Chapter Text
A stone trickles down a rocky wall. It echoes, the sound bouncing off the many walls of the tunnels.
Cracking open an eye, Sonic is met with pitch blackness. He might as well have kept his eye shut. Cuts all over his skin sting. It takes way too long for his brain to work, to figure out he’s splayed out on his side, that the ground he’s on isn’t flat, but made up of misshapen boulders packed together. Feeling around, shaky fingers find broken steel wires and thin, bent rods. He sits up. Rocky debris rolls down his pounding head. Groaning, he clutches at his skull. There's a ringing in his ears.
Lifting his head further, he bumps the back of it against something cruelly solid. He hisses and ducks back down. “Shi…”
That bump knocks a loose screw in his mind back in place. Flashes of memories tumble around in his skull. His memories of the last few seconds before he'd hit his head are too brief to grasp at. It takes him a minute or two to recollect them.
They'd raided one of Eggman’s many lairs. They hadn't anticipated it would have a self-destruct sequence.
A picture of a pink hedgehog resurfaces in his mind, screaming for him with alarm just as the ground had rumbled and lights flickered before completely going out.
His breath hitches.
That’s right. Amy had been there.
“Amy?” he calls out softly. First in confusion. Then again, with more urgency. “Amy?!” His voice ricochets off the walls that used to be the structure of the lower floors of the hideout. He still can't see a thing, and his hedgehog nose is useless here when it all smells of dust and powdered building material.
Amy had been nearby when the building… when the walls cracked and bent, when the ceiling fell apart, collapsed, when the floor under his feet gave out.
“Amy! Amy, can you hear me?! Are you there— Urgh!” Attempting to stand, his back gets jabbed by the rough slab of a broken structure leaning just over him. Strangely, he feels a pain in his leg before he registers the hot-and-cold one in his back. There's a burning, muscle-tearing sensation in his upper leg. Agony shoots up his calf, sending him kneeling, hissing.
“‘Course…” he says irritably. “Nah, sure, why not? Not like I wanted this to be easy or anything…” He's no stranger to leg injuries. It comes with the territory of being a runner. He can still move it to some degree, though the intended motion control feels off. It hurts like things are all tangled up real tautly in there. Huffing, he grits his teeth and puts as much weight as he dares on it, grunting, limping, grunting, cursing. Amy, wherever she is, still hasn't answered him, so screw the leg.
Feeling around, he can make out cement and exposed steel and bent pipes. The base of his claws under his gloves are sore. His paw pads tender, too, as though he'd tried gripping at anything to break his fall.
It’s only been a minute, but that's a full minute of radio silence from Amy. Amy’s never quiet. She’s loud. She’s chatty. She tends to ramble, go on and on about her morning, her day, her week, ask how he’s doing with a whimsical sparkle in her eyes. The eerie silence raises his hackles.
There’s an unusual mobility limitation to his right wrist he’s only now noticing. A sprain or something of that sort. The reminder of his wrist brings his attention to his wristwatch communicator. With a spark of hope, he presses the two protruding dots rimming the screen, lighting it up. He fiddles with the watch and activates the SOS function. On the loading screen: dots bounce on the screen like they're chasing each other, searching for any other comm.
It reaches one. There’s a beeping. It’s not Tails’ or Knuckles’ comms; the sound is down here with him.
“Amy…” he breaths, hope flattering in his chest.
His relieved smile is short-lived. Her comm had picked up his SOS signal, but after a few bated breaths, waiting for her to respond to his device with hers, she doesn’t. “Come on, come on… What’s going on, Amy?”
His ears flick, rotate here and there. The noise of his SOS signal coming out of Amy’s comm. It’s ricocheting everywhere, making it a pain trying to determine which echo is the source out of all the wobbly mimics reverberating throughout the multiple tunnels the collapse had formed. He’s still light-headed. Something doesn’t feel fully right with him, like he’s not entirely secured in his own body. There's a slight delay between him wanting to make a move and his limbs actually moving. Hopefully just dazed, not a sign of depleting oxygen.
His inability to pinpoint which way Amy’s communicator is beeping from, combined with the aches all over his body and especially the leg injury, has him irritated. Angry at himself. The sound of liquid trickling indicates possibly a leaking pipe he hadn't cared much about... Until his limping, pathetic footsteps start to squelch through something cold. The high humidity level down here feels uncomfortably high. Flicking on the Flashlight Mode on his communicator, he sweeps his surroundings. The walls and ceiling, all jagged concrete slabs and steel beams. He aims the light down. More gray concrete. His shoe shifts, omitting ripples.
Shallow water. That hadn't been there before.
…This place better not be slowly flooding.
“...Yeah, that can’t be good.” He grimaces, now sweeping the light all around, hesitating which pathway could possibly be useful. Amy’s comm is still beeping and he can’t find where the damn thing is coming from. “Amy! Can you hear me, Ames?!” She’d never not answer him. It doesn’t sit well with him. An image flashes behind his eyes—a bloody glove sticking out from underneath a boulder, the wrest adorned with a golden bracelet. Sonic shakes it out of his mind, only for another one to replace it: Amy's limp body on the ground, the color of her fur and quills dulled, her eyes lifeless.
“I’m coming, Amy!” he shouts out, his voice hoarse and dry. “I’m coming, just hold on!”
He wants to bang his head against any of these rocks, because how in Chaos did he screw up this badly? She’d been fine just earlier. Grinning with confidence, running alongside him with spirit, and twirling her hammer at badniks with the combination of a ballerina's grace and a bulldozer' might. They'd been laughing at how easy and fun it all was wrecking Eggman's leftover toys.
