In the city of Station Square, Amy's home stood out a bit. Unlike the apartment she had moved out of some time ago, which was no different than the rest in terms of its exterior, this small house situated close to the edges of the metropolis served as a small beacon of greenery through its yard and the garden contained inside of it. Amy was waiting in that yard when she heard a faint sound slice through the typical ambience, an ethereal humming sound. A second later, what she had suspected to be the source of the noise hovered into view

"I'm here! Hope I'm not late," Silver said as he dispersed the field of energy that had been carrying him and softly dropped onto the ground

"Nope, you're right on time," She reassured him. "Do you want anything before we start? I just got some tea from the store"

She gestured towards the front door of the home as she asked, and Silver couldn't tell if this meant she had planned to have a snack before they started, or if she was just being very inviting. He did really want to get to gardening right away, since he knew it would be fascinating to learn more about the plants of the past from someone who knew a lot about them, but he didn't want to accidentally mess up her plans after she'd been nice enough to invite him over. He hadn't known Amy for as long as her other friends, but she had always been just as sweet to him as everyone else during that relatively short period, so he decided that something little like this didn't matter

"I'd like to start right away, if that's alright," He stated with a slight bit of uncertainty. "Tea does sound great afterwards, though"

"Sounds good to me," She answered, beginning to turn and move towards the back of the plot's land

Silver internally relaxed a bit, and then began to follow Amy as she walked to her garden. The walk was very brief due to the small size of the yard, but even so it was still pleasant because of the perfectly maintained grass, and the perfect weather that was looking down on it. Once he had caught up with her, his eyes were caught by the centerpiece of the place. Laid out in a rectangle formation were what must have been at least a hundred roses, not just red, but in all sorts of new colors that he didn't even know were possible. White, yellow, green, even blue. The pretty display and the realization that even one of the few plants he thought he knew relatively well had so much more to it excited him a lot, which she noticed

"I see you like the roses I planted," Amy said joyfully

"I love them! They're all so beautiful, I didn't know that they came in colors other than red," He exclaimed

"Oh, yeah, there's tons of different colors they can have. Most people just think about the red ones when they hear roses, so romance is commonly associated with them since that's the meaning the reds have, but each color symbolizes different things"

He was intrigued even more by this revelation than the previous one. Each of the differently colored flowers in front of them all had meaning to them, like hidden messages of some sort. He began to wonder if the other flowers he'd seen up until this point represented things as well, if they might have been giving him signs that he hadn't been aware of

"Can you tell me about all of them?" Silver questioned

"Well, there's a lot of colors here to go through, and they can each have quite a few things associated with them," She explained. "Why don't you pick out one for us to start with?"

He looked at the arrangement of flowers intently, and tried to think about which ones caught his eye the most. Yellow and orange were such great colors, they reminded him of the sun and how its light felt on his fur, which the white roses happened to look like. However, after thinking about it for some time, Silver decided that the most interesting shade was blue. It reminded him of the ocean, and one of his most precious memories that had been made there

"What about those blue roses?" He asked

"These can symbolize uniqueness, or things that are impossible. It's like they were made for Sonic," Amy replied as she crouched down to the earth to get a closer look at them. "Heh, but that's just my opinion. What do you think of them?"

While the color of the flowers had immediately brought water into his mind, hearing about the impossible made him think of the fact that he was standing here in this moment, thinking about this at all. Not just because of the miracle of time travel, but also because of how harsh the world he'd been in for so long was. All it would've taken was for one of Silver's many near misses to have not been a near miss, and he never would've been able to see the past. Surviving for long certainly seemed impossible at the time, let alone changing the world. But here he was, able to relax, with his future no longer desolate. Telling Amy all of what he said verbatim would probably drag the mood down a little, so he decided to just state the last part instead

"It seemed impossible for things to ever change," Silver began explaining. "But once I was brought back here, I was able to fix everything. Now my future is just as beautiful as this place is"

"That's amazing to hear, Silver. It's good to know that even 200 years from now, this world will still be full of life," Amy complimented him. "Are the plants from your future anything like the ones here?"

