This one goes out to Gadget and Ultimus.
And everyone else who thinks I hate SonAmy.

There's a moment where you look in the mirror and wonder how long it's been since you've actually looked. You've seen yourself in the mirror recently - but you didn't actually look. You suddenly get lost in the details of your own face, the face you barely recognize, and you wonder what happened. You consider how many times your cells died and replaced themselves. You wonder to yourself exactly what you are - what you've become. Not just outside, but inside.
I think everybody experiences this from time to time.

I'm getting old. I'm getting.. old.

The wrinkles. The permanent bags under my eyes. The expression on my face like I'm already dead. The thought crosses my mind that I don't know myself anymore, but maybe I never have. I feel like I did once, but... I don't really know.

Maybe it always made sense and I didn't acknowledge it when I didn't agree with it. Or maybe I never did. I don't know, it gets hard to remember things..

I just don't know anymore. I'm not sure if I remember you at all, Maurice.

Pink and blue flowers

The pen is heavier than anything I've ever had to pick up before.
I'm supposed to be Sonic the hedgehog. I'm supposed to be able to overcome anything. But maybe that's not me anymore, maybe I'm just weak now. Maybe.

A sigh escapes my lungs as I lift the pen from the table. I try to make light of this. I try to make it like a joke.

"Ha, so this is it, right?"

She doesn't respond. She doesn't even look at me. Neither does her lawyer. Princess Sally Acorn. Too good for me.

It's like a knife, twisting. I guess we don't hate each other. It's just over and it hurts. It hurts me, at least.

Don't know what to make of it. Don't exactly know how to feel, or even how I should feel. I take a deep breath and I sign my life, as I know it away.

I guess you could say this has been a long time coming. It never felt like it was going to work anyway. It always seemed like it was what we were supposed to do, but it was always so broken from the start. We were something else, back then. That's for sure.

It's just hard to let go, I guess. It's just hard to let go.

I set the pen down on the table, and I exhale.

It was all very fair, I guess.
Fair enough.

I'm staying in the beach house. She needs to be close to the city and all, so I got the house on the outside of it. The house on Ocean drive, the street with a luxurious view of Emerald coast. Every morning, I watch the tide come in. Every evening, I watch the sun sink into the sea.

At night, I stare at the ceiling. At the back of my eyelids. I stare at nothing, hoping for something that won't come. Sleep.
Eventually, I give into the night's calling, and I take a walk along the beach. This is where I find myself even now. I guess I'm at the point where I don't know what to do with myself. This land hasn't needed a hero in quite some time.

My bare feet leave imprints in the sand, marking my path from my home on stilts all the way out here. To wherever I'm going. Tracing my steps back. The ocean sings to me as the tide embraces the flats of my feet. The stars tell me stories, or listen to mine, depending on my mood.

Memories like old photographs flash across the back of my eyelids. I smile, because there's no other sentiment left for them.

The kids, they like to make fires out here at night and drink on the shore. They listen to the ocean and talk about god knows what. Their fires catch my eye, and I wonder to myself, wandering just outside the light, what their lives are like.

And that's when I kick the beer over. I don't know that's what happened right away, but deductive reasoning takes its course.
"Hey," the shadow from the corner of my eye calls. Female. "That was my beer."
"Oh, uh," I stutter. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" she asks.
"For spilling your beer."
"That's all right," she giggles. "You just owe me another one."
"What's your name?" I ask. I can feel the smile creeping across my face.
"Amy," she says, the cherry of a cigarette forming a brief glow around her face. She's a hedgehog. She's young. This much I can tell you. "Amy Rose," she says, exhaling smoke. "You?"
"Amy Rose." I repeat. "Nice to meet you, Amy Rose. My name's Maurice."
"Maurice, eh? Sounds exotic."
"If you call Knothole exotic," I chuckle.
"Oh? You're from Knothole, too?"
"Yeah." I laugh, because it would hurt otherwise. "You could say that."
"We can talk about that later," she says, flatly. "Right now, you owe me a beer."
"How am I gonna get you a beer?" I ask, dumbly. "We're on the beach."
"I know a place nearby," she says. And she isn't lying. I laugh, because it's funny. She doesn't get it.

