This chapter has been updated as of 09/08/2020

Tuesday, November 23rd, 7:43am, the corner of Mission St. SW and 5th Ave.

Amy couldn't get a hold of Sonic all of Sunday, and he wasn't at school Monday due to food poisoning. By Tuesday, Amy feels antsy and insecure. Neither her swimsuit nor spin the bottle had wooed him. He might be her boyfriend now, but it doesn't feel any different from pining after him before they were together.

Actually, no, it does. It feels worse.

A part of her wonders if dating him is a mistake, but she feels terrible thinking that. She loves Sonic! They are meant to be together! She shouldn't have doubts just because he's been busy.

When Amy and Cream meet their friends on the way to school Tuesday morning, Amy is delighted to see Sonic waiting with Sonia and Manic. Her doubts lessen and she rushes over to greet him, throwing her arms around him in a huge embrace.

"Sonic! I'm so happy to see you! Are you okay? I was so worried when I found out you had food poisoning!"

He gently pries her off him, and she lets him because his siblings are present and she doesn't want to be that girlfriend.

"I'm fine, Ames. Ah, sorry for worrying you?"

Amy blanches. "Oh, no, you don't have to be sorry! I'm sorry!"

"Oh my God you two," Manic complains before Sonic can reply. "Can we just go?"

Colour floods Sonic's cheeks and Amy nods very quickly. "Right, yeah, that's a good idea," she babbles. She links an arm through Sonic's—he seems tense from Manic's comment, or maybe he just isn't feeling totally better yet—and the group heads off.

As soon as they reach the school, Sonic shakes Amy off. "Hate to ditch you guys, but I've got some things to do," he announces before running off.

"I could go with you!" Amy calls, but he's already gone.

At lunch she watches him run, but the morning's insecurity is creeping back, and for once she doesn't enjoy seeing him in his natural element. She even goes so far as to check her phone, but for whatever reason there's no signal. She resets it twice before giving up and joining in her friend's conversation.

"So," Rouge begins when she notices that Amy's actually listening. "Who was the better kisser?"

Amy groans and Blaze raises an eyebrow. "Did something happen during spin the bottle?"

Rouge nods. "You really should have stayed, poor Amy became a battle ground."

Blaze laughs. "Yeah, no, I'm good. I had a very nice evening after I left that wasn't filled with kissing people I have no interest in."

Rouge lets out a derisive snort. "Well where's the fun in that?" she asks, before turning back to Amy with an expectant look.

Amy swallows. "It's, ah, really hard to say?" she tries, but Rouge continues staring at her so that must be the wrong answer. "I mean, ah, you're both good?" Still wrong. "You have softer lips?"

Rouge grins at that. "Well of course I do. Girls are always softer than guys."

Amy's not sure that's entirely true, but she doesn't want to keep talking about this. It's so embarrassing! The only person that should have kissed her like that is Sonic, but he'd barely touched her. If Manic's stupid claim that kissing him was basically the same as kissing Sonic then Sonic should have rocked her world!

And yet.

Perhaps he didn't want their first kiss to be in front of the others? Yeah, that makes sense. He's probably just waiting for the perfect moment to share an amazing first kiss as boyfriend and girlfriend! She repeats the thought to herself as she watches Sonic run, and by the end of lunch it doesn't sound like an excuse. Sonic is perfect, and they're in love, and their relationship is perfect. She just needs to stop overthinking everything.

After school, Cream needs to drop off a library book and Sonia is hitting the mall with Rouge. Which means Amy will be walking alone with Shadow and Manic, which is absolutely fine. Sure, Amy hasn't been able to look Manic in the eye since spin the bottle, and Shadow's silent demeanour makes him as good as absent, but still, maybe this will be a good chance to move past that whole awkward experience.

Except when she gets to the front of the school, Amy sees Sonic waiting to walk with them, proving to her that he really is committed to their relationship. She tackles him with a hug and he pats her back before pulling away. She's slowly getting used to his dislike for public displays of affection, so she settles for looping her arm through his. They start walking, but she stops after a few steps.

