Chapter 16

For the next two weeks Amy felt the happiest she could ever remember being. She lived every day for the night, when she would shed her worries, climb down her balcony, and gallop through the woods at top speed to meet up with her trio of thieves.

Every night spent fighting Knuckles, learning from Tails, and teasing Sonic meant so much more to her than words could ever articulate. Each man showed Amy - with painstaking attentiveness and skill - all the ways she could be better. They pushed her to the brink and pulled her back expertly, tagging each other in seamlessly to work out the kinks in her strategizing, her stances, and her confidence.

On the second day of training, Tails instructed Amy to dig into the histories of Tournament winners past, and from then on the four of them ended every lesson in a circle, recounting tales and discussing strategies of all the Rose Kingdom's Champions.

They worked backward from the most recent Tournament winners, which meant they ran into stories of Shadow's past glories quickly. In fact, almost immediately.

The rules stated that warriors entering the melee had to be aged 21 years or older. Though Shadow hadn't won the first year he could enter, he claimed his first victory as Champion at the record-setting age of 23. Amy remembered that Tournament well, and she regaled Knuckles, Tails, and Sonic with the story of Shadow's nail-biting first win with excitable dramatic flair.

She was freshly 20 when Shadow first won, and everyone in the kingdom had bet on the reigning Champion to defend his title that year. Everyone but Amy. Shadow and the defending Champion were paired in the first round, which meant that if Shadow wanted to advance, he would have to knock the favorite out round one.

Amy screamed herself hoarse watching him pull a maneuver that sent the favored knight tumbling ass over teakettle. With one more decisive blow, Shadow secured a swift, deafening victory that left the arena pin-drop silent as everyone processed that the man left standing was not the reigning Champion. He was out cold, discarded like rubbish on the arena floor. Instead, it was the Princess' own, young personal guard who stood proud and unwavering - the indisputable winner.

After that, Shadow defeated every other opponent easily - they were all so clearly shaken by his stunning opening round win. Not just a win: a critical and absolute crushing. Shadow went into the final match virtually untouched, set a kingdom-wide record, and pulled off the upset of the year with all the understated confidence of a man who knew greatness wasn't something he needed to earn. Not when it was something he already had.

As Amy demonstrated for the thieves how the crowd had exploded into frenzied screaming and chanting for Shadow the moment he struck his title-winning blow, Knuckles rolled his eyes. He grumbled that such praise was undeserved, and that having the title 'Champion' didn't mean that a man actually was one. But Amy could tell that he listened to her story intently. In fact, Amy could tell that Knuckles hung on her every word, occasionally looking away, glazed over, as he pictured a different life for himself. Perhaps, Amy guessed, one where the chants and shouts of "champion!" were for him.

Sonic, for his part, listened to her story unconvinced. He scoffed at her theatrics and sat with his arms crossed, telling her, "There's no way it happened that way, Ames - get real!" To which Amy assured him it certainly did happen that way and she would never dishonor Shadow by making him out to be more than he was.

Shadow's valor spoke for itself, Amy told him. That was when Sonic rolled his eyes.

Telling Shadow's story made Amy's heart ache - she remembered fondly the expression her usually dour knight wore when they saw each other after his first Tournament win. He seemed almost embarrassed to see her, unable to restrain his smile for once in his life. But Amy didn't want him to. He was so happy - so proud of himself - and she was delighted to see him embrace that feeling of joy in his own, quiet way.

It was also the only time Shadow had ever hugged her back. Or… maybe Amy had stretched the truth on that part and she only thought Shadow had wrapped her up in a hug, both of them utterly lost in the exhilaration of his win.

She hoped that they would get the chance to share that moment again if - when - she won the Tournament for the first time herself. She wished even more that he was sitting with them in the glen now, able to casually talk and train with this wonderful new group of people that she already loved with her whole heart.

But the vision in her mind of all five of them together wasn't quite right, and Amy knew it. 'Casual' wasn't in Shadow's vocabulary, and neither would he think the wanted criminals she was now thoroughly entangled with 'wonderful people'.

