-= The Scars I Carry =-

"So... this is the place, huh?"

Nicole nodded, stepping out of the lift and in front of Sonic. "This is it... Repose."

Repose was the name of the panic bunker located on the outskirts of Mobotropolis, built in secret for King Maximilian's great grandfather nearly two hundred years prior. It was deep underground, reinforced and all but impenetrable; this was where the new-found 'defectors' of Sonic, Nicole and the other Freedom Fighters would be calling their home, at least for the moment.

"Man..." Sonic marvelled at the place as he followed on behind Nicole. A 'panic bunker' was a term that crudely belied the aesthetic of the place. It was not sparsely decorated, nor was it cramped. It was an exquisite suite of facilities fit for a king like those of the old Acorn Empire. Every furnishing was lined with trimmings of pure gold, the carpet a royal crimson red, the smooth stone walls lined with paintings of historical Mobius South figures.

"Quickly," Nicole said to him. "Press that lever behind you to re-seal the entrance."

Sonic turned around and heaved with both hands to pull the heavy lever down. Coming from up the lift shaft, he could hear the sounds of old gears grinding away, the immense stone blocks on the surface sliding back into place, becoming one with the environment once again.

"I had no idea this place even existed," he mused as he followed her through the lobby, walking across the carpet in the centre. It was a massive mural, depicting the Acorn Empire's coat of arms, with its secret family credo written above: To Rule with Honour.

"Nobody was ever allowed to know, except for the King of each generation and his spouse," Nicole explained. "Even the king's closest advisers were not to be told. In the event of an emergency, or a usurping, this would be the place to which the ruler would retreat. When Robotnik launched the coup almost twenty years ago, King Maximilian entrusted me with all of the confidential knowledge he possessed in the hope that if he didn't survive, I'd be able to pass it on for Sally to make use of."

"Why didn't you tell us when the coup happened?" Sonic asked. "It could've come in real handy sometimes."

"I considered it. But this place was never in a position where it would make for an effective home base. It's far more isolated than Knothole ever was, and it's dug in too deep to have any escape if it were ever compromised. It was built as an absolute last resort."

Sonic smirked. "Would you call us being here a 'last resort', then?"

Nicole turned to look at him over her shoulder. "Absolutely."

They moved beyond the foyer and into an elaborate and well-stocked kitchen, overlooking a lounge room. There were no hologram projectors like he'd seen around the Castle Acorn, or even any of the old-styled bulbous computer screens of Robotropolis; merely a series of bookshelves and a large fireplace. A small coffee table sat in front of a leather couch, with a piece of paper and an inkwell sitting atop it. Everything looked at once brand-new, untouched by the usual rigours of time, and yet was also a throwback to a time long before even the oldest residents of Mobius today had been alive.

He moved to the lounge, picking up the note on the table.

Your Majesty,

It is hoped that you do not find this place out of desperation. May it serve you well in the coming days, months or years as it may be; and the majesty of the Acorn name will live on strong, respected and celebrated for all generations past, present and future.

"Pretty nice digs," he commented, looking up to Nicole in the kitchen. "You think the others are gonna be long?"

The decision had been made fairly early into their trek that Sonic should get Nicole to Repose as quickly as possible, despite doing so meant leaving the others behind.

"Maybe early in the morning," Nicole said. "I forgot how fast you were." She walked to the refrigerator, opened it up and peered inside. Turning back, she asked, "Are you hungry?"

Sonic thought for a moment - there had to be some way he could make himself useful until the others arrived! But there wasn't. He'd need something else to occupy his time until then. "Heck yeah," he finally said.

Unfortunately, previous laws in the Acorn kingdom at the time of this place's construction had disallowed the preserving of meat, so chili-dogs were off the menu; but what the place did stock was plenty of long-life canned vegetable provisions, that were mercifully well-preserved and presentable when prepared correctly. As it turned out, Nicole was a talented cook; the more Sonic thought about that, the more it made sense.

Sonic watched her working idly from one of the kitchen stools. She was preparing a quiche, with a side-serving of pasta and chopped vegetables. As she cut them on the chopping board with precision, Sonic spoke. "So they taught you how to cook and everything, huh?"

Nicole stopped for a moment, and looked up at him. "They gave me the recipes along with all the other documentation they had available. I wasn't too much of a cook though, until a few years ago. The recipes were there but their quality was questionable. And I needed practice to coordinate all of these synthetic muscles of mine..." She held a hand up to her own face, studying it idly. "Hopefully I've got it sorted enough to do a good meal for you tonight." She smiled at him.