But the rumble they'd heard. The door they'd come in from sealing shut by a thick steel wall coming down. He’d tried spin-dashing himself at the steel door, only to bounce off of it, leaving an indent on the thing. The lights strained, blinked, died. Then the ceiling coming apart, an avalanche of dust and insulation and pipe water and construction material. He'd heard Amy call out to him—“Sonic!”—in a shrill voice shredded in panic, like it was her life on the line and not his. Her scream had been so dry-throated, petrified, that he no doubt knows she'd been what had saved him, tackled him out of the way, even though he hadn't seen it happen.
Now that he's managed to recollect some of his memory, he recalls how the tackle had felt.
Solid. Perfectly flat.
Amy's not solid. For a hedgehog who ranks high on speed and strength, when she turns off her battle stance, she’s all soft. She’s bubbly, peppy, bouncy. Tender and gentle and loving during quieter, somber moments. She’d scatter two-story tall badniks across fields, all crumpled with evidence of blunt force trauma, then she'd sit with him under a starry night, leaning against his shoulder, and he’d chuckle softly and snake a paw around her waist and tug her closer if nobody’s watching. She's a vicious tempest with a dreamy voice. It's just how Amy is.
What had tackled him from behind earlier must’ve been her hammer. She’d… thrown her hammer at him. To push him out of the way of something, or block something from crashing into him.
He hadn't seen her hammer near him when he'd woken up. Granted, he'd been too confused to specifically search for it. If she'd passed out, or had lost strength, the hammer might've dematerialized, for all he knows.
Amy's usually loud. Very loud. It's both obnoxious and endearing.
So knowing she's around here somewhere and he hasn’t heard a thing from her…
CLANG!
He halts. That metallic sound had sounded noticeably purposeful.
His ears twist, Then stay still in anticipation.
CLANG!
There.
CLANG! CLANG!
The sound of something solid hitting hollowed steel. It stops and starts up again. Three rhythmic hits. Someone making noise and being deliberate in making sure it doesn't sound like just random debris tumbling.
“Amy!” Sonic’s ears swivel widely. He sweeps his spotlight, and zeroes in on the tail-end of a broken pipe the width of a human wrist. It’s protruding out of the rubble, drooling water. One of the many burst pipes.
He presses two fingers against it. It vibrates under his touch with every clang.
“Amy…” he whispers, hopeful. He gives the pipe three experimental knocks with his knuckles, the same three-hit rhythm.
Sure enough, he receives three vibrations back.
It's her. It's got to be.
For some reason, whether she had tried calling him and he hadn't heard her, or she's in a state where she's unable to call out or even answer her communicator, she's opting for this method.
On one hand, he's impressed how she even thought of this.
On the other, he can't shake off the thought that something has to be catastrophically wrong on her end for her to resort to this.
“I hear ya, Ames!” he yells out, in case she can in fact hear him. “Keep makin' noise, I'm coming.”
Just in case, he gives the pipe three more knocks, then he's on the move, navigating through tight tunnels with his paw up against the rocky walls and ceiling, feeling out the vibrations of the pipe running through them. His leg is being a pain to work with; he opts for balling up and rolling through wide enough spaces to save up time. The splashing of his shoes against the shallow water on the floor makes him nauseous. He's a fucking idiot for thinking about gods' damned water raising when one of his best friends is definitely hurt somewhere.
He finds himself needing to slip and climb up and down diagonal gaps, stepping over thin rivers of water runoff that weave through the rocks.
“That's it, keep ‘em coming,” he calls out, trying to sound confident, like he's not about to pull his quills out because why isn't she just yelling back? Why? How bad is she— “I'm comin’ to gotcha, Amy, alright?” he says in a serious tone. His strong, bright Amy must be freighted. Whatever's going on on her end, it's rendered her unable to operate her communicator, and unable to call out to him. The moment she realized she couldn't call for help must've left her in a panicked state. It'd freak anybody out.
The noise stops. It doesn't come back.
He tries, really really tries, not to let his fear seep out in his voice. “Amy? Amy, you still there?”
He pauses. Hears nothing back other than the irritating trickling of water. He presses his paw against a wall harder, hoping to catch even the tiniest of vibrations. Nothing. He wants to ask why she's not shouting, yelling, screaming, anything. He holds back. If she's hurt, really hurt, then him demanding answers she can't physically give is the last thing she needs.
“Can you do whatever that was a little more?” he asks it almost politely. “Is that a thing you can do right now? Try something else if you can't?” When there's still nothing, he reassures, “Just sit tight, I'll be right over.” Even if he doesn't have her leading him anymore, he’ll search under every rock and welcome the insanity of claustrophobia before he even entertains the idea of leaving her down here, hurt and alone in the dark.
CLANG!
The banging on the pipe comes back. There's a longer gap of silence between each hit, now. He doesn’t want to wonder why. The sound is back, at least. She's trying.
He can't help the grin on his face. "That's it, that's it! You got this!” His stupid leg's on fire. He wishes it’ll just go numb so he can focus. It’s a constant hindrance of what feels like swollen hot sacks of fluid inside of his thigh threatening to burst. It better not be inflamed already. He’s not in the mood to entertain the thought of getting the excess fluid drained out of a swollen bursa.
With a grunt, he climbs a wall of rocks and heaves himself through a gap, tumbling out the other side in a full roll and landing unsteadily on his feet over a shallow puddle with a splash. The flash of pain cutting up his leg instantly makes him regret that botched landing. “...That used to be easier.”
The spotlight of his wristwatch catches a spot of pink hidden amongst the grainy debris.
“Amy!” His leg momentarily gives out from under him. He stumbles, catches himself. The splashing of his shoes sound like fish fighting at the surface.
Amy’s moving, alive, but that’s where the good news ends.