As Amy continued her deep dive through Tournament history, she began to think that Shadow would be the most famous knight in all of the Rose Kingdom's history. He hadn't won the Tournament every year after his first win, but he had won several other times and was poised once again to win this year. There was no denying that his speed and strategic ability - his precise and unyielding technique - was unmatched.

And then she stumbled upon him - the legendary knight who held the record for most Tournament wins ever - and things got significantly messier for her very quickly.

At the end of her happy two weeks, after she had gone back nearly 15 years through Tournament winners, Amy ran into the knight like he was a brick wall. When she first saw him, she dropped the book she was reading with a yelp like it was burning up her hands.

After reassuring the library attendants that she was perfectly fine, Amy crept forward in shaken silence and grabbed the large tome she had been reading up gently. She placed a shaking hand on the page, her mouth agape as she locked eyes with the red echidna knight in the portrait.

It was Knuckles. Or, who she thought was Knuckles at first glance.

The man in the portrait looked somber, grizzled, and virile. He wore the exact same scowl Knuckles had hit her with when they first met. As Amy flipped through the book frantically, the man grew younger and more handsome with each year she traveled back in time. He never got softer, however. His expression remained stoic and angry and disapproving. Amy watched the knight grow younger in awe, wondering dumbly for a moment how it could be possible that she was looking at Knuckles' own proud, angular face. Only when she had enough sense to remember that Knuckles was far too young to be this man did she finally read on, following the thread of hazy nostalgia that pulled her back through time.

"Sir Locke," Amy whispered, rubbing her thumb across the ink letters of his name. She moved her hand to trace the knight's profile tenderly as she read on, tearing up when things long-forgotten started coming back to her - settling on her heart in a soft and heavy blanket like fresh snow.

Decorated Knight of the head table, personal guard to the 14th Queen of the Rose Kingdom.

Amy's throat closed up, painful with the effort it took to keep her emotions at bay. That was why it was all so familiar to her.

The rumbling laughter that sounded just like Knuckles, the haze of red…

She had known this man - Sir Locke - because her mother had known this man. Sir Locke was the late Queen's Shadow. Her treasured guardian of many, many years. And Knuckles was his…

Well, Amy could guess - but she needed confirmation.

She wiped her eyes and tore a page out of the book irreverently: a full-length depiction of Sir Locke's final, documented Tournament win. In the small painting, he knelt before the King and Queen as they knighted him with the honor of Champion. An 8-year-old Amy clung to her mother's skirts, looking past Sir Locke and out into the arena with awe.

Amy touched her mother's face delicately as she looked at the piece. The Queen held the Champion's medallion, her face lit up with approval, and Sir Locke looked only at her. Amy had never before seen her mother depicted with such a smile. She would have liked to see more paintings like this one - more of her mom looking so truly joyful - but after this portrait, Sir Locke disappeared completely from history. He blinked quietly out of existence like a star.

Folding the page to bring to Knuckles, Amy felt the familiar pressure of irritation pinching behind her eyes. None of it sat right with her.

Amy only had more questions to contend with now. Clearly, there had been as much - if not more - tenderness between Sir Locke and the Queen as there was between Shadow and herself. So what had happened to him? Why had he been doomed to fade into nothing but a fuzzy memory - and by whom?

There was one obvious common denominator in every great tragedy suffered by her friends - only one person with the power to snap famed knights and whole cities out of existence at will.

Something flipped inside Amy, and she decided to have words with her father that night at dinner.

She would either be dead or the Queen in a matter of months, and she didn't care to dance around her father anymore. The war was coming, the battlefield set. For her friends and for her mother, she would gladly bear the flag, beat the drum, and march straight into the mouth of the beast to pull the truth from the King's own stomach if she had to.

"I was looking through Tournament winners today," Amy said from her seat at the long dining table. She glanced around, aware that servants and maids populated every dark corner of the room. As royalty they were never alone; always on display - something Amy had been painfully aware of for as long as she could remember, but something her father could never bring himself to care about.

