Chapter Text
THE SEVEN: HERE WE ARE NOW
Act I: REUNION
Track 1: Here We Are Now
LOS ANGELES, 1997
“If anything, I know those two still owe me a song.”
-Sally Acorn, 1996
Certainly, at first, she’s astounded at the very sight of him. It is not an everyday occurrence that the man who used to mean so much to her, who brought her into his orbit, who threw her through the wringer and set her free from it in the same breath, is standing on her doorstep.
“Tell your dad to reach out to Amy Rose.”
“And you tell Amy Rose that she better answer.”
That’s all well and good, she thinks, but surely, she didn’t think he’d actually do it … right?
Part of her now regrets saying yes to the documentary – if only she could see that it would lead to a future quite like this.
And yet here he is, despite her mind’s schism – right here, at her doorstep.
Two. Fucking. Decades.
She managed to keep close enough with everyone else in The Seven, but this?
This was an apocalyptic event if she ever thought of one.
He asked how he looked, she said he looked like shit.
And he smiled. Good God, he sure smiled.
It wasn’t her first heartbreak, no, but it was surely her worst.
And she hadn’t ever said goodbye to him, but it would’ve hurt the most.
She isn’t sure how to quench the war between her mind and her mouth, the war between her lips and her rationality. It’s a Cold War if she ever knew it. A lot had happened since that fateful October night in ’78. A decade swam by with multitudes of changes. She wasn’t certain if she would ever be ready to face him down again, and she had even skipped out on Blaze and Silver’s wedding. She wasn’t ready for the show trial – this was no Iran Contra, this was no Watergate – this was if the Soviets decided to stop fucking around and smash the red button and doom everyone here to a fiery inferno and a lifetime of hellish, poisonous winter.
“How do I look, Amy Rose?”
“Like shit, Sonic the Hedgehog.”
Those were the first words they spoke to each other at the doorstep. That felt like the nuclear bomb was making impact and incinerating everything in the path of its shockwave.
Or maybe it was completely fine. Maybe. It still wasn’t any easier to stop herself from smiling. 17 years ago, this man would cause her stomach to flip, her mind to implode, and her legs to wiggle out from under her. Now? It just causes her dread.
But she could handle dread – she had to be able to handle something.
Because right now, she was all out of options.
“I have knocked on the right door, yeah?” Sonic whispers, grinning, which only penetrates Amy’s guard even more.
“Huh?”
“Well, the Amy Rose I knew would not hesitate to let me know exactly how she feels about whatever might be going on in that very moment. Especially when she probably shouldn’t.”
Got her good, she thinks.
“I’m – I’m definitely surprised to see you.”
“That’s certainly one way to put it,” Sonic replies.
Amy sighs, finally allowing the smile to fall for a moment, looking back over her shoulder into an empty foyer, a spiraling staircase catching her eyes for a moment, as if she’s surprised her own house has a spiraling staircase.
“Do you – do you wanna come in?” Amy asks in a hushed whisper.
Sonic looks behind his own shoulder, biting his lip, before turning back to her.
“Well, I came all this way.”
Amy moves, pushing the door open with her back, her long, light-pink dress dragging behind her, allowing her former bandmate, and the former fire of her loins, into her home. She watches him take in the vast ceilings, the spiraling staircase, and the flowers that adorn every inch of the house.
“It’s good to see you, Amy,” Sonic says, shoving his hands in his pockets. The distance between them feels like an ocean’s length, neither certainly comfortable enough just yet to take a hammer to the walls they have kept up between one another. Amy couldn’t escape her own mind – those walls are just going to have to stay, she thought. At this point, she’s basically begging to be put out of her own misery, for any sign of mercy to sweep her away.
“I was gonna call, but…” Sonic says, rejecting to finish his own sentence. Whatever sentence he tries to muster gets lodged in his throat.
He stares at her intensely, probably more intensely than he should, but how couldn’t he? The woman who so passionately and destructively changed the very foundation of his world all those years ago, at the height of his planet – who then vanished from his life for two decades – is right there.
He sees things differently with her here – he’s not sure he recognizes the perfume. He doesn’t ever recall her wearing a shade of lipstick like that before. He wonders if her eyes were always that green. Her hair is much less shaggy and wild than it once was, now straighter, pinker, and perhaps even longer than it was then?
