'Cupcakes for Amy'

Summary: Change doesn't always happen in the wake of a thousand explosions. Sometimes, all it takes is one. Amy Rose centric story. Sonic/Amy

Focuspoints: Amy Rose, Sonic/Amy, the rest of the team.

This is what it was like after Chris left.

Things simply chose to resume, her life working over the hole he had left until the wound was gone altogether. She would awake at whatever time she pleased, but made a rule to limit the time frame to no later than the middle of the afternoon, and never earlier than the first few hours of morning. Anytime between then she would slip out of her bed and proceed with the boring ritual of getting ready. It was hard losing a friend, especially when sometimes she wondered if that was what actually transpired, but she did well in moving on. She was not the only one to question if he had really left, for one minute he was there and then he simply wasn't, or if he had even been sent home like they were told. But with no way to communicate to him, her worry evaporated into a little nagging feeling every so often.

She found that most of the time all she did was make sweets. It started on a particular day, with one apple pie that was sweet and made her lips part into a smile, and soon afterward delicious delights filled her countertops and threatened to spill over. She was usually covered in flour and such things by the time she decided to stop. When that happened, she would walk to Cream's house and drop off a good deal of her creations, before asking around and just giving away the rest. Usually everyone wanted something of hers, especially after they had decided to settle down for the day. Then she would clean up her kitchen, write down a list of things to do, and wait until it was time to go to sleep, to repeat the process.

But on this day, before she could even get around to finding a new recipe to toy with, Amy Rose's carefully planned routine was ruined by a knock on the door. When she opened it, still wearing her personally made one-of-a-kind absolutely only for Amy apron that Ella had taken the time to make for her, she was surprised to see Miles Prower; someone who was not usually in her normal-day planned activities. Crime-fighting activities, yes, but there had been little to none of that lately, even in the past few weeks. Rumor had it that Eggman had gone underground. Which meant that he was working on a big bad machine that would soon join his extensive pile of failures, but that it might be a long time before his latest scheme was ready.

"Hi Tails," Amy said with a smile. She was upbeat today, naturally. "Come on in." When she led Tails to the living room, she gave a quick grin before slipping off into the kitchen. She poked her head through the little window-like arch that allowed the two rooms to be connected, and gave her usual hospital welcome. "What would you like to drink? I've got some fresh lemonade I just made, and I made some cupcakes this morning. Oh, never mind, I know just what you want anyway. I have something for you." She arranged a particular cupcake on a little plate and poured the sweetest freshest tartest lemonade this side of Mobius and walked back to the couch, where Tails sat slightly intrigued.

"Amy," He said, catching a little of her surprise. "Is that-?"

Amy gave a little laugh and a nod of the head, settling both the plate and the lemonade down on the coffee table with one fluid motion. Tails lifted the plate with the treat on it, and looked amazed at the work of art she had done. First off, this cupcake was huge, so that the top and the bottom were in perfect sync and too big for a single bite. And though Tails didn't know it, the outside was made of strawberry, and the core of the cupcake was filled with homemade melted chocolate fudge. The very top of it was covered in frosting, but it was the carefully decorated design that really made this sweet something special. Tails felt a sense of awe at what his friend had created. The majority of the colored frosting was a light blue, but white frosting was mixed in here and there to look like lovely clouds. And the most amazing thing of all was that this cupcake carried a frosting rendition of the X-Tornado, but instead of looking like a childish sugarplum version, it looked surprisingly accurate, enough to make his heart stretch.

"I made it special." Amy spoke up, cheerfully awaiting his thoughts on her hard work. "The people in town absolutely love these guys. I call them Jumbo Cakes, I know the name's not all that great, but I'm working on it." Amy sat down and sipped her own glass of lemonade.

"This is incredible!" Tails praised, examining the cupcake at all sides. "Thanks so much Amy! It's so pretty I almost don't wanna ruin it by eating it." The two animals laughed a little and Amy shook her head.