Let them hear him, Amy thought with venom as the silence stretched on. When everything was said and done, she wanted every staff member, every citizen, to know who she was and what she stood for. She was not afraid to be seen by the people of the Rose Kingdom.

"Oh?" her father said, clearly uninterested. He stabbed into his main course with a finely polished fork, gazing somewhere far away.

"And… I suddenly remembered a man," Amy lied, trying again to coax her father into conversation. "A knight, rather… Mom's knight."

She clenched her fists under the table, her jaw tight as he let the seconds tick by without acknowledging her. She thought of Sonic to keep from boiling over prematurely, but her father's obvious indifference to what felt like everything made it so hard for her to keep from shouting at him already. Which he probably knew.

The King blinked and ate his meal, returning mentally to the dining table. He leveled his stare at her - not cold, just blank. Gray.

"What about him?" he said.

"I had just… forgotten about him," Amy said with an unnatural shrug. "Seeing his face I... I suddenly remembered he was a Champion. The champion of Champions, actually. And I thought it was odd that I had forgotten him when he was… so close to mom. I can barely remember him now, but I know that he was there, always - for eight years of my life he was there. I just… wanted to remember him again."

The King visibly bristled, clearly annoyed. It only made Amy feel annoyed right back at him.

"But what about him?" he repeated, waving his knife impatiently.

"What happened to him?" Amy snapped back.

The King hesitated, his eyes flicking to the side. The reaction revealed a lot to Amy. Spending months surrounded by thieves had helped her learn other, more subtle skills - like how to read the quiet language that people spoke with their bodies.

"He died of a sickness," the King said with an over-exaggerated sigh. "The reign of a Champion ended slowly, messily, and without honor. It wasn't documented to spare Sir Locke the shame. He was the kingdom's finest warrior - the world could not and should not know that he was felled so easily and so grotesquely."

Amy's eyes narrowed. She should have known she would never get the truth from a man unwilling to give it, but for some reason she always hoped that maybe he would prove her wrong; that the next time would be different. Instead, she was different. And totally unafraid to take the gamble.

"And his son?" Amy guessed.

Her father swallowed his wine hard and set his chalice down harshly.

"Dead," he recovered, "of that same sickness. Horrible, really. Horrible..."

Surely, Amy thought, Sir Locke's son would have something to say about that.

The room fell silent again. The King went back to ignoring her, but Amy wasn't done with him yet.

"And one other thing - from my study hour, of course," she said loudly to recapture his attention. Lying still came unnaturally to her, but at least now - after months of what felt like nothing but lies and evasion - she could keep her face straight as she spoke. "There was a town once, called Greenhill. It was burnt to the ground, and I wanted to know… why?"

"'Why'?" the King scoffed like he was humoring a question from a peasant. He swirled his wine in his glass, relaxing as the subject changed. "Such a simple question… Do you expect a simple answer?"

Amy balked at the accusation. "Of course not!" she sputtered, trying to figure out what trap her father was laying out for her.

"I suspect you do," the King sighed and turned away from her. "I suspect that no matter how complex I tell you the situation was, you'll tell me that it was actually really, very simple."

"Try me," Amy said through her teeth, trying and failing to not sound like she was seething.

"Honestly Amelia, it's none of your concern what happened to one small village years and years ago," her father said patronizingly. He knew she hated when he took that tone with her. "Greenhill was no different from any other place crushed by the natural progression of time and power. It was here, it was gone, it does not matter - end of story."

"Whether you want to admit it or not," Amy said, a warning in her tone, "I will have a hand in ruling this kingdom one day. It's my right to know what messes you have made, especially since it will be - it is - my responsibility to clean them up."

The King smiled at her pityingly, and the last bit of her patience dried up faster than rain in the desert.

"You are a fool if you think that I am not cleaning up 'messes' constantly. Greenhill is a perfect example," he said. "It was an unfortunate mess that we lost your mother before she could have a son. Greenhill was… a casualty - caught in the crossfires of that clean up."

