoribotchi de

Kizu tsuita mayotta michi

Moshimo yukusaki miezu

Kokoro ga korondara

Yakusoku suru yo sagashite kuru yo

Egao kureru yuuki

x

Do you remember? The day we met

If I close my eyes, there you are

Tears flowing, all alone

Hurt and lost

Even if you can't see where you're going

Even if your heart stumbles

I promise you, I'll search for you

Your courage makes me smile