Zima
Warnings: emotions?
Notes: I make no promises on updates anymore, simply because I'm in my junior year of university and I barely have time to sleep, let alone write. Combine that with the fact that I'm currently enthralled with Hetalia and you've got someone who lets fanfiction fall to the wayside in favor of homework. In fact, I should be learning how to recite the first stanza of Canterbury Tales in middle English but I'm here instead. So, there's that. I hope the emotions came across correctly in this chapter. I'm very tired.
A few of the questions that I never got to answer in review replies: What kind of Elemental is Knuckles? I haven't said yet. It'll come up eventually. Is it possible for Sonic to be killed? Yes and no. You'll see. I hate Amy. Is she going to be a major character in this? Yes. I lov e her and she doesn't deserve hate. Pairings in this story? Background Silvaze. Otherwise, look for your romance elsewhere.
Onward and upwards!
Each crunch of snow under her boots reverberates through her body, shaking her to the core. The white is still unblemished, sparkling, bright, perfection under the sun. It's quiet—only the wind and the sea beyond the cliffs making any noise. This land is ancient, but it shouldn't be deserted; there should be laughter and happiness here. There's no one to play in the snow, no one to trek through it to the train station, no one to sled down the hills with or build snowmen with. Tails is truly alone out here, and the idea of that loneliness socks her straight in the gut, taking her breath away.
(There had once been life and wonder here. Every summer they had picnics in the sun, roasted marshmallows over Blaze's fire, laid in the grass and looked up at the stairs. Spring found Tails flying around with Cream, watching in wonder as she pressed life into plants with the tips of her fingertips, painted flower buds across the landscape, breathed warmth into the air that chased away the last of Sonic's frost. Autumn was large piles of leaves and a swooping, looping fox, dive bombing and throwing oranges, reds, and yellows into the air. Winter— Well, winter was the best. Sonic's domain: snowball fights to rival the wars of old, small snow families, each with different scarves because Tails insisted they would get ill otherwise, lopsided snow angels, footprints scattered around in varying sizes. There were whispered promises, so quiet Amy was sure she wasn't supposed to hear them. You'll have a power one day, Sonic told Tails as the fox soaked the cold of the snow into his body, and you'll be able to change the world, just like us.)
Her pace speeds up at the thought, feet crushing angry holes in the snow as she climbs the plateau to the workshop, bag smashing into her leg with each agitated movement. The building is quiet, a perfect match for the landscape that threatens to take it over, but Amy knows that Tails is here. The curtains are drawn over the large bank of windows that face the huge area of the plateau and that— That brings her to a stop. Tails never pulls the curtains over those windows, leaves them open so he can see out—and so Sonic can see in, her mind adds, but she ignores it. Tails doesn't know Sonic is there.
There is a harsh slash of ice across the glass, she realizes as she resumes her trek and draws close, trepidation and dread dripping into her veins, and, just barely, she can see the incriminating letters hidden under the ice, etched into a light layer of frost. Oh Sonic, you poor, poor fool. Despite herself, she squints further, takes in the swoops of each character. His hand was sure, the letters clearly defined, innocuous, I'm always here, as if the very letters themselves aren't life shattering. Chaos, what had he been thinking—
No, no, now isn't the time. She can fuss at him later. For now, she has a confused fox kit to worry about.
She knocks a few times and stands for far too long in the cold, hands shoved into the pockets of her coat, shivering her tail off in Sonic's stupid snow. There is no sound from the house, no sign that Tails heard her, and she sighs before trying the knob. It's locked—because Tails listens, and Sonic once told him to always lock up, so he does—and she swipes her hand across the edge of the doorjamb for the keypad. It appears as a hologram and she struggles through the combination, never quite used to the see-through not-numbers. She gets it eventually, and the lock clicks as it disengages, the door swinging open under her hand.
"Tails...?" she calls softly as she sticks her head in. The house is dark and silent, only the creaking of the wind outside breaking the sense eating void. Amy kicks her shoes off and drops her bag once she steps all the way in, the door swishing shut and plunging her into complete darkness. With a sigh, she snaps her fingers and a small ball of light appears in her palm, drawn forth by the friction. Strange shadows appear before her, menacing shapes that threaten to attack at a moment's notice, and she scowls and huffs before padding forward in her socks, whispering quiet.