He doesn’t know, but he also knows it doesn’t matter. This is now. Here he is, now. The fucking irony of it all. The song he hated all those years ago is now the only song that runs around the tempest that is his brain.
He recalls how he used to think pink was such a dumb color – so girly, so feminine, and he was a man, after all. About how he hated his own green eyes, wishing he could’ve gotten the amber eyes like his brother, and how he didn’t believe in God until he met Amy Rose.
All those things seemed to change once he met Amy Rose.
And yet here he is, standing in the entryway of her powerful home, and opts not to move since, well, she isn’t moving herself. He knows if he asked to come in he should probably move, but she’s not, and it is her house so, her rules, right?
That’s what he tells himself, at least.
“I’ve been waiting,” Amy finally speaks, “for a call.”
“Right.”
“I was specifically instructed to wait for a call.”
“You were,” Sonic laughs.
“And furthermore, I was given very potent instructions to answer that call should it arrive.”
“I know,” Sonic adds, “I think I just needed some…”
“Time?”
Sonic sighs, yet the smile remains as ever strong and bright.
“Time, yeah.”
They say nothing. It hangs between them. A silence so deafening that quickly, Sonic can’t really take it anymore.
“You have a lovely house.”
Amy tilts her head, squinting at the hedgehog.
“Well, how could you possibly know that, considering we haven’t even left the entryway?”
He smiles.
There it is. That’s the Amy Rose he remembers.
⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎
“I meant it, you know.”
Amy turns around, the pair finally making it to her grand Mediterranean style kitchen, her desire to revolt against the prevailing interior decorating of the ‘90s taking full hold of her.
Always one to revolt, she was.
“What I said earlier, I mean,” Sonic continues, which only makes his heart crack just a bit further. He’s not sure he understands what this is.
The drive to her house was agonizing enough – finding himself replaying the few years they spent in each other’s orbit in his head, wondering if it ended for a reason, and if opening that up was really the wise thing to do.
Amy marvels at just how … different he seems. He’s much less brash, abrasive, and hot-headed. He seems calmer, more zen – the word Amy finds is maturity.
Surely, she reached a certain maturity too, no?
He had stayed fiercely loyal to Sally, and to his daughter, in those twenty years that passed. He had not strayed from his life, his air, and his water, once in those years. He made up for lost time, he paid his dues back, and he rebuilt what he once wrecked.
What he and her had both wrecked a bit, he thinks. Inevitably, he decided to act on Sally’s wish.
Even if it didn’t lead to what he believed Sally was clearly implying, this couldn’t hurt, right?
Or could it?
Is this gonna hurt? – Amy thinks. Is this gonna hurt like it did? Is she being cold? - she thinks.
Why is she … so cold? - he thinks. He knew they probably had changed. It had been twenty years anyways. He wasn’t sure if it would be a reunion like the movies – where the stars in their eyes light up again like they did those years ago. He wasn’t sure if it would just be a meeting at a coffee shop, had he called.
But what he did not expect was for it to be so … unfeeling.
Whatever was happening here hurt. Now, he stands in the kitchen, wondering if he’s ready to regret coming here in the first place. Sure, twenty years, but sometimes you can pick up where you left off, right? In this instance, he felt miles and miles apart – and he didn’t love it.
Should he have just stuck to the call?
Funny, he did not expect this many questions to swarm his head. He did expect, at least somewhat, for his mind to rewind every mistake he ever made on the sight of her, but he did not expect it to slam him quite this hard.
“It really is good to see you, Amy.”
Does he expect her to say it back? He knows she may have been expecting this, but that doesn’t mean she wants this.
At the slightest indication that she doesn’t want it, he’s out the door. He keeps his peripheral locked on it in that very case.
“It’s good to see you too, Sonic,” she finally replies, willing her voice to be just a louder than it desires to be. “But I’m…”
Here it comes.
Why does she feel this desperate need to get rid of him? Has she not come to her own terms with how it all went down? She’s had a great career and life since then – surely, she still can’t be wishing him away this intensely, right?
In his mind, he’s almost wishing Sonia just hadn’t shown him the message in the first place.
“I’m gonna … have to cut this very short.”