Amy's heartbeat picked up at her father's implication. If Greenhill was somehow connected to the royal lineage - which in its totality was herself - what would she tell Sonic? And even more panic-inducing: how would he react?

"...How so?" she asked, suddenly afraid to hear the answer. She hadn't realized she was clutching tight to the table edge until she suddenly felt like she was hanging onto it for dear life.

"Well, we had to break your betrothal with the neighboring Lord's son after the Queen died. I thought the Lord understood at the time, but… when word reached him that his son could have been the King had we not broken our contract, he decided to… take what power he felt he was owed."

"He… laid waste to Greenhill because his son couldn't marry… me?" Amy asked, praying she didn't look as wholly devastated as she felt.

All that was stolen from Sonic - his life, his family, his happy youth…. His heartache was all her fault. Because she had the audacity to exist, he had lost everything.

"And you didn't… stop the Lord? Didn't send aid?" Amy pressed, her voice hoarse.

"The man had his 'vengeance', got his pound of flesh, and was appeased - mess cleaned," her father intoned. "Most things are not getting worked up over, Amelia."

Amy could have cried then. She could have screamed and thrown her plate at her father like a frustrated child. The King's words were like a spark in a gas tank. They lit the short fuse inside her, and in an instant her panic, her fear, and her guilt mixed and exploded like a bomb into a singular, unfiltered rage. The shrapnel of her fury shredded any last desire she had to remain calm.

"You will learn - there is only one thing worth fighting for in this world," the King said before she could throw her fit. He raised his glass in a grotesque toast, gesturing at all the finery around them. "Self-preservation."

The heels of Amy's chair screeched on the stone floor as she stood violently, her hands braced on the table. She was an inch away from upending the entire, heavy thing just to satisfy the rage that felt almost like bloodlust coursing through her veins.

"What about the people in Greenhill?" Amy accused, Sonic's smile burning bright in her mind and breaking her heart. "They would certainly think that their homes, their lives - their children and their friends - were worth fighting for!"

"You feel much too much Amelia, and that is why you will never be a great monarch," the King sighed. "A King cannot know his kingdom, he can only rule it."

Amy reeled back in shock, on fire at the very notion that she could ever 'feel too much.'

"You can't even begin to fathom how much and how deeply I feel," Amy spat, mocking his ridiculous accusation, "because you live alone, in a world of gray. I'd pity you for that, but I know that you don't want to live a vibrant life, because to live a vibrant life means to acknowledge all that is beautiful and ugly and dirty and inconvenient around you. Of course you wouldn't think it possible to know your kingdom. You couldn't even manage to know your own wife, let alone yourself."

"Watch yourself," the King barked. "You think you can stomp around saying whatever you want to me, doing whatever you want in the castle? My patience has limits."

"And what if I push past the limit?" Amy challenged, still on her feet. She stared her father down with all the ferocity of a warrior and all the power of a Queen. "What would you do if I reached out and took what power I felt I was owed?"

The King sat in his chair, one hand clutched tightly around his chalice. He glared at her and opened his mouth, but Amy stopped him short.

"- Because it seems to me," she snarled, her shoulders heaving as she wrestled with her rage to keep from boiling over, "that you would do exactly what you did for Greenhill: nothing."

The King tipped his head back and did his best to look down at his daughter.

"Do not interrupt your King," he said coldly, staring at his only child with sharp disdain. "It is a pity you will never be King. It would do you some good to know the true nature of such a 'privilege', but I will do my best to illuminate you. There is no sane man alive who wants to be King, Amelia. It is the short straw… the unlucky lot in the draw of life."

"You would think that," Amy said with a disgusted shake of her head. Someone shifted behind her quietly, but she looked directly in her father's eyes. "Maybe you're right - maybe I'll never know the burden of being a King. But you are lucky - because you'll never have to know the burden of being your daughter."

Something clattered to the ground spectacularly behind them, and servants scurried to pick whatever it was up in a flurry of hushed whispers and shuffling.