It takes two full walkthroughs of the whole house for her to spot him on the couch. He's burrowed under a blanket up to his nose, ears poking just barely over the edge of the armrest, eyes staring right through the room, the wall, the world in front of him. There's a cup of cold tea on the coffee table before him, and she nudges it over so she can sit in his sightline. He doesn't see her, instead breathes once, twice, thrice, and blinks slowly, as if it is a chore and not a basic function. The blanket is a lumpy mess, curled around his legs and namesakes, not really doing anything but making him look small and chaotic.
"Tails..." She lets a long breath out of her nose and reaches forward to shake his shoulder.
His eyes snap up to her then, pupils blown wide by the lack of light, skate down her extended hand, up her arm, whirl past her face, and settle on the warm, yellow light ball still cradled in her other hand. Tails sucks in a harsh breath and recoils into the back of the couch, legs coming up so he can curl into himself. "Not you toooo..." he wails into his knees, voice broken, cracked like a parched desert.
Okay, he definitely hadn't been able to see her light balls last month. Maybe this whole idea wasn't so farfetched.
She lets the light go, dropping them back into complete darkness. There's no sense in agitating him further after all, and this conversation might be easier if she can't see him. She won't be able to go through with this if she can see his face breaking as he realizes what's going on, or denial as he refuses to believe in them. Either way, it's best for now to keep them in the dark.
"Tails, Tails," Amy tries to grab his shoulder again, but he slaps her hand away. The hit stings, and she snatches her arm back, hurt. Breathe Amy, he didn't mean it. He's confused and hurting. "Tails," she sighs, leveraging her hands into her knees, "I know you're scared, but—"
"I'm not scared!" Suddenly, he's alive with energy, manic with it. She feels him whip up, feels his stare in her head, hears his breathing pick up as he works himself into a frenzy. "I'm angry! Sonic's here! He's been here the whole time, and no one told me!"
Okay, here she is, prepared to convince him that Sonic never left, and he goes and says something like that. She isn't sure where to go next, has no idea what to say, but she doesn't have to worry about that, because Tails steamrolls on.
"Why did he leave me, Amy? Why did he leave if he was just gonna stick around? He's haunting me! Does he hate me? Am I that much of a burden?" His voice cracks and the angry energy turns into depression—like a snap of fingers or the flip of a coin. "Did I annoy him so much that he had to get away?"
"What?" she all but demands, sliding off the coffee table and onto her knees so she's eye-to-eye with him. "No, Tails, honey..." Suddenly, she feels like she's gone back in time, back when Tails was a tiny thing, no more than ears and eyes and matted, dirty fur, and she has to comfort him after a hard winter storm. Back when Sonic had to sprinkle snow and leave Tails with her or Knuckles while he worked. Tails had worried about Sonic abandoning him even then, and it broke her heart to see it again. Except, this time, it is real, as far as he knows. "He— He had no choice, do you understand me? He had to leave you, but he's always been looking out for you. He was never really gone."
"He had no choice," he parrots back, voice harsh, disbelieving. With a tone like that, he's a dangerous little thing, city crumbling, unforgiving, angry, the total opposite of the kind-hearted child that clothed snowmen and nursed birds back to health. "Don't lie to me, Amy."
Amy's eyes narrow at that and she feels a growl bubble up her throat. Tails' anger must be contagious, because, suddenly, she's infuriated right with him. "I'm not," she presses, and snaps her fingers, drawing the light out again. With a flick of her hand, she throws it toward the far wall, where it sails in a clean arc before smacking into the wall and recoiling. It hovers there, illuminating the wall and the many pictures that decorate it. All taken on old film—digital cameras can't capture Elements, a phenomenon they have yet to figure out—they tell the story of Tails' life, from the day Sonic adopted him and carted him up to Angel Island to a few weeks before he lost the ability to see them. There's Sonic teaching Tails to read, Knuckles hoisting the kid over his head and helping him learn to fly with his namesakes, Amy and Cream curled around him as they all nap in the sun, Silver teasing him while Blaze looked on, vaguely amused. Tails grows in the pictures, drawing equal in height to Cream and then overcoming her, and the last photo shows him only a half an inch shorter than Sonic. The hedgehog is leaning on his shoulder, smile bright, but there's something behind his eyes—he knew Tails was forgetting, that it would only be a matter of time before he lost the ability to see them, and he was already mourning, even then.