He noted, not for the first time, what a strange thing it was to see the cat smiling. She smiled with her eyes too - big, green and exotic. He'd wondered more than once before if there could've been more to Nicole the handheld computer, than she'd ever displayed before being transferred into her android Mobian body. These days, there was no doubt about it that there was now. Maybe there always had been.

Once the meal was prepared, they ate in near-silence. Nicole seemed suitably pleased with the results - Sonic had eaten vegetables without complaint. Surely, from what she had gathered over the years, this was something worth calling an achievement.

Now, they were left sitting in the lounge. It was barely seven in the evening, and there was still plenty of time to kill. There was no radios, computers or holo-projectors for entertainment - there were only books, which Sonic wasn't all that interested in reading, and which Nicole, unsurprisingly, was already intimately familiar with.

So they sat for a while, in the large leather chairs, doing nothing. There was no noise aside from a quietly ticking grandfather clock in one of the other rooms and the constant low whoosh of the climate control system.

"So..." Sonic murmured, staring up at the ceiling, arms behind his head.

Tick, tock.

Nicole sat quietly with her eyes closed. "So..."

"What do we do now?"

The android feline was silent for a moment before she responded. "There's very little to do until the others get here. Perhaps we should get some sleep."

"Sleep?" Sonic chuckled. "It's barely seven! Seven's juice-o'clock! What say we head back up, scout the area, maybe bust some heads?"

Nicole shook her head. "Bust whose heads? Besides, what's the use of risking our position that we've already worked so hard to keep hidden? Not a good idea, Sonic."

"Pfft... killjoy," Sonic moaned. "If it bothers you that much, I'll head out by myself. Who's gonna know? I'm totally the model of caution."

"Sonic," Nicole rolled her eyes. "I don't mean to offend, but I don't think 'the model of caution' is exactly a term befitting of you."

"Oh yeah?" the hedgehog said, folding his arms and leaning over with a smirk. "Then what is?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said back to him, now with a smirk of her own: "How about, 'impulsive and reckless'?"

Sonic's face went blank.

Nicole returned his expression. "I..." She looked at him for a moment, puzzled. "Did I offend you?"

"Nah," he responded. "It's just the whole 'reckless' thing. It's something Sally always used to give me all these lectures about. She was right about it too, y'know. She was right about me on a lot of things."

The cat returned her gaze to nothingness again, pulling her arms close to herself. "I didn't mean to remind you of her. I suppose it still stings, with her being gone."

"Not so much these days," he said honestly. "It happened a long time ago. But... you remind me of her in a lot of ways. Like she rubbed off on you or something. You even sound like her. I mean, like, exactly the same."

Nicole suddenly felt an inexplicable craving for hot chocolate, and immediately stood up to move to the kitchen.

"She did, I suppose," she said as she walked. "Since she used me for recording her diary entries, I guess you could say she confided in me a great deal. Even when I hadn't taken my current form, when I was still purely an AI in that computer of hers, I found myself empathising with a lot of the things she felt." She bent over to one of the cupboards and produced two empty mugs. "She cared about you very much, Sonic. She always did."

Sonic watched her working, watched the thoughts and memories as they played across her face. "I never told her..."

"Told her what?"

"Uh..." He stared at his feet. "Well, how I felt about her, I guess."

"You loved her."

"Love's a strong word."

She looked at him again. He'd stood up also, and walked up to sit at the bench across from her. "But you did," she said. "Loving someone is something you do. You don't need to say it."

"Mm." He rubbed the fabric of the bandages that Rosie had wrapped around his hands, flexing his fingers. He wished he could've found a new set of gloves before they'd left Knothole. The way he'd figured it, gloved hands were for getting stuff done. Soft, bare hands were for... not much.

"I wish I had been able to do and say the things she'd done in her lifetime before I became Nicole," the cat murmured.

As soon as the words left her lips, she froze, eyes wide. She hadn't meant to let that slip. Her old confidentiality protocols were being overridden with something. By the gods, what was it?

Sonic's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'before you became Nicole'?"

"I think you misheard me..." Nicole said defensively.

"I know what I heard."

Nicole stared at the two mugs and the assorted ingredients she'd placed on the table in front of her. "It was all a long time ago. A... very long time ago. It's a very personal thing to me."

"It's funny..." Sonic said, still staring at his hand. "No one ever told us who made you, or anything like that."

Nicole watched him pensively, thinking carefully about what to say next.

"Sonic, I..."

"Hm?"

Nicole looked him in the eyes, as serious as he'd ever seen her. "If I tell you this," she said very slowly, "can I trust you - completely - that you will never, ever repeat it to anyone under any circumstance, without my say-so?"

