123 days, 17 hours, and 54 minutes. With a spoonful of ice cream, and the static screech of the TV in the background, it was as it always was when he left. The sore piercing pain beneath my eyes as the world seemed to haze into a day less arrangement of black against the silent walls.
123 days, 17 hours, and 56 minutes.
Another slip of the spoon in the inside barrier of my mouth, and the slippery cold ice cream is crammed down my throat. The taste almost completely vanished into nothing more than useless calories. Sixth gallons of ice cream, going on seven.
123 days, 18 hours.
Still nothing more than empty silence, except for the threatening voices in my head. Bright illustrious words written in Sonic blue are streaked across the ceiling: calm, sweet, still, quiet, nice, and patient. Maybe he will like me if I change? Maybe he will finally notice me. He cared about me, he had to. He wouldn't ever come back if he didn't. Maybe he wouldn't come back. With grey walls, burning coffee, broken glass in almost every corner, and the lack of friendship; it seemed he would never come back.
123 days, 18 hours, and 6 minutes.
"Amy?" Cream whispers as she props open the front door. Tails at her said and Cheese at her shoulder, the three wait for a reply as I press myself further back into my chair. Taking in the sweet toxic fumes of car exhaust leaking in through my window.
"He's going to come back." Tails said lightly.
"123 days, 18 hours, and 13 minutes." I mumbled as my head leaned forward and rested on the colorless table before me. My house only seemed to lack in color when he wasn't around. The florescent pink walls, yellow couch, and blue table set; seemed nearly grey to match the dark rings beneath my eyes. When had I last slept? The hours seemed to blur together. Patience had never been one of my most redeeming features, and maybe that's why he left.
"You're just hurting yourself." Cream moaned as she carefully grabbed my arm and began to drag me out the door. A baggy black hoodie was tossed in my direction as Tails loudly noted the cold weather just beyond my window. As I was forced to change into some clean pair of pants rather than the ghastly pair of pajamas I had been wearing for days, I could only imagine Sonic's reaction to the cold. I had always loved winter the most, because it was at this time of year when I was able to bundle close to Sonic in attempt to warm him up. His cool fresh fur against my skin as he trembled at the touch, and seemed to wish nothing more than to escape, but he never did. Well, at least until four months ago.
"You need fresh air." Cream chipped in as she began to drag me towards the door with Tails following briskly behind me. Cheese happily sang along as we made our descent down the creaking staircase and towards the door.
"Amy, look." Tails said as he gently tilted my head back so that I no longer stared blankly at the dirty pavement beneath my feet, but rather at the dancing pieces of snow that streaked across the sky. "It's finally snowing. You love this time of year! Cheer up! Sonic will come back."
But what if he doesn't? The image is still plastered into my mind of his back turning, for the last time. His words, as they lingered in the air, still pierced my soul. "Sorry, Amy." He said as his back was to me. "Don't wait for me."
Like that, he disappeared, just like the snow as it floated down to the sidewalk. Knuckles, as usual, was only to be found at his shrine. Tails had used the free time to go and research and develop equipment that he had probably told me what it was and what it did, but I honestly couldn't remember any of it. Cream and her mother probably just laughed their lives away with talk of sweets, friends, and how happy and content they were with everything. In the end, it was only me who worried. Sonic had apparently said different things to each one of us as he left saying: 'stay strong, I have to talk to you about something when I get back', 'keep working, I'll be back before you know it', and 'it smells great, can you make me a batch when I get back?'. It was only to me that his voice hinted the long and painful wait.
"The conformist treatment is going well." Tails hinted as I stared numbly into the sky. It was a change of subject, but every topic referred back to him.
"It looks like he is finally starting to crack." Cream giggled as though something in what she said held humor in it, but Tails and I only blankly watched her for the reason she never gave.
"It doesn't matter anyway." I said with a sigh as my breath seemed to take shape and color in the irritable cold air. Nothing mattered in the end.
Tails and Cream continued to dig out excuses of good news, but my mind glazed over the frosty surface of our surroundings. With a sky above us of grey air, and white covered buildings, it seemed as though my world was forced into darkness. No color seemed to register, except for a slimmer of gold in the distance. I automatically began to walk in the direction of the glimmer and slid my hand below the surface of the snow to grab the object, but paused. The cold didn't seem to register in my mind as it seemed that I wasn't even reaching out to touch something. Brushing the snow away I found it to be nothing more than a chaos emerald, something I never thought I would see again.
