The fire snapped and crackled, warmly illuminating the night in a way that seemed at odds with the way Sonic shivered. With his yellow fur, Tails looked like he belonged with the flames from where he sat across from Sonic. Sonic watched him watch the fire. It felt like it had been years since he'd seen Tails. Sonic wondered when Tails developed the dark bags under his eyes. He looked far too old. The last time they'd been one-on-one—save for when Sonic was being held—was the day after Amy died. When they'd gone up in the Tornado and Tails tested out a new feature. Now the memory just didn't feel real.

Tails pulled a gun on Knuckles. Sonic couldn't get past that. His heart settled in his throat so that he couldn't breathe properly. A piece of metal with the power to kill, and Tails had pointed it at their friend. Sonic squirmed, unsettled by the fact that his kid brother would even consider that a viable option.

"Sonic?"

Sonic blinked as he tried to bring himself out of his head. Tails looked up at him with wide eyes. "Yeah?"

"You're staring at me."

"…yeah."

Sonic hesitated and then just shook his head. "Sorry."

"S'okay," Tails muttered, looking back down at the flames. After a moment in silence, Tails glanced back up again. "Hey…um…could I maybe see Amy's letters now?"

Sonic stiffened and he forgot how to breathe for a second. But he forced himself to swallow hard and choke out, "Yeah…yeah, sure."

Sonic slipped two fingers under the cuff of his left glove. He slid out the stack of letters and let them fall to the ground beside him. For a moment, all he could do was stare. After carrying them for so long, he'd forgotten how few notes Amy wrote. This pile of papers, held so many times that the paper was more like cloth, was all that was left of her. It seemed too little, considering what they held.

Sonic pushed the papers around, scattering them across the ground. "Here," he said, passing one folded-up square, yellowing more than the others, over to Tails. "That was her first letter."

Tails gently took the letter from Sonic's hand, meeting Sonic's eyes as he did so. Their fingers brushed as Tails pulled away. Sonic's arm dully. Sonic dropped his eyes and unfolded and sorted through the remainder of Amy's letters. He stacked them in order from first to last and passed them over to Tails as well.

After a moment, Tails lowered the first letter. He nodded at the bronze device encircling Sonic's right forearm. "Is that the ring device?" he asked.

Sonic nodded, staring at the device rather than Tails as he spoke. "Yeah. I was kind of surprised they didn't take it from me back there, but I guess only 'cuz no one could figure out how to take it off." Then Sonic scowled, remembering the rest of letter. "But Shadow did get the Chaos Emerald she left me."

Tails's shoulders fell, but he didn't say anything. He just took Amy's next letter from the pile. Sonic's heart accelerated until he felt it in his skull. He stared at the fire and focused on not thinking.

After a few minutes of silence, Tails asked, "What was the clue Amy said she left?"

"A gear from an old factory," Sonic replied without missing a beat. "I went there but it wasn't anything I recognized. Some of the computers had old robot plans on them"

"Like Eggman's robots?" Tails asked.

"No," Sonic replied, shaking his head, "something different." He frowned, trying to call his memory of the designs to the front of his mind. "At least, not anything like he's made recently, like…his Egg-Walkers, maybe. I mean, something closer to Badniks, but…not even that, really. Different enough that I didn't see any connection until now, if you can call it that. Maybe I'm overthinking it."

"Do you have the designs?" Tails asked.

Sonic frowned at the fire rather than at Tails. "No. I…I kind of leveled the place the moment I saw them."

Once again, Tails didn't comment. He just went back to Amy's letters. It wasn't long, though, before he spoke up again. "Tails is next," he read in a whisper Sonic almost couldn't hear. A chill crawled down Sonic's spine. Tails released a shuddering breath. "Amy knew."

Sonic looked up then. Tails stared down at the letter held tight in his shaking hands. Sonic worried he would tear the paper. "She did," Sonic said softly.

"But why wouldn't she say anything?" Tails said, his voice small. Young. More familiar to Sonic than the boy who'd only hours earlier wielded a gun.

"I…dunno," Sonic admitted. "Maybe she couldn't. Maybe there wasn't time." Sonic sighed. He crossed his arms and settled them on top of his knees. "Why ask a question she can't answer?"

"Because it matters, Sonic," Tails insisted. "Why would Amy send you on a chase for a murderer after she was already dead? It wouldn't do her any good. She keeps saying that anyone who knows about the murderer dies, and she didn't want the murderer to find out about any of us. So why would she risk your life after she's already gone?"

Sonic squeezed his eyes shut until his eyelids ached. "Maybe she thought if I found the letters after she was dead, the murderer wouldn't know I knew about him."

"But what if he made her write them?"

Sonic's eyes flashed open as the blood in his veins froze. His hands shook in his lap. "He didn't," Sonic said, though he hated that he couldn't be sure. "That last letter she wrote she said it was the day before she died. We weren't around; she couldn't have said anything about you being on his list. She had no choice but to write it and hope I found it in time."

