A bad day means I should put something good out in the world, right? I hope a new chapter brightens your day!

Chapter Five: A Brief History of Love and Warfare

"I'm able to what?"

Rose dropped the newspaper from about a week prior into Sonic's lap. "Lee's words, not mine," she added. "He could be embellishing."

"By a lot," Knuckles muttered. He plucked another newspaper off the pile Rose had dropped on the picnic table they had commandeered in a more secluded area of the town's public park. "We are talking about the same guy who's collected weeks of newspapers specifically about us."

"Don't be rude!" Rose snapped over her shoulder at Knuckles. "So he's a bit of a…fanboy. Right now, it's useful so we should be grateful."

Sonic scanned the text before him, not really reading the words but instead scanning for the choice of phrase Rose had just repeated.

"It shouldn't be physically possible," Tails added. He sat on the edge of the wooden table with his feet flat on the bench underneath.

And then Sonic found the line. "But it's true," he breathed.

Sonic the Hedgehog, perhaps best known for his ability to run faster than the speed of sound—

His eyes slid from the newspaper to Rose's face.

"You're not trying it," she snapped.

"I didn't say anything," he protested.

"But I know what you're thinking."

After another heartbeat of hesitation, he shrugged. "It's one way to know for sure."

Rose snatched the newspaper from Sonic, and he quickly released his grip on it so they didn't rip the thing in half. She scowled down at him. So he just smiled up at her. Which ultimately resulted in her rolling her eyes.

But once she turned away to return the newspaper to the pile, Sonic's smile faded somewhat. His heart jumped to the base of his throat, beating unsteadily.

Because…he barely knew this girl.

Because…he barely knew himself.

Because…how could this feel so normal?

Especially when the name of another girl entirely echoed through his head. Amy…

"Speaking of physically possible—" Knuckles shook another newspaper in front of Tails's eyes. "—apparently you can fly."

"What?" Tails dropped the newspaper he held to snatch the other from Knuckles's grasp. His eyes flashed across the page so fast that Sonic had to question if he was actually reading the thing at all. "I can…" Tails's sentence went unfinished as he glanced back at his twin tails behind him, draped across the picnic table he sat on.

Sonic nodded at Knuckles. "At least your hidden talent makes sense."

Knuckles balled his hand into a fist and grinned mischievously. "You want to test it out?"

"Does 'Sonic is still injured' mean anything to anyone?" Rose snapped at the both of them. She stomped in their direction as if she intended to physically step between the two of them.

Sonic raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, though it was anyone's guess to which of the two of them he offered the gesture. When his hands fell to his sides again and the humor faded somewhat, so did his smile. This time, though, the gesture was meant for Rose. "It's weird that there's no mention of you in all these articles."

He expected her angry frown to fade into a disappointed one. But instead, Rose just shrugged, the queen of nonchalance. "If you're all heroes, then I guess it's possible I was just the damsel in distress that this Dr. Eggman chose for his scheme." But then her expression hardened. "I just hope you're not under any impression that I intend to stay helpless."

Sonic grinned sheepishly. "It's hard to believe you might have ever been."

She shot him a sly smirk and while she didn't blush, heat rose in Sonic's cheeks. To try to hide his reaction, he cleared his throat and quickly turned to Tails. Tails hadn't moved from his spot on the edge of the picnic table where he still clutched the newspaper from Knuckles. His eyes swept across the page in front of him.

"Hey, Tails!" he called over to the kid fox. At the sound of his name, Tails's ears twitched in Sonic's direction, even before his head perked up the following moment. "If you're feeling up to it—" He pointed at the sky and wispy clouds twisting and drifting above their heads. "—why don't we see if you can give me a lift?"

Tails lowered the newspaper. His eyes didn't leave Sonic's face as he did so, but the longer he looked, the more a smile spread across his face. "Gotta try, right?" Tails agreed.

He tossed the newspaper aside and pushed himself off the edge of the picnic table, landing with a little hop. Warmth filled Sonic's stomach, a warmth entirely different from that which warmed his cheekbones a moment before.

"Careful!" Rose called after Tails as he dashed toward Sonic. But because of the smirk on her face as she said so, Sonic knew the expression was nothing more than cursory caution.

Tails slid to a stop in front of Sonic, by which point his smile had faded somewhat. Like only now was he processing the implications of what he was about to attempt. He twisted around to look over his shoulder at his tails behind him. "I guess…it's got to work like this then."

He twisted his tails around each other, as though he was attempting to wave a braid out of them. But rather than twisting together into a single unit, they spun around each other, faster and faster, until the only word Sonic could think of to describe them was "propeller."

And they lifted Tails right up into the air.