Father and daughter stared each other down across the table without even blinking at the sound. Amy couldn't tell if anything she said had even slightly phased the King - he looked just as dull and unfeeling as ever - but she held her ground nonetheless. If he felt even a hint of discomfort, she wanted to force him to sit in it for as long as she could. She wanted him to join her there, in the uncomfortable gap that she had squeezed herself into for her whole life, and know for certain what it felt like to be made smaller, for even just a moment.

She grounded herself, braced against the table, and stood like a fortress until finally her father was forced to excuse her.

The minute she was out the door of the dining hall, Amy broke into a run. She was trying to outrun her impending meltdown - to at least have the dignity to break apart in privacy.

As she ran, Amy felt certain of only one thing: to be a King was to be a thief. But there was no honor among Kings.

Her father had stolen countless lives, the joy of so many people she loved, and the joy of the people that they loved. Her mother, Sir Locke, Sonic, his parents, Knuckles, Tails, and every thief who scraped by in the camp - they had all been sapped of the ability to thrive. Pulled, kicking and screaming, into her father's kingdom of gray.

Alone in her room, Amy pressed her shaking palms to her door and let her head hang forward until it hit the wood. She clutched at her chest, gasping from the effort it took to be near her father - from the effort it took to hold so much fury in her body. She could have ripped her heart out and thrown it across the room, so tired of feeling everything like a physical wound; emotions always as real and devastating as sharp arrows tearing through her flesh.

Heavy tears slid down her cheeks as she panted for a full breath, but her corset compressed her lungs painfully, and she thought for a second that she might be really, truly suffocating. Visions of her mom and the fear that history was repeating itself plagued her. She could picture the Queen in this exact position - heaving against a wall, unable to handle the weight of her tragic life any longer.

In his complacency, the King demanded that both Amy and her mother surrender their very souls to him - something that he, himself did not have and never would. But unlike her mother, Amy could never - would never - let him take hers away.

As she tore her gown off and prepared for training that night, Amy no longer felt free and happy. Her fight with her father had pushed her over the crest of the hill, and now she felt tangibly that time was ticking down. No longer was the world infinite, no longer was the engagement a pinprick in the distance. Now she was hurtling toward reality frighteningly fast, and gaining momentum every second.

But the reality that Amy could not bring herself to face was the truth of Greenhill's destruction. If she told Sonic what she knew of his life…

Well, she thought, though her father could not steal her soul, Sonic certainly could if he were to leave her a second - and surely final - time.

"You're sloppy tonight," Knuckles told her that evening as they sat away from Tails and Sonic, drinking from the pond during a break. "And quiet. If you don't start working harder I'm gonna make good on your word and go get some fucking sleep for once."

Amy would have smiled at him any other day, certain that this was Knuckles' attempt at encouragement. But tonight she could only regard him wearily.

She saw his father so plainly in his face and proud stature - stoic, sharp, unflinching. But there was so much more of Knuckles to be read in his gaze and the way he watched over Sonic and Tails. Knuckles was good to his core. He was so… sweet, in his own way. Maybe it was just the small bit of her mother's spirit moving through her, but oh, how desperately Amy craved closeness with this man. Oh, how she loved him deeply for who he was and what his father had meant to her mother.

Unable to conjure enough energy to say anything other than the truth, Amy pulled the paper from her pocket and unfolded it carefully.

She held the small painting out to him, already choked up. "Do you think our parents… loved each other?" Amy asked gently. Knuckles scowled at her.

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, plucking at the grass in irritation. "He was right."

"I'm sorry, Knuckles - I was so young, I hardly remember your father…" she said guiltily. "He was clearly a great man, but I didn't even… my father said that he died from an illness but -"

"He did not," Knuckles barked, turning away from the painting without looking at it.

Amy still held the page out to him, but for the first time in her life she had no idea how to begin digging up this long-buried hurt of theirs. She could hardly speak for fear of immediately bursting into tears, so she waved the paper gently at him again - a silent plea for him to come join her and help her break ground, together.