"Don't be silly! It'd be a shame if this beauty went to waste. You be sure to be honest with me about how it tastes too!" She playfully punched his arm. When the fox took a little bite, she watched his reaction carefully. He sat there with his eyes closed, chewing slowly while making little sounds that made her smile widen. When he finally finished his bite, she was in his face, big green eyes shining with hope. "Well? Tell me what you think!"

"Seriously?" When Amy nodded Tails licked his lips. "I think this is better than anything I've ever had in my whole life! You have a real talent Amy, and I mean it." He took another bite. "But the best thing is the chocolate in the middle. How did you do that? It's like heaven." Amy rejoiced in his compliments, but once he swallowed the second bite, his demeanor slightly changed. "Actually, I didn't just come here for a visit, Amy. I should have told you that before."

"Oh," Amy said, a little worried. "Okay…"

"The thing is, I want to do something…" Tails stopped there, and chose to stare at his reflection in his drink.

"Something?" Amy blinked. "Like a big something? Or a little something?"

"A big something." Tails answered.

"Oh, alright." Amy searched her mind, but couldn't fathom what he could possibly be thinking. "Well, is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah." Tails set down his plate and his cup, and looked at her seriously. "You see, I know we've all kind of been healing since we got back from defeating the Metallix. And there's still a lot of hurt in all of us. Sonic runs like he's trying to, I dunno, escape something. Knuckles seems determined not to mention it at all, and he's totally focused on the Master Emerald. Cream, well, she's just scared sometimes. And I know we've all decided to kind of heal on our own…but…" Tails cleared his throat. "But Cosmo died. Cosmo died and I feel like nobody knows it except for me. Sometimes it's like I'm the only one who remembers that she was even here. When we got back, every Mobian in town wanted to know what happened, and where our friend went. We put that on hold...decided to wait...but I'm done." Tails lifted his head and looked her straight in the eyes, so that she could not misunderstand him. "I want to have a funeral."

Seconds passed, a couple of blinks between them. "I..." Amy coughed a little, and gave a shrug of the shoulders. "I'm going to...go get some more lemonade." She stood straight up and slowly walked into the kitchen. Looking around, she saw the stacked containers of sugar cookies, the neat rows of absolutely flawless pies, and even the picture perfect cakes that had their own unique spark. She wanted to get out another bowl, grab a couple handfuls of chocolate chips, she wanted to make more sweets, Making sweets was fun, it was easy, it kept her mind off of anything unpleasant. Yes, she should be baking right now. Stop it, she quieted her thoughts, Tails is in the living room right now and he came to you because he knew you're the only one who could do it. He's right, and I know it. He's right. So stop baking for five minutes and go in there to help him. Amy gathered her breath and strutted to her cabinet, and pulled out a couple of books from the shelf. She found the page she had marked, the page that had been marked and looked over for years, and walked back into the living room to meet Tails.

His eyebrows slanted sadly at the sight of her. It took her a brief second to realize her eyes were glazed with tears. "Amy..."

She sat down right beside him and opened the book, ignoring his concern. "So this is what I was thinking." She showed him the picture of the spring colored banners, every color found in a June garden. "Let's have it outside, and lets string these all around the trees like a little archway. We'll have her memorial where we first met her. With all the trees and flowers it'll be beautiful." She kept going, not noticing that Tails was not staring at her highlighted portions or tabbed reminders, but at her face. "Where the memorial is we'll have a pretty marble stone. And two big huge vases with huge bouquets of flowers in each one. We'll have the seating close, not parted down the middle, but like half circle. And right behind that, white tables and chairs to have a reception afterward. I'll make all the food, don't you worry about that..."

"That sounds great...but..." Tails paused and when they met eyes his irises reflected a stunned emotion. "Amy...this is..."