“Right, right,” Sonic replies. There it is. What he knew was coming and now his foot was already inching towards the door whence he came. Uncertainty is one thing, but rejection is an entire other war to fight. Not that he needed her to reject some sort of romantic proposal – but the rejection of even seeing him again, that’s what struck the match the hottest.
“What was I thinkin’ showing up here, right?” Sonic says with a guilty laugh, “I mean – look at this place. You’ve built an amazing life for yourself, by yourself – and I mean, you deserve it. You do. It’s just been too many years, right? You don’t need it all being – well, drudged up again. Especially after all the healing and rebuilding we’ve had to do, I – I’m sure this just puts a nail to all of that…”
He's rambling. He remembers the smile. She seemed happy to see him, but Sonic learned the hard lesson long ago: nothing can always be exactly what it seems. Perhaps it was a shock reaction? Now that he’s standing inside her house all this time later, he supposes the shock is wearing off, and now she’s seeing the sky clear as day now.
“No!” Amy gasps, shaking her head forcefully. “It’s – it’s not that. Not at all. I – “
Amy stops, placing her bare hands against the cold countertop of the island. She sighs, biting her lip, her top teeth now stained red just on the edge.
“I was on my way out to – to pick up my daughter,” Amy finished, sighing. “And then you walked in, and I got surprised, and then you came inside my house and this whole time I’m supposed to be picking up my daughter…”
Now she’s rambling. It’s like she said to Sonia in the interview process – the very sight of him could reduce her to a pathetic little worm.
Apparently, and not-so-fucking-shockingly, it was still true.
For him, too.
“Please don’t tell me you forgot about picking her up,” Sonic laughs, rubbing an awkward hand through the back of his hair.
“I did not!” Amy replies, yet the shame runs to her face. Truth be told, she did, and she didn’t. She was getting ready to leave, and then suddenly, a ghost showed up on her doorstep and threw her for a full loop! Can anyone really blame her?
She knows she has to leave, but she can’t quite allow herself to do it. If she sends him off now, will he come back? Will this just be one giant “whoops”?
“I got caught off guard, so maybe it slipped my mind for a second, but can you blame me? It’s not every day a ghost shows up on my doorstep!”
“You’re late, aren’t you?” Sonic asks with a smarmy smirk, showing Amy that no matter how much he might have returned, that fiery banter was still well alive within him, and by extension, probably her as well.
“Well, excuse me if I needed a moment to gather my thoughts!”
“So, you weren’t already late when I showed up?”
“That’s – not relevant…”
“Uh-huh,” Sonic replied with a small chuckle.
“I will have you know I am always on time now,” Amy shot back, and Sonic put his hands up.
“Go get your daughter, Ames.”
Ames. For fucks sake, she thinks. The way it just rolls off his tongue is like smashing a plate over her head from behind. It comes out of nowhere and hits her like a semitruck, but clearly for Sonic, it’s like he never stopped calling her Ames in his head.
She swears she sees his eyes widen ever-so-slightly for a moment – clearly, it must be shocking him somewhat also.
Sonic took the initiative to the door, allowing Amy to grab her keys and follow, before Sonic turns.
“Will I get a chance to do this the right way sometime?”
“Like…”
“I don’t know – burgers and fries like old times?”
Her mind immediately goes back to the first time they went out of the studio, to a burger joint, trying to figure out how to get their minds to link together to write something – anything.
“How about I call?” Amy asked, earning a pursed lip from Sonic.
She’s not a lost soul wandering anymore. She has more at stake now. She has a daughter, a career, a life – something that is hers.
Those words Sally Acorn once said to her in a ballroom – needing something that was hers. Those words continued to linger with Amy years after.
She was quick to grab a lingering notepad and a pen, tearing a paper out and handing it to him. “Write your number down, and I will call.”
“Will you?” He asks, as he writes his number down, leaving it on the side table by the front door.
“You don’t trust me?”
Sonic pauses, smirking, the tug of his lip inching at the corner of his muzzle. “I do.”
“Then I will call.”
“And I will wait for that call.”
So be it, Amy thinks.
May not have been Sally’s entire command for the pair, but it’s the way it’s going to be.
This time, it might just be different.
Who the hell really knows, huh?
“Bye, Amy.”
“Bye, Sonic.”
He walks out, she closes the door, puts her back against it, and lets out a breath that she had been holding for twenty years.