"What? You want me to talk to you about it?" he asked dubiously. "Why would I do that?"

"Please," Amy said quietly. It was all she could manage.

Knuckles looked her up and down uncomfortably, delicacy not his strong suit. "I don't… it's not pretty to hear," he said truthfully, sounding confused at why he was even considering talking to her.

But Amy knew why. It was the same reason why she was so desperate to know him. They both held only pieces of the truth, and they needed what the other had if they ever wanted to feel whole.

"I don't care. I've got to know," Amy begged, on the verge of tears. "I think that… he was all my mom had."

"My old man…" Knuckles gritted his teeth, looking around to make sure no one else could hear him. "He was - he committed his whole life to protecting the crown's most precious jewel - you understand?" Knuckles said. He sounded angry, or at least annoyed, but Amy thought he likely didn't know how to sound any other way. "He took a vow to watch over the Queen, and he always told me that there was nothing more honorable a man could do than protect. That a real protector was humble, loyal, and expected nothing in return for doing their duty. So…" Knuckles' great fists clenched and unclenched, digging into the soil angrily.

"When the King ordered him to leave the Queen and… her daughter behind during a raid to defend him … My old man defied orders. The raid turned out to be nothin' but… he had made his choice. And for committing treason… the bastard paid."

"My father told your father… to leave us behind?" Amy said slowly.

"As the Queen's personal guard, he chose her," Knuckles growled. "And that meant he had chosen her over me, too," he added sourly.

Amy looked up at him with realization, her heart sinking into her stomach. "You hate him, don't you?"

"...I don't hate him," Knuckles admitted with a frustrated huff. "I hate… you and her and everything else about what he did and I hate - I don't know how to say it," he shot her an annoyed glance like it was her fault for making him even try.

Which it was, but Amy didn't interrupt him.

"He was a great man, but he wasn't a good dad, alright?" Knuckles said sharply, and then he snatched the paper from her swiftly, staring at it like he wished he could make the cursed thing burst into flame.

But Amy watched him get stuck staring at the image just as she had, his gaze softening almost imperceptibly.

"I know what that's like," she whispered, aching to sidle up next to him and loop her arm into his to look at their lost parents together.

"When the King disgraced him," Knuckles said, crumpling the page in his hands as he gripped it tight, "I was in my first year of training to become a knight. I looked up to him - he was my idol. I thought - I was convinced that…"

"What?" Amy prompted.

"Nothing," he growled, and tore his eyes from the page to look away in shame.

She reached out and grabbed the page with him, pulling it between them. He looked at her fiercely, and Amy was shocked to read so much complexity in his expression. There was so much at work in this man - he was clearly mad and hurt; he looked at her like he hated her.

And yet they stared at each other desperately - twin flames fated to be strangers, miserably clawing their way out of the hole that their parents had dug.

Knuckles shook his head angrily after a tense moment of consideration. "If I hear you telling either of those two dolts about any of this - my tree threat still stands."

Amy nodded fervently, anxious to just have it all out on the table finally.

"I had this… great plan for as long as I could remember. I was going to spend my whole life just like my old man did - to make him proud. Protecting the crown jewel… You, I guess. The next Queen."

"You?" Amy whispered, the breath stolen from her lungs.

Amy suddenly felt robbed of Knuckles' presence in her life. Somewhere out there was another world - one where the two of them had grown up together like dysfunctional siblings, spending every day side by side bickering. She, the Princess; he, her knight. Amy would never dream of giving up Shadow, but still she shook her head sadly at Knuckles and thought that she would have liked to live in that world just as well.

"When he disgraced himself I was kicked out of training. I was only 14. Spent the next year scraping by, thinkin' that if I couldn't fulfill the duty my father once had - if I wasn't gonna be the personal knight to the next Queen - then I had no purpose at all… it was the only thing he ever taught me to do."

Amy thought of Sir Locke's angry stare in all his portraits - the same way Knuckles had looked at her the first time they met. It was a stare so full of contempt, so judgemental. She couldn't imagine what Knuckles must have felt living under that scrutiny every day.

