Chapter 22: Garden

Amy led Metal back into her house, waiting for him to carefully close the door behind himself. He then started for the living room, but she pulled him towards her bedroom. He resisted a little for the first couple of steps before freely following her.

"I'm really tired," she told him as she shook out the two blankets on her bed. "Just sleep here with me, okay?"

She crawled onto her bed, burying herself under her own blanket. When she didn't feel Metal join her, she waved a hand at him.

"Just go to sleep," she said.

Amy was so tired, she was almost asleep by the time she finally felt his weight on the bed at her side. She turned over and put an arm over him, and then very quickly fell asleep again. When she eventually woke up again, she was lying on her back, her head resting on the underside of Metal's armpit. He too was on his back, his arms spread out across the pillows , one leg hanging off the edge of the bed, the other bent at the knee. Amy sat up and turned to look at him, slowly realising then how inappropriate it was to ask him to sleep there with her. He was soundly asleep, and it was not like she didn't share her bed with other people from time to time, but given his innocence and lack of understanding of social norms in general, she realised then that she probably should have just let him sleep on the couch. She carefully and quietly moved off the bed and padded through to the kitchen in her bare feet, looking up at the clock and groaning as she remembered that she was supposed to be working on the fairy garden project, and, thanks to the chaos of the night before and her subsequently sleeping so late, she had just lost a good part of her first day's work. She began making tea and toast, assuming the smell would wake Metal up: and so, when he still hadn't stirred by the time she had eaten it all and cleared away the dishes, she peeked into her bedroom to check on him.

He was still in the same position she had left him, but, with a calmer and more critical eye, she could see that he had a bald patch on his neck and his right shoulder was a little swollen. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, he had fought hard the night before, it was only to be expected that he would be showing signs of battle wear. She crept a little closer to him, lightly placing a hand on his chest. She put no pressure on it, her hand rising and falling with his chest as he breathed. His heart-rate was slow, he was deeply asleep, though she hadn't needed to touch him to confirm that: and so she wondered why she had. She wondered what had provoked her to touch him, why she was still touching him. She couldn't really find an answer, but one thing she did know, was that, in that position, she got that same peaceful feeling she got when they were working together or just relaxing together. It was quiet and calm, and so very different to how she felt around anyone else. It was, she mused, the opposite to how she used to feel around Sonic: though she oddly found herself no longer feeling that way around Sonic.

She smiled, happy that Metal was back, that he hadn't been hurt by Eggman, taken by Eggman or that he had chosen to go back to Eggman. It was nice having him back, and she did really like having him in her house. She gently retracted her hand, telling herself that she needed to let him rest. She couldn't deny that she wished he would wake up because she wanted his company, especially after the day before, but she also knew it was selfish to wake him when he was surely exhausted.

As she turned from him, Amy's eyes passed over the shelf on her bedroom wall and the box of tarot cards she kept there. She didn't want to dwell too long on her recent, darker, reading, but she did wonder if her older reading, the one that had led her to Little Planet, led her to Sonic and to Metal, would ever actually come true, because she had never fully felt she had achieved the point shown in the last card. Maybe it was close, she told herself. Maybe that image of being happy, of feeling loved and of realising love, in a beautiful garden, was just around the corner.

"What are you guys doing here?"

Amy couldn't believe what she was seeing.

"We said we'd help, remember?" Vector answered her.

"We took everything we thought we might need," Vanilla added.

Cream waved to Amy from further down the garden. She and her mother were dressed in overalls and gardening gloves, and Vector had already cut half of the overgrown grass back down.

"I-I can't believe you..." Amy began, starting slowly towards them.

"If we just forgot about this, we would be letting Eggman win," Vanilla said solemnly.

"We can't live in fear," Vector added.

"And it's nice to have something positive to do," Vanilla said.

"Oh, well, um, I did some drawings, I probably need to get a few things," Amy said. "But listen, you don't have to help me with this, really."

