Chapter Six: The Persistence of Memory

Sonic asked Tails about the name "Amy" first.

He found the young fox busy reorganizing the newspapers back in the boxes that made up Lee's filing system. But when Sonic asked the question, Tails just frowned and shook his head. "Maybe we were in whatever that ruin was trying to save her," he suggested. "Or maybe just a friend's name. Or a sister. 'Amy' is a pretty common name, I think, so it could mean nothing special."

Not the kind of detail he had hoped for. But at least Tails's answer was more useful than the answer Knuckles provided. He caught up with the him while the echidna was testing the force of his fists on some of the thicker tree trunks standing just beyond the infirmary where Sonic had awoken in Crescent Village. "How would I know?" he snapped at Sonic, punctuating his feeling on the matter with another throw of his fist. "It's just a name. It's not like it actually tells you anything useful."

Sonic didn't exactly appreciate the fact that despite the delivery of the information, Knuckles had a point. Simply remembering a name didn't tell him anything about who he had been before. For all he knew, the name was nothing more than a piece of a lyric in a song.

And besides, even if it was a memory, even if Amy had been someone he had known, he knew nothing about her. He knew more about Rose, Tails, and Knuckles than he did about Amy.

But Sonic knew even less about himself.

How could that even make sense? He was the only one who had an insight to his own head, and it wasn't like he could see inside the heads of the others. But at least he was getting used to the sight of them. Without a mirror, he had no ability to look at himself. So still, when he looked in the mirror, he saw the strangest of strangers.

When he stepped into the infirmary that night, he stopped dead in his tracks in front of the mirror just inside the door. His eyes widened like he had seen a ghost. Except he was the ghost.

Deep circles rung the bottom of the eyes looking back at him. Though his eyes were green, the color looked dull—more like smog than the brightness of fresh grass. His fur still looked pale with ash, though it certainly had all washed away by now. The white bandage holding his side together was doing him no favors either, its thickness making him look more emaciated than he was—at least, he hoped so. For supposedly being some renowned hero, he was all sharp edges rather than muscles. More like a wooden puppet dangling on strings than a mortal creature.

He made himself stand there staring at his reflection far longer than he wanted to. He needed to memorize his own face, the way the lines of his body straightened when he made the effort to lift his chest. Even though he winced when that sort of movement pulled at his stitches.

"Sonic the Hedgehog," he muttered himself, watching his mouth to see how it shaped his own name. He glanced back over his shoulder a moment later, double-checking that no one was watching. But no, the long infirmary room remained empty. The thin last rays of sunlight lit the room sepia. Sonic turned back to the mirror, meeting his own eyes once more. Then he rolled his shoulders back and watched his own lips as he whispered one more word: "Amy."

Nothing happened. He said the word, and the name drifted in the room for maybe half a second, thanks to the wide-open space. But then it faded away from the air, from his lips. His fingertips tingled. He clenched his fingers into fists, then uncurled them again. Once the silence lasted for more than a couple seconds, he couldn't help but laugh—though the sound was more like a cough. He leaned his head forward so his chin touched his chest before he lifted it once more and he met his own eyes in the mirror.

He wondered what it must be like to look into a mirror and not be faced with a stranger. Hopefully, one day he would learn it again.

-(-)-

He saw her. But…he didn't.

Sonic knew that the girl he looked at was Amy. He saw her standing before him, turned most of the way away from him so that he could really just see the very edge of her cheek and the very corner of her eye. But while he saw her, he couldn't describe what he saw. His memory refused to retain what she looked like. Her color, her species, any of it.

But he knew this was Amy in the abstract sense. Knew she had followed him here, not the other way around. Even though she was turned away from him.

She closed her eyes as she tilted her head further back. Like she was a flower turned toward the sun. "I can understand why you love this," she said.

He tilted his head to one side. And while he couldn't feel something as specific as his body moving in a dream, he knew the corner of his lip quirked upward in a smirk. "Nothing more freeing than a good run," he confirmed. But he simply stood back watching her, rather than walking forward to stand by her side, where she stood just a little way back from a precipice.

She turned his way and rolled her eyes. "If you can ignore the fact that you can't breathe, sure," she muttered.

Sonic shrugged. "Get better at it."

Amy probably rolled her eyes once more, but she turned her head away from Sonic again so he couldn't see enough of her face to know for sure. But then she stiffened, took a step forward closer to the precipice. "What's that?" she asked.

Sonic didn't need to look out in the same direction as Amy to know what she looked at. "Our adventure for today," he told her.

-(-)-

Sonic's eyes snapped open. Only the still stabbing pain in his side stopped him from shooting upright in shock. Instead, he reached across his body to lay his hand against the bandage covering his wound. He forced his body to exhale slowly, though his mind was spinning.

He thought his dream had been just that: a dream. A fiction. But when his eyes flashed open, a feeling lingered within him. That Amy had been looking at the building that ultimately became a ruin. The same ruin that Sonic awoke in, sans memory. Which meant…

She had been there.

She might still be out there.