She’s on her side, one of her arms trapped beneath her. Pinning her down by her side from the waist down is a large steel beam lying across her diagonally, the rubble surrounding her propping up one end of the beam just enough to miraculously prevent it from cleaving her clean in half. Her teary eyes are wide, frantic. The fur on her face damp. Her quills are sharp from adrenaline. She’s hyperventilating, whimpers wobbling out between pants. She’s clutching a stone. With what little effort she can muster, she swings her fist up over her head and bangs the rock against an exposed pipe overhead, the action evidently excruciatingly painful as she jostles herself against the beam. She manages four hits before her strength gives out and her head and arm flop to the floor, splashing the few centimeters of water on the ground. Her ears are pinning against her head in despair, quivering at the tips.
She's yet to notice Sonic. Or the light he’s shining at her. In fact, she doesn't seem fully coherent, still in a strangling hold of her fight-or-flight instincts. The steel beam is pressing down against her side so hard it looks as though it's sliced into her. All that flailing she’s doing can’t be good.
In a blink, Sonic's by her side. And in another, he takes note of the red in the water around her. Not all of it is a reflection of her dress.
Sonic's breath hitches. He forces it to even out.
He can't panic here. Amy's got enough of that going on.
He lays a gentle paw on her shoulder. “Hey,” he says in a gentle but firm voice. She doesn't react to him, still in a manic state. Attempting to hit the pipe again, her paw loses grip on the stone; it plops into the water. She miserably resorts to smacking the beam with an open palm, then drumming at it with the bottom of a curled fist.
Through her pained gasps for air, her chest, what little of it Sonic can see, stiffly jerks in the effort to breathe under the pressure of the beam, the flat edge of which has cut into her. It possibly happened due to her struggling.
He gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Hey hey hey,” he softly urges. Her whimpers break his heart. The fingertips of her glove have gone grimy gray. “Easy there, Ames, easy.” While there's urgency in his voice, he tries to tailor it to sound calmer. She’s freaking out; she needs to believe that he’s got this, that he’s going to make it alright, that she doesn’t need to be so scared. “It's me, Amy. It's me.” Despite the situation, he gives her a dashing smile. “I'm here.”
He sweetly cups her cheek. Her paw grasps at the back of his with a wet slap. Her thrashing eases, though her gasps are still desperate. She stares up at him unblinkingly, pupils wide and glistening.
He caresses her cheek, smiles proudly. Anything to put her at ease. “There you are,” he whispers to her, rubbing his thumb just under her eye. “There we go. Easy now. Try not to move too much, yeah? Big ask, I know, I know. But you gotta stay strong for me, okay, Ames?"
He’d gotten her in this mess. If he'd just been paying attention, she wouldn't have had to save him, and he would've gotten to her before she got caught in the collapse.
The intense fear in her eyes is breaking him. It always does. For years, ever since they were hoglets, she’d get herself in a mess (Metal Sonic, Badnics, her biting off more than she can chew against a threat she impulsively jumped at,) then scream his name for help. In some weird, twisted way, it’s reassuring, hearing her call for him, because she knows to call him, knows he’d come and get her out of what stupid situation she got stuck in, so he doesn’t worry that much.
It’s when she’s not calling him when she should be that freaks him out. There’s something frighteningly wrong about it. When they’re out in a battle, and all he hears is a grunt from her, a gasp, then nothing else, and his hackles go up even before he turns to see Eggman had shot her hammer out of her hold or finds Metal Sonic over her. When she’s scared, hurt, confused, but so, so quiet that it makes him angry he can’t just bulldoze through whatever’s causing it. Those pleading eyes of hers always screw him up inside.
And now, she’s looking up at him like she can’t believe he’s real.
She has no clue, none at all, how much power she holds over his heart when she looks at him like this.
And when there’s a spark of recognition in her eyes, and she manages to whisper, “Sonic…” It kills him inside just how thankful she sounds. Like it wasn’t his doing that got her here.
“Sorry for the wait. Couldn’t find the light switch ‘round here.” He gestures all around with the light from his communicator. “Or doors.”
She shakily opens her jaw, but no words come out. She gives it another attempt. “Hurts to…” She doesn't finish it, resorting to grabbing at the beam for emphasis.
Hurts to breathe. Hurts to talk. To move.
His mouth thins, concerned. “It hurts, I know,” he acknowledges sympathetically. He looks the beam over, shines the light from end to end, both of which are concealed under more rubble anchoring them in place. He stands, putting his weight on his good leg, leans his back against the beam, and gives it an experimental push. It doesn’t so much as shift. He tries pushing harder with his shoulder and open palm against it. It groans, but nothing more. Pulverized rocks trickle down from the ceiling. He lets go of any idea involving playing Jenga here.
Amy’s staring off into nothing, blinking owlishly. A possibility of a concussion. Or asphyxiation. That compression against her ribcage can’t be good. High chance she broke a few ribs. He doesn’t want to think about how far a dislodged broken rib might've traveled to through her body.
“Alright,” he sighs. “I sent out an emergency signal. You just hang in there for me.”
Her arm, the one pinned beneath her, keeps making beeping noises under the few inches of water. Explains his unanswered call on her communicator.
Seeming to lose strength, she lowers her head. The water around her ripples. She angles her face toward the ceiling as much as her neck lets her, keeping her snout from going underwater.
He’d lose his shit if that were his head to the floor.
“Here, lemme…” As carefully as he can manage, he lifts her head and shimmies his good leg under for her to use as a pillow.
Her eyes go glossy, lids droopy.
He can't have her slip away. “Hey, come on. Keep your eyes open.” He strokes her head. Her quills have lost their shine, damp and caked in gray dust. The sound of his moist glove is lost in the echoy ripples and Amy's strained wheezing. “Can you hear me at all?” he asks, trying to determine just how lucid she is, and to keep her mind from drifting off. There's damage to her ribs, for sure. Cracked or broken.
Amy manages a vague little noise. Then faintly whispers, "Is… 's it… bad?"
“Amy.”
“‘S bad… isn’t it.” She’s not asking this time. She has a vague estimate.