"But why wouldn't she have put this letter somewhere we'd see it immediately? This is important. She could have hid it anywhere, and she chose to hide it at Never Lake. And that's kind of out of the way," Tails said.

"It's where she told me her next letter would be; she had to put it there or I wouldn't have found it, period."

"But why wouldn't she have put at least the hit list part on her first letter where we would have seen it sooner? Unless…" Tails furrowed his brow and frowned down at the letter. "I wonder if maybe she couldn't go home. I mean, there were no pictures up, no mess anywhere. Her apartment didn't look liked in when we went to check it out. The closest letter to home she wrote after the first was at Cream's, but even that she made it hard to find. Maybe she did what she did because she didn't want the murderer to find her apartment."

Sonic's eyes widened as he realized how much sense that made. "Because she left the Chaos Emerald there," Sonic breathed. "Because that's where the trail started. If he'd found out where she'd lived, he either would have stopped me from finding him or we would have found him would be because he'd kill us too."

Tails's shoulders fell, and his tails, moments ago twitching naturally, drooped. "Sonic, she sacrificed everything so that you could save everybody."

Tails looked up at Sonic, his eyes glistening in the flickering firelight. Sonic tightened his hands into fists to keep his own eyes from burning. Tails continued, "She died so you could stop him while keeping everybody safe. She couldn't have told you in person because he would have known. So she moved as unpredictably as she could while making sure it would mean something to you. So you could save me."

Sonic turned his head away, his mind spinning. The cold stung the side of his face not facing the fire. Sonic struggled to imagine Amy wandering around spreading her secret messages while evading the notice of her murderer to-be. Tails trying to find the logic of such a bizarre scenario only made Sonic itch to run away. He didn't want to discuss Amy yet.

"Can we not do this now?" he said, his words coming out harder than he intended.

"Sonic?"

Sonic glanced at Tails out of the corner of his eye to see his little brother's eyebrows drawn together in concern. Sonic attempted a smile, but it fell flat. "I just want to take care of this guy before figuring out any of the details. Okay?"

Tails frowned at him. "But if we don't know how she did all of this, how are we gonna stop him? Amy used the last part of her life to give us clues, Sonic. We can't just write them off."

"I'm not," Sonic protested. But he wasn't sure how to explain to Tails what he meant. How he could think about Amy's words but not that Amy wrote them. The way his heart and lungs and head ached when he thought about the girl full of laughter and stubbornness glancing over her shoulder to check that she wasn't being followed. The way his world spun at an awkward tilt when thought about her scribbling letters rather than just telling Sonic how scared she was. He could handle the idea of Amy, but what he couldn't handle was seeing Amy with so much life in his head when he knew the reality was that her life was over.

"So then, what's the plan?" Tails said.

"Find the killer," Sonic replied simply.

"But how?"

Sonic opened his mouth to answer but hesitated when the words failed him. Tails sighed, shaking his head. "Sonic, we have to think about why Amy did what she did so that we can find her killer. What she did matters. The only way we'll find him before he finds us if we have a plan."

Sonic shifted where he sat in what looked like an uncomfortable shrug. All he wanted to do was run away. If only he could just run away. His muscles ached as he stiffened them to hold him there. His body shook with the effort.

Tails tilted his head. "Sonic? You okay?"

Sonic forced his eyes back to Tails's face. But this time, he couldn't summon even a fake smile to comfort his brother. "Just tired," Sonic muttered.

Tails smiled and, in doing so, looked more like himself. "Why don't you try to get some sleep? I can take the first watch or something."

Sonic only thought about Tails's proposition for a second before he realized he couldn't fight Tails on that point. "Probably a good idea," Sonic admitted. "You sure you'll be okay to stay up?"

Tails nodded. "You can count on me."

Sonic pushed himself back until he leaned against a tree behind him a small distance from the fire. "Wake me up as soon as you get tired, all right?"

"Don't worry; I've got this," Tails said, the smile not fading from his face.

Sonic eased back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes. For the first time in weeks, he felt his muscles loosen. Between the crackling and warmth of the fire and knowing Tails sat only a few feet away, Sonic let himself feel safe and drift off to sleep.

…Target acquired…

…Analyzing…target analysis…fox youth…genetic abnormality…two tails…verified.

But…target is with him. That is not the plan. Plan must change to account for new variable.

Possible sensor disruption from fire smoke? No…verified. He is in sight. Plan must change. With it…probability of success increases to 94%...unexpected. He is weakened…observations confirm.

Tempted him. Got his attention. Now the real game begins.

Only one can remain.

Whew...this chapter was a tough one to get through. I've been sitting on it a while, but I was too intimidated to edit. And now it's done! Thanks for waiting for so long; I love you guys!

Don't forget to review (and/or favorite and/or follow)! I love hearing from all of you!