Chapter 15
He should've known.
Sonic sat down with a dull thud at the mess table. Numb.
Only moments ago he had felt like an idiot for keeping himself from such simple happiness, and now he felt like a damned fool for allowing himself to ever invite it in in the first place.
He should've known that the universe would somehow sense that he had found something good. He should've known that that even one small thought would be enough to catch the attention of whatever divine force thought it was a fucking riot to keep wrenching everything he cared about away from him violently, mercilessly, relentlessly.
But it was his fault, really. He had made the mistake of thinking that something in his life, something about him was different this time around. He had dared to think that maybe - just maybe - he was safe from heartache and deserved something good for once, and now he would surely pay for every second of the joy he had felt.
But that was fine. He knew he could suffer.
If anything happened to Amy, on the other hand…
"If things go bad, you run," Sonic whispered to Tails, placing a warning hand on his shoulder. Tails didn't acknowledge that he heard him, and though Sonic couldn't see his expression in the dark he could feel Tails' muscles were tense under his hand.
"This a friend of yours we're meeting?" Sonic directed the question at Vector, who stood warming himself by the last remnants of the night's fire. Sonic's voice was cold. His stomach felt like one solid block of ice so freezing that it burnt him up from the inside out.
"I'm just the middle man," Vector shrugged.
Sonic's ears pricked. He turned back toward the tree-line as he felt a soft whisper of wind behind him, and his body became aware of the presence of something his eyes could not yet see.
All three men stiffened, feeling the exact same abstract dread as the man next to him at the same time. Sonic heard a low, rumbling growl come purring from Knuckles' chest.
Something was closing in on them.
From the shadows, on the other side of the table, a figure took shape and color slowly. Like they were melting out of the darkness itself. Sonic couldn't make out the details of the man as he appeared, and the fire-glow cast half of the stranger's face in a murky shadow. The rest was covered by a hood.
"Late night, eh gentlemen?" the man said smoothly, quietly.
The stranger looked up at them with glowing yellow eyes from under a deep, plum wrap pulled up over his head and draped over his shoulders. As the man tipped his head up, a long horn slowly revealed itself. A chameleon, Sonic realized.
The twig snap, he suddenly thought with horror.
Sonic's fight or flight response should have kicked in like it usually did then, but his body could bring itself to do neither this time. Instead, his visceral response was a third, more horrible option.
He froze.
He was paralyzed with the dread of knowing that in one way or another, the jig was up, and it made him feel quite literally like he was suddenly dying - like the end was closing in on him. Like a timer had just been started, and Sonic knew deep down that the countdown to zero could not be stopped. Only postponed.
For his part, the man across the table sat casually but with clear purpose and elegance. His hands were folded before him on the table in restraint and his expression was serene, friendly even. He was dressed in all black, and his deep purple shawl fell back into a cloak that trailed down his lanky form in tatters.
The man wore all the accoutrement of someone who knew the value of being able to disappear in an instant.
"Who wants to know?" Knuckles growled, when Sonic could not bring himself to say anything. Malice radiated off of his friend in hot waves. Knuckles' fortitude bolstered him, and Sonic felt his lungs fill again. He took a slow breath and then another, his mind returning to him even as the icy feeling of panic grew stronger in his veins.
"You can call me Espio," the man introduced himself with a closed-lip smile that was calming and calculated. "I've been hired by a… mutual friend to do some digging about a rather delicate situation."
"You're a hired thug?" Sonic asked, his voice raspy. The man's eye twitched.
"I prefer the term mercenary… tracker… investigator…" Espio mused in a rich voice that would've set anyone else at ease. He reached a hand up and tapped a finger at his shoulder. "I certainly didn't spend my whole life perfecting the art of the hunt to be called… a thug." His eyebrow raised artfully, and it sent ice shooting down Sonic's spine as he saw the gold pin that Espio drew his attention to.
A little golden 'x' in the center of a ring.