"How long you been married?" she asks, sipping he beer and setting it back down at the bar. "And does your wife know you're out with a total stranger?"
"Oh, that," I say, glancing at my wedding band. "I'm divorced. Ha. I guess I'm not used to not wearing it. I wasn't trying to pick you up or anything, though."
"I know," she says, giggling. Her hand extending towards my forearm, fingertips lightly petting me. Sending chills down my spine. "I'm trying to pick you up."
"I'm too old," I say, laughing. "You're too young for me."
"Is Sonic too old for anyone?" she asks.

She's being coy. She's teasing me and it might be working. I give her the satisfaction of a glance before my glance turns to my rum on the rocks and I knock it back.

"Sonic's too old for this world," I tell her without looking at her. "He has been for some time."
"I don't think so," she says.

She means it. I think she does, anyway. It gets hard to tell at my age. Or maybe it always was. Maybe I've been naive for much longer than I want to admit. I laugh, because if it wasn't funny, it would be sad. She doesn't get the joke.

"You're young. At your age, it feels like there's no end to it, like everything good in the world will last forever. I'm sorry, it won't. Shit was broken from the getgo." I think I'm drunk. Maybe I shouldn't have drank this much. Maybe I should go home. Like, now.
"You can understand loss at almost any age, I think," she says to me, and I don't understand why, but it strikes a chord with me.
I write it off. "You don't understand life, young lady."
"Maybe," she sighs. "Maybe you just don't want to accept the simplicity of it all."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't want to accept that life is so simple after years and years of trying to analyze it. You've sat and picked it apart so long that you can't just accept that there's nothing to get. You're just a small, broken piece of something that's completely functional without you, and what you do or think about it doesn't matter."

I don't agree. I don't disagree. I just drink.
Maybe she's right.
Silence. I take another drink before her hand touches my shoulder. It's an unsure gesture, I can tell by her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I wasn't... I didn't mean you."

It's okay, I tell her. I'm still alive. I know how it is.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I ask, shining the flashlight in her face.
"Yeah," she says, staring at me, blankly. "Yeah, it's a great idea. Just get those ropes and hop on."

I untie the last remaining tether from the dock, freeing the barge to the ocean as I jump on deck and stumble over to the seat nearest her. She's in the caption's chair, pulling levers and pushing buttons.

"You, uh. Take this thing out often, do ya?"
"All the time," she says, smiling at me, as the boat backs away from the dock. She pushes a few more buttons and pulls on the lever and the lights turn on, and the boat starts moving forward, down the river and towards the open sea.
My gut doesn't have a good feeling about this, but my gut is also full of rum. So, I just sit back and shut up.

We brought a bottle with us, but I don't see myself drinking anytime soon. Especially not on the ocean. I don't know how I got talked into this, I really don't like the ocean.
My mom loved the ocean. She would always talk about it as if it were some kind of paradise. It was something of a disappointment when I got here.

I guess everybody's gotta hold onto something. Some kind of utopia. Some kind of reward for sticking it out, surviving, helping others instead of just yourself. Especially if you go out the way mom and dad did. Sacrificing themselves for something that doesn't even work.
An unattainable goal.

Rocks in the ocean. Cells reproducing and dying, multiplying and dividing. Existence is simultaneously creating and erasing itself. The waves splash against the side of the boat.

"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I say, snapping out of it. "Yeah, I'm fine. " I'm lying. " I think this boat was only built to tour the river," I tell her. Misdirection.
"It's fine," she responds, giggling. "I do this all the time, remember?"
"Right," I say.

I'm slipping.

Sprawled out across the cushioned bench adjacent to the captain's chair. Eyes roaming the dark purple sky, from star to star. Connecting the dots.
Lost in the universe around me, when I feel her arm and leg wrapping around my body at the neck and hip respectively.

"I know what it's like," she whispers into my hear seductively. "I know how it feels. I don't want to be alone, either."

Dark clouds looming over my head. Threatening to rain.

A sigh of relief escapes my lips. I close my eyes and prepare myself.

"I always bought flowers," I say, laughing. It's not really funny, I guess I forced it. I dunno. I don't necessarily understand myself all of the time. "I never got them."
"Not even on Valentine's Day?" She asks.
I'm half asleep. I have no filter. "Not even on Valentine's Day."
"I'll be sure to send you a bundle of pink and blue flowers every February 14th. Whether we're together or not."