"Wait, where's Shadow?"

Sonic shrugs. "He left shortly after I arrived. Was he supposed to be joining us?"

Amy nods.

Manic digs his phone out of his pocket. "I'll text him," he offers as he enters an excessively long password into it.

"Why don't you just use your fingerprint?" Amy asks.

"Um duh? So Sonic can't get into my phone?"

Amy and Sonic both stare at their green-haired companion. "That's, uh. We don't have the same fingerprints, dude," Sonic points out, and Manic gives him a quizzical look.

"You sure?" he asks. Sonic nods, much to Amy's amusement. For someone who's so smart in some areas, the rambunctious youth can sure be clueless in others. Manic stares at his phone with a frown. "That's weird," he mutters. Amy and Sonic crowd in to see his screen.

Just like Amy's phone, Manic isn't getting any reception.

"Mine wasn't working at lunch. Maybe the network's down?"

"Maybe?" Manic replies, but he doesn't sound convinced. After a moment he shrugs. "I'll worry about it later. As for Shadow, he probably went to grab something from his house. He was headed away from the school." That seems reasonable enough, and if that's the case then it doesn't make sense to wait for him. They head off.

Sonic and Manic start talking about whatever it is Sonic's been doing with his friend Tails lately, but a lot of it flies over her head. Actually, a lot of it seems to fly over Sonic's head too, because all of his answers amount to "I don't know, you'd have to ask Tails."

Still, it's nice to actually walk home with her boyfriend. Even if he does keep pulling his arm away from her. He likes to talk with his hands, so it's probably an unconscious action. It's very frustrating, though.

When they part ways, she tries to gesture for Manic to give her and Sonic a moment of alone time, but he doesn't seem to get it—or maybe he's being frustrating on purpose—so she settles for giving Sonic another big hug, and then she finishes the walk alone. Again, doubt creeps in. Dating Sonic should have gotten rid of all her insecurities, but here they are getting worse, officially making Amy the worst girlfriend in the history of ever.

The sight of Shadow waiting on the bench outside her building again, reading his book, snaps her out of her thoughts.

"Hey, where were you?" she asks as she reaches him, and he slips his book into his bag as he stands up.

"Waiting," he replies, and she frowns at him before leading the way into her building.

"Why didn't you wait at the school?"

He hesitates for a moment. "I am trying very hard not to say unflattering things about your boyfriend, since I suspect that falls into the category of 'being a butt'. Please do not make this more difficult for me."

They get into the elevator and Amy stares at Shadow for a moment. "You really don't like him," she says, realizing that maybe this is more than just a simple disagreement like he'd claimed at the party. The words 'get your shit together' echo in the back of her mind. "Why not?"

Shadow gives her a look. "That falls into the category of talking about him," he points out.

Amy laughs. "Right, sorry. I'm just curious because-" she stops herself from going on a tangent about Sonic's virtues. "-because you're my friend," she finishes instead.

Shadow frowns at that, but whatever he's going to say is cut off by an older lady getting into the elevator with them.

Once inside Amy's condo, she gets them each a bowl of gelato and then busies herself setting up a small fruit plate for while they work. There's not much conversation while they eat, and once they're done Amy is the one to suggest they start their study session. Shadow gives her a funny look, but complies. Amy is happy for the distraction. She must be coming down with something, because her thoughts keep returning to self-doubt and insecurity. She tries to focus on Shadow's voice, and on history, and on the mythology of the seven chaos emeralds. She really does. But...

"Amelia," Shadow's tone is sharp as a knife, cutting into her thoughts and demanding her attention.

"I'm sorry," she squeaks, and he rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

"What's wrong?" he asks, ignoring her apology.

She opens her mouth to reply, then closes it. "It's stupid," she tells him, and he snorts.

"If it's stupid then why is it bothering you?" She shrugs. She doesn't have an answer for that. "Amelia, whatever it is, it's affecting your ability to concentrate. What's wrong?"

She hesitates. "I can't talk about it or you'll go back to being a butt."