The pink hedgehog looked back down at the book, and saw what had alarmed the fox. She reached down and took the note in her hands, crumbling it up, which wasn't hard. The note had been written ages ago. She grinned, felt it in her core, the healing. "It's going to be amazing, when it's done." She whispered, and the two smiled at each other. They resumed then, as life would, bent over the pages while they discussed an event that would be more of a celebration than a funeral. In the corner of her living room, an air conditioned breeze rolled the crumbled note half open.

Not that it mattered, the only words that had been written were unrecognizable. No one would be able to tell the age old note labeling the pages had once read:

My Wedding.

The next day, instead of making sweets, Amy Rose got up and went to the shopping center.

She stopped at a floral shop and ordered as many flowers as she was allowed, and when she watched them write down the order in disbelief, she felt a sense of satisfaction. She bought a perfectly tailored magnificently red dress and perfectly trendy but appropriate red boots to match, a small box of neatly arranged sushi for lunch, and a romantic novel that had initially looked too risqué from a first glance. By the time she was done she felt as big as the sky, though exactly why could not be explained. The entire time, the only thing she thought about was the funeral. The colors, the decorations, the food. Yes, thinking about the food was her favorite part.

She spoke to herself silently. "A dozen Jumbo Cakes, each individually assigned. A strawberry short cake might be better than an angel food cake, but the main course is the tricky part. Lobster seems over the line, but then again...I want this to be a grand occasion. Is that wrong? Tails wanted a celebration of her life, but what if I make it too-?"

She stopped mid-out loud rant. Her eyes fixed on the item for sale in the middle of the current store she was in. She stepped up to it and called for an employee. "How much for it?" She asked a teenage worker with a ring through her nose. She sat down at the bench and let her hands hover over the smooth black surface of an exquisite beautifully crafted grand piano.

"Aren't you Amy Rose?" The girl said, and without needing an answer her eyebrow arched. "What do you need a piano like this for?"

"I want to hear somebody play a song on it," Amy continued on, choosing not to listen. Her fingers still hovered, as if she couldn't quite make up her mind if she wanted to change it or not. Like looking out at a blanket of fresh snow untouched, she was holding off on tainting it with tangible touch. Determination painted her face as she lifted her irises to meet the girl who had questioned her. "I want to hear this piano. Before I buy it. Something classical, you know? Can anybody here play the piano like that?"

"Yeah, I can give it a shot." The girl sat on the bench beside her, and with a natural ease lifted the covering to expose the piano in its rawest section. The two met eyes and the unknown employer offered a little smile. Her fingernails were painted like miniature galaxies, and they were enough to transfix Amy into trusting her. "My mother was a music teacher. I had to learn all those dumb odes and stuff." To Amy's amazement, the minute she quieted to focus, it was as if the girl before her had changed. Her posture straightened, and Amy found herself battling goosebumps. And then, after only a second longer, the girl played.

The melody was soft and sweet, but also sad, as if the notes were meant to tell a story. It drifted from the fingers of the girl to Amy's ears and into the air as if the whole scene had been waiting for its own theme. Amy closed her eyes, felt the need, and saw before her eyes things she had forced herself to forget. Cosmo, laughing shoulder to shoulder with Cream and Knuckles, her hand over her mouth as if ashamed to let grief go. Sonic and Knuckles recovering from the battle, how she had removed bandages to be shocked at the cuts, still angry and red and open as a mouth. She saw Chris, absent mindedly drawing blueprints for something, and Tails looking at the rough draft with a distant grin. She saw Vanilla the first day they had come home, standing at her doorway as Cream let go of Amy's hand and ran into the arms of her mother. She saw Rouge, shaking Sonic's hand as she said not in so many words that she would be joining their team. She saw Cosmo again, after a night that held no meaning, waking everyone up with her nightmares. And how Amy had tucked her back into her bed, neat and comforting, to tell her everything would be alright.

"Nothing will happen to you," she had said cheerfully but honestly. "Not as long as we're here."

The song ended with a simple slow chord, and when the song had stopped it was as if Amy was painfully aware, of all that was quiet. She opened her eyes and turned to the girl, who looked satisfied with herself. "What is that?" Amy asked, almost urgently. "What song did you just play?"

