((AN: After some of the comments, I'm going to put in brief comment warnings on anything that's particularly gruesome or squicky. I will warn you all that any of Silver's parts are going to be at the very least uncomfortable - but hey, you're the ones reading something with Horror as a genre. If I don't flag something that you think should have been given a content warning, let me know and I'll try to put it in the text for the future.
All that being said, thank you for all of your kind comments that you've left. I really appreciate knowing that someone benefits from this effort other than myself.))
His fingers moved first. They curled and uncurled, each joint a hinge isolated from the rest of the hand. Then the wrists, back and forth, side to side, clockwise, counter clockwise, and all of it over again. His tongue could do the same, he realized, and his head, and his torso. Knees couldn't do it, nor elbows, nor his legs at his hips, nor his feet, nor his ankles. Try as he might, he'd only get so far before some odd sensation stopped him. Deep in his mind, the word "pain" rose to the surface to explain the feeling, but it confused him. He'd expect resistance from flame, or acid, or a number of other things. His own movement, he felt, should be uninhibited, fluid and smooth. It all felt so strange - he had always lived in this body, but now none of it made sense to him; why should some places be able to twist and bend but not others? Why couldn't he press in other directions without Pain stopping him? It wasn't consistent. It wasn't logical.
Without realizing it, he was sitting up on the dirt where he had collapsed. His eyes opened and burned until he blinked, automatically. The comfort of it made him force the movement several times, trying to rid his eyes of the dirt stuck inside of them. It felt mechanical, and before long, he remembered that his body did it on its own; he didn't need to direct it to do anything. After some twisting on the ground, he realized he could rise on to his two feet, so with some wobbles and effort he did. Pain was in his eyes, but only for a moment. They adjusted to the light - it was the daytime, he realized. He was Awake, which meant some part of him needed Sleep. His head had Pain in it too, and though he thought of trying to shake it out, he felt a sense of calm overcome him and it was forgotten. The other one didn't need Sleep, but Charging. This was good; he could Sleep anywhere, but only Charge in certain places. He could cover more ground this way. Less difficult. More efficient.
With another experimental movement of his head, he saw the discarded robot. Nobody had come to collect the remaining shell, but then again, he wouldn't expect them to. What a worthless form, he thought with disgust. Its strength came at the expense of truly living, since it moved through electricity and circuits. It was much better to be a creature of blood, he thought. If he stayed still and paid attention, he could feel his heart beating - even the blood itself, as it flowed through his body. There was something else, too - a rising and falling of the chest, the air itself going in and out of a hollow cavity in his abdomen. He experimentally tried to stop the movement, but it was no use; moments later, it happened again, more pronounced than before. Again, it was automatic, like the movement of the blood or the blinking of the eyes, but it still felt new to him. He had never realized how many things his body did completely on its own, until he was forced to by…something. He couldn't tell what. He wasn't scared about it, so it must not be important.
Stumbling, he attempted a step, then two, and finally a third before losing balance. His arms shot out to the sides and grabbed a branch, moving without thinking but not automatic. An interesting act of self preservation, he thought, almost detached from what his body was doing. He tried taking steps again with the branch in hand, a little faster this time. He felt more stable now, but still couldn't keep up quite right. He couldn't remember how this worked, and there was nobody around to show him. Somehow, this didn't strike him as odd.
There was a sound. His head shot to the side, looking for the source of the reverberation in the trees. It was unlike the branches snapping or the air pushing through leaves - it was high pitched and, though repetitive, made something stir in his mind. "Silver!" it came again, and he recognized it. The sound was him. He was a Silver. No, he was Silver. Yes, that was right.
The sound came from another body, which was fast approaching his. It was about the same size, but pink. The thing was called Amy, he remembered. No, not a thing. She. She was Amy. She was Amy like he was Silver, individual but looking so much like him, same but different. "Oh my goodness, Silver! Are you okay?"
The sounds unscrambled themselves in his mind, and soon he understood them. He tried to see if he could make the same kind of sounds - her mouth was moving, so maybe that was the key to it. "O…okay," he managed to get out, using the air's movement and the curling of his tongue to shape the sound. It was only an echo of her last word, but it seemed to appease her as she visibly softened.
"Well, good! Blaze was looking for you earlier, you know. She said you normally went down that path over there in the mornings, but today you didn't come back, so I went, and then I saw that robot over there and came over in case it was still active. I got out my hammer and everything, but then I saw the metal was all bent like that, and you were moving around on the ground like you were hurt or something. Wait, did that thing attack you? It looks like you took care of it, but…Silver, you're not talking to me. Are you sure you're okay?"
The jumble of sounds all made sense to him after a second or two. It was Talking. Yes. And he could talk too. The air came through with less effort, until he almost didn't have to think about it. "My head has Pain in it," he said. It was easier to say things than it had been before.
"Well, we should get you to a doctor! What if you have a head injury?"
"No, no Doctor!" he said, more forceful then before. The Pain built up in his head, like something was screaming inside.
