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THE DAY AFTER

20. The farewell.

[AMY, Sean Catlett]

Flash freeze.

The way I feel right now, it's hard to describe but easy to feel all the same. Almost like I've been an ice cube in a freezer all my life and then one day someone throws me into warm water. Cracks appear along my surface and I cling to whoever is nearby.

"Don't worry. They'll leave us alone," Rouge says, her arm losing circulation. The gun wedged in her pocket still feels cold even through all of the clothing.

After the rape, I started having panic attacks and frightened outbursts at random intervals, screaming at a desk lamp or a street light. Anything phallic shaped, probably. After awhile they went away, but now, another feels like it's creeping, waiting around the corner, biding until the strike. . .

"I know where we can go," she says, clutching me tighter than I'm clutching her. We look like two dirty street urchins from any number of historical stage plays, but at least we're in a part of town where we blend in. Besides, it doesn't really matter who sees us. Fuck my acquaintances.

Knowing your own mortality really puts life in perspective, doesn't it?

Along the way to wherever we're going, we pass several newsstands and televisions screens, and they're all talking about the "serial killer" loose around town. They're still calling them the "Vampire" something or other killings, whatever the assfuck, and now the media is concentrating on a single witness that has come forth.

Sandra's OTHER girlfriend, no doubt. Cheating bitch . . . . . God rest her soul. The press conference will be held tonight. The police will address the public with newfound information. Been there, done that.

Where we end up going is a dockyard, the kind where shacks and stores selling bait and whatnot for the sea-bound ships rest right on the water, over piers. They all look like they've been dipped in wooden varnish and sprayed with dirt, despite the water. Everything looks dried out like a senior citizen's skin, from all the salt. It's on dock 82 that Rouge turns onto and we walk to the very end, the only ones out this far, and she knocks on the door to the shack. The door creaks instead of pounds.

"Honey, why don't you go over there and look at the fish," she says to me, circles under her eyes. I smile at her.

"I'm not a kid anymore, you know. You can just tell me if you want to go away." She smiles back, and I turn.

The air tastes like a lemon drop, the salt drying my skin, turning me into the wood. Making me look old, like the way I think. But even now I don't know what age I'm supposed to be.

The pier is low enough to the water, and the moon is bright enough for me to see myself looking down, searching for fish. But the water is unusually black at night, and it looks like oil.

Oil . . .

This is reminding me of things that I don't want to think about, but this place . . . this place is too inspirational, too poetic. Free thought is expected. The horizon, at the point where the sea looks like it curves down and off the planet, forever, where the end of the world is, it's so clear. There's no smog from the city behind me. The stars light the way, along with the broken moon's white flesh. It used to be, when I was a lot younger in the mindset sense of the word, I'd lose myself in the stars, and send out a silent thanks for the moon being so easy to look at. Bright, but not harsh. I could stare at it all my life and not go blind from it directly. But now, because of Robotnik, it's no longer whole. So broken that it's no longer beautiful, but only reminds me of what happens to everyone and fuck, fuck no, I'm crying.

Wait. It's raining. Yeah. Must be raining. Those drops that hit the water can't be coming from me. That sullen, downcast face isn't mine but the moon's. It's full again. Everything's fine . . . everything's fine . . .

No. It's not.

The baby is kicking. I'm almost seven months along and I don't look like I've gained much of anything. Possible birth defects. There's genes to consider, there's environment. I'd be a bad mother, since I have no fucking clue what I'm doing. The baby is going to grow up just like me, just like me, turn out just . . . like . . . me.

Fine. I am crying.

Doesn't matter anyway.

I'm sobbing violently, the crying echoing into the night, when Rouge appears beside me, also reflected in the water, glowing like the moon. She doesn't even try to console me. She just sits with me, watching the water, until miraculously, we both get up at the same time and we leave.

Goodbye.

_________________________

"This isn't so bad . . ."

A dumpster, lined with blankets and pillows. The outside is labeled as being a chemical waste bin, so no one will even try to open it. Just in case, though, there is a lock on the outside that is supposed to be keyed, and the inside can be pushed open as easily as a door. This was offered to Rouge by Dack, her FBI friend, who probably has a thing for her but it's hard to tell.

The inside is dark, but I've adjusted to the light enough to see Rouge enough to try and talk to her.

"Just goes to show that you still have your fair share of tricks up your sleeve . . ."