The girl blinked, and then looked off. "It's an old classic, my mother used to play it all the time. She said it was composed to tell about a man who was in love, but the love was hurting him and he knew it. The woman was an important figure in their society or something, and so he lived in her world of riches for her. But that wasn't what he wanted. So he left her. Not because he didn't love her, but because he didn't want to life the life he had with her anymore..." Her fingers placed the cover back in place, and her next answer was almost too quiet to hear. "It's called The Year of Orchids."

"Play it again." Amy whispered, and it was the focus in her eyes that kept anyone from mistaking her. "I'm buying the piano, but please. Play the song again."

The employee with painted nails did so, and this time Amy fell into it much faster. But instead she saw things as a whole. Meeting Cosmo, becoming her friend, saving planets, the final showdown with Dark Oak. One minute Cosmo was there, but then she was not, evolved and deep rooted into the evil, overwhelming it. One minute there, the next gone and forcing her loved one to kill her. One minute there, alive, and the next minute gone. Amy saw the events in a never ending circle, replaying in consistency, never changing. The moments in her mind are added in, and when the song ended again Amy knew it was not over. That she would not rest until the song showed her the ending. Not just those events, those seconds of recollection. She wanted to see how it must end, the end of the never ending circle. She wanted to see herself, making amends for a lie, getting on with her own life.

That day she made fourteen pies, six batches of sugar cookies, a chocolate cake with four layers and a mountain of homemade strawberry frosting.

She made six sweet caramel apples and the most delicious absolutely mind numbingly amazing fudge that she had ever tasted.

She made three Jumbo cupcakes, each of them telling great stories, and ended her day with a couple of cookies and a cup of hot chocolate.

When she cleaned up the kitchen, she had no more time to just give them away willy nilly.

So she placed the items on a red children's wagon that Cream had left over long ago. She hauled it through fatigue and stress and over hills and across the lawns of her neighbors. When she reached Cassidy's Corner, an old building that had been the only bakery of its kind and still remained the most famous, she scrawled her name on an envelope and set the wagon by the door. When she knocked, and a pregnant woman answered with a smudge of flour on her cheeks, she grinned ear-to-ear.

"Bless you Amy girl," she said. "We just gave away the last of your key lime pies, and we thought we'd have a riot on our hands." The woman snorted and gave a full bellied laugh, the kind that made Amy hurt. It made her think of mirrors, compact mirrors that judged. Whenever she was younger she would practice on the proper ladylike way to laugh so that she could be charming even doing the little things, watching her actions from a compact mirror. It never worked, however, because anytime something humorous caught her off guard she would throw her head back and laugh loudly and obviously. No matter how hard she tried, Amy could not press out the flaws in her own self.

Amy smiled in return. "I'm just glad everyone likes them so much." She passed them off one by one, her pies and cookies and fudge and apples, and felt so much lighter when the last of them disappeared inside the bakery. Much lighter, as if she could breathe again. "Remember what I said. Please don't tell anybody I made them, and don't sell them. Give it away, to people who look like they need it."

The woman let out another amused chuckle. "You bet missy, such a generous and amiable soul you have when it comes to your food. I'll tell you though, your talent is impeccable, sometimes I have myself a bit of your pie and I swear I almost melt! If you opened your own bakery the boss'd be out of business so fast his head would spin! I'd work for you over this fuddy duddy anyday."

Amy gave a reluctant grin and took one of her own cookies, and followed the motion of the woman before her. They raised their cookies like glasses of wine, both of them in need of a good treat. "To baking!" Her friend bellowed. "Long live Amy Rose!"

Amy blinked and kept her smile as best she could, but suddenly she felt very sick. "Long live Amy Rose…" her voice died off and she made up for it by biting her cookie in half. It really was delicious, she had to admit. Better than any other cookie that had come before it. Perhaps a bakery would benefit…

Amy dismissed the thought immediately. Open her own bakery?