"Without him and without that stupid old dream… I realized that my father left me… nothing. I went and found it all, rebuilt it all, myself." Knuckles glanced at her and then immediately away, suddenly clamping up. He tore the page from her hand and pocketed it roughly, wiping at his nose with his thumb as casually as he could.

"Strange," Amy's voice cracked as she watched him, "how the universe works. You spend your whole life working for one thing, and though it doesn't happen how you thought it might… you still somehow get exactly what you wanted in the end."

Knuckled simply grunted, his chin raised and his eyes glued to the starry sky.

"I don't know if they were… romantic like that …" Knuckles grunted after a long, quiet moment. "But I do know that he loved her in his own way. He wouldn't have given up his life like that if he didn't see something in her that was… worth protecting."

"You… spent your whole life waiting for me," Amy whispered, "and I didn't even know you existed. Then two weeks ago, just like that… here I am on bended knee, the living embodiment of all your lost hope… I -" her voice cracked, "I'm sorry I pulled you back into a dream you thought was dead, but… I don't need you to give up everything for me like your father did for my mom. I just… want you here, on my side."

Finally, they locked eyes.

Amy pulled herself to her knees in front of him, sat back on her heels, and hung her head.

"I know I'm asking so much of you - and I'll beg until you say yes if I have to. But I need you to bring that dream back to life," she said, her eyes shining. "Would you serve me again? Please, Knuckles. We can't be our parents and we can't be what they wanted us to be. But we can fix what they broke - you and I."

Knuckles stood from her then, and for one horrible moment Amy thought that perhaps she had crossed a line and would lose him. But then he closed his eyes and reached out for her, offering his hand without a word.

Affection blossomed deeply in her heart. She laughed through tears she hadn't realized she was crying. They were reflections of their parents in the best way - discarding the tragedy of whatever their parents' old dependence had been and creating something entirely new, but just as fated.

She took his hand, and as Knuckles pulled her up she used the momentum to launch herself straight into him. She wrapped the big man up as best she could and pressed him tight to her, her head hitting his chest. She heard Knuckles grumble and Sonic and Tails jeer at them from across the glen. He offered her a stilted pat that did wonders for Amy's weary soul.

"Alright, alright, enough," he protested and pushed her away gently.

From then on, after every hard-fought battle between them, Knuckles always reached out for her and helped her up with so much attentiveness that she could have hugged him every time.

Before leaving for the night, Amy turned to Sonic with every intention of telling him that she was responsible for the loss of his perfect, happy life. She would have done it too, but when she turned to him, she saw he had already been looking at her. The soft smile on his lips was so precious to her that she couldn't bring herself to steal it from him.

So she mounted up and left without looking back, promising herself that she would tell him just as soon as she was strong enough to handle the possibility of losing him again.

But she was playing herself. She knew full-well that she would never be strong enough to handle that.

For weeks Sonic lived in a waking nightmare. All day, every day he tracked Espio - who was tracking them - to make sure that shit didn't hit the fan. Espio skulked about the camp with Charmy and Vector, his watchful eyes always on them. It made Sonic paranoid whenever he caught them hanging around or training. Though Espio looked to be absorbed in whatever they were doing, Sonic knew the man's attention was really trained on them like crosshairs.

Every day was a reminder to Sonic that time was running out, but it killed him not to know exactly how much of it they had left.

Scourge marched around camp exploding like a pipe with a leak more and more. As time went on and planning for the night of the ball began, his violent tirades became almost predictable. Clearly, Scourge was mad that he wasn't getting results from Espio, and he took it out on Vector and Charmy especially - who were both noticeably companionable with the merc.

One night, Scourge trashed Vector's station, nearly taking one of the cook's fingers off and setting fire to his tent for spilling some stew. Vector was usually a jovial man, not one for angry outbursts, but after that incident his attitude soured. The large crocodile grew irritable and intimidating - always talking angrily in corners with Espio about what could be done.