"Uhh, I think so? I haven't seen too many from either time yet, so it's hard to know if anything I see is unique to that period or not"

"I see. Next time, you should describe some of your future plants to me, and I can tell you if they're ones that exist in this time. Maybe you could even bring one back, it would be fascinating to see"

"Oh, um, I'm not sure if I can, it could mess things up. I guess I could fix things even if they did go wrong, but-"

"No, you're right, I wasn't thinking about it. Let's get back to the flowers that are in front of us now, which ones are catching your eye?"

The green roses were the first ones that Silver thought of this time around, they almost looked like immature sprouts that hadn't finished growing yet, but they were the same size as everything else. A flower lacking the vibrant splash of color that it usually had at the top, and instead having the same color as its less treasured parts such as the leaves, had a lot of potential for interesting meanings. Plus, in the event that his thought about the green roses not being finished growing was true, it would lead to the just as interesting revelation that these ones would end up being much larger than all of the others

"What's up with the green ones?" Silver asked, phrasing it so that the answer would tell him which one of his assumptions about them was right

"They mostly mean life and abundance. Perfect for a day like this, right?" Amy remarked

He took a second to look up into the sky as well as into the street behind him, and saw that she was very right. Life stretched far past Amy's yard, it was in the skies above them as Flickies flew overhead, and in the streets behind them as people went about their day walking to who knew where

"Abundance... yeah!" Silver exclaimed. "That's the perfect word for what the past is like, there's so much stuff here. Every day I'm here, I see a bunch of new things"

"Did you see anything new today on your way here?" She asked

"I did! I passed by a bakery, and I saw these little colorful things that had cream in the center, and the outsides were kind of like little cookies"

"Oh, you mean macarons? Those are really good, did you get to try one?"

"I actually did, I asked the person eating them if I could have one, and they handed it to me. It was super sweet, I wish I could've had more, but I didn't want to be rude"

"Well, if you want to have more, we could always go to there ourselves and order some next time"

"That would be fantastic, I love visting restaurants! It seems like there's infinite choices, and all of them are delicious"

"Yeah, the places here all have a lot on the menu, even I haven't tried all of them yet. Say, what's your favorite thing you've had so far?"

"It was this amazing apple pie I ate at a bakery. Back in the future, I ate a lot of old ration bars, the best ones were the apple flavored ones. The closest I ever felt to being in a natural world was when I ate one of them, but then when I had that pie, it was like experiencing that times a million. It was the first time I felt something familiar in a new way, instead of something completely new"

"Wow, if I'd only gotten to have things flavored like fruit my whole life before getting to eat the real thing too, it would probably have been as magical as you were describing. Did you have anything with the pie?"

"Nope. What do people usually have with it?"

"The most popular toppings are vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. It's actually kind of funny, since they're both like you"

"Huh? How are they like me?"

"They're both white like your fur, and they're both really sweet"

"Aww, thank you!"

"No problem!"

Since Silver was now thinking about things that looked similar to him, when he looked back to the garden after the conversation had died down, he immediately thought of the white roses. Like vanilla ice cream and whipped cream (supposedly), the petals did look a lot like his fur, he would probably be able to hide pretty well behind all of them if he needed to. While their potential hide and seek applications were fun to think about, Silver was also even more curious about what they could mean than he'd been about the other two. If they looked like him, would they have meanings that reflected him?

"What meanings do the white roses have?" He chose, silently beginning to get a bit excited as his anticipation grew

"These can stand for a lot of things, but some of the most prevalent meanings are innocence, loyalty, and new beginnings," Amy shared. "They're mostly used at weddings, but I think with meanings like those, they're good for a lot of events"

"New beginnings, huh?"

"Yep! I bet that makes you think of travelling back here for the first time, doesn't it?"

"How did you know that?"

"Oh, I just guessed based on what you've told me before. Good to know my guess was right!"

"Well, you only guessed half of it"

"Hm?"

