Belong

Chapter 8 - Inside The Portal

The next few days went by in a rush. During the day Silver and Venice would train the other's powers, and in the quieter hours of the evening when Venice usually had collapsed with exhaustion already Silver studied the book and files he had gotten from the library over and over. It didn't really seem like anyone wrote down what had happened in detail, in people's diaries and newspapers he could only find some vague mentions of an attack that had taken place. He was willing to swear his life on it that it was Eggman's doing again. Whatever had happened, it had been sudden, presumably followed by a mass panic. Thinking about the despair that his friends must have gone through made him immensely upset, and he squashed down the thoughts about that every time they drifted to the surface.

His sources also mentioned that suddenly the world had gone dark and had frozen over, and with a little bit of sleuthing he discovered it had to have happened at basically the same time as Eggman's assault. It explained why this world was as dark and cloudy as the one where he had grown up, though his original timeline had been burning while this one was freezing. In the former it had been caused by the abundance of ash and sooth in the air from the Ifrit, while the sky in Frozen City was filled with dark snowclouds. As such, he had moved on to the more educational and objective books on the atmosphere and meteorology, to see if he could explain the sudden drop in temperature. He read about volcanic explosions and nuclear winters, and while the pessimistic information they gave him made his skin crawl it did not fit with the attack he also read about. It couldn't have been an natural disaster, and Eggman didn't seem like the type to nuke the entire planet, often happily proclaiming that he wanted to have something left to rule over... or had something gone wrong with his plans, something even the genius could not have foreseen?

Waking up one morning with his head collapsed on his shoulder and his whole body aching from his unfortunate sleeping position, – he had fallen asleep while going over the sources instead of making it to his bed – Silver groaned and rubbed his temples as he resisted the urge to fling the useless brittle books at the wall. Venice was waking up too, freeing himself from the confines of the sleeping bag and yawning as he stared at Silver's grumpy face. Silver just shrugged noncommittally and prepared to make breakfast. Yes, for his own sake and emotional wellbeing, it was time to get back to the past.

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"Are you sure about this, Venice?" Silver eyed his friend carefully as they stood outside their shelter, presumably for the last time. The two psychics had carefully trained Venice's ability to open the Genesis portals, along with helping him get a better grip on his telekinesis. Silver was not even sure he himself possessed the power to tear apart space-time like that, instead opting to spend all his time focusing on developing Venice's skills rather than his own, since they at least knew for sure that he was able pull it off. With his food storage getting depleted twice as quickly and his backpack getting more empty as the days rushed by, Silver knew that they had to leave soon. While he had kept an eye out for any Chaos Emeralds, it was as if they had disappeared off the face of the planet: he couldn't sense them anywhere near. Venice was their last hope of getting out of here, but Silver had decided to leave that detail out of their conversations; he did not want to put any additional pressure on his friend.

Venice himself was staring out wishfully at the rocks making up their shelter, looking immensely disheartened as he grappled the coat he was wearing like his life depended on it. Silver wracked his brain thinking about what could be bothering the other, before he realised. He gently reached out for Venice, grasping his shoulder and murmuring: "You're going to miss it, aren't you?"

At his words, Venice flinched. "I-I'm sorry... I k-know you don't like it here b-but..."

"No, don't apologise. I get it." Silver wrapped his arm around Venice fully and pulled the other against him. "This is the only place you've really known so far, right? It's not weird that you feel attached to it." He decided to not start about the mysterious facility that he presumed Venice had come from, deeming it massively detrimental for the other's already shaky well-being at the moment. He wondered about what else he could say to say to help Venice. "But the past is beautiful, more beautiful than anything you can imagine. It's certainly a lot warmer and sunnier than here. And my friends will love you, I promise." He gently held Venice for a few moments more.