He contemplates. Sugarcoat it? Lie? Half-answer? He goes with: “...You're a little worse for wear.”
She slowly closes her eyes. She’d probably been expecting as much. “...How long’s it been?”
Checking his watch won’t be of any help when he doesn’t even know when the collapse had happened. “Hard to say. Can’t be that long ago.” Their friends would’ve gotten them out by then. Unless, they too were—... No. He can’t think like that.
“‘S cold,” she whines, her voice so weak he almost missed it. She's been in water for some time.
He can’t do anything here, can he? “We’ll get you home and warmed up. You have a tub, right? A hot bath would be great, I bet. Heck, you can even wear those insane fluffy socks I walked in on you wearing a few winters ago.” He remembers that winter. He’d let himself into her cottage to drop off some take-out for her when she’d had a fever; he’d found her watching TV on the couch, her quills unstyled, wild like his, and wearing thigh-high socks so thick and fluffy he knew she’d be slipping and sliding without rubber slippers. He’d muffled a snort and pinched one of her toes, asked if she was preparing for a trip to Winterburg he didn’t know of, and received a pout, a grumble, and a measly kick at him.
She opens her eyes, looks up at him with a sleepy expression, and of all things she manages to utter out, whispers, “Mean. Don’t… make fun of me.”
He can't help it—he chortles a bit at that. “Not makin’ fun, just spitballing here. Not too bad of a suggestion, right?” He wants to lighten the mood, have her talking, listening, focusing.
Instead, it's like her mind's too slippery for her right now to grasp at his words. She drifts into silence. The sounds of water plopping and dribbling reverberates all around them.
“I’m scared…” she admits in a raspy voice.
His ears fold back against his head. Some hero he is. “Can't blame ya. Nobody would. Hang in there. It's just for a little bit.”
She bites her lips, physically fighting the urge to just start ugly sobbing. She chokes out, “Don't leave.” Her voice sounds clogged, her throat uncomfortably tight.
It hurts that she has to beg him. And that it’s not the first time she’d begged him not to leave her.
He can’t say he has never left her behind before. It’s a mark of shame he wants to forget but needs to acknowledge. He’s not proud of how nasty his teenage-self had been to her.
“I'm right here. I'm not leaving,” he emphasizes, hoping she knows he's serious, that he's not just saying it just to say it.
She’s said, time and time again, that he's her hero, sometimes as a flirty joke, one of the ones their friends think is entertaining to watch and tease him about. But sometimes, when it's just him and her, she means it literally, with all her heart.
The amount of confidence she has in him is both insane and flattering. And now he really needs her to tap into that again. Believe him. Believe that as long as he said he'll be here, she doesn't have to be so scared.
So when she's quiet, and sucks in a pained, wobbly breath, and whimpers like she’s close to tears. “Don't leave…” It stabs at his heart.
“Hey, hey,” he soothes, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “I promise I'm staying right here. Just stay with me too, alright? Can you do that for me, Ames?” He smiles sweetly. Anything to ease her suffering right now.
Her pleading, watery eyes stare up at him. She turns her face and presses her eyes against his leg, sniffling, then giving a subtle nod.
He runs his fingers through her quills. “That's my girl.”
A sound akin to a mix between a sob and a chuckle escapes her. Evidently she found it funny whenever he’d slip intimate stuff like that in inappropriate situations. It gets a laugh out of her, he’d reasoned, so he keeps doing it.
It's been a mutual but silent agreement that he'll take his time easing into a more romantic relationship with her, and she’d go along with his absurdly slow pace. Anybody else would've called it quits, flipped him off for wasting their time. And he wouldn't blame them for it. He's not good at all… this. Relationships. And sucking at relationships doesn't make all that he's done to her okay. Not the missed dates, or the dismissiveness he'd had around her as kids, or the fact that, when they'd been teenagers, when he'd started liking her but had still been uncertain about it, he'd been unintentionally giving her mixed signals.
And being a snarky fifteen-year-old boy, a hero, and having faceless fans who believed he could do no wrong, it churns his stomach now how flippant he'd been.
Knuckles had to smack some sense into him during an embarrassing scolding on Angel Island. Sonic can't say he didn't deserve that. He had to hear Knuckles growl at him, "Stop stringing that girl along before you really hurt her."
Shame ate away at him for being a horrible person to a wonderful girl.
Sonic had tried talking about it with her. Tried. He was and still is bad at this stuff. He'd managed a whole lot of useless 'you-know's and 'remember-when's, trying to play it cool but tripping over his words, because telling the girl you liked that you fucked up badly and you do like her, you really do, and you're sorry, and you like her but it's all kinda too big and too soon and can you have time to think it over?—he might as well have worn clown makeup to somebody's funeral.
And Amy… sweet, radiant, loving Amy, hurriedly interrupted his absolute disaster of a speech to tell him, “Oh. I know.”
He hadn't understood what she meant the first time she said it. Even when she explained, it was like chewed-up gum had gotten tangled up in the spinning cogs in his brain.
She'd known. She'd known he'd started liking her. Known he needed time to figure out if he wanted this or not.
Known what she was signing up for when she fell for him.
And whenever she does this—be insanely considerate and criminally forgiving—Sonic's reminded that despite how he's seen as the hero in the eyes of many, at the end of the day, he's a bit of a loser.
His friends might say that's a little harsh. (Minus Shadow. He'll agree Sonic's a loser. Not just in the romance department but in general.) Sonic's done the math. Without his impulsiveness and his anarchist approach to getting shit done, what's left is a hedgehog who likes to read classics on the couch and play video games on occasions and fumbles the bag when it comes to crushes. In other words: a loser. Amy's heart is cursed to be in love with him.
A different sounding beeping comes from both of their wristwatches. Hers is muffled, tucked beneath her with her arm. Sonic answers his.