Amy looked at him and tilted her head. "Are you sure?" she said.
Something rippled in his stomach. A loud sound emitted from it, but it wasn't Talking, and it didn't cause Pain either. He put his hand on top of his abdomen, but the sound had stopped, and he couldn't make it happen again. Amy seemed to know what the sound was, because she grabbed his hand. "Oh, I see. You need to eat first. I'll take you to get lunch…or dinner? What time is it anyway? Anyway, whatever it is, it'll be my treat. And then you'll go to the hospital afterward. I mean, you're stable enough, so it's not like you have to go right away. Right?"
"Right," he found himself replying, and then he shook a little. There were three steps to understanding language, he realized. The first was recognizing the sounds. Then there was linking the sounds to words, which was more knowledge buried deep inside him. Then the implications of the words, when strung together, would become clear. He regained the knowledge of Talking quickly, but only now did he understand the full extent of what she was saying. A head injury. Was that why he was feeling so odd? The head was important. Something else stirred inside of him. Yes, it was very very important. Nothing else could be more important than the Head.
Amy began to run, and Silver's own legs followed hers. This was different from his first steps, when he was alone. He watched her legs as they tensed, their movements as they hit the ground and reached forward in anticipation of the next leap forward. His clumsy stumbles became more fluid as he moved, until he was running smoother than he ever had before. Everything had been lost to him, maybe from the "head injury," but that was fine; he learned again quickly. Soon, he may even live out the Purpose…a piece of knowledge he felt itching in the inside of his mind, but not one that came to the surface. But that was fine too. It was only a matter of time.
Sonic poured over the pages, flipping through each individual leaf of the book one more time. It was fruitless; he leaned his head back, groaning loudly in frustration at it all. He had tried shaking out the pages of the book, exposing it to heat in case there was invisible ink, holding it at different angles, but nothing came of it.
Blank. The book Shadow gave him was blank.
He traced the pages with his fingers, hoping there was some kind of indent or engraving that he was just unable to catch before. No such luck; their surfaces were smooth and flawless, with only slight wear around the edges and a flexible binding to suggest it wasn't a brand new book. How could Shadow have given him a book that was completely blank? It must have been some sort of joke.
But Shadow didn't make jokes. He never saw him do anything without fully intending to; every action, every movement, every gesture had a purpose. This wasn't his style. If Shadow gave this to him, it must have been for a reason. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of makeshift mystery to occupy him for a few hours. But that didn't seem right either; Shadow wouldn't give him a puzzle without a solution. He set the book down and rubbed his temples, trying to think back. What had he been talking about with Shadow that made him so insistent on giving this to him? Something about…how depressing his normal books were. Or was it something else? It had been a few hours, and at the time, he was occupied with thinking about other things. Like the fact that even though he had plenty of friends, Shadow was the only one to come on a regular basis and bother to ask him about anything other than his healing leg. Or the Divine Comedy embodied the path to God in Dante's love for a girl, an idea so foreign to him that he was scared he wouldn't fully understand it. Or how he wanted Shadow to stay around and have a cup of the coffee that he had gotten especially for him, even though Sonic didn't like jittery feeling of sitting in his chair when excited by the caffeine that made his heart race so quickly the last few times Shadow came over. Or how he had never managed to get through such large books before Shadow had started giving them to him, and he wondered if Shadow read all of these books in his free time or if he had them for some other reason.
He slid the book across the table and looked at his phone. Maybe, if he didn't care about his pride so much, he would actually ask Shadow what he meant by the "book." For some reason, though, his hand stopped right as he was about to dial the number. If he were to ask why this was given to him, Shadow would only sneer. He'd rip the book away, probably. What if he even got mad enough that he refused to come over anymore, or to lend him books? Sonic didn't know if he could take that.
Besides, Shadow's on a mission, he thought. Probably not the best time to interrupt.
Chaos, when did he start caring about interrupting people when they were busy?
He looked at the window. It had been a few hours, and Shadow was as fast as Sonic normally was. He had to be done by now, right? At least with the briefing. And maybe this whole "confidential" business was just a front - Sonic was a world renowned hero, after all. Injured or not, his perspective had to count for something on a case like this. He could come, poke around a few top secret government files, help them find who they're looking for…and he could casually bring the book with him and ask, oh by the way, why did you give me a book without any words in it?
With renewed determination, Sonic sat up, grabbed his crutches, and started thinking of how he would make his way to the GUN base. The Tornado should have room for him in it, even with the bulk of his cast. He hadn't flown it himself in a while, but Tails couldn't have changed the controls that much. And once he got to the base…well, he'd come up with a plan to sneak around unseen once he got there. After all, he was Sonic the Hedgehog - he could think on his feet. He always had to, anyway.
Ignoring the pain in his leg from the larger shift in weight, Sonic propped himself on his crutches and made for the plane. The book stayed in his hand, and though it made walking more unsteady, he knew he could not leave it behind.