"A merc?" Sonic asked, his fur bristling as another slice of fear tore through his chest violently. "You're from the Chaotix?"
The Chaotix were a well-known, small guild of highly skilled assassins. They weren't always paid to kill, though. The thieves of the camp all knew that the members of the Chaotix were really just hired hands - people who got jobs done. Deal-sealers. And oftentimes, members of the Chaotix were thieves just like the rest of them, only more…
Pretentious, Sonic thought as his eyes narrowed on Espio.
Finally, Sonic understood the breadth of what was happening: this was an ambush in the form of an interrogation. His mind whirred back to life. He knew he couldn't linger on the what-ifs, for Amy's sake. He couldn't let the seconds of the countdown tick away without making every single one of them count, without making them stretch as far as he could. It was worry for Amy that had tripped him up in the first place, and it was worry for Amy that brought his mind fully back to the present.
He began spinning out ideas as he stared Espio down, his hands clenching into fists.
For a brief second, Sonic thought about jumping the man. But if their "mutual friend" was who Sonic suspected, then Espio's disappearance would only put Scourge onto them more. And he never killed, barring a last resort or self-defense.
But, he remembered, Tails had said it earlier and now it was abundantly, painfully true: this was life and death.
Espio nodded with an indulgent smile, finally pulling his hood off to stare back at Sonic directly.
"Alright Espio," Sonic said, willing himself to speak calmly. "Why don't you skip the dramatics so we can get to the part where we tell you we don't know anything, send you slinking back into the shadows where you came from, and finally get some goddamn sleep? Sound good?"
His voice didn't crack, but the sound of that godforsaken twig snapping in the woods kept taunting him. Sonic had no ammunition, nothing to do but deny and hope that just because there was an investigator here, didn't mean he had found anything yet.
Or maybe, Sonic hoped, that he just hadn't found everything yet.
Espio gently tossed something onto the table with a light plunk, letting it roll loudly across the wood until it spun like a top in a few circles then stilled.
Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles peered down. Sonic clenched his teeth to keep from reacting as he confronted the little object before them: the ring from Amy's room, the one Scourge had been so interested in a week ago.
The ring that Sonic had forgotten to ask her about.
"It's my understanding that your team brought this in," Espio said coolly, gesturing to the ring. "Well, you brought it in, actually." Espio's firm stare was aimed directly at Sonic. "I'm afraid I must ask you where, or who, it came from." He leaned forward onto his elbows, like they were all discussing a frivolous secret instead of locked in what would perhaps be the most important negotiations any of them would ever be a part of.
"I told Scourge already -"
"Not you," Espio cut Sonic off and turned his head to Sonic's left. To Tails.
"I want to hear it from him," Espio said, raising his chin at Tails. Like the sights of a crossbow, Espio had them in his aim.
Sonic could hear the confidence in the merc's voice. The man clearly thought Tails would be the weak link of the group, and Sonic did wonder what his friends were thinking. Neither of them had ever seen the ring before this very moment. They likely truly had no idea where it had come from.
Though, if Sonic knew Tails, the kid could probably take a pretty good guess.
Sonic didn't blink, didn't flinch at Espio's tactic. Espio would be in for a rude awakening if he hoped any one of them would sell the other out.
Tails glanced at Sonic, who raised his eyebrows in encouragement.
"Yeah, buddy," Sonic said casually. "I told Scourge I couldn't remember where it came from, but I didn't think much about it at the time. Besides, you're the brains. You got anything in the old memory box about this thing?"
"It uh," Tails looked from the ring to the chameleon, "it seems like a pretty generic piece, to be frank. I think we… nabbed it off of someone on the way to the solstice celebrations in town - that festival brought in a lot of visitors from all over."
"Actually, you are quite wrong my young friend," Espio corrected, picking the ring up and turning it in the firelight so they looked at the gem from the bottom of the setting. In the firelight, the diamond sparkled differently, refracting into a breathtaking rainbow of colors. It gave the illusion that the gem itself was multi-colored, turning from red to purple and every color in between as Espio twirled it slowly.