As if.

That night she dreamed of the dress she had bought.

In the dream she was standing over a large cliff, her bold red dress rhythmically timed with the gusts of wind that blew her hair in different directions all over her face. The ground was covered in snow, but below the rocky cliff the sea was calm, unresponsive to the storm above the ground. In her dream she knew enough to find the situation strange, but as she turned she saw Cosmo. Only it was not the Cosmo she had known, but an older lighter evolved form, her features made soft by fond memory.

In a simple graceful motion this beautiful Cosmo took her hand and Amy reflexively dug her heels in the dirt, surprised as she felt a pang of dread. Cosmo kept going, took her over the cliff, but instead of falling they seemed to float on air. Amy shrieked and grabbed Cosmo's other hand, terrified and unwilling to accept the sudden loss of gravity.

"Should and want." Cosmo said suddenly, over Amy's fear. "An ocean."

Her hands let go, and Amy hovered in the air for a moment, like in a hilarious cartoon where the inevitable fall is stilled for the character to have a witty last remark. Her body sunk then, but she kept one hand extended, trying to reach Cosmo, her face painted over in horror as she realized she was going to-

Amy's eyes snapped open.

Her heart was racing and slamming so hard into her chest that it was the first thing she focused on when she came back from the other side. She sat up, hardly able to catch her breath, and placed a hand on her heart to try and slow down the frantic panic. She shook horribly, trembled as if her core was ice cold. She glanced at the clock and was distraught to see there were still hours to go before morning. She walked around her house for awhile, made some delicious hot chocolate, but could not gather enough nerve to go back to her bed.

So she put on her coat and walked all the way back into town. She found it a bit ridiculous, thinking about it, why in the world did she choose to build a house so far away from where everything was? So it would be closer to Tails' workshop, so it would be closer to Sonic. Amy answered herself and then rolled her eyes, then wished she hadn't. She also wished she had built her home closer, wished she had thought a little more.

Eventually she reached a patch of land that was only a mile or two from downtown, a rather large patch of land. It surprised her that nobody had claimed this land yet, not from what she could tell. Out of morbid curiosity she walked all around, looking for the signs that it was marked. Every Mobian knew that if you saw marked land that was that, but if there wasn't a single sign it was yours to take. When she was sure there was nothing, she stood there with her hands in her pockets, alarmed at her own actions. Why was she looking? Why did it matter that this prime patch of land didn't belong to anyone?

"It's yours." Amy was startled when she heard a voice beyond her shoulder, and when the pink hedgehog turned she saw the woman from the store, the one she had bought the piano from. Under Amy's gaze she yielded a smile. "It used to belong to my aunt, but she decided she didn't want to build a candy shop after all, and so she finally let it go. I'm actually here to say goodbye."

"Oh." Amy could only reply, and then she bit her lip. "What made your aunt not want to build a candy shop?"

"My cousin, her little girl died, not too long ago." The girl seemed very young then, and they both looked at the property, transfixed. "My aunt couldn't build a candy shop after that. Said it had too many memories. Emma, my cousin, loved candy. Any kind of sweets, but especially candy. Auntie wanted this land to go to someone who wasn't heartbroken. You know what they say, brings bad luck to start a new journey with a broken heart."

Amy nodded, and tried not to think about her own contradicting beliefs. She had stayed and lived her life, six months after the Metallix, and yet none of it had worked. In fact, there was this feeling of dread when it came to facing what she had built around herself. Her team, her friends, her passions, she hated being the person that enjoyed these things now. A tremor of pain passed through her spine as Amy inhaled a bit of breath, realization a bitter wound:

I don't want my own life.