It was all handleable for the most part - Sonic thought he could brave anything if it meant seeing Amy so happy every night. He couldn't take his eyes off of her any time they were together, but he kept her at arm's length.

He had to, for the safety of all of them. And he began to think that it really could be enough for him - just supporting her and talking to her. He didn't have to be with her, he just… needed to be near her.

Then Amy flipped, and watching her spirit deteriorate in real time almost broke him.

As days pressed on, she ended lessons in terse silence. When she failed or lost a fight, she cursed like a sailor and stormed around the glen berating herself, wishing out loud that she was something she was not. She looked at Sonic with such devastation. He could feel her asking him silently, "Where are you? Where have you gone?"

Though Sonic knew exactly how he could bring her smile back to their glen, and dreamed of it almost every night, he refused to give those kinds of thoughts a foothold in his mind. Tails was a godsend for him in those difficult weeks, clearly buffering Sonic from making a serious mistake. When Sonic felt most tempted to go to Amy and comfort her, Tails was there instead. The young fox made it his responsibility to pull her aside and do the best he could, infinitely patient as he was, to hold her hand and talk quietly and logically with her until she could at least be talked into taking a break.

The three of them distracted Amy, and themselves, in the only other way they really knew how. They ran her into the ground every night, sometimes tag-teaming her lessons and taking her on two, even three at a time. They began to string fights together to test her constitution - to just keep her from having to stop and sit in her absolute misery. She mostly refused breaks, and when she did accept them after some sweet-talking from Tails, she wandered off into the woods alone to avoid their pitying stares as she lashed out or broke down or cursed.

It was everything Sonic could do not to draw her to him and hold her every night before they left. Watching her ride away, shaking with exhaustion every night, made him wish he could go back to her room with her. He wanted to tuck into an armchair with her and promise her that everything would all be alright.

One night, about a week before the engagement ball, Sonic could bear it no longer and stopped her before she could gallop out of the clearing.

He just couldn't let her go home in the state she was in. Seeing her so hollow made him feel scared, and he needed a moment of reassurance just as much as she did.

So he sent Knuckles and Tails ahead and zipped in front of her horse before she could escape him, holding his hands up to calm the beast.

"Ames," he pleaded seriously, his arms still up as she looked down at him with panic.

"I have to go Sonic," she said, desperately glancing up toward the path back into the kingdom.

"I can't let you yet," he said obstinately, placing a hand on her saddle and holding out the other one for her to take. "You're not okay."

"Please," she begged, "don't make me do it… not in front of you."

"It's nothing I haven't already seen," Sonic said. "Let me hold it all with you - just for a minute."

She took his hand hesitantly and slid out of her saddle like she was melting.

Before she could hit the ground he pulled her into him and hugged her fiercely, burying his nose in her quills as she clung to his jacket and wept bitterly.

"I should be stronger than this," she cried pitifully, "I can't afford to be like this but… I can't stop it. I can't stop."

There was so much they both wanted to say. Sonic felt the alien impulse to whisper sweet comforts in her ear. He wanted to call her darling and run his hands through her quills. Amy wanted to tell him that she felt like she was dying, and fighting it was so hard. She wanted to tell him that he made it so easy to keep going, and that if she could just have him with her every night, if she could fall asleep wrapped up in her bed with him, she was sure she would survive.

"It'll be okay," Sonic said instead. It came out too breezy, sounding like more of his usual charm. He cursed himself, and wished he could be more for her. But he knew that if he gave her any more of himself, he wouldn't be able to hold himself back any longer and would have to give her everything.

"It'll be okay," he said again, quieter this time.

But even as he spoke the words, somewhere else; somewhere in another dark place in the forest, the timer quietly hit zero.

Blind to it all, Sonic and Amy held tight to each other as their private little world - all the lies and the promises and the deals made in the dark - caved-in on itself in one spectacular, silent supernova.

A/N: Ooof. Accidentally made my heart bleed with this one. Please drop a review if you enjoyed. Much love, Bee.