"This is a rare type of emerald mined only in the mountains near what used to be the land of Mobius," Espio said slowly, watching them each carefully.
None of the boys said anything. Any good thief knew that a convincing lie was made up of small bits of truth, but an infallible one was silence.
"A very special ring - one of a kind, actually," Espio murmured and nodded to himself thoughtfully, "a ring that could only really come from one very special person, our friend says."
"Well, we're very sorry we can't help anymore," Sonic said casually, standing from the table abruptly. He knew very well who that one person was, but on the chance that Espio did not, he didn't want to give him the opportunity to ask. "You'll let us know if we can do anything else for you, I'm sure. You seem annoyingly persistent like that, but if you'll excuse -" Sonic turned to leave, when he heard another small something plunk onto the table behind him.
Sonic made the mistake of turning and looking at it, briefly registering his friends sitting frozen in tense anticipation of what had been placed before them.
"Oh, but," Espio almost purred, "before you go, you… dropped this."
The little figurine of Amy stood proudly in the center of the table, devastatingly innocuous. Sonic realized that Espio must have lifted it from him earlier, and now the man looked up at them all with an expression that read loudly and clearly: checkmate.
"You should be more careful with that thing," Espio tsked, nodding at the figurine. "Would be a shame if the wrong person were to… get ahold of it."
Espio stood abruptly, causing a quiet and violent chain reaction amongst the three thieves as their tenuous pretense of civility snapped the moment Amy was placed on the board.
Sonic lunged over the table, pulling Espio out of his seat. To Sonic's surprise, Knuckles shoved in front of him and took over, muscling Espio against the thick trunk of a tree a few paces away from the table they had been sitting at. Sonic was also shocked to see Tails on the other side of Knuckles, glaring at Espio with a ferocity he had never before seen come to Tails quite as naturally as it came now. As they sprang into their threatening huddle, Sonic drew his dagger and pushed the tip of it into Espio's side discreetly.
At the same time, Sonic felt something sharp press against his chest. Espio had drawn his knife and was casually pointing it to the side, at Sonic, right at his heart. He held his other hand up by his head in a gesture of partial surrender. Espio's knife was an unusual instrument with a thin grip, long blade, and a ring at the end. An assassin's weapon.
"Tell us exactly how much you know," Sonic barked quietly in their stand-off. He tried not to shake, but he hadn't been able to stop the tremor that ran through his body at the sight of Amy - the figure of Amy - set in front of him like a bargaining chip.
"Now, now," Espio said casually, "you thieves are so astoundingly unsubtle it's almost hilarious. I thought we might talk like civilized beings, but I see -"
"Oh, you're gonna talk," Knuckles said, and Sonic put some pressure behind his knife. In turn, Espio did the same and pressed his blade forward, but neither he nor Sonic flinched as they both broke skin.
"Scourge needed to know where this came from and how it had made its way to him," Espio said, his expression annoyingly calm and superior as he flicked the hand by his head, the ring appearing between his fingers. "So I started with the very man who put it in his hand. You really shouldn't tromp around in the forest screaming about such… sensitive topics as you all do, by the way."
Sonic stopped himself from cursing. He hadn't known Scourge had hired help to dig for information at the time - but, Sonic wondered subconsciously, why did he want information on the ring in the first place?
"Does Scourge know about her yet?" Tails asked. He sounded the most calm of all of them, clearly hoping to broker some sort of deal. Sonic was grateful for his pragmatism - what mattered the most was that they could find a way to keep this man quiet. Then, they could do damage control.
"From the moment you handed this to him," Espio nodded towards the ring, "he knew someone had come into contact with the Princess. Now, I'll confirm to him that it was you just as soon as we finish up here," Espio shrugged. "I simply wanted to see if you all had anything to say for yourselves before I exposed you, but I suppose this speaks volumes. It's practically a confession," he said, gesturing with disdain at their rough-and-tumble reaction.
