Chapter 28: Death

"Amy, honey, come home with me."

Amy ignored the voice behind her. After cleaning herself up and accepting a change of clothes from Rouge, Amy had taken Rouge's overalls and headed back to city hall. She had taken a notebook and pen she had found in one of the offices in city hall itself, and she was cataloguing the damage caused to the garden. In her numb emotional state, it didn't upset her being there, seeing the carnage, and making a list of things, setting out a plan to undo the damage, performing the repetitive and simple task of just writing down what she was looking at, felt like both all she could handle and it made her feel useful, at a time when she was plagued by a sense of utter uselessness.

"Okay, well, I made you a lunchbox."

Amy wrote down the type of flowers that populated the small patch of churned up, ragged plants before her as she heard Vanilla place something on the ground behind her.

"Don't stay out here all day," she added. "I know Cream didn't get any sleep last night, I doubt you did either. Having something to eat and getting some rest would do you a world of good right now."

Amy stopped, her hand holding the pen over the notebook, her eyes staring straight ahead at Eggman's logo, painted onto the garden wall. As she listened to Vanilla's footsteps moving away from her, she wondered if she had any idea that what she had probably meant as kind words were in fact painful to hear: Amy had slept the night before, albeit not for long, whereas everyone else around her – including Metal – had been up all night.

Vanilla's footsteps faded and, after taking a moment to consider just how terrible she felt, how much she regretted sleeping the night before, how much she regretted not explaining to Metal that she had been upset because she was scared for him and not just because Eggman was threatening her. She wished she had said so many things to him, and, she realised, ironically the silence she had enjoyed so much with him had come to be her own downfall. He was the one who couldn't speak, but she was the one who didn't: and she had left so many important things unspoken.

After a little more time spent working on her list, Amy heard someone else coming out into the garden behind her, but she didn't bother turning around.

"Amy? I got you a doggy bag from Charlie's, just in case you were hungry."

Amy said nothing.

"So, uh, should I just put it down here, beside all this other food you're not eating?"

Knuckles's question was almost comical, but Amy lacked the emotional strength to find it funny.

"I was kinda hoping you might come home soon," he continued. "Me and Sonic are having a hard time with Tails. He won't stop to rest. I thought he might listen to you. You know... You're an important part of our group – our family – and we need you. And I think right now you maybe need us too. Take the time you need here, but... Come home soon, okay?"

Amy looked down at the notebook in her hand, realising then that her handwriting was quite erratic in places, and a lot of the notes and abbreviations she had written no longer even made any sense to her. As she considered how kind Knuckles had just been, she turned her head, looking back over her shoulder, intending to tell him she was happy to see him, to thank him for stopping by: but he had gone.

Amy looked over at the lunchbox Vanilla had left for her, finding it broken open, a few crumbs spilled out onto the garden path. The brown paper bag with the Charlie's logo on it was torn apart, the contents desecrated, the only remaining evidence as to what had happened being a feather on the ground near by.

It was dark outside.

Amy had no idea what time of day or night it was. She wasn't even sure how much time passed between her noticing her lost meals and Rouge arriving. When Rouge took her hand and pulled her to her feet, she dropped her notebook and the pen, and allowed her friend to walk her away.

Back at Rouge's apartment, after she had taken another overly long shower, spending most of her time sitting on the shower floor, Amy listened to Rouge and Shadow argue about something to with a pillow before Rouge deposited her into a room she could only assume was Shadow's. She had no intention of sleeping in Shadow's bed – she was confident she wouldn't have slept even in her own bed – but she did sit onto the edge of it, looking at the digital clock on his bedside table.

In the dark of the room, all she could see was the glowing red numbers on the black screen. The coincidence was beyond unusual, and she couldn't look away. She stared at it for a long time, without actually reading it.

When Amy finally did find the wherewithal to read the time on the clock, she found herself looking at it sideways, the room around her illuminated with daylight.

Amy sat up and looked about herself. She had no memory of lying down on the bed, far less falling sleep on it. She got up and moved through to the living room, where she found just Shadow, reading a book. He didn't look at her as she crept around the room, but, as she got close to him, he held out a communicator towards her. She accepted it purely out of curiosity, quickly realising that it was her own one, and it was alerting her that she had several missed calls, all from Tails.

"He's been calling you," Shadow said without looking up from his book still. "He went to your house and when he realised you weren't there, he gave that thing to Rouge and asked you to call him."

"I don't want to talk to anyone right now," Amy plainly replied. "I don't even want to have this conversation with you."

Shadow lifted his eyes to look at her, and she lost momentum as she looked back at his red eyes. They weren't the same as Metal's eyes, they were lighter and more sparkling, not the same flat red that Metal's eyes were – which she supposed was because, as Tails had told her, Metal wore some sort of lens in his eye, and that was what she had been looking at all along – but she was looking at a pair of red eyes nonetheless, and she started to feel tears that she had denied threaten.

"I'm sick of listening to that thing, call the stupid fox back," Shadow told her.