“Sonic!” Tails exclaims. There's some commotion in the background on his end. The wind. And Knuckles' gruff voice asking something inaudible.
“Tails!” Sonic laughs softly. “Am I glad to hear your voice, buddy.”
“Are you okay?” Tails' voice sounds slightly calmer, now that he's hearing his big brother on the line. “I just got your signal. I guess it wasn't reaching me before Knuckles dug me out. I'm okay by the way!” Tails added quickly before Sonic could ask. “Left wrist hurts but I can still use it. That's all I can tell right now. Knuckles says he's all good.” He pauses, his way of saying: Status report. Your turn, Big Brother.
Sonic huffs lightheartedly, a gentle smirk on his face that slides away when he acknowledges what he needs to inform Tails. “Glad to know you and Knucklehead are safe, pal. I’m alright. Might’ve sprained my leg or something. We, uh, might have a bigger problem, though…” His eyes soften when they turn to Amy, her cheek still on his leg, the water lapping at her chin. Normally, she'd make herself be heard by now, alert Tails and Knuckles that she's down here with Sonic. She stays silent this time around, her jaw half open, wheezing.
Her eyes are unfocused, dim. The dirty water's pink, the color spreading.
“Hey, Tails?” Sonic keeps his voice steady. Tails is an incredible kid, an amazing inventor, a skilled pilot. He's Sonic's baby brother, but Sonic lost count on how many times this little guy had saved his tail. It just sucks how much pressure this current task is going to put on Tails. “Can you call for a rescue team? One with a medic. Amy's…” Bleeding. Suffocating. Might drown in the next few minutes. “She's hurt bad.”
There’s a brief silence.
Sonic hears Knuckles' in the background. “...Damnit.”
Tails' silent for a few seconds. Then says, “Okay.” There's a strangeness to his voice, like the kid doesn't fully register he'd spoken. After a few breaths, he says with more assertion, “Okay. Yeah, okay—I can do that. Can you tell what’s wrong with her? Is she conscious?"
He wants to say yes. He doesn’t. The haziness in Amy’s eyes that comes and goes is enough of an indication that she’s playing tug of war inside her head. “Goes in and out, I’d say. She’s bleeding from her side, and… there’s this metal structure on top of her. It won’t budge, and I dunno if I should get it off if I could.”
“...Yeah, no, don’t move anything until we get there, okay? A Restoration's aid shuttle is on its way,” Tails reports professionally. Then, he adds with more hesitation, "Jewel's asking what the team should expect down there.”
The water is inching up Amy's chin. It's reaching for her lips. He places a paw under her chin and tilts her head up. Her eyes are half closed. He doesn't like how unresponsive she is right now. He reports back: “Amy's not breathing right. Don’t know how much longer she can handle this log of metal on her.” He looks straight at her while talking. She blinks slowly, not once indicating she understands what's going on around her. “It's flooding down here, Tails. Might wanna hurry."
“…How fast is the water coming up?”
The water level is still low for Sonic. It's not for Amy. “…Way too quick for Amy if I can't get her off the floor.”
It's harder to breathe; the humidity level is uncomfortable. Every inhale feels like breathing in a swamp. And he's not the one whose ribs are getting crushed.
The pink water climbs another few inches. In a sudden moment of clarity, Amy shakily lifts her head off of Sonic's outstretched leg, propping herself up with her good arm. Shallow waves fold over Sonic's knee, and with that, his leg goes underwater. Amy's keeping her shoulders up as best as one could when her middle is practically stapled to the ground. The beam digs into her side as her bending presses up against it harder. Her arm is quivering, threatening to give out. He cups her chin to support the weight of her head.
“Hey, I got you." He needs to figure something out; he can't just sit here and watch her like this. “Help’s on its way, just stay with me.”
“...Sonic?”
Right. Tails' line is still open. “Can you do something about the flooding? Amy doesn’t have a whole lot of wiggle room right now.”
“I could scan and search for how I could shut off the source of the water supply to this place, but I don't know how much time that’ll take. Not to mention that probably won't stop the runoff already down there.” Tails starts mumbling to himself, things about Eggman’s most commonly used hideout layouts, the computer system being down after the collapse so he can't hack anything, his Miles Electric scanning the rubble for the safest path to dig without hitting any weak spots that could cause a secondary cave-in. A gasp of a eureka moment. “I’ve got an idea. It’s risky, but—”
“Go for it.” Something’s better than nothing.
Tails’ voice sounds farther away than before, leaning away to talk to Knuckles. “Knuckles, you’re good at tunneling, right? Think you can do this?”
There's a quiet moment, Tails probably showing Knuckles something on the Miles Electric screen.
“I know it's more complicated than just digging straight down,” says Tails, trying to explain whatever weird twist the plan has.
“I can do it, no sweat,” says Knuckles, confident. A thud sounded: his fists knocking together in preparation. “Just watch your head and stay close behind me, kid. Hey, Sonic!” Knuckles grunts into Tails’ comm. “Take care of Amy, you hear? Tell her we're on our way.”
Despite the exhaustion weighing down his bones, Sonic lets out a tired chuckle. “Don't need to tell me twice.”
Sonic forgets to ask what exactly they're doing. Does it matter at this point? It's not like Sonic can do anything. His communicator crackles, the line still on. A violent rumble vibrates the rubble around him. It comes and goes. Knuckles digging around somewhere. Sonic knows Knuckles doesn't dig haphazardly. Every impact of his spikes is expertly landed. He'll be fine.
Sonic is still holding Amy's face. Her eyes close. She's cold.
“Amy.” He jostles her head a fraction. “Hey, come on. Knuckles and Tails are working on getting here.” Is she even breathing anymore? He… he can't tell. “...Amy.” Numb, he puts a paw over her ribs, just above where the beam is. He's shaking too hard. “Hey… hey, come on, don't do this.”