Shadow's mouth lifts into the barest of smiles. "An exception then, so we can get back to studying with full attention?"

Amy chews on her bottom lip. "It's just," again she hesitates, because there's no way he'll understand. He's attractive, and smart, and is probably dating Rouge or something. Still, maybe it'll feel better if she talks to somebody. "I was so excited for that pool party, you know? I was gonna look super cute, and have lots of fun, and get to hang out with Sonic. But I guess I didn't look cute at all, and I mean, I did have fun, but..."

"You didn't get to hang out with Sonic as much as you'd like," Shadow surmises, and Amy can't meet his eyes. She nods.

"We've barely spoken since the party," she whispers, eyes starting to water. "We've been dating for weeks, and we haven't even hung out once."

"Sonic is an idiot," Shadow points out, and Amy snorts.

"You're just saying that because you don't like him."

He shrugs. "I don't like him because he's an idiot."

There's a few moments of surprisingly comfortable silence before Amy asks the question that's really bugging her. "I just… why wouldn't he kiss me?"

"Because he's an idiot," Shadow repeats.

"Shadow," Amy protests, "I'm serious."

"I am too," he replies, expression carefully neutral, but there is a betrayal of colour in his cheeks. "Your swimsuit was very flattering; a good boyfriend would have been all over you."

Amy flushes at that, because whatever Shadow might say to the contrary, that was definitely a compliment. Even though his words don't help her understand why Sonic wasn't interested at the party, it's nice to know that at least someone thought she looked cute in her new swimsuit- even if that someone is as grumpy and hard to understand as Shadow. Still...

"Sonic is a good boyfriend. A great boyfriend, really."

Something dark crosses Shadow's features. He opens his mouth only for the words to die. He tenses up instead, then shouts "Get down!"

Outside the window the world turns white, and Amy feels her skin burn. She can't see anything, but she hears it: An impossibly loud noise like nothing she's ever heard before. "Amy!" Shadow shouts, but she just sits, wide-eyed and incapable of movement. Time is immobile, it's just her and the light and the noise, frozen forever.

Something grabs her ankle, yanking her off the chair and under the table. Time resumes. Her face is pulled tight against a very warm and very solid chest as she's cradled like something precious. The glass wall of the dining room shatters inwards, letting in a second wave of heat, spraying jagged shards everywhere. She feels a few of them bite into her arm, but for the most part she's covered. The building shakes, or maybe it's Amy that shakes. She can't tell.

They stay like that for a short eternity, under the table with Shadow hunched over, Amy pinned to his chest with one arm while the other shields his face. The world is just starting to fade back into view when he lets her go and crawls out from under the table, turning back to help Amy once he's out.

"You saved me," she murmurs, heart racing. For a moment they just stare at each other, but there's something nagging the back of her mind. "Cream!" she shouts as it occurs to her that library trips never take the dainty girl long to complete, and without thinking she grabs Shadow's wrist and sprints out of her unit and into the neighbouring one.

"Cream?" she calls once inside.

"Amy?" Cream's tiny voice calls back from the living room. There's another voice, too. An unshaken man's voice that she can't make out from the doorway. She heads to the living room, where Cream is sitting on the floor in front of a window, surrounded by broken glass and staring wide-eyed at the door Amy just entered through. She's bleeding from where the glass hit her, and her skin is definitely burnt with blisters already forming. Against one of the walls is a relatively unharmed TV, and that's the source of the man's voice.

An overweight, bald man with tiny goggles and a very bushy moustache is on the TV, explaining that he is Dr. Ivo Robotnik, owner of Eggman Industries, and that the explosion he just caused is but a small fraction of what he's capable of. Already, he's knocked out cell phone signals and WiFi around the entire city, and if his demands aren't met in the next five hours he will knock out the power as well.

Amy asks Cream if she's alright as Dr. Robotnik explains that all the bridges leading from the city to the mainland have been collapsed by his robots. The city is inaccessible, and any aircrafts that get too close will be shot down with extreme prejudice. Cream says she's okay as Robotnik says that calling for reinforcements is futile.

