Chapter Nine: What Remains

I don't breathe.

I don't see.

Even if I wanted to see, I wouldn't be able to. Not with the tears burning my eyes. The further Tails flies us away from the space station, our cloaking protecting us from Metarex attention, the more real the choice we made becomes.

We left Sonic and Cosmo behind. We left them with the Metarex.

At first, I felt a buzz beneath my skin. A surrealness. A sensation that prevented me from feeling anything more than skin deep.

Now, I feel nauseous.

Screw being strong.

Amy didn't consider crying as "not being strong." She could cry and still be strong. Strong didn't mean you didn't mourn. It meant you kept moving. It meant you straightened your back and did what needed doing. You kept moving forward, despite the fear and the memories holding you back.

But you know what?

Screw. Being. Strong.

Amy's knees gave out beneath her and she slid to the ground. Knuckles glanced her way as she started to fall. His hand snapped out to grab her arm, but he only found his grip when she hit the ground. He dropped down beside her in an instant. "Are you hurt?" he demanded.

She lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. She had just abandoned Sonic like she had always been scared he would do to her when it was Angel's existence at stake. But now she was the one who had left him behind.

With the Metarex.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the feeble gesture did nothing to hold back her tears. "Amy—" Knuckles started again.

"She's not hurt," C2 said, cutting Knuckles off. Amy wrenched her eyes open to see the blurry image of C2 stepping away from her side, C2's twin tails flicking behind her.

There really was no escaping the fact that, in some version of the future, C2 was Tails's daughter. And if her existence was determined by Sonic and Cosmo being lost, well…then…

Amy lifted her eyes to stare at the back of Tails's head. She tried to imagine a future like that…a future where Amy was not with Sonic but with…

She had to swallow to prevent herself from vomiting.

"So is this just it then?" Amy sobbed. She grabbed Knuckles's arm and used it to unsteadily leverage herself to her feet. "If you exist, that means Sonic and Cosmo die, right? Like with Angel?"

C2 paused and turned to Amy. Amy swiped the back of her hand against her eyes to clear away the blur. Amy saw C2's mouth in a thin firm line before Amy's vision blurred with tears once more. "No," C2 said, her voice as steady as it ever was when she was an immortal Time Whisperer. "Time is broken, but Time Whisperers are still able to see the near-term impacts of decisions. Angel gave me everything she could before she threw me back in time. Sonic and Cosmo are both still alive. There is still a chance, but you needed to survive for that to be a possibility."

Tails shoved himself away from the captain's seat for the first time since hearing Cosmo was taken by the Metarex. He stumbled only a step away from the controls before his hand snapped back to steady himself against the seat he'd just vacated. His knuckles tightened around the back of his seat, like he was holding on for dear life. He stared at the ground rather than at anyone else. "We can't just turn around and save them either." He said it like a statement rather than a question.

Amy dragged her eyes back to C2 in time to see her slow nod. "No, we can't. The Blue Typhoon is hardly functional. The Master Emerald remains in disrepair. And while we don't have a single Chaos Emerald in our possession, the Metarex have literally hundreds of fake Emeralds. To go after the Metarex now would doom us as well as Sonic and Cosmo."

Tails nodded, still staring at the floor. His eyes were dry, but that didn't mean he wasn't grieving. Amy remembered how Tails had responded when, in yet another timeline, a false version of Sonic had been killed by the Metarex right before their eyes. Instead of tears, sometimes Tails dissolved into shock.

Which meant he needed just as much help as she did.

Amy swiped the back of her hand against her eyes again, cleared her throat, and did her best to steady the sobs building in her chest. "If you know what happens next, C2, then what do we do? How do we save them?"

C2 turned to face Amy, and again Amy was struck by the fact that C2's eyes mirrored hers. Only now it made sense why.

Only now did Amy realize she was asking her daughter how to make sure she never existed.

"Not that—" Amy started.

C2 raised a hand to stop her. "We are not having that conversation." She said the words so slowly, enunciating them clearly. "I will say this once and then we will not address it again: I want to be a Time Whisperer. I am as unhappy with this potential timeline as both of you, and I will do everything within my now decidedly mortal power to prevent that. I will not allow this to be a repeat of the same dilemma you all faced with Angel."

A sob rose up in Amy's chest once more, and she struggled to swallow it back down.

"As far as a plan," C2 continued, as if she had just discussed something as simple as the weather lately, and not the fact that she wished to be an ethereal being outside of time itself, "like I said, time has been damaged, preventing Time Whisperers from getting a clear picture of the timeline. As far as we've been able to tell, this may not even have been a viable timeline. What the Metarex have done to repeatedly alter the timeline may have damaged it irreparably. Our best chance is what has worked in the past, as well as several other timelines that didn't come to pass: gather the seven Chaos Emeralds. Possibly gather the help of Nova and Shadow. And destroy the Metarex, reclaiming Sonic and Cosmo in the process."

"We can't just leave them with the Metarex until we collect the Chaos Emeralds!" Knuckles barked. "Last time they had Cosmo, they screwed with her brain and last time they had Sonic, they tortured him and turned him into a Metarex."

C2 didn't so much as bat an eye as she turned to look at Knuckles. "And do you think we stand a chance against the Metarex without the Master Emerald fueling the engine?"

Knuckles's hand brushed against Amy's as he clenched his into a fist at his side.

Was there any possibility—any possibility at all—that this was Hell? Amy no longer had the strength to banish such dark thoughts. Was this where they were destined to spend eternity? They had all fought so hard for so long to do the right thing, to be heroes, to make the universe a better place. All just for the Metarex to fix the game, to bend the rules until they broke.

If Amy was being honest with herself, she wished she could dissolve. She wished she could vanish, cease to exist, leave this universe and its problems behind. Some unseen pressure constricted her chest.

And she took a deep breath.

It shook as she took it. But she counted as she breathed in, held it, breathed out. So long as she breathed, she would fight. She would always fight.

"We always said our next stop would be Majyk, right?" she said. She kept her voice quiet to hide its shaking as much as she could, but even then, she couldn't hide the shaking completely. "Let's get to Shadow and Nova. They'll be able to help us. And then we figure out how to get Sonic and Cosmo back."

C2 opened her mouth, as if about to protest the seven Chaos Emerald-shaped holes in Amy's plan. But then she pressed her lips back together, apparently thinking better of it. Amy tuned to look at Tails, who was nodding, almost absentmindedly, still while staring at the floor. Amy pressed her hands to her chest, pushing pressure against the place where her heart used to be. Then she curled her hands into fists. As if trying to clutch the last bit of hope they had left.

And even that rose was wilting.