She looks asleep, long lashes as still and pretty as icicles.
He's known her practically his whole life. Her recalls when she'd slept on the floor at his and Tails’ house. He'd called her, told her Tails was sick with a bad fever and somebody had to go deal with Eggman. She'd dropped everything to come over and watch Tails. Sonic had come back to find the lights off, the TV on, muted, and Tails asleep on the couch under a blanket. Amy had fallen asleep on her knees, with her head and folded arms over the couch. It was sweet. Sonic had soundlessly relocated her to his bed. She'd cracked a drowsy eye open before deeming there was nothing to worry about, it was just him.
Here, with her head in his paws, her lashes don't flutter.
She's too still, too quiet. Amy Rose should never be this quiet.
He draws her in, tucks her head against his chest, curls his body around her.
“Don't leave me.” Her words come out of his mouth. “Don't you leave me…”
After all that he's done to her, he has the gall to beg her this.
Idiot. Stupid, fucking idiot.
Something soft flicks his chin. Her ear twitching. The relief washing over him makes him dizzy.
He presses his mouth against the crown of her head, murmurs with hope, “You still with me?”
A pained whine is all she can squeeze out.
He'll take it. “Yeah… can't blame ya.”
The water's climbing. It's going at a pace that's both agonizingly slow, and yet, not slow enough. His wristwatch goes under. Its light wobbles. The water touches Amy's chin. His exhales ripple the surface. It smells like old pipes and mud. His fingers brush through the quills on her head, massaging through them, keeping her head pressed to his chest, his heart.
There's no way to lift her any further. And he'll be damned if he even thinks of letting her go.
The waterline grazes Amy's lip and she weakly jerks her head up. “Sonic…” Fear quivers in her voice.
His arms tighten around her. There's a thrumming in his ears, in the back of his mouth. His heart’s galloping. They're going to go under. They're going to fucking go under. She's going to go under and and he's going to just sit there and be useless. He's about to tell her to hold her breath. Then shuts up, because what breath? She can barely suck in gasps here and there.
He can still hear the commotion Knuckles is making around them through the walls. He holds into that fact.
“S– Sonic!” Amy sobs.
With his booming heart clawing up his throat, he swallows hard and ducks his head, firmly pressing his face against her cold one. Her short gasps brush against his muzzle.
“Hold on, Amy!” he orders, gritting his teeth. Come on, Knuckles, come on! “I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.”
Her wide eyes don't dare to blink. She's looking at him like he's her last breath. She chokes out, “You— Sonic, you can't…!”
You can't. You'll drown.
As if he hasn't considered that.
As if she thought he’d just let her do this alone.
“Hey.” Keeping their faces pressed together, disheveled foreheads and wet snouts touching, he cracks a smile. “Like I said. I’m not going anywhere.” He's not thinking when he firmly plants a kiss on her forehead.
There’s something beautifully haunting in those wide eyes of hers.
Their lips brush against one another. It’s by accident. He doesn’t mind it. She shakily breathes out of her mouth. It’s warm over his. “Tell you what.” He nudges her head with his in an almost playful manner. The light of his wristwatch is wobbly under the water, like the lights in a swimming pool. Its reflection shimmers over the walls around them. “After Knuckles and Tails get us out of here, I’m taking you anywhere you wanna go.” He winks. “Let’s call it a date. What do you say?”
Her eyes start pooling. Her face scrunching up, fighting the urge to wail. With what little time she has, she shuts her eyes hard and forces out a hum of affirmation. “Hm!”
A rippling ring of water frames their heads. It swallows her face first. He grabs her harder. He dips under not too far after. It’s suddenly silent. There’s cotton in his head. It’s somehow colder, and he puts more strength into his hold on her, just to be sure he wouldn’t slip away from her. There’s a muffled boom and rumble he quickly forgets about; Amy’s desperate clawing at his arm is a bigger concern of his. The water’s tainted with dust and other debris. It’s cloudy white. He can’t see her well, but he does catch a glimpse of her panicked face right up against his. She’s struggling. Her head jerks against his, her body inadvertently fighting. She doesn’t have the luxury of lungs working at full capacity.
He keeps holding onto her. He’s not really thinking anymore.
Bubbles burst out of the corner of her mouth. She thrashes harder for two seconds, then starts going still. The foggy filth in the water thins just enough to show her face. Pink quills flutter around her head in slow motion, her eyes half-open, hazy.
He doesn't move. He doesn’t want to. His burning lungs could give out for all he cares.
An ear-splitting boom shakes the water like dynamite going off. The impact forces the air out of Sonic's own lungs. More underwater debris plumes like smoke. There’s a sudden change in current that pulls Sonic’s fur to one side. The surface lowers back down to him. He’s too confused—and actively choking—to figure out how and why. His body hacks violently. It hurts. It’s giving him a headache.
Squinting one eye open, he makes out a whirlpool the size of a basketball.
Water dribbles out of his ears until there’s a pop. Suddenly, everything’s too loud. Legs trudge through the diminishing river. Red quills. Yellow fur. Shouting. A glove on his shoulder. More gloves grabbing at him, then at the bundle in his arms, and he initially refuses to let go, confusion caking his thoughts like molasses. He just knows he shouldn’t let go.
Voices urgently call his name. His brain short circuits. He knows those voices.
Tails. Knuckles.
There’s a bright orange-red smear running down Tails’ forehead. A bleeding cut. Knuckles’ red pelt hides any bleeding. They’re both drenched, dirty, and yelling in his face. Tails panickily shaking him by the shoulders; Knuckles is outright manhandling him in an attempt to pry Sonic’s arms open.
Their words tumble into his ears.
“Sonic! Sonic, snap out of it!” Tails. Frantic, fretting.
“—let go of her or I’ll have to break your arm!” Knuckles. Snarling, furious.