"I don't know who you think you are," Sonic said, fangs bared, teeth clenched, "but you'd better get off your high horse and get real - I know you Chaotix guys think you're better than us, but you're thieves and deal-makers just the same at the end of the day. Surely you, with your superior mind, can see that what's happening with all this is… really big and really important. You want to talk? Then let's make a deal. Clearly we've got something big on the line - we can work something out for you."
Sonic tried to speak with his usual tone of smooth, disarming disinterest, but he hated talking about Amy this way. Like she was something to be used; a stepping stone, the little game piece Tails had carved. She was a person, a champion.
But to keep this whole unmanageable, snarled web that he had spun out over months from collapsing, he would have to make one more deal. Use her one more time. There was always a solution, he reminded himself, and if the solution to keeping Amy safe was using her, he would do it.
Merc's lived by codes - they made deals - surely even this man had his price.
"This is nothing personal, Sonic, really," Espio said. "You must understand that I was simply hired to do a job, and I intend to do it. That is the code of mercenaries. What makes us different from you is our rules - the rules I have utmost respect for. The rules I follow and uphold devotedly. It's all about transactions. Plain, simple, elegant transactions. So - you see - I must complete my transaction one way or anoth-"
"Espio?"
A high, sleepy voice piped up from behind them. Sonic froze with confused recognition, as all four men turned and looked to where Charmy Bee was surely standing behind them, back by the tables.
"What's going on, Espio?" Charmy asked. He was crawling out from under the picnic table next to the one they had just been seated at, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
In an instant, Sonic realized that the tables had just turned, and his heart sped up.
"Charmy," Vector said, springing up from his seat at the fire and hurrying to the boy, "come away from there, the boys are hashing out something serious."
"Are you… hurting Sonic?" Charmy asked, ignoring Vector completely and stumbling toward the tense group. He looked them all up and down as he evaded Vector's large hands, slowly taking in Espio's knife pressed to Sonic's chest. There was a small bloom of red staining Sonic's shirt underneath it, like Sonic's very heart had sprung a leak and was bleeding straight through.
"You know each other?" Sonic demanded desperately.
"No!" Espio insisted, his tone emotional for the first time since their conversation had started. Sonic heard frustration, some anxiety. But any sign of emotion no matter how small meant only one thing - a vulnerability.
"How, Charmy? Tell me how!" Sonic insisted.
"Leave!" Espio hissed at the boy.
"Yes we do know each other!" Charmy said, sounding hurt as he scrambled to them. "And you can't hurt Sonic, Espio! Sonic is the one who saved me - from Scourge!"
Charmy reached them and began yanking on Espio's shawl, trying to pull the knife away from Sonic. He was too short to reach, and his wings buzzed tiredly like they, too, hadn't yet fully woken.
"He's the one who saved you?" Espio snapped, looking annoyed at the news.
"How do you know each other, Charmy?" Sonic spoke over Espio, trying to get information before Espio could shut him up. Vector finally stepped up and began to grab at Charmy, trying to pull him off of the rest of the group who stayed frozen in their stand-off, unphased by the kid's tugging and buzzing.
"Orphanage -" Charmy yelped simply as Vector pulled at him. It was all Sonic needed to get the picture. It was a word, a history, that so many of the other men in the camp knew too well.
"Why is he here? Do you know?" Sonic demanded, pulling away from Espio to kneel before Charmy, holding a hand out to still Vector.
"Quiet!" Espio's eyes widened and he lunged for Charmy, but Knuckles grabbed him by the back of his shawl, slamming him back up against the tree before he could get anywhere.
"Let the kid talk," Knuckles growled, Espio's heels lifting off the dirt. "Subtlety and civility and all that, right?"
"I'm going to the Chaotix with Espio, he came to get me! We're gonna do something big to get out, and you can come!" Charmy whispered with excitement.
"Who's 'we'?" Sonic pressed, his eyes wide, heart pounding. Please, he begged that maniacal higher power in his mind. Just one bit of ammunition against this man and I swear I'll never step out of line again.