"My other new beginning was meeting you"

The answer caught Amy off guard. She hadn't thought that she'd had that much of an impact on Silver, she just treated him the same way she did to everyone else. Knowing that her meeting with him was apparently so important that he considered it the start of a new chapter in his life made her feel a deep happiness, followed by a small bit of curiosity

"Really?" Amy asked, still a bit shocked

"It's true," Silver began. "The first person who I ever felt a real connection with was Espio, but since we were working together to save the future, I thought it was just because of our shared goal. But then, the next time I went back here, you saw me. You didn't know why I was here, or even who I was, but you were so nice to me... It made me realize the truth. Espio, Shadow, everyone else; they weren't being kind for the sake of the future, it was because they cared about me"

"Wow. That's... really something. I'm glad that I was able to help you"

"I'm glad about it too"

As Silver reminisced about the change that his meeting with Amy had brought to him, he was facing her, since he had just finished a conversation. However, since it was followed by a short period of silence while both were busy thinking about that information, his eyes went back to the flowerbed

It was just a default position at this point, since he had previously looked at it a lot in order to make his choices for rose variants to learn about. Spending time in silence instead of asking about that, though, made him notice a part of the rose other than their colors: their thorns

The first time Silver saw a rose, he'd grabbed it with his hand in his excitement, and it pierced through his glove into his hand. Even though it had drawn blood, it still had the same gorgeous appearance that had drawn him to it in the first place, so he chose not to leave it behind. Instead, he grabbed it gently with his psychokinesis, and carried it beside him as he walked and floated across the land

Everyone he'd met during his times chasing Eggman Nega, he'd been rude and harsh to at one point or another. While Espio was the only one who had brushed it off and followed him at the time, he had seen all of the others at later points, and they all seemed to at least tolerate him. Maybe it was because they had been told he wasn't actually that bad by Espio, or maybe it was because his urgency during his first time saving the future had faded, and no longer forced him to push everyone out of his path. Maybe it was both

Suddenly, Silver snapped out of his thoughts when he realized that Amy had moved over to the garden in front of them again. Unlike last time, though, she was plucking a rose from the dirt instead of just looking at them. It was yellow, close to his bracelets and eyes, although not exactly like either of them

"Oh, you're picking them now? That's fine, I wanted to hear about the yellow ones next anyways," Silver said as Amy turned around to face him, slightly confused

"I'm giving it to you, silly!" She explained as she stretched out her arm for Silver to take it. "Yellow roses symbolize friendship. You looked so happy seeing all these roses here, so I figured this would be a great gift for you"

"You'd... really do that for me? We're friends?" He asked, sounding very touched

"Of course we are! I know we haven't known each other for so long, but every time we talk, it's so enjoyable. You just have so much love for this world, and you share it with everyone you're around. Whenever you talk about how amazed you are by something I see everyday, it reminds me of just how great this place really is, of what I fight to protect"

Silver didn't respond verbally at this point, as he was a little overwhelmed by just how kind Amy had been to him, but tears welling up in the corners of his eyes showed he appreciated it very much. Remembering the lesson he had learned before, he held his hand forward and gently encircled the flower with his psychokinesis, lifting it out of Amy's hand and bringing it close to his side

"Thank you," he managed to choke out. "Thank you so much. I'm going to take the best care of this as I can"

"Maybe you could even start your own garden someday," Amy suggested.

"That would be fantastic," He replied, before turning to look at the lone plant. "But for now, I've got to take care of this"

"I understand. It was great hanging out with you today, hope I can see you again soon!"

"Me too. Bye, Amy"

"Bye, Silver!"

With that, Silver flew off similarly to how he had arrived. Amy was left in her yard next to the garden that she had just taken her gift to Silver from, and thought about the future. There was no way she'd be alive to take care of it in Silver's time, so it would likely have disappeared long before then. However, even if the garden she was standing next to would eventually fade away, she knew there would still be one like it 200 years from now. A very beautiful, and very yellow, garden of roses