Amy turns the TV off when the scientist begins making his demands, turning her attention to Shadow. "How did you know?" she asks.

He freezes, but she'd seen him tense up. There's no way he hadn't known. "I'm not sure," he answers, and she can hear the wonder in his voice, see the truth of his words in his furrowed brow. "Instinct, I guess."

"Well that's some instinct," Amy huffs, reaching out to take Shadow's hand in her own. He tenses, but doesn't pull away. "You saved me," she repeats, "thank you."

"It was the right thing to do," he replies, tone neutral. She shakes her head.

"It was brave." She pulls her hand away and turns to Cream. "Do you want to wait with us?" It's worded like a question, but it isn't really an option. Fortunately, Cream nods, and Amy doesn't have to forcibly drag her friend back to her condo. Once inside, Shadow asks if he can use the landline and Amy shows him where it is, before grabbing the aloe from the fridge and taking Cream to the downstairs bathroom to use the first aid kit. Cream doesn't even flinch when Amy starts cleaning out her injuries, and Amy suspects that her tiny friend is in shock.

When Amy returns to the kitchen, Shadow's very agitated. "What are you talking about?" he demands. "There's no way the blast damaged the house, it came from the East side of town."

A woman replies, but Amy can't pick out any of the words.

"Okay, I'll stay put. But, Aziza? You owe me an explanation."

Shadow hangs up the phone and then roughly pushes his hand through his hair. Amy wants to reach out and smooth it back into place, but he'd never let her.

"Your sister?" she asks instead, and he turns to her.

"Mother, actually," he replies in an incredibly flat voice. Amy regrets saying anything.

"Sorry!" she squeaks. "I just assumed, y'know? Cause you were using her first name? And I, ah, I'm sorry. I-"

"Amelia," he cuts in, "it's alright, it's not you. Okay?" She nods, and a little bit of the tension leaves his eyes. "How is Cream?" he asks as they move out of the kitchen, and as Amy updates him, she wonders if Shadow actually cares or f he's just trying to distract her.

At this point, she's glad for either.

...

Tuesday, November 23rd, 5:27pm, Amy's living room

Shadow sits on a couch going over Amy's history work with her while she sits on the floor, even though it's after their tutoring session. The dining room may be destroyed, but most of the downstairs is still intact. Amy seems to appreciate the distraction, and Shadow doesn't know what else to do. He'd told Aziza he'd stay put, after all. While the two of them focus on history, Cream sleeps in Amy's room. They're reviewing the past hour's work when the phone rings, and for a brief moment, Shadow hopes it's his mum.

"Hello?" Amy greets. "Speaking. Okay... okay... What!? What do you mean there was an accident!?" Shadow watches as his student, usually so vibrant and full of energy, starts shaking. The way she keeps blinking and chewing her lip makes it clear that she's on the verge of tears. The way she's gripping the phone like she wants to smash it lets him know the tears will be angry ones. He wonders if he should step in. "But, they'll be alright, won't they…? Okay... yeah... thank you... alright. Bye."

It's quiet after she hangs up, and Shadow isn't really sure what he should do. "Amelia?" he prompts, wondering if she wants to be alone.

"It was the hospital," she whispers in a voice so small that he has to strain to hear it. "My parents..." she trails off with a small hiccup.

"I'm sorry," he replies softly.

Amy shakes her head, then turns to him and smiles. It's a tight smile that doesn't reach her eyes, but she's trying. "No worries, the doctor said they're in good hands. It might take a while, but they have a good chance of pulling through. They told me I should look into staying with a friend or family member."

Shadow nods, his respect for his student growing. He thinks of Aziza, and wonders what he'd be doing in Amelia's shoes. "What are you going to do tonight then?"

"I'm going to stay right here with Cream until her parents get back. After that I'm not too sure. I guess I could try calling my cousin Rob, but he lives out in Mercia, so...," she sighs. "What about you?"

He raises an eyebrow. "What about me?"

