Disclaimer: I don't own whatever you can remember from any part of the Sonic franchise. I only own my imagination, and even that isn't saying much.

~.xXGONEXx.~

Winter was near and its presence was made painfully clear. Cold kisses nipped teasingly at short, pink ears. Shivers, in turn, danced playfully up and down the spine of the rose colored hedgehog that smiled softly at the sight of her own breath.

It'd been far too long.

She looked past the charcoaled remnants of walls that had once been a sanctuary to a certain dark furred hedgehog and sighed. She half expected him to walk in past the burnt, black edges and glare off into the distance. Then he'd tell her to return home. She'd stay, of course, and the afternoon would be spent with her chatting the time away, and he pretending to be annoyed at her being there. She'd return the next day to retrieve a forgotten possession (a book? A hat?), and he'd be gone to some foreign country.

The auburn hedgehog grasped tighter the black, leather bound book, and took a deep breath. Exactly one year ago, on this date, a Shadow had been lost to flames.

The case had been pushed aside fairly quickly; the Media had dubbed it an 'unfortunate accident' and 'regrettable', but she doubted it was so simple. Shadow the hedgehog had been, without a doubt, one of the strongest Mobians she'd ever been pleasured to meet—second only to Sonic the hedgehog himself. He was meant to die fighting—protecting things dear to him with his very last breath. A fire sparked from a broken light bulb didn't seem to fit the bill of 'tragic anti-hero'.

Sometimes she thought that she was thinking too much about it. Accidents happened, didn't they? And Shadow had been working hard up until the fire. Saying he'd been too exhausted after a taxing mission seemed a legitimate excuse until one realized that he hadn't been called on in over a week.

"SHAADOOW!" She whined helplessly. It'd worked all the time when she was a child. She'd get captured, wail the name of one of her heroes, and then *poof* they'd miraculously show up right in the nick of time and whisk her to safety. She wasn't too surprised when the wind whistled back, almost mockingly, and the trees seemed to giggle at her look of indignance.

She briefly wondered why she bothered.

It wasn't like they'd been good friends, but she didn't like the gaping absence now that he was gone. Everything around her seemed to scream 'scandal'. She was glad the reporters had lost interest, though. There was only so much she could take of rumors of her nursing a secret affair with the supposedly deceased hedgehog. It'd only gotten worse when people started believing he had killed himself because he couldn't win her love.

Please, she scoffed to not one person, He wasn`t so weak.

She stood up after realising she was kneeling on the scorched remains of hardwood and dusted off a white winter coat. She couldn't waste time staring off into the distance anymore. She was eighteen; a young woman more than capable of taking care of herself. She was Amy Rose, and this time—she stopped at the sound of rustling leaves─

This time, she'd be the one doing the saving.

~.xXGONEXx.~

Gosh darn diddly doo~! Here's the prologue of the rewrite I was talking about. *dodges many bullets* Sorry for the Hiatus people. I doubt there's going to be much space between updates. Lovies~!

-Souja