"Honey, if you keep pushing away the offer of free labour, I'm going to become very cross with you."

Amy turned around, her eyes doubling in size at the sight of Rouge in overalls, her sleeves rolled up and actual dirt and grass stains on her knees.

"You didn't think I was going to make you do this all on your own, did you?" she asked with a smile.

"Yes," Amy flatly replied. "And you are the last person I expected to put on overalls and start getting your hands dirty in the name of making a fairy garden at city hall."

"I grew this at home, I thought you could use it."

Amy's face fell, her eyes flicking between the perfectly pruned purple hydrangea bush in a clay pot and the person holding it.

"I take it back," she said quietly, moving her eyes back to Rouge. "Shadow is the last person I expected to see getting his hands dirty in the name of making a fairy garden."

"Just tell us what we need to do and where we need to go."

Amy turned to the last person to talk, unable to hide the surprise from her face.

"Gees Amy, Rouge and Shadow are here, is it really such a shock that I'd be here too?" Knuckles asked her, looking a little offended.

She shook her head.

"Thank you so much!" she said. "All of you!"

"Just get to doing what you love best, and bossing us all around, Ames."

Amy turned to Sonic, who shrugged as their eyes met.

"You can pay us back by making us dinner later," he offered.

"Amy feeds us all the time, don't we kinda owe her?" Knuckles asked him.

Sonic gave him a flat look and Shadow made an amused grunt.

"Dude, thanks, you just lost us a free meal," Sonic grumbled.

"I'll buy dinner for all of you."

Amy – and everyone present – turned in surprise to Rouge.

"Tuesday night," Rouge added. "And only if you all finish before eight. That's the deal and that's the motivation."

"Sounds good to me," Sonic said.

"So what do you want us to do first, Amy?" Knuckles asked.

Amy smiled, pulling some folded up pieces of paper from her pocket.

"I drafted up a couple of ideas, but some of them are pretty ambitious," she said.

"You all make Amy's most ambitious idea, and I'll buy the drinks and dessert too," Rouge called out.

"Aren't drinks and dessert part of the meal anyway?" Knuckles asked.

"There's always fine print with her," Shadow muttered.

"Okay, let's give it a shot then," Amy said, shuffling to the plan that would require the most work. "It would be awesome if we could make this a reality."

Tails knocked on the door again, his patience starting to wear thin. He was sure Amy was at home and he was sure he was knocking loudly enough that she would be able to hear him even if, by some slim chance, she was still asleep. After one more impatient sigh, he tried the door handle. When it gave way, he continued inside, the silence within quickly changing his frustration to concern.

"Amy, you here?" he called out.

"Miles?"

Tails moved into the living room, where he found Metal sitting at the breakfast bar.

"Where's Amy?" Tails asked him.

"I don't know," Metal replied. "She was gone when I woke up."

Tails nodded, moving to the edge of the bar and frowning as he noticed that Metal was holding a bottle of super glue in one hand.

"What're you doing there, buddy?" he asked.

"I was trying to fix the picture I broke," he replied, nodding at a framed photo of Sonic and Amy laid out on the bar in front of him.

"What happened?" Tails asked.

"I glued the glass to my fingers and then I glued my fingers together," Metal replied, lifting up his other hand to reveal exactly that.

"I see that," Tails said. "But I meant what happened to the photo?"

"I broke it," Metal flatly replied.

"Deliberately?" Tails asked.

"I don't like it. I tried to hide it, but Amy kept putting it back where I could see it."

"Metal, this is Amy's house, you know."

"I'm trying to fix it. Are you going to help me or not?"

"I'll help you on one condition: don't tell Amy that I helped you."

Metal said nothing, but his eyes did pointedly lower to the floor.

"That was pointless, huh?" Tails said with a sigh as he started towards the back door. "You're not telling Amy anything anyway."