I don't know what that means. I try to open my eyes.

Sally Acorn.
We're building a wall together. Metal scraping the wet concrete against the bricks between us. It's not the best wall, so far, but it's also not the worst.
Bricks covering up more and more of her body until it gets to about neck level. We start on opposite ends, unable to look at one another until we get to the center, where we both pause and just look at each other for a moment.

I don't know what I feel. I don't know how to describe this pit in my chest. I don't know how to react. She puts the final brick in the middle, cutting off eye contact and I can only see from her forehead up. I get back to work on the wall, myself.
Tired. Sweat dripping from my brow and into my eyes.
Blink. Shake it off.

Keep working.
Stacking, scraping, building, until the wall reaches the ceiling and I've locked myself in this dark cell all by myself.

I call out to her. No answer.
The cement dries.
I call out to her again. No answer.

Her soft sobs can be heard faintly through the wall. Or maybe that's laughter. My heart pounds against the back of my sternum as I start stabbing my trowel into the grey spaces between the bricks. Screaming at nothing as I try in vain to break the wall down.
It doesn't happen. The wall doesn't falter, doesn't change at all. Call her name until it sounds foreign, nonsensical to me before collapsing against the wall, all my weight against it, sliding down.

Ha.
Hahahahaha.

I'm not mad or resentful towards her. I don't hate her by any means. I don't want her dead or think she was wrong or stupid or blame her in any way.
I think about myself. I wonder how long I was living this lie. How hard I tried to keep something afloat that was sinking as soon as it hit the water.

The calming sound of waves swelling and splashing against the surface of the ocean in the distance, comforting me as my breath and heart-rate slow down.
Crying with laughter. Laughing with tears.

It was all just so moot. Why didn't I see it sooner? Why didn't she? Maybe we both did. Maybe we both saw it coming but refused to believe it.

Now, I'm old and weary and alone and I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know who to turn to or who to talk to.
I'm alone. I guess, in a sense, I have been for quite some time.
But now it's real. In my face. Laughing at me.

And then I hear the voice.

"Sonic?"

The ocean, I can hear the ocean. I don't usually wake up to the sounds being this close. Or other voices. Not these days.

"Sonic, are you okay?"
"Maurice," I say. I feel the hot sunbeams consuming my entire being. I open my eyes, blinded by the sun in the sky, waiting for my sight to adjust. Eyes rolling around in my skull, looking for something to focus on that won't blind me. I see her silhouette and sigh. "My name is Maurice."
The shadow cocks its head. "You'll always be Sonic to me."
"I guess you'll always be Amy Rose to me. Where the fuck are we?"
"Oh, uh, yeah. That," she says, stuttering nervously. "About that. I have no idea."
"Hnn?" My body shoots up without direction, and my head cranes all around me to view my surroundings. We're still on the boat, but there are no sights to see. Just water and sun and what's on the boat. It takes a second for this to register. "What the fuck?"
She smiles nervously at me, chuckling as if she has no idea what else to do. "You know how I said I knew what I was doing when I took this boat out? I may have been telling you something of a fib."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You can get us back, right? I mean, you KNOW how to drive this boat, I've seen you."
"Yeah, driving a boat isn't rocket science. But it isn't my boat and I don't know where the hell we are. Plus we're out of gas."
"Out of gas," I say, laughing sarcastically. "We're out of gas in the middle of the ocean on a party barge. Just how long have we been out of gas, Amy?"
"Since last night? There wasn't much gas in this thing from the getgo, apparently."
"And you just decide to take us out into the ocean. On a stolen boat. That doesn't have any gas in it. Great. You're fucking brilliant, you know that?"
"I didn't know," she says, hanging her head, and sitting down on the cushioned bench adjacent to me. "Do you have a cellphone on you? Mine's dead."
"What are we going to say to anybody we call?" I ask, hysterically. A mocking voice. "Oh, please, help me. I'm out in the middle of the fucking ocean." I don't have my cell on me. Nobody calls me anyway. I'm being an ass.
Her voice cracking. "I thought I was helping.. I just wanted to help you."