"I'm not lying, Tails," she hisses, throwing her arm toward the pictures. "I know you see now. I know you can see it. Look—you're so smart, use that brain of yours. Don't let your instincts get the better of you. Don't be like all the other children," she's begging now, but she can't bring herself to care as Tails' face seeps into confusion and concern. Her throat is thickening with tears, tears for Sonic and his pain, tears for the countless number of their kind that found children to love and then lost. "Just... Look."
Tails' eyes follow her arm and his gaze settles on the pictures. They swim up and down the wall, tracing the timeline of his life, and she watches as his expression becomes vaguely frustrated. "I— I am, okay? And I don't— I know there's something, but I can't..." He trails off, grasping at the air, unable to articulate himself.
"We never age, Tails," she breathes. He has to notice. She knows, vaguely, that the magic and energy that makes mobians forget also makes them look past certain things, and their lack of growth in those photos would be one of those, but now... He has to see it. "Don't you remember? Snow days with Sonic? Spring showers that made plants bloom immediately? Clear summer nights with just the perfect amount of heat? We— We did that, for you. Sonic he— He adopted you when he shouldn't have. It wasn't his place, but damn if we didn't encourage him."
Tails looks back to the wall of pictures, but he doesn't look at them. Instead, his eyes float to the light still bobbing there, casting a warm glow on the room. He watches it, blue eyes going up and down with it, and she can see his mind working, cogs turning, knowledge flipping past, memories shaking lose and escaping their prison. "You're elem—" The word chokes off in his throat, his very being fighting against him as he tries to remember. "You're— Sonic's a—" His eyes turn to her, helpless, a prisoner to the magic that sustains them and keeps the planet in balance and turning. She can't imagine how hard he must be fighting.
"I can't help you." She wants nothing more than to say it for him, get it out into the air so he can simply nod, but it he has to do it, or else he'll always be a hostage to this sick world they live in.
He grimaces and she sees his jaw set, spine straightening as he tries to get his thoughts in order. "Amy Rose, you are..." he breaks off again, choking, "...summer."
"Yes, good Tails, very good. What about Cream? Can you remember?"
"Cream's... spring?" He looks up at Amy's enthusiastic nod, as if he is a four-year-old learning new vocabulary and not a sixteen-year-old genius. "And Sonic's... Sonic's winter." A smile spreads across his face as his brain finally jostles itself free of its lockdown. "You're elementals..."
"Yes!" Amy cries, falling forward to pull him into a tight hug. "You remembered! Oh, I knew you could do it! Wait until Sonic hears about this!"
Tails laughs in her arms, a slightly hysterical thing. "But, I don't even know what that means! What on mobius is an elemental?"
Amy's happiness crashes into itself at that and she pulls back to look at him square on. That was too easy. Of course there was some kind of catch. He is properly confused, staring up at her with his eyebrows pulled down into a small V, crease between his eyes becoming even more pronounced the longer they sit there. "What?" She can feel dread creeping up her spine. What a cruel trick—let him remember what they are, but not what that entails. She is going to have a talk with Tikal if this doesn't turn around right now.
"Elementals... I don't..."
"You don't— You don't know?"
He throws his hands up. "I think? I'm not sure! I just know... I know that Sonic has something to do with winter, and that he's been gone for three years and..." His head whips up then as something occurs to him. His eyes flash, blue fire, terrifying in their own right. "If you're the same, why can I see you, but not him?"
He's getting frustrated and she doesn't want to push him. They've had enough anger today. "You know what? I think that can wait. I need to— There are some people I need to talk to to get this straightened out."
"Knuckles?" he asks then, looking mystified as his brain supplies the name. "You have to talk to him, right?"
"Yes..." she nods, unsure how much information she should give him. Chaos, she was only supposed to see if this was possible, not actually go through with it. This is risky. For all they know, this kind of memory dislocation can cause brain damage. Sonic is going to kill her. But, they've come this far. To stop now would be cruel. "Here, how about this. You ask me anything and I'll answer. That way, we can sort out just what you remember. Sound good?"
He worries his lip for a second, casting another look at the light ball. "Okay..."
Amy sighs and moves to sit next to him on the couch, gathering the blanket and draping it over both of them. As an afterthought, she holds her palm out toward her little light and it zooms back; she crushes it between her fingers bringing the darkness back. Darkness is their new revelation medium, and they're gonna be here a while.
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth...
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