Tails made his way down Amy's back garden towards her shed, where he knew she kept glue solvent, but he only got one foot through the door before he was stopped by the feeling of five knives stabbing into his shoulder. He hissed and turned his head, finding Metal's unglued hand gripped into his shoulder, and his eyes suddenly glowing: Metal had not looked at him that way since the day he had found him in the woods trying to haul himself back to Eggman with one leg in tatters.

"You can't go in there!" Metal said to him with a surprising amount of ire.

"This is where Amy keeps what I need to dissolve the glue," Tails explained.

"But this is Amy's lair, you can't just go in there without her permission!"

Tails smiled in spite of himself.

"This is not Amy's "lair", buddy, this is just where she does all her crafting to save making a mess in her house," he said. "And she wouldn't mind me going in."

"Amy is my keeper, it's my duty to protect her interests," Metal replied.

"Metal, can you let me go, please?"

Metal narrowed his eyes slightly, but, after a moment's hesitation, her opened his hand. Tails winced and touched a hand to his shoulder, and, upon seeing his reaction, the glow faded from Metal's eyes at last.

"Look, buddy, you've done really well at learning how to... Not be one of Eggman's pawns," Tails said carefully. "But you need to understand that you're not anyone's pawn now. Amy hasn't just replaced Eggman as your master. You don't have a master. You are your own master."

"I didn't say Amy is my master," Metal quietly replied.

"Well good," Tails said, nodding his head.

"She is the ruler of my base and I am her guardian."

Tails pouted.

"Amy's just your friend, Metal," he tried. "Like how I'm your friend."

"I consider you my equal," Metal replied.

"That's cool, we are equals!" Tails said with a smile.

"I consider Amy my superior."

Tails pouted again.

"Let's just fix your hand, and then we can... Figure that one out," he said.

He continued into the shed, and Metal moved into the doorway, but did not cross the threshold.

"Don't touch anything other than what you need," Metal warned him from the doorway.

"I wasn't gonna!" Tails called back to him.

He quickly located the solvent and moved back over to the doorway, where Metal took a step back to allow him out.

"This should get to work pretty quick," Tails told Metal as he beckoned for him to hold out his hand.

"After, will you fix it for me?" Metal asked.

"This should fix it," Tails answered. "This will unstick your fingers."

"Will you fix the picture?"

"Oh, right. We could just put it in a new frame."

Tails opened up the bottle of solvent and made to pour it over Metal's hand, noticing then that Metal was looking at him sceptically.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You have to fix it before Amy comes back," Metal said.

Tails nodded.

"I can do that," he said, pouring the solvent over Metal's glued hand. "I've probably got a frame about that size at home, we can just swap it-wait!"

Tails groaned, his hand still poised in the air, the solvent bottle still tipped over and pouring out, the contents splashing onto the footpath below as Tails watched Metal exit the garden and run up the hill towards his house. With a sigh, he turned the bottle back over and sealed it up again, returning it to where he had found it before hurrying after Metal, knowing only too well that the former robot would literally tear down shelves and turn over furniture to find what he sought without a care for the consequences.

"Whoa Amy, you should leave stuff like this for Knuckles!"

Amy strained until Sonic lodged the heels of his palms under the fallen stone statue she was trying to lift back into place.

"I thought it was hollow," she said as he helped her ease it back.

"Seriously Ames, leave the heavy lifting to Knuckles, he loves feeling useful," Sonic said with a smile as they finished their task. "Or get your boy Metal on it. Speaking of which, where is he?"

"He was still asleep when I left the house this morning," Amy replied. "I didn't want to wake him, he looked so peaceful and he went through so much yesterday – the gala, Eggman, me shouting at him... I still feel so bad about that."

"Don't worry about it," Sonic said.

Amy sighed.

"What?" Sonic asked her.

"Your approach to everything is to not worry about it, Sonic," Amy flatly replied. "And some things are worth worrying about."

"Okay, but I'm telling you, this is one of those things you don't need to worry about," he insisted.

"How do you figure?" Amy asked, as she began unwrapping overgrown ivy from the statue.