The hedgehog raised an eyebrow. "I've been called a lot of things, babe..." he said, "but never a snitch."

There was a brief moment of consternation before Nicole began to speak.

"Julian Kintobor made me," she said. "Before I was Nicole, I was human. One of his lab assistants. He'd been experimenting secretly on the idea of giving an AI a personality by retrieving thoughts and memories from someone and transferring them over. Somewhere, back on Earth, there's probably still a Dr. Courtney Russell out there who tells people what happened to her boss and that weedy little nephew of his."

Sonic's heart froze.

That name.

Courtney Russell. Tails had mentioned it back at Gorromandas, the Magdalene, the ship's human captain who'd flown her across dimensions in search of Robotnik and his secrets. Who could say where she'd ended up? Was it worth pursuing in the midst of the chaos around them?

He thought for a moment about mentioning what he knew about her, but she spoke again before he had a chance to decide.

"It wasn't really all that traumatic," she continued. "They put me into a tube, just like they used to do with the roboticiser. A blue ring formed around my head, and I would've woken up again in my bed with not much but a bit of a headache. They'd duplicated the personality of Courtney Russell, of me, and put it into a handheld device they used in the lab for recording test results and observations. And then that handheld device was me. Just to make the separation, they called me Nicole instead. Named me after my cat. Courtney kept working like nothing had happened.

"And it was only after that teleportation experiment had gone wrong and dumped Julian and Snively into this world, along with me, and when your uncle had reprogrammed me for use in the Acorn empire, that I started to learn things about how people should work. I learned things about myself, the lab assistant. Things that I hated."

Sonic raised his other eyebrow. "What've you got to hate yourself over?"

Nicole grimaced, letting her long locks of black hair drift over her face. "I was an awful woman. I'd grown up on Earth as a spoiled little girl, who always got her way and gave nothing in return. I had no respect for anyone or anything. I used my friends, I used my family - hell, the only reason I didn't use Julian was that he never afforded me the opportunity. He was overbearing and intolerable to his colleagues. He'd always used fear and intimidation as his tools to make people do what he wanted. It worked on me, so I tried doing it myself, and found that it worked for me, too. I cheated people. I seduced people. I... killed people... all so that I could get my way.

"And then I was on Mobius. Chuck thought he'd cleared my memory and reset me to a default state, but I'd secretly moved my innermost memories into a partition he couldn't get to. I suppressed all of the memories, and I disabled my empathy routines so I wouldn't feel the torture of being confined to a world of ones and zeroes. I'd think and speak and serve like any reliable robot would. But I never stopped listening. And I never stopped learning.

"Then the coup happened... and I found myself at Sally's side. I saw how she'd treat others, how she'd lead others. With total and utmost respect. There was no ambition to her except to be there for people. I saw how she'd learned to love..." Nicole closed her eyes, speaking very quietly. "And be loved... all those things that in my time I'd failed to learn for myself. All that time I thought I'd never learn either. I would've thought I'd missed my chance, if it weren't for me finding this body that Ariel had planned to use to infiltrate with. And I suppose, if it weren't for you, giving me the opportunity to lead...

"And now all this has happened. The assassination, the invasion coming..." She gritted her teeth for a moment, but took a deep breath, swallowed the tears and forced the stress back to the rear of her mind.

Sonic leaned over and quietly continued what Nicole had started with the hot drinks. He finished them, and after blowing lightly on each, passed one of them over to Nicole.

"Thanks," she said, picking it up and taking a small sip. The drink left a little brown smudge on her cream-coloured lips, and she licked it off absently.

"Hey..." Sonic started. "Don't stress. It's gonna be okay."

"Mm." Nicole nodded. "I've never told any of this to anyone before. I'm sorry to ramble."

"Everyone's gotta have someone to open up to," Sonic shrugged. "And everyone deserves a second chance, if they're willing to change for it. Reckon that's something I learned from Sal, too. The only thing I really regret... is that I learned it too late. Never said the things I should've said..."

"Well..." Nicole smiled wanly. "I think she'd understand. Didn't you just say everyone deserves a second chance?"

Sonic chuckled, blue spines jiggling lightly. "Yep. I did, didn't I?"

"Thank you, Sonic. For listening to me. You're a good guy. No matter how people might paint you now that you've chosen to side with me, you're a good guy. I've seen it day after day, for all those years."

"I really, really hope you're right, Nicole. Lately, I've been starting to wonder."

She took another slow sip of her drink, watching him across the table. Her big eyes shone like emeralds