"The Chaotix is coming when everyone's out on the roads for the Princess' birthday. Espio says that he's scouting for the job, and he's gonna take me with him when they all go - we could all go together!" Charmy whispered conspiratorially, a happy grin on his face.
Sonic's eyes lit up, his chest rising and falling heavily. There it was: his gap in the armor. Chaos bless Charmy Bee and his big mouth. If Sonic weren't so relieved to have leverage, he would have pitied the kid. He knew what it was like to think that things were going to be different - that life would get better if you could just get out of the camp.
"This is a job within a job?" Sonic whispered, glancing back at Tails and Knuckles.
"Charmy, that's a secret operation," Espio said through gritted teeth, clawing at Knuckles' mitts to no avail.
"Sonic can know," Charmy reasoned. "Sonic is good, like you! He should come with us after we leave, too!"
"Let me get this straight: the Chaotix are going to steal from the camp, from Scourge," Sonic asked, giving Charmy's shoulders a squeeze, "and you're with them?"
"I'm with Espio," Charmy said proudly, puffing out his chest. "He came to get me!" From where Knuckles held him, Espio groaned.
"Right - orphanage," Sonic agreed. "Charmy, you're an absolute lifesaver, now get on out of here - Espio and I gotta talk about this… operation. The farther you are from all of this… grown-up stuff, the safer you'll be," Sonic said, giving Charmy one more squeeze and then gently pushing him away. He flashed Charmy a smile, a smile full of relief, and Charmy brightened as he headed over to Vector.
"Vector," Sonic said sternly as he stood, his expression stone serious. He didn't know how much Charmy - or Vector for that matter - had heard, but on the off-chance they knew about the Princess, he needed to know they would stay quiet.
"Don't worry about me, kid," Vector waved away Sonic's tone with his hand. "I've been around longer than you - I know when to keep my mouth shut. I'll keep my eye on him."
"So… not a thief, huh?" Sonic said, turning to Espio slowly as Vector and Charmy left for the fire, triumph on his face.
Sonic stepped up to Espio. Knuckles still held him up by the scruff of his shawl. Sonic saw Espio go for his knife, but Sonic was quicker on the draw, pulling his blade back out.
"I sure hope you're not thinking about slipping out and running to tattle to Scourge right now, because I can assure you," Sonic said with a fanged-smile, tipping his head menacingly, "I'm faster. And I will get there first."
"You look just like him right now," Espio spat with disdain, his hand falling from inside his black doublet.
"Why don't you let our new friend go, Knucks," Sonic said, softening at Espio's stinging comment. "Wouldn't want him thinking we're barbarians."
Knuckles let the merc go and Espio's heels hit the ground from where he had been pulled up on his tip-toes. He grunted, rubbing his neck and readjusting his shawl.
"Alright, you've got something - congratulations. And quit grinning about it, no one likes a gloater. Now, let's figure something out - or would you prefer mutually assured destruction?" Espio said and gestured with a sweeping hand to the table, inviting them all back into negotiations.
The party shuffled back to their seats hesitantly, where the wooden figurine had tipped over in the scuffle. The likeness of Amy lay toppled and abandoned on the table.
Espio made the first move, snatching the carving up quietly, holding it in the moonlight to examine with performative consideration.
"Here's the deal," Sonic said firmly, confidence back in his voice - though his hands still shook under the table, "you keep quiet about the Princess and what we're doing, and we don't tell Scourge about the Chaotix coming for the camp in a little over a month."
"You don't know anything about our plan," Espio countered. "How can you threaten to tell him about the operation when you don't know what you're telling him about?"'
"Charmy knows, I'm willing to bet," Sonic reasoned. "If he doesn't tell us tonight, he'll tell us tomorrow. You know it'll be nothing to get the story out of him."
Espio's eyebrow raised in a flash of acknowledgement.