Of all the things, it was a chaos emerald. An accident that would have come in use months ago, but it no longer mattered. There no longer was a threat for world domination. There no longer was a need for Sonic to transform, and there was no need to collect them before they disbanded. The numb feeling in my hands seemed to be alive as my hands held the emerald. The gem always had seemed so alive, but this had honestly been the first time I had held one in my hand. I quietly pulled my glove off and let the gem come in contact with my skin as the warm and energetic sensation seemed to be breathing through my veins and skin, the closer to the gem the more violent the sensation. There had been so many secrets held within the simple gem, and it almost intrigued me to figure out what made a chaos emerald what it was, but my mind was too blank to think too seriously on the subject.
"Where did you get that?" Tails gasped as he stopped in his place and both he and Cream took in the sight of the emerald within my hand.
"It was just sitting on the ground." I laughed in the most fake way possible as I slid on my glove and held the gem carefully between my fingers. "Finding these things was always so hard, but here it is. Just lying in the snow, near my house, as though-"
"That's a fake." Tails said as he swung around to survey the area. Cream seemed to understand what was wrong and instantly got into position to defend herself. "When Sonic left and Eggman was locked away, the rest of us set out to find them."
The bushes seemed to come alive as familiar robots seemed to slither out of nowhere and whip out their pathetic guns. Dropping the emerald I backed into the open area that Tails and Cream had their backs to, and prepared for an attack.
"So you're saying that you have them?" I asked quietly as I looked quickly at Tails before returning my eyes back to the approaching robots. They weren't a threat, not in the slightest, and they never had been.
"Under the strictest security I have ever made." He said proudly. "The government would be jealous of the security I was able to muster. Before Sonic left, he tested the equipment and was not able to get through even once without setting off the alarms. If someone would have broken in, then I would know about it."
The ground beneath us rumbled, throwing all three of us off guard as the rumbling sensation grew stronger just beneath our feet. The ground broke and we were all thrown in separate directions as things of black blurred around us. Thrown through the air, I came down hard against my wrist as I tried to block my face from impact as I was thrown wildly in every which direction. My shoulder was the next thing that came in contact with the ground, followed by my higher back and head as I summersaulted backwardly across the snow. There was only a black blur coming straight for me as everything went black.
It was the tainted smell of chemicals that helped me gain consciousness. Every part of me was restrained back in a chair surrounded by medical equipment everywhere. It was like being in the dentist office of hell. I tried to pull my wrists out from the secluded metal holding me back, but I couldn't seem to budge. My head was dizzy beyond anything I had ever experienced, and the world seemed to constraint and bend against nature as I could hardly make sense of what was in front of me with its fraying edges.
"Comfy enough?" A chorus of voice asked from above as the clinking and clanking of metal above me made me twitch. Whoever they were, they were sitting on top of the large machine surrounding me like a suffocating throne of metal.
"What do you want with me?" I hissed as I tried to yank my hands free, but the pain in my wrist seemed to scream back with anger as it became apparent that I had landed worse than I thought. "Where is Tails, Cream, and Cheese?"
"Don't worry about them." The chorus of voices said lightly from above as they seemed to all shift their weight at one time. "You are the only one I need."
"Come and fight me." I screamed angrily. If Sonic was here, he would rescue me, but he wasn't coming back.
"I'm not stupid like your other enemy, or should I say former enemy." They continued, ignoring me. "I'm willing to plan, wait, and be patient to get what I want. There is just something I wanted you to witness."
Dizzy, sick, and cold; I waited. The clicking sounds of metal all around me caught my attention as I tried to see what it was that was rising from the doughnut in the ground. Was that a doughnut? My mouth watered at the thought as I watched the doughnut morph and change with my delirium. Momentary weakness in balance, I saw some metal machine complete its ascent through the hole in the ground.
"Now, don't flex your muscles, it will hurt less that way." They laughed as a felt a searing pain in my arm as the machine jolted forward. The syringe inserted a serious amount of liquid into my arm before quickly withdrawing and retreating to the floor below.
"Now, it begins." They said triumphantly as I felt a horridly sickening sensation burning in my upper arm, making me tremble violently as it slithered through my veins. The metal around my wrists, ankles, legs, arms, head, and just about everywhere else, loosened and I felt thrown out of the chair and to the ground.
I squirmed on the ground in pain as something coursed through me with burning strength. Screaming; I began to dig my nails into the flesh where the sensation seemed the strongest, at my heart and where the needle had gone in. Voices laughed all around as I continued to scream in pain.
123 days, probably, and he's still nowhere to be found; and for the first time, he was too slow to save me.