I don't know what to say to that. I don't know if she actually gives a shit or if she's just manipulating me. I don't know what this is or why this happened.
I feel lost, and I guess I am.

As if on cue, she begins sobbing into the palms of her hands. Her fingers resting more and more tightly against her forehead, closing together with each sob.
My head drops and my gaze falls to my shoes. My old, worn out shoes.

A sigh escapes me.

I'm going to die out here, and still, my heart goes out to this poor girl. If she's lying, she's a damn good actor. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for buying it

I stand and plop down on the seat next to her. My arm reaching around her back, pulling her closer to me until her head is resting against my shoulder. I tell her I'm sorry. I tell her it's okay. I repeat myself until she calms down, face leaving her hands in favor of my shoulder and neck. Her hot breath hitting my neck in short bursts.
The sensation sending chills up and down my spine.
Picturing her face close to mine, breath in sync, lips closing in.
Let go of her and scoot away from her, for personal reasons.
I'm sorry.

"I'm broken," I say to her. "A broken toy. What would you want with me? You're not the less fortunate. You can afford something better."
She giggles. "You're not suggesting I have to pay for my men, are you? Am I that ugly?"
"No, not at all," I tell her. "You can afford something better with your looks. Your smile. Yourself."
"I've always admired you," she says, scooting towards me. Closing the distance. Why is my heart racing? What the fuck is with these butterflies in my stomach? "I guess you could say I'm your number one fan."
"My biggest fan, eh?" I catch a smirk crawling across my face. Everybody is narcissistic enough to feel all warm and fuzzy after that, right?
"I didn't say biggest," she says, giggling. "I said number one. YOU said biggest. You calling me fat?"
Let out a laugh. I can't help it. She's funny. "Shut up," I tell her. "You know what I meant."

She grabs my hand and holds it for a few minutes as we comfortably share silence together. Things seem okay, even though they're not. I could die, and somehow, I feel fine.

"Do we have anything to drink?" I ask.
"Rum," she says, digging up the half full bottle from the other side of the bench. "The water jug that's hooked up to the sink over there is empty. I checked it."
"It always is," I laugh. I take the bottle from her hands and unscrew the cap before taking a hit and handing it to her.
"What am I drinking to?" she asks, looking at me as I awkwardly choke down the harsh rum in my throat.
"Let's drink to the wrecking ball," I tell her. Voice raspy and harsh to match the drink. "Tearing down walls and opening up new possibilities."

She chokes on it just as I did, coughing and trying to silently burp it away. Formalities and all. I smile, because I recognize it, but don't condemn it. It's cute that she tries to hide her bodily functions from me.
Correcting herself, she looks back up at me. Her green eyes holding mine in place as my reality falls apart, and I melt in so many words.

I can feel myself genuinely smiling for the first time in a long time. I have to break eye contact before I do something stupid and embarrassing, like kissing her.
Should be panicking about my health, about my life, about the fact that I might die soon and it's all her fault. But all I can think about is trying not to kiss her and ending up looking like a jackass to my only remaining link to mobian nature.

Feel pathetic. Time for misdirection. "We should check under the seats," I say, getting up. "See if there's anything that can help us."
"Oh," she says, getting up. I can tell she's disappointed with something, but I'm not sure as to what. "Okay."

Life jackets. An anchor. Useless. We're not going swimming, and we definitely don't want to stop here. I want to curse out loud, but I don't want to make her feel worse, so I just take another hit from the bottle and look to the sky.

And as soon as I close my eyes - I hear it in the distance.

"Amy," I say. She's sitting down again, looking for refuge in the palms of her hands. She seems as lost and as broken as me. I snap her out of it, shaking her shoulder lightly and pointing. "Amy, look."

A helicopter flying right over us. We both rush to the end of the boat and start waving and hopping madly as it flies towards us, passing us by. We turn to follow it in sync. My hand grabs hers instinctively, and I turn to look at her at the same time she turns to look at me. She throws her arms around my neck and pulls me in close. As if by second nature, our eyes lock as my hands snake their way around her waist. In the corner of my eye, right before it closes, I'm pretty sure I see the helicopter turning around as we close in towards one another.

And when we kiss, I stop caring either way.