"Metal did a pretty good job of showing us all that he's on our side now. Everybody's happy about what he did, and he came back, so everything's fine. There's nothing to worry about."

"I never actually thanked you for bringing him back. Where did you find him in the end?"

"He wasn't far. He wanted to come back."

"Was he upset?"

"Upset how?"

"That I shouted at him. Was he upset that I shouted at him? He's been so nice since we got back, but it's so hard to tell what he's really thinking, and – obviously he can't talk – and sometimes I don't think he even wants to, but I just wish I knew what he was thinking, good or bad."

"Most of what he thinks is good."

"Sonic, you can't read his mind!"

Amy sighed, turning to Sonic with handfuls of scraggly, dead ivy, which he had just stood and watched her remove from the statue.

"Trust me Ames, he's fine," he told her.

"I hope he is," Amy said, throwing the dead vegetation into a nearby wheelbarrow. "And really, thank you for finding him and bringing him back."

Sonic smiled.

"And thank you for... Opening up to me about what you did," Amy added.

"Are you about to try to hug me?" Sonic asked her.

"Just shut up and bear it!" Amy answered with a smile, before throwing her arms around him.

He groaned, but eventually put one arm around her, patting her on the back. She squeezed him a little tighter and he groaned louder. She giggled and then released him, stepping back from him. As she stepped back, she noticed a movement on the edge of her vision, and turned her head to see Tails and Metal standing nearby.

"Are you guys here to help too?" she asked, turning to them with a bright grin.

"Yeah, sure," Tails answered. "Right, buddy?"

He looked up at Metal from the corner of his eye, with what Amy thought was a strangely irritated look.

"You wanna help Amy with this garden project, right?" he asked.

Metal, who had been looking at Sonic, blinked a couple of times before shifting his eyes to Tails.

"Right?" Tails pressed as their eyes met.

Metal gave a single nod of his head and Tails groaned. Amy made to ask him why he was so grumpy, but stopped when Sonic spoke.

"Still, huh?" he said.

"Yep," Tails replied, his face flat.

Amy frowned at them, but, when neither of them acknowledged her, she turned her attention to Metal.

"You could have stayed at home if you were still tired, I wouldn't have minded," she told him.

He shook his head and Sonic groaned. Amy looked back over her shoulder and Sonic gave her a strange look before turning away as Tails ushered him away from her.

"Don't mind them," she said, turning back to Metal. "They're always keeping secrets from me. I'm really glad you're here, I want you to help with this. This is going to be something for everyone in this city, it would be amazing if you could be a part of that."

Metal nodded his head, that soft, small smile appearing on his face. Amy smiled back at him and he held out his arms.

"You can start with this!" Amy said, dropping a back of top soil into his arms.

His face fell.

"It's okay, Vector and Knuckles are already on it, you'll have help!" she added.

He swallowed loudly and his face twitched, but he nodded and turned in the direction she was pointing. She watched him go before turning to commence scrubbing clean the statue Sonic had just helped her right: but as she turned, she noticed Sonic and Tails scowling at Metal's back. She frowned at them, but they didn't seem to notice her, instead turning to each other and talking about something, rolling their eyes and shrugging their shoulders. She hoped they were not somehow being mean to Metal, and made a mental note to grill them about it later.

She finished cleaning off the statue, wiping the back of her head across her forehead to clear the sweat away before starting a walk around the garden to check in on everyone. She found everyone hard at work on something – even Rouge, who, along with Shadow, had actually proved quite efficient and hard-working – except for Vector, Knuckles and Metal, who were sitting on upturned buckets eating some of the sandwiches Vanilla had brought. Amy started towards them, thinking it was a little early for Metal to be taking a break already: but when she realised that they had raked and resurfaced the entire square of lawn they had been working on, she slowed her pace. Knuckles and Vector were telling a story about one of their adventures together and Metal was patiently listening. Amy smiled, continuing until she was standing beside them. As Vector finished his story, Knuckles nodded a greeting to Amy, before turning to Metal.

