Chapter Text
When I found out what happened, I told everyone I was going on a walk.
That was the last they heard of me until later that afternoon.
You see, a few weeks prior…Maybe months—I don’t know…Sonic was killed. He was murdered by…well, Metal Sonic. I guess something went seriously wrong with his coding, as Tails put it. He was no longer transmitting Robotnik’s directives. He was completely on his own, like a computer suddenly with a brain, differentiating between learned hardware and conscious desires.
The funny thing is, Metal Sonic wasn’t the only head-injured blue speedster in the mix. Well, I guess it really isn’t funny. None of this is.
Anyways, Sonic was injured, too, Concussed, actually. Tails said it happened when they both collided into each other; a deadly head-butt that dazed Sonic and ripped Metal Sonic into two fragmented beings.
Metal and organic.
I say it was deadly, but it didn’t kill Sonic. No, that wasn’t what dealt the blow. No one really knows exactly how it went down. We lost our best witness.
I just don’t understand how it all went so wrong. I always thought Sonic was invincible. That nothing could touch him; nothing in the world—not even death, could stop the blue blur. But Metal? The robotic copy created by Sonic’s own rival to only just keep him busy while Eggman did the real dirty work?
I was going for a walk.
I am going for a walk.
I didn’t tell you where I was heading.
I know where Metal…disposed of Sonic. I won’t keep it on the DL anymore. I know every event to a T, and I have a few friends who helped put the pieces together.
I smell salt water. Everywhere I go, I feel it. The crest of the water. The crashing, pulling tide, increasing and decreasing like synth waves, like masterful brush strokes painted thick with blood.
The lull is pulling me in and drawing me out again; everywhere I walk I feel a sway, and then I hear it.
Bones rattle like noisemakers in the water.
One foot in front of the other, easy does it.
I walk down the hill until my feet meet sand. The sun is gone and the sky is pearly white. The horizon line stands out, grayish blue, out there in the distance, and I keep walking.
Why is it that the sea only seems to appear wider and more vast, the closer I approach? It’s perspective surely, but it’s also fear. Phantom fear, because the pieces in my heart that belonged to Sonic know the dangers of the water and reflect the same hatred for it.
I stop when my feet tread the shore. There’s silence for a moment. Some of it belongs to the seagulls, crying out overhead. Some of it belongs to the churning of the waves as they slap the sand beneath my boots. Some of it belongs to the tension that fills out my chest and swallows the air in my lungs.
I am on the verge of discovery, I know it. My eyes move east of the coast. They move west. They move up and up, around and around, until I’m marching into the open sea.
I no longer feel the ocean.
He hates the water. Oh, sweet, irony. I sense him. Everywhere. When something is lost to the ocean, it might as well belong to each and every square of the vast expanse of roiling dark, dark water. He very well might be the ocean.
I don’t feel the cold. I just feel him, everywhere, calling for me, crying, pleading with me to help him. I’ve never heard him cry like this.
I kneel into the water, crawling on my knees now, finding my way with my hands as I sift through the blue. My dress wraps tightly around my legs, nearly weighing me down; my hair falls in semi-damp strings around my face, but I carry on deeper.
I begin to make a low groaning sound at the back of my throat. I pat the water with flailing hands.
Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Oh.
My face flushes with a surge of emotion. I am beating the water with my fists. Dark droplets rain and spatter as I knead, punch, and kick. I hit it over, and over, and over, and over and—
The cry reaches out of my mouth like it had been squatting inside of me for far too long. On, and on, I scream. Wail. I think maybe I sound like a whale.
My face shakes even though I hardly make a sound; my mouth just dangling open. Water is no longer discernible from saliva as it foams at my chin.
You took him. He belongs to you now. If he belongs to you, then so will I. I won’t be without him any longer. No—not ever again.
Then I span my armlength out and stalk forward, wading further past my elbows. Wind strikes me, knocking me back, but I just surge into rougher waters without a care in the world.
He’s out here, I know it. He’s still here. I just have to find him.
“SONIC!” There it was, the first scream of his name. The first sign of my descent.
“SONIC!! SONIC!!!”
I turn my head this way and that, crying his name each time. It starts to feel less and less like a name the more times I scream it. It’s uncanny how less and less it’s like he ever belonged to this world.