Sonic's jaw dropped in disbelief. Knuckles muttered something behind him, but Sonic was too bewildered by Tails hovering in front of him to resolve the sound into words.

Tails only hovered for a moment, a couple feet in the air, before his spinning tails tangled around one another and he dropped to the grass once more, stomach first. Before Sonic could ask the question, Tails groaned, "I'm okay." He rolled over onto his back so his blue eyes turned up to the blue sky overhead. "My muscle memory had it under control until I thought too much about it."

Sonic offered Tails his hand. The fox accepted the gesture, and Sonic pulled him back to his feet. "Try it again," Sonic suggested. Then he offered Tails a wink. "Only this time, I'll catch you if you fall."

-(-)-

Tails practiced flying until the sun slid lower in the sky. Sonic waited just beneath him, just in case Tails's tails got tangled. And they did. Every so often, Tails dropped from the sky like a stone, but Sonic's arms were waiting. The young fox would groan at his failure, beam a smile at Sonic in thanks, and jump back to his feet to try again.

As the day went on, Tails's mistakes grew less frequent. Which was good because as light as Tails was, Sonic's body ached with strain. His shredded body still relied on bandages to hold him together, after all. So by the time they started to head back into town, Sonic limped behind the rest of the group.

Rose realized first. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him falling behind. She handed off the newspapers she was carrying to Knuckles and slowed down until she fell into step beside Sonic. "You okay?" she asked.

"Just sore," he admitted.

Even so, Rose pulled his arm around her shoulders so he could lean some of his weight against her body instead of his own. He smirked at her. "I don't know how all those papers paint me as the hero when lately I've just been in distress," he told her.

Rose shrugged the shoulder that bore less of Sonic's weight. "It would explain how you got hurt worst if you're the hero. The way I figure, you probably threw yourself in harm's way to try to protect the rest of us."

Sonic's chest warmed. He tried envisioning what Rose suggested. Not trying to drag his lost memories from the dark, exactly. More like trying to tell a fairy tale about himself. What would such an expression of selflessness feel like? Caring for the lives of others more than protecting his own?

"AMY!"

The memory of his own voice screaming that name tore through Sonic's thoughts without warning. He winced at the burn it left behind. He jerked away from Rose's support without meaning to do so. One hand of his flew up to clutch his skull.

"Sonic? Sonic!"

Sonic blinked rapidly to clear his vision and with it, the burning pain in his head faded away. He shook his head as if he could shake off the effect that lingered. "I'm good," he said quickly.

But when he focused his eyes back on Rose's face, he saw the way her eyebrows drew together, the way she frowned, like she was unconvinced by Sonic's immediate dismissal of what had just occurred. "What was that?" she asked.

At first, Sonic just shook his head. Because…how could Sonic describe that? He himself wasn't sure why he kept hearing himself scream that name. Was it a memory? But it felt too vague to be something as significant as a memory, too insubstantial.

Though, then again, a single word in Rose's head was enough to have returned her name to her. So perhaps even such an inconsequential not-quite-memory was worth mention.

"I keep remembering this name," he explained. "I hear myself scream it."

Rose leaned toward him. "You've been getting a memory back and you didn't tell us?"

Sonic quickly shook his head. "It's not really a memory. Just my voice screaming a name. I don't see anything to go along with it. I just thought it might be a dream. The first time I heard it was when I woke up here after passing out, so I didn't think much about it."

Rose pressed her lips together and slowly nodded along with Sonic's explanation. When he finished, she only hesitated a second before asking, "What name?"

Sonic furrowed his brow. "Amy."

Rose frowned. For a long moment, she held silent, not reacting right away. Sonic held his breath as he waited to find out if such a name rang a bell in Rose's head, maybe even triggering the return of some of her own memories.

But ultimately, Rose shook her head.

"It doesn't mean anything to me," she told him. "Maybe ask Tails and Knuckles. They definitely seem to have been your friends before all of this went down. We're not sure I was, so maybe it doesn't ring a bell for me because it's not supposed to."

Sonic hummed a response. Rose had a point, though Sonic couldn't help but be disappointed.

Rose held out her arms like an offering. "You good to get moving again?"

Sonic agreed, and Rose accepted a portion of his bodyweight to carry once more. They walked for a few minutes in silence. While Sonic turned the name over and over again in his thoughts. Amy…Amy…Amy…

A friend? A girlfriend? A once-damsel-in-distress but otherwise a stranger? Who could she be to him for her name to be the one memory fragment he had managed to recover?

He could only hope she hadn't been caught in the same incident as the rest of them. Because if she had been…

The weight of the thought was too much to carry, and he was grateful for Rose helping him carry the burden.