A shock of realization hits Sonic, and he immediately lets his arms go slack. Whatever relief he felt upon gulping in air dissipates when Knuckles shoves him away by the shoulder and takes Amy’s head in his own paws, cursing under his breath at seeing her unconscious. Knuckles brushes a paw down her face, then touches the beam, his purple eyes scanning, his fangs gritting. Thinking what Sonic’s thinking.
How do you do chest compressions in this situation?
“Amy! Hey. Hey, come on, kid!” Knuckles starts patting her cheek and jostling her head.
Despite the terror on Tails’ face, his eyes dart for a solution, the flashlight of his Miles Electric sweeping. His tails flick anxiously. “Her back! Can you reach her back?!” His voice cracks.
Knuckles turns her head so her nose points to the floor. Sonic almost reflexively shouts at him to stop when Knuckles thumps Amy on the back with the bottom of his fist. Her head jerks with the motion. The sounds are dull thuds Sonic flinches at every time. He’s about to push Knuckles off in his own hysteria when a gurgle freezes him in place. Amy coughs, twitches, then violently spasms as water trickles out of her mouth in bursts. It comes out of her foamy with streaks of pink. Her eyes shoot open as she painfully hacks and coughs.
“Amy!” three voices exclaim in unison.
Knuckles holds her head up. Tails shifts from foot to foot in apprehension. Sonic’s shoulders sag in relief. He scoots closer and cups her face, wiping at her cheeks. “You’re okay,” he reassures repeatedly. She’s wheezing between coughs. It’s noise, at the very least. She gives no indication she’s noticed Knuckles and Tails. For all Sonic knows, she’s barely aware of even him. “You really gotta stop wearing my heart out like this, Ames,” he jokes, though it lacks any humor. “Cut it a little close there, Knux,”
Knuckles fumes, “Well, I’d like to see you try digging upward and around all that steel!”
Where the whirlpool used to be is now a hole in the concrete. A hole Knuckles had dug out of from below. A drainage tunnel.
Following Sonic’s line of sight, Tails explains, “We had to dig down from elsewhere and come back up here.” A U-shaped tunnel that functioned as both a way in for Knuckles and Tails as well as creating a drain. “The rescue shuttle's outside. They’ll kinda have to pump the water out of where we came in from, though.”
Silver glints at the back of Knuckles mitts. Sonic just now notices them. “You brought out the Shovel Claws. Haven’t seen those in a while,” Sonic acknowledges.
Knuckles glances at the silver claws, then at Amy, before looking away. “Situation called for it.”
Sonic's thumb rubs under one of Amy's eyes. “Thanks, guys,” he breathes. “I mean it.”
“Save it for when we're out of here.” Knuckles pats the beam, hears the echo, feels the vibration. Being an echidna, and an expert digger, he knows a thing or two about digging and not burying himself alive. “Move it and it all comes down. Tails, should I pull her out?”
Tails hurriedly shines the light at where the beam is pressing down on Amy’s side. His breath shakes. The light from the Miles Electric is stronger than that of Sonic’s communicator. It highlights the red smear on the beam, just around where it's embedded a few inches into Amy. It had definitely damaged some ribs. The red in her vomit can't be a good sign, either. “...I don't know how we can pull her out without doing more damage.” Tails’ eyes linger on Amy, his ears drooping.
There's an image that flashes in Sonic's head. Tails under a plush blanket, battling a fever, Amy stirring soup in a bowl on her lap, scooping a spoonful to feed him. Tails seeing the once vibrant girl this way, not able to do much for her, must be devastating.
A stranger's voice comes out of the Miles Electric. Mature and feminine. “Hey, did you guys make it in alright?”
“Yes!” Tails says.
“Excellent. We're pumping the entryway dry right now. Medics and rescue crew are on standby. How's Miss Rose's situation at the moment?”
Sonic's attention veers away from Tails coordination with the rescuers. Amy's looking paler by the second. There's a worrying whistle at the end of her exhales. Her eyes close, exhausted.
“Hey, stay awake.” He sounds apologetic. It feels cruel to ask more of her. He taps her cheek until her eyes crack open. She opens her mouth, looks ready to say something, then gives up, opting to just whine in response. The noise is devoid of any energy. It’s a noise. That’s all he needs to hear.
Tails shines the light at where the beam meets Amy. His calculating eyes glint. “Knuckles, can you dig her more space?”
“What?” Knuckles looks to where Tails’ light is shining. Understanding downs on him. His eyes sharpen. With a mitt on the beam, Knuckles crouches behind Amy and tilts his head to get a better look at the packed, uneven rubble that forms the ground. With a fist, he tests out the vibration by lightly knocking on the spot of concrete just behind Amy’s back. They’re weak hits, meant to examine rather than demolish, but Sonic feels the impacts underneath him too. Knuckles’ eyes are shut, letting the sound and echo help him envision a visual map. Eyes sharply snapping open, he clamps the beam for perches with one paw, and strikes down with his other. Again, he restrains himself, only applying a fraction of his strength. He firmly plants the spikes into the concrete, spreading out spiderweb cracks. With a twist of his fist, the top layer of the ground crumbles further.
Sonic and Tails hold perfectly still. Throwing off Knuckles’ concentration could very well cause a crack in a vulnerable spot underneath them and have them plummet further down. He’s not hitting with much power, but Sonic can make out Knuckles’ clenching muscles underneath his red pelt, keeping his whole body zeroed in on this one task. Knuckles jerks his steel claw out with a crunch. He steps right over Amy and takes the same position there, briefly glancing at the hazy look in Amy’s. Worry flashes in his expression. He shakes his head, refocusing with a snarl on his muzzle. He performs another sound test, followed by an actual hit and twist that cracks the stony ground. The cracks on either side of Amy reach each other, intertwining, creating a top layer of gravel.