“More water, more water…just more water!” I cry. “SONIC!”
I dip my head under the water; for a moment that brings an epiphany. I come back up for what I can only assume now is the final time. I don’t think for one second about my friends. It’s selfish, I know. When you love someone you’re willing to drown for, you’ll understand.
“Sonic,” I mumble senselessly.
I hate knowing he’s out here all alone. I hate it more than I hate the one that took him from me. I hate it more than I hate the fact that the last thing I said to my friends before I left was, “I’ll be right back.”
Sonic said that before he left, too. My Sonic. Chaos, I love him.
There it is, the first tear of the day. It’ll be the last time I mourn.
The sea is an indifferent, unattainable monster. It’s a prison that Sonic never deserved. I’ll make it his home. I’ll spite Metal Sonic.
I suck in air and exhale, getting a taste of my last breath.
For once, the water is calm, and I am happy.
I want to see the blue before I close my eyes. So I dunk my head with them open. It no longer stings. It’s just a dull pain. Lulling back into my skull, I allow all the air to release from my person. I wait until the bubbles stop.
I feel so, so warm. I think he might just be holding me.
And that was all she wrote.
I think for a moment I’m fully dead and yet somehow aware that my body is rising to the surface rather rapidly, as if something or someone has latched on and pulled me out. Hoisted me, more like. A strong, familiar grip nearly breaks my arm with the effort.
I break the surface and collapse against the red blob with the killer grip. When my ears stop ringing and bubbling with salt water I realize it's been talking. Repeating the same thing.
“Amy, Amy, Amy…”
I can’t move; my limbs are like wet pasta. It’s almost funny.
The anchor that lifted me out of the water brings a hand to the back of my head, holding me up in an awkward position bent over him. He’s crying.
“I’m so sorry, Amy,” the anchor sobs. “I’m so…I’m so sorry.”
“Sonic.” I’ve regained my voice even if it is a little throaty and dull.
“No, Amy…It’s me. It’s Knuckles.”
“Knuckles?” I grip his shoulders. My vision clears and his big muzzle comes into view, spattered with sand, water, and tears.
“Yes, it’s me,” he says.
“Anchors…Anchors are supposed to keep you underwater. Not lift you out of it.”
Despite his confusion, Knuckles answers: “They do both.”
I gasp. “Oh. Oh, Knuckles, I—I tried to drown myself. I tried to—Chaos!”
He pulls me into him, stroking my head and keeping me balanced above the thrashing water. I feel the tears streaming down my cheeks as they mingle with the salt and frown lines on my face. I bury my head into my friend’s neck, the warmth stabilizing me for long enough to remember myself.
After a while, I feel Knuckles bend his arm underneath my legs and pick me up. He begins to trudge his way back to shore. Not once does he stumble or struggle against the still-raucous waves. He keeps his eyes ahead and his hold tight, but not too tight, on my limp, saturated body.
He makes his way onto the beach and a quick shadow casts over us for a moment.
Rouge.
A figure drops down a few feet away from us. She’s flapping her wings rather erratically, like they were once bound at her back and she’s just got them free.
Knuckles tries to speak something to her but instead he sets his jaw closed. She walks up close to us, close enough so that I can see her face.
“Oh, Amy, dear,” she whispers. “I’m so thankful we found you in time.”
I turn my head with effort, a string of my hair falling against my cheek. I see her upturned nose and pink lips. Her white batty hair and her thick eyelashes are wet with rain. Last I checked, it wasn’t raining. But then again, last I checked, everything around me was water.
I smile at her. “I’m okay.”
She reaches out and wipes the stray hair from my face.
“Rouge,” Knuckles says. His voice is so quiet it scares me. “Can you take her for just a minute?”
“Of course,” Rouge replies.
He hands her off to me gently, and when I’m fully passed into Rouge’s arms, I realize he won’t meet my eyes. He won’t even look at me.
He stands there looking at Rouge for a long while, as if deciding if he should tell her what he’s going to do. Then he turns on his heel and walks off.
“Mhm,” I mumble, turning my head to look up at the bat.
“It’s okay, Amy,” she says softly. “He’ll be back.”