"So… what?" Sonic pressed on, hoping to coax more from Espio now that the secret was out of the bag. "You took the job to do some casing for the real job? And at the end of it you get to take Charmy away to somewhere that's just as bad as here but in a different way - great. Good for you. But what about your code?"
"The codes of mercenaries are much more complex than your type would understand," Espio said hotly. "The first of our rules is to uphold a transactional sense of justice. We are not above the morally gray, but we are above evil. We will -"
"Steal?" Sonic supplied helpfully.
Espio's expression soured. "We will not abide by corruption. And it appears this… camp has gotten too powerful for the guild's liking. That is all we are doing - balancing."
"Sure, sure… I don't care how you want to say it," Sonic said, leaning forward. "All I care about is that you do your digging for your operation, and we do our work for ours. Neither of us says a peep, and then we all get what we want when it's over. If you only care about the loot, shouldn't be a problem to leave the whole… ring thing out of it, right? Tell Scourge that it got picked off of another Duke in a dozen?"
Sonic's argument felt flimsy even to himself. Or maybe it was just that the web of lies he was weaving was becoming too heavy for his tongue to hold. Certainly, the seal of secrecy would break and everything would come crashing down, that was beginning to feel inevitable. But as long as Sonic could forestall it, he would. He would make however many deals it took to keep Tails, Knuckles, and Amy safe.
"The second rule of a mercenary," Espio said in a low warning, "is to always deliver on a contract."
Sonic leaned back. His hand rested on his knife casually.
"When the contract gets completed, however…" Espio said, turning the wood figure over in his palm, "is something that can be… negotiated."
Tails reached forward to grab the accursed carving from Espio, but the man pulled his hand back, fist closing around the piece. The merc looked at them pointedly, all pristine and elegant business again.
"I don't particularly want to hurt the Princess by telling Scourge that you're the ones who know her," Espio shrugged, "but I don't really give a damn about her - or any noble, for that matter - either. I have not a single ounce of skin in your game. So hear this well: I am not afraid to use what information I have to keep Scourge off of my tail. If I get even a whiff of an idea that you're going to screw me - if I have so much as the tiniest sense that you're going to fuck the Chaotix over - I will not hesitate to… complete the contract with Scourge. Transactions, gentleman, are all about currency. And I hope you'll remember just how valuable the currency that I have is."
Espio held the carving of Amy up for them to see between his forefinger and thumb, and then slowly and deliberately pocketed it.
They got the hint.
Espio stood up, pulled his hood back over his head, and nodded at the group like nothing had happened.
"To be clear, the only reason that I'm not going straight to Scourge right now is because of what you did for Charmy," Espio said, turning from them. "It's been a pleasure doing business, gentlemen."
As Espio walked away, he slowly dissolved back into the night, leaving the other three men quietly reeling in the cold air.
Like it was easy as breathing, Espio had come and gone, and now they were all one step closer to the cliff's edge. There was now one more weight plunked onto the scale, sending the whole thing tipping slowly, imperceptibly over to one side; into an understated but infinitely significant imbalance.
But the night was still quiet and the camp murmured its usual melody almost comfortingly. This was just another dark deal witnessed by no one, but heard and bound by the very bones of the camp itself. Another thieves' agreement swallowed up whole by the night and regurgitated into nothing but silence and a cold sense of foreboding that followed the three men everywhere they went.
They all knew, without a doubt, that circumstances had shifted underneath them tectonically.
They sat in terse silence in their tent, letting the foreboding settle on the ground like permafrost; unable to speak, unable to move, unable to sleep for all the anxiety trapped between them.
"I -" Sonic's voice cracked in the cold as he broke the silence and his breath flew from him in a cloud of wet steam. "I'll tell her tomorrow - today - that we're done. We don't have to go back. I told you guys that I wouldn't put you in danger and I meant it. This is all so… precarious. And I can't just volunteer you guys to be in the middle of it all. I won't," he said, swallowing thickly.