Six months she had baked, been there for Tails, played with Cream, argued with Knuckles…and she had hated it. In some small way she had hated it. From the minute she came back her world had been altered, and trying to gain back what she had lost was just impossible. Yet she woke up, day after day, not minding the effort. And then when Chris left, only a short time ago, the dissatisfaction grew, swelled, nearly knocked her over. Six months of her own life had been so much that in these past couple days, when she was given a job, a chance to do something that wasn't like her, she jumped at it with arms wide open. This event, this grand event that Tails had asked her to plan, was her way of breaking free, starting over, giving tribute to a friend who she had loved very dearly, setting Cosmo as her inspiration. Life had ended in one second for Cosmo, after eight years of torment she was happy even for a moment and that happiness gave way to willingness to die. But what about Amy? Amy lived hoping one day to be happy, to one day have the guy she wanted, the looks she craved, the talent…

The new Amy, the new Amy who had been there with her, transitioning for six months, was changing everything. She was making herself happy. The new Amy wanted to do this for Cosmo because she was hurting. She was not waiting, was not settling for one day I'll be happy. This grand event, this memorial celebration, had allowed her to stretch from the box of expectations that she had been trapping herself in.

Soon though, she would have to go back to fighting Eggman. He was overdue for one of his lousy schemes anyway. Could she go back, just like that? The last time they fought evil Cosmo had died. Amy tried not to think about it, for some reason that aspect made her sick to her stomach.

"Now, what would I do with land like this?" Amy thought out loud, and the other girl stared at her in a manner that told her she had considered this too. Amy gave the tiniest laugh. "I'm not all that great at making candy."

Her partner in insomnia offered a warm chuckle of her own. "Yeah, well, neither was Auntie…"

The two of them shared a moment of silence, before they burst into a fit of laughter. The kind of laughter that bubbles your mouth open at the times where it seemed most unfitting. It was the kind of laughter that takes place at funerals, hospital lobbies. Amy wrapped her arms around her stomach, which was starting to ache, and though they tried wave after wave of laughter just continued to wash over them. Then the laughter gave way to tears, but on the foot of that, even more laughter.

Amy hoped that wherever they were, Cosmo and Emma would understand all that she could not say with words alone.

The next day, Amy decides to clean out her attic.

What she finds is something she already knew was there, but she had long since forgotten. It is a small tiny pink box; the length of it is just long enough for an envelope. This is exactly what is inside. A letter. Even though she has two trash bags full of junk, Amy sits down to examine the treasured container. Her hand sweeps over the carved floral patterns, and though she cannot bring herself to question why, she opens the lid to see the envelope. It has yellowed from years of being ignored, and she has not read its contents, not even once.

Amy could remember her parents, and she had a handful of memories, always tucked away to comfort her. She could remember them. But what did it matter? Besides Cream, none of her friends had parents, and so she felt as if she could never say anything about them. Tails still felt hurt, she knew that much. The rest of them, even Sonic, she had no idea. Her parents had died due to an explosion, Metal Sonic had murdered them. Despite the fact that she could remember all the horrible things about that day, as Amy closed the lid, she did not feel as if that could stop her from opening the letter. It had remained closed out of fear, out of the fact that she didn't want to think about it. That she had considered it done, and there was no need to bring it up.

"Can I do it?" She whispered to herself. Her thoughts, altered from lack of sleep and an extreme amount of self-analyzing, carried past taboo and into acceptance. She wished her mother was here now, just for a minute. If she was meant to open it later, not today, she wanted to know. But the quiet continued.

In the end, she doesn't. She takes down the trash bags, closes up the entrance to her attic, and wipes dirt from her boots. After all that, she makes cupcakes.

The box, though, she keeps. Underneath her bed, a comforting voice casted in amber, until she would be ready for it.

a/n: I sincerely hope you guys like what I've written over a pretty long period of time. I could never bring myself to erase it, and I've been reluctantly adding onto it for awhile now. I want to continue this, I'm just not sure if I only like it because I have a big ego, or because it's legitly good. 3

I love Amy Rose, and I always believed her character is a work in progress. So I enjoyed a scenario, a pebble thrown, in which progress is happening. Not the progress anyone could have thought though. Sometimes growing up means realizing your whole life doesn't mean what you want it to.