"You can't go home, right?" He frowns at that and answers her with a shrug. Amy wraps her arms around herself and bites her lip, as if debating what to say. "Do you want to stay here tonight?" she offers.

"Ah, I'm not... I don't..." Does he have any other options? His mum is going to call later, and even if she doesn't, Rouge lives pretty far away, and her dad doesn't much care for Shadow. Manic's close, but staying in the same house as Sonic seems like a recipe for disaster. "Sure," he finds himself answering.

"Alright, cool. If my parents' room is intact you can sleep in there." It isn't even remotely, but Shadow says they can worry about sleeping arrangements later.

When Cream's mum, Vanilla, gets home she makes dinner for everyone. Cream asks about her father, but Vanilla shushes her and changes the subject. It makes for a very stiff and uncomfortable meal, unhelped by the power going off partway through. Everyone decides to retire early after that, and that's when they realize how much trouble the sleeping arrangements are actually going to be.

The bedrooms in Cream and Vanilla's condo both have windows on the East wall, as does Amy's parents room. That leaves Amy's room for the four of them.

"In the morning, I'll ask around to see if anyone has spare bedrooms they're willing to share, but for now we'll have to share Amy's room," Vanilla says. Shadow grimaces. He has never shared a room before and he really doesn't want to start now. In the end, Amy and Cream get the bed, Vanilla gets the floor next to the bed, and Shadow manages to convince the others that it'd really be better if he slept on the couch in the sitting room, alone.

...

Shadow runs through the metallic corridor, dragging the dainty blond girl behind him. Everything is the same as it always is in his dream. Well, almost everything. This time there's something different. Some tiny detail that he just can't quite manage to grasp. It's a name... a name he heard recently... if he could just recall...

She trips, and as his momentum carries him the extra steps he tries to turn, fear gripping his heart. He knows what comes next. He sees her, leaning on the control panel. She opens her mouth, but whatever she's about to say is lost to a different voice.

"Shadow," it hisses. "Wake up!" Someone is shaking him and he groans, willing his heart to slow down. "Shadow," the wrong voice hisses again. "Please, you'll wake them up." He cracks an eye open, disoriented to find himself somewhere other than his bed.

"Amy?" he asks, unconsciously using her nickname.

"Hey," she replies in the softest whisper, smiling a little. She has a cute smile, Shadow's sleep-fogged brain decides. It's very innocent; he likes that. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he replies just as softly, pulling himself to a sitting position. "It was just a dream." He chokes a bit on the word 'dream' and hopes she doesn't notice. "What are you doing out here?"

"I couldn't sleep. I'm worried about my parents and my friends, and my friends' parents, and-" she cuts herself off with a sharp inhale, and Shadow gives her a moment to collect herself. "I was just lying there staring at the ceiling, when I heard you start speaking. You sounded scared." They sit in silence for a while before she meets his eyes. "Who's Maria?" she asks, and it's like a knife tearing into his heart. Images flash into his head of the blond girl from his dreams. She's laughing in most of them, as vibrant and full of youth as Amy, crying in others, pale and weak. And, of course, the image he can never fully forget, silver walls and bullets tearing through her chest.

He shuts his eye and shakes his head, wishing he could erase the visions from his mind the way one erases the pictures on an etch-a-sketch. "She's no one." He says it through gritted teeth, and he knows there's no way Amy believes it. She doesn't say anything, though, just leans forward and wraps her arms around him in a warm embrace.

He stiffens and she whispers "I'm sorry," into his ear. After a moment he awkwardly returns the embrace, wrapping his own arms around her waist.

"Me too," he admits. They sit like that for a little bit before Amy pulls away, though her hands don't leave his shoulders.

"You can talk to me, if you want." He shakes his head at the offer, gently removing her hands.

"Go back to bed Amelia," he says, patting her head awkwardly.

He stays sitting for a long time after Amy leaves, and all he can think is that Rouge was right. Amy is a nice girl, undeserving of the grief he tends to give people. He wishes he could shield her from whatever comes next, protect her until this is all over. He knows he can't.