"Hey Metal, how did you get to be such a good dancer, anyway?" he asked.

"How did you even notice what he was doing on the dance-floor?" Vector asked Knuckles. "I saw you getting cosy with the sassy broad."

"She made me do it!" Knuckles snapped defensively, angling his chin downwards to try to hide his embarrassment behind his quills.

Metal waved a hand at Knuckles to get his attention and then signed something out that made both Knuckles and Vector burst out laughing. Metal smiled at them and shrugged.

"That's hilarious!" Knuckles said. "Wait, did he make you do it?"

He looked suddenly worried. Metal curled up his lip and Knuckles paled, but Vector started laughing again.

"What is it, you guys?" Amy asked.

"Metal said "Celebrity Hey I Think You Can Dance" is Eggman's favourite TV show," Knuckles explained. "He said Eggman made him sit and watch it with him so he had someone to talk to about it. I asked him if Eggman made him dance with him after and he said yes."

Vector signed something to Metal, who signed something back that made the crocodile laugh harder than ever.

"What was that?" Amy asked.

"I dunno, I wasn't looking," Knuckles replied with a shrug.

"I said he did good to dance with you, since he had to dance backwards," Vector explained. "But he said Eggman liked to dance the ladies' part and he made Metal dance the men's part."

"That's more than I needed to know about Eggman," Knuckles said.

Amy turned to Metal and smiled gently.

"Well, it maybe wasn't so great for you at the time," she said to him. "But I'm really glad you did learn that way. I had a great time last night. You know, I mean, before Eggman ruined the night. It was great before that. And you were great. At the gala, on the dance-floor, against Eggman, when you saved Sonic, and when you came home and stayed with me."

"Amy, we don't need to know what you and Metal got up to after everything was over," Vector said.

Amy felt her face flush before she could even tell that it would.

"Not like that!" she protested. "I just meant that..."

Her voice trailed off when she noticed the smirk on Metal's face.

"Well don't look like that!" she cried. "You're making it look like we–!"

Amy pouted as Knuckles and Vector started snorting in their attempts to contain their laughter. She wanted to argue with them, but, seeing Metal happy, seeing him comfortable among her friends and them comfortable around him, she decided to let it go.

She sighed and smiled, slowly looking around her surroundings. The garden still looked a mess, but with so many hands at work, they would soon turn it around. As she started to walk through the garden, despite it being a long way from the picture of serenity and whimsy she had planned, she felt quite at peace. She could feel the positivity around her, the camaraderie. It felt strangely familiar.

It was like the Nine of Cups, in a way.

It was a garden setting where love was evident and there was a sense of security about that love. For the first time since drawing her reading eleven years earlier, Amy felt as though this was the conclusion of it, this was the last part of that foretold destiny. The first part had clearly been about the events on Little Planet, but she now felt that the Knight of Swords had not been Sonic, but rather Metal, when he saved Cream from Eggman and Sonic from drowning, and the result of his actions was where they all were now. It was a moment she could really have celebrated and basked in, but it was tinged with apprehension, as the conclusion of the one reading left her wondering at what point the more recent reading she had carried out would become a reality. In the present moment, it was hard to think of any situation where the Death card or The Tower card could play a role, but if this was just the conclusion of a reading from eleven years ago, that darker reading could happen any time, be it in the next day, week, month, year or even decade.

Amy decided not think about it, decided to store it at the back of her mind as just something to be aware of, but to meanwhile just enjoy finally realising that sweet Nine of Cups moment she had been longing for over so many years.

Next Chapter: Tails continues to be irritated that Metal isn't speaking to Amy, Amy shares her bed with Metal again, another day working in the garden goes smoothly until Rouge tells Amy her wedding is happening a lot sooner than she thought. Amy tries to put into words how she feels about Metal, and although she can't, she does know that it's different to how she's felt about anyone else. After a third day in the garden, Metal appears to be sulking, but Amy isn't sure why. Chapter 23: Something