Rewind

Silver has always sworn to others that he uses his time-travel powers responsibly.

There's a lot attached to it, that even the psychic cannot entirely wrap his head around despite his expertise on the topic. He doesn't really know how paradoxes work or how he's always avoided falling into one, for example, nor does he know what happens to the timelines that he stopped from ever forming. But none of that matters if he can keep his friends and the world he loves so safe, and it matters even less with the knowledge that he doesn't use his powers as a plaything or something to recklessly fool around with. He is careful with them, he tries to strain the timeline as little as possible, and so far everything has worked out just fine.

So to then stand eye-to-eye with himself, one quiet morning where Silver had snuck out of bed far too early for everyone else to get up too and had been hanging out in the Agency's living room by himself, is perhaps a bit baffling.

"Hello," Silver is the first to speak up. "You... are me, right?"

The hedgehog in front of him just stares, eyes so wide and fur so ragged and face so pale that the coils of a bad feeling rush to churn through Silver's body like a snake shooting forward to poison its prey. "Yes," the response comes, shakily.

"From the future?" Silver continues, before grimacing at the stupidity of that question. Of course this other Silver is from the future, because he doesn't have any memories of ever coming into contact with himself from a different timeline.

His counterpart nods. "Yes."

"Okay!" Rubbing behind his head Silver shoots the other an awkward smile, silently expressing his gratitude to the rest of the Chaotix for having normal sleeping schedules. Explaining all this to them would be so awkward neither he nor the other Silver would get anywhere for sure.

But then again, the fact that a counterpart from the future is here can only mean... "Um, why did you come here? Did anything... happen?" the hedgehog prods further, and his heart sinks right into the dinky floorboards at the second nod that follows.

Silver can think of a few reasons why he would ever go back in time to an era where a younger version of himself already resides. Or rather, just one: if his efforts hadn't been good enough and he had been unable to stop a disaster from striking and ruining the world. But in the days he'd let his mind wander over the topic he had always figured he'd work more furtively then, try his best to let nobody figure out there's two of him around, and work from the shadows to change the odds and make sure he would become the deciding factor to save the world after all. Especially he himself would not be allowed to know, he always figured, what with those paradoxes he still doesn't grasp. But even he can realise that him coming across himself is going to be a confusing disaster of the highest sort.

And on that topic... All pondering of what would happen to both him and his earlier version once either would change the timeline had given him a headache immediately, because it cannot be anything else than a paradox worthy of a minor dimensional implosion.

So for a Silver from the future to have shown up here despite the fact he must know all that, something really very bad must have happened.

The other Silver shuffles his feet, and Silver doesn't even need to look so closely to see the trembles that run over his body and the shaking of his hands and how the blue-purple bags under his eyes all but droop to his chin. "Yes," follows once more, a look of desperation flicking over the other's face. "Um- listen. Today, around one in the afternoon, Eggman is going to attack Central City. And- And h-he-!"