Fuck, this isn't working. She has not been responding to my attempts at conversation. She's just been staring at me.

Damn it.

Why can't I just thank her? Why can't I just let her know that I love her, that she is the best thing to have ever happened to me, that . . .

"i . . . i want to talk." Rouge says, the cancer scratching at her throat.

It's almost insulting, since that's what I had been trying to do for the last ten minutes, but . . . . it's so feeble sounding, so frightened. I hope that this won't be another relapse.

"Sure," is the only thing I can think of to say.

"I want to talk about something."

"Sure. Anything you want." I scoot closer to her, resting my head on her legs and staring up at her. She keeps focused on where I was sitting, not really seeing anymore.

"I . . . I'm sorry for the way I've been acting. It was selfish of me to take the cowards way out . . ." She shivers, like she wants to cry. I know who she's thinking about and she hates associating "coward" with him, but we both know that she's right. "I know you've been in that drawer before, looking for medicine to dose yourself on, and we both know that nothing of the kind is in there. At least, not literally."

She pauses, takes a deep breath. She also takes our gun out of her pocket and sets it down in front of her. Then, continues.

"There was only one bullet in it. And every day that he had not come back to us, I . . . I'd spin the chamber, put it to my head and pull the trigger. I know, I know, it's stupid, but . . .  I wanted to join him, wherever he was."

We're still near the docks, so the air feels misty with a touch of salt. "You really love him, don't you?"

Rouge nods, starts to run her fingers through my hair. "Even if what he did was selfish, I'm sure, in his mind, his intentions were well placed. And that's what . . . that's what stopped me the last time." A tear drop hits my eyes. It so warm that I barely feel it, but I don't blink, despite the stinging. "I realized that he wasn't coming back. He's gone. He left us. And right as I pulled the trigger . . . I moved. I chickened out. I'm too weak to do something like that."

It's easy to think of what to say after that. It's practically set up enough that it's cliché. "Weakness would have been to go through with it. It takes someone strong to deal with someone like me every day." This is the most we've ever spoken about this, in all the months we've been together.

"Never sell yourself short, Amy. You're still the best company I could ever hope to get." She smiles. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

The whole thing is bittersweet, really, because I know she's lying. What she wants is for me to get out on my own, to be dependant on only myself. She wants a normal life, a real daughter, a real husband, but she knows she can't have it. But this . . . This conversation has gotten me thinking about him. I haven't done that in a long time, I know, but it seems like it's all I ever think about. More than Sonic, more than Tails, more than . . .

Weird.

He was my first real distraction from Sonic, the first guy I thought I could compare accurately to. Where Sonic fell short, he made up. The first of our group to actually let stupid, trivial shit truly slide. It didn't matter to him, and what I saw in him was part childish infatuation, part realization that this was the type of guy I wanted to end up with.

Quite a catch.

I can see that Rouge would have been really lucky to end up with him. Had it worked out . . . .

Especially after weeks of swallowing Sonic's cock fluid did I finally realize the significance of a guy who actually listens to you, someone that doesn't just roll over and fall asleep afterwards, someone that actually matters. But now . . .

Now . . . kiss all of that goodbye. Sonic made all men the same in my mind, just as he made sex with them the same. I suppose the reason I'm who I am now isn't because I hate men. More that I'm afraid to try liking another one of "them" again. The prospect of being hurt is too much, and with women, it's like they're not even real people. They're facsimiles. Sex with them doesn't seem like real sex to me. And I suppose that's probably wrong . . .

"The FBI is after me again," Rouge says, shattering the silence. "Only this time I'm a suspect in a case they're doing. They want me to talk but they don't want me to talk to them. It's a government thing."

"I don't think we have to worry about them anymore," I say, thinking about how true that really is. They are the least of our problems.

"Yeah. Dack told me that they have new leads to follow, and that they'd leave me alone for the time being, hence why we aren't being interrogated right now."

"You sound better already." She's coming out of her funk, so quickly that I can hear the incline in her voice.

"I have you to thank for that."

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh, come on, I know you, Amy. The ability to unconsciously tag along with any fight against 'bad guys' is ingrained within."

"I think you're full of shit," I smile.

"Maybe. But we both know who's right."

My arms slither around her waist, and I bury my face into her stomach before she sees my crying. "I love you, Rouge."

"Call me mom." She yawns. "I was beginning to get used to that . . ."

And we both fall asleep.

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