Amy swallowed and nodded, moving back into Shadow's bedroom and closing the door. She sat onto the bed and looked down at the communicator for a long time as she warred with what to do. Really, despite implying to Shadow that she would, she had no intention of calling Tails. She didn't want to know what they had done, that was the real reason she hadn't gone home, and talking to anyone or going home would be finding out what they had done, and she wasn't ready to do that yet.

She wasn't ready to find out what they had done with Metal after they had taken him from the ledge he had fallen down to by the tower.

Amy got dressed into Rouge's overalls and headed back to city hall – but she did take the communicator with her. Several times throughout the day, she considered her options, considered calling Tails. She laid her communicator down by the remains of the water fountain, and every time she passed it, she looked at it and thought about calling him: sometimes she just paced back and forth past it to try to work up the courage to call, but the moment never came.

And, eventually, it didn't need to, as the communicator began to ring. Amy wasn't near it when it started to sound, and, at first, although she heard it, she didn't really register the sound. After several seconds, she focused on the sound and moved over to her communicator, picking it up, her disinterest quickly changing when she saw the state Tails was in.

"Amy!" he said frantically before she could even talk.

His fur was messy, he had several greasy finger marks all over his face, and his glassy eyes betrayed prolonged periods of sleeplessness.

"Amy, where are you?" he asked, his every word punctuated with the nervous energy of someone high on adrenaline.

"City hall," she answered. "Are you okay, Tails?"

Tails took a long drink from a large mug of coffee before answering her – although his actions answered any questions she may have had about his sleeplessness.

"When are you coming home? You haven't been home," he said.

"I don't want to go home right now," Amy honestly replied.

"Why not?" Tails asked, his voice a little too quick and sharp thanks to his over-stimulated state. "What're you doing at city hall?"

"I'm cataloguing the damage Eggman caused."

"How long is that gonna take you?"

It was a valid question, and even Amy knew she ought to have finished a long time ago.

"I was gonna get some paint," she recovered. "Paint over all that… Stuff."

She pointed a finger in the vague direction of the defaced garden walls, despite the fact that none were showing on her communicator and Tails would not have been able to see her hand gesture.

"Do that later," Tails said. "Come home now."

Amy frowned.

"Come home," he said again. "Just come home. Come home, okay?"

"I already told you, Tails," she said with a sigh. "I don't want to."

"You can't stay out there forever," he said, before letting out a short, weird laugh. "You have to come home eventually. To sleep."

"I'm staying at Rouge's place," she said.

Tails's face scrunched up and he sighed through his nose.

"You look like you're the one who needs to get some sleep," she told him. "Go get some rest. Knuckles said you haven't slept since we… Just go to bed, okay?"

"I can't sleep knowing you're not at home."

Amy frowned.

"That was a weird thing to say…" he whispered, before shaking his head and recovering a little. "I feel like I have to watch your house when you're not around. It's keeping me up at night."

"That time I went camping with Cream, I asked you to housesit for me and you forgot to water my ficus and it died," Amy reminded him.

"That's not relevant," he replied.

"It is," she insisted. "You said you felt weird being responsible for my house, so you only looked after the garden, and never went inside."

Tails sighed.

"Can't you please just come home?" he asked. "Please? Just do it for me?"

Amy shook her head.

"Well, I tried," he said with a sigh. "I hope you do come home soon, Amy."

"We'll see," she replied. "Goodbye Tails."

"Bye, Amy."

Amy closed her communicator and looked over at the opposite wall, silently wondering if Rouge would lend her money for paint to repaint it, but already knowing the answer.

"Bye, Amy," Tails said, before closing his communicator.

He placed the communicator down onto the table and picked up his giant mug of coffee, but stopped just before it reached his lips. He hardened his eyes as he glared at it, before thumping it down onto the table.

"I am going to sleep," he announced.

When he received no response, he looked over at his couch, where he could see the back of a familiar, blue, spiky head.

"Did you hear all of that?" he called out.

"Yes."

Tails nodded, expecting more of an answer. When none came, he tried again.

"We've all tried to get her to come home, and she isn't listening to us," he said. "You have to go talk to her now."

Tails waited and waited, until he started to feel the urge to drink more coffee. He moved away from the table to stop himself, allowing his exhaustion to start to take over his body.

"Did you hear what I said to you?" he snapped. "Come on, buddy! You have to go talk to her! She'll listen to you!"

"I don't know what to say to her."

Tails gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.

"I don't care what you say to her!" he declared stomping all the way over to the arm of his couch. "Just get off my couch and go talk to her!"

A yellow-green eye moved to fix onto Tails.

"Just… Tell her to come home," Tails insisted. "That's all you need to say. She'll listen to you. You have to be the one to do it. She isn't going home for Rouge, or Cream, or Vanilla, or Shadow, or Knuckles, or me."

"What about–"

"No, it has to be you!"

Tails let out a long sigh.

"I'm going to my bed," he decided. "But before I do, I'm going to enable my security system. It only recognises and accepts me, so if you're still in this house when I activate it, you'll be shot with a laser."

"Is that a threat?"

"Yes it is!"

The green eye closed and the blue hedgehog let out a sigh before standing up.