The tension in Sonic’s body goes lax. Next to him, Tails sighs shakily. As Knuckles starts scraping away the gravel, making sure to carefully dig sideways when getting right under Amy, Sonic gathers her exhausted body by the shoulders. Amy’s bloodstained chest sags away from the beam, her body sinking a fraction thanks to the added space underneath her, and Sonic tries to pull her out, and he blinks in confusion when all he could manage was weakly tug her out by a few inches.
Right. His leg. And he might’ve hit his head. He forgot about that.
Catching onto Sonic's struggle, Tails hurriedly wraps his arms around Sonic's midsection and he successfully drags Sonic back, extracting Amy out from underneath the beam. There’s no celebration. Nobody says anything. It’s hard to see how much her side is bleeding when her dress is rose red. Her eyes are glossy. With quivering breaths, Tails presses down on her wound; the palms of his gloves turn pink, then red.
Voices echo out of the hole in the ground. A clamor of footsteps and clunking and shouted commands. A blinding light bursts out of the ground, silhouettes of mobians emerge from it like stage performers. The rescue crew swarms the tight space. Grime smears their reflective yellow boots, work gloves, and helmets. Many have their helmet lights turned on, swinging their spotlights all around as they move.
The ground had been drained, so when Sonic decides to lay down on his side, he’s only bothered by little shallow puddles. He keeps an arm tucked under Amy’s head while he touches foreheads with her. Neither of them flinch from the wet boots stomping around them. Her lashes feel like feathers tracing his face. Someone crouches behind Amy. They run their paws all over her, and pull one of her eyelids down to shine a smaller flashlight into it. The process is repeated for the other eye. She doesn’t react to any of this, simply blinking like she hasn’t slept in a month.
Plastic crinkles. The smell of medical disinfectant assaults his nostrils, startling him into partial alertness. For a brief moment Sonic forgets what’s going on. Someone sticks an IV line into Amy’s inner elbow before they start wrapping it in multiple layers, finishing off with a layer of blue tape for waterproofing. He jerks on reflex when they tear her away from him. Scissors glint. They cut Amy’s dress around the wound. Her matted pink fur’s painted red. Someone stuffs gauze into her wound before wrapping her chest in bandages and tape. With a coordinated three-two-one countdown, multiple mobians hoist her onto a vacmat.
Someone touches Sonic’s shoulder. He flinches when somebody’s light shines over his eyes by accident.
“How’s the leg? Can you move it?” asks a peccary.
Right. Sonic’s still on the floor. His leg’s fucked. “It’s not too bad.” He eyes the bright red vacmat where Amy’s getting strapped into like a cocoon. They’ve tucked what might be a neck brace around her neck.
“Come again? I didn’t hear that.” The peccary squats in front of him.
Sonic blinks. Did he not just answer? “Hurts, but I’ve had worse.” He ignores the peccary, watching the rescue team lift the vacmat cocoon upright and start tying it to Knuckles’ back like a backpack. Oh. They’d have to get her out through the tunnel they came in from. It’d be a steadier evacuation with Knuckles’ expertise and strength rather than relying on multiple people trying to maneuver through a dark, slippery tunnel with delicate cargo
Sonic heard the peccary ask, “How long’s he been slurring for?”
Tails’ weary voice says, “Since I sent out the distress call… It wasn’t this bad.”
Knuckles backs into the tunnel, taking Amy with him. The second she’s out of view, Sonic’s world tilts. Tails’ and the peccary catch him before his head could hit the ground. He’s now very aware of a churning in his gut. He doesn’t mean to vomit. Didn’t even feel it coming. His “Sorry” sounds too loose on his tongue. Someone tries to lay him on his side. He’s stubbornly uncooperative, sloppily yanking his paw out of whoever’s trying to grab him. He’s not even sure why he’s fighting them.
Fuck. He doesn’t feel great.
Oh, yeah, he drowned for a bit, didn’t he? Or is this from hitting his head?
He might’ve blacked out for a few minutes. By the time he wakes up, a purple sky greets him. He has no memory of being dragged out from under the rubble. He’s on his back, strapped into his own vacmat, its walls contour his body. He doesn’t bother trying to wriggle out of it. He wants a break. There’s an unusual coldness running through his bones. Drugs, maybe. Yeah, they must’ve given him something. His leg doesn’t hurt as badly, although he doesn’t feel like he wants to move in general for another century.
He’s somehow upright and moving. Strapped to somebody’s back. It can’t be Knuckles; the height’s not right. When the person unstrap him off of their back, and other mobians lower him to the ground, he makes out it's a muscular bison mobian. Figures they’d get one of their big power type volunteers for this. In his drug-induced state and with limited mobility, Sonic struggles to make out most of what's going on. The Restoration’s rescue shuttle is at least big enough to spot easily. It’s perched over the grass with its drop-door down, acting as a ramp. Not far from it, he catches a flash of pink from the corner of his eye, and refuses to blink, paranoia telling him he’ll never see it again if he does.
Amy’s vacmat is on the ground. It’s hard to see her; the volunteers crowd her as they secure her onto a stretcher. An oxygen mask cups her muzzle, held in place by a green elastic cord hugging her head. The reservoir bag rests over her chest. She gets wheeled up the shuttle’s ramp and out of sight. Exhaustion pulls his eyelids down. He can only resist it for so long. It feels like a daydream as he’s being transported onto a stretcher. The mask they put on him smells like plastic. He tries thrashing. He can't. It's a perthitic attempt. He vaguely makes out somebody telling him to calm down.
“Amy…” he slurs. Don’t let her die, he wants to beg. I’m sorry, he wants to tell her. He shouldn’t have let this happen. Let me stay awake, he wants to shout, because there’s a possibility she won’t wake up and he wouldn’t be there to coax her back.
This is the longest he’s gone without hearing her voice when she’s been right there with him for the past few hours.
TBC