He meant it. Sonic pledged it in his mind moments ago, made a deal with the devil for neck-saving information. If he had to cut things with Amy off for his friends to be safe, for her to be safe, and for his descent into maddening need for her and what she made him feel to end, then he would do it. He would let her go. If he did disappoint her and go back on his promise, Sonic thought with little comfort, at least he would be leaving her on his terms, and not losing her on someone else's.
"I wish you had said that a fucking day ago," Knuckles growled. Sonic looked up at him in confusion.
"Sonic," Tails said gently, wrapped in Amy's own quilt from her bed, "I think what Knuckles is trying to say is that… It's too late. We're all in now. Both of us."
Sonic shook his head painfully. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop the guilty wetness building there.
"You don't have to be," Sonic promised. "It's okay, I swear. it's been one night, and she'll understand, really. She's kind, she doesn't want to see anybody, least of all us, suffer for her sake."
"But she is suffering for the kingdom's sake," Tails argued. "And you are clearly -"
"Don't," Sonic hissed, and shook his head. "Don't say it. We are nothing, we were nothing… We can't be, and I should never have let myself think… Well, I got the message loud and clear now. I won't make that mistake again. We're in deep enough as it is. If we want to get out… it has to be now. And I will do it, for all of our sake."
"No," Tails shook his head sadly, his voice sympathetic. "You're already much too deep. Don't you know, Sonic? It doesn't matter if I say it out loud or not… You can't change what's already there."
Tails' words shot straight through his still-bleeding heart, as plain as the red stain on his shirt. Sonic knew it was true. Amy had altered the very threads of his existence. Leaving her on her own again, no matter how justified, would tear him apart. Now that he knew what his life could be, going back to just existing in the camp would feel like dying to him.
"Then I'll keep going," Sonic rasped, his hand flying up to press on his aching chest. If he was going to die withering away in the camp without Amy, he might as well die honoring his promise by her side in the Tournament. "And you two can walk away now, before you're culpable."
Knuckles snorted incredulously.
"Yeah, well… too late for that. And anyway, you're not hearing him, dummy," Knuckles said. "Just stop being an ass for once and accept the help. We're saying that we're in. Let us be in. Simple."
Hearing his friends offer him their unconditional support was the most profound act of love Sonic had ever been shown. It was devastating to hear, and even harder to accept. But he forced himself to try, and Sonic slowly nodded, emotional to bursting.
"You can either let us help you or not, but I know that your chances are better with us," Tails said wisely. Sonic recognized his own words.
"She'll be worth it," Sonic promised lamely. It was the only comfort he could think to offer them as thanks for the profound way they were telling him how deeply they loved him. To show them that he felt it.
"We're not doing it for her," Tails said with a shake of his head. "We're doing it for you and we're doing it for us."
Sonic nodded again, discreetly wiping his nose on his shirt sleeve as Tails and then Knuckles bedded down. They were quiet as they all stared up at the stars waiting for sleep to come. There was nothing more to say. Only much to do.
And though being surrounded by their brothers brought each man comfort, it didn't stop the slow, cold crawl of foreboding from sinking deep into their clothes and then through their fur into their bones. It kept going even as they each fell asleep, taking hold of their dreams and shifting them foggily into nightmares that stole what rest they could get. It conjured vivid reminders of that little chess piece laying toppled on the table, cast in beautiful refractions of light bouncing off of that confounding mobian-emerald ring.
When they saw Amy that next night, each man couldn't stop themselves from casting sad glances at her when she wasn't looking, though they kept appearances up as they fought.
Amy was right, she was better than the day before. She was also effusively bright and unconditionally happy to see them; she had so much to worry about and still she showed up and gave them her best. Each man felt touched as they watched her throughout the night, not just a figurine but a full person that was now under their unspoken protection. Without a word between them, each man resolved to give her his best, praying that when the countdown reached zero, when the scale tipped over, Amy's best would be enough to save them all.
Most especially herself.
A/N: Woof, that was a doozy of a chapter. I was nervous about the release of this one for some reason - let me know if you enjoyed!