"I don't know how quickly I can–"

"I don't care, just get out of my house and go talk to Amy!"

Tails stood his ground until his instruction was finally taken. He stood on the spot, watching with narrowed, tired but angry eyes, as his guest slowly left the house. As soon as he heard the front door closing, he duly activated his security system and gladly went to his bed, falling onto his mattress and very quickly falling asleep.

"Amy?"

Amy paused, halfway through her attempt to salvage the hydrangea Shadow had given her.

"Amy, Tails said you didn't come home last night."

Amy carefully placed the uprooted plant down and sat back on her heels.

"I just want to do this," she said.

"Come on Ames, let Rouge hire a clean-up crew to do this. She can pay for it with some of the money she's made off you recently."

Amy smiled.

"You don't know Rouge as well as you think you do," she said.

"Don't tell her I said that by the way. My face still hurts from her slapping me."

Amy smiled again, looking back over her shoulder at Sonic.

"That was actually pretty funny," she admitted.

"It was actually pretty sore," he replied. "She's a lot stronger than she looks."

Amy nodded, before turning away from Sonic again.

"Look Amy, me and Knuckles are going to Charlie's for lunch," he said. "If you want to join us, you know where we are. If not… Don't sit out here all alone all the time, okay? I know you, and this isn't good for you."

Amy nodded, but said nothing. As much as she appreciated Sonic's offer – and she knew it would have taken a lot for him to come and talk to her at all, given how much he hated confronting emotional moments anyway – she still just felt that she wanted to be alone. She wasn't sure how long she would continue to do what she was doing, how long she could get away with staying with Rouge and Shadow, but she equally found it difficult to think about any sort of future at all anyway. Which was a new experience for her: she had spent most of her life getting excited about the future. But, leaving the garden, leaving Rouge's apartment, going home, all meant facing reality, and in her current state of limbo, she could easily ignore reality, carry on being numb, pretending nothing was wrong.

She clawed at the dirt around the plant, finding pieces of broken garden ornaments she had forgotten all about. She began picking them up, throwing them into a wheelbarrow at her side.

"Amy."

Amy paused at the sound of Sonic's voice behind her, surprised that he was still there, still persisting. As far as she was concerned, their conversation was over, and so she continued once more picking up pieces of broken stone and dropping them into the wheelbarrow.

"Amy, you can't do all this on your own," he said.

"I know that," Amy quietly replied.

She pulled her pen from her pocket and wrote down the name of another ornament she noticed broken before continuing to pick up the pieces.

"Then come home with me," he said.

"I can't," she replied as she smoothed her fingers over the broken wing of a butterfly ornament Cream had been particularly fond of.

"Because you're stubborn," he said behind her.

"No, because I need to do this," she answered, before dropping the butterfly wing into the wheelbarrow.

"You need to do this because you're stubborn."

Amy sighed quietly and sat back onto her heels.

"I need to this because I need to feel useful, okay?" she said, her voice breaking a little. "This is how I deal with things: I just keep myself busy. And... I don't want to feel as useless as I did when I found... I just need to feel useful, okay?"

Amy took a few steadying breaths, until she was sure that she had staved off tears, before leaning forwards and clawing through the dirt for more shards of broken garden ornaments. She continued that way just long enough that she started to wonder if Sonic was even still behind her, just long enough that she was ready to stop and turn around, to yell at him to leave: but, just as she reached that point, he spoke again.

"You could come home and make me a sandwich," he said. "That would be a useful thing for you to do."

Amy frowned.

"I'm hungry," he added. "It would be useful for me if you made me a sandwich."

Amy snorted out a noise of confused amusement.

"That's a weird joke, even by your standards," she commented, shaking her head.

"I'm not joking," Sonic plainly replied. "I'm really very hungry and I tried to make a sandwich myself but it wasn't the same as when you make it for me."

"Thanks," Amy said with a wry smile. "It's nice to know there's something I can get right at least."

"I dropped tomato ketchup on the carpet and it left a stain. Miles isn't happy, but he pretended he didn't mind because he feels guilty."

Amy paused, the sound of Sonic calling Tails by his formal name sounding strange, as she had never heard him say it in a serious context, and the tone of voice he was using was serious: either he was setting up for a long, convoluted and ridiculous joke, or something was very amiss.

"I didn't mean to make him feel bad," Sonic continued, his voice still solemn. "And I know he did the best he could. But I'm not happy. I didn't want this. This is going backwards, and I wanted to go forwards. Does that make sense?"

Amy bunched her hands around the fabric of her dress by her thighs as she drew in a shuddering breath.

"Back there, at the tower," he continued. "I heard what you said. You said you loved me. Is that true? Did you love me? Do you love me? Can you love me, even now, with what's happened to me?"

Amy swallowed carefully and stood up, taking a few steadying breaths as she started to shake and tears threatened. She turned around, and any hopes she had of containing her tears vanished as they slipped from her eyes, one hand coming up to cover her mouth, to stifle her gasp at what she saw: it wasn't Sonic behind her, it was Metal.

Next Chapter: One big, well-earned, fluff-fest to bring this little story to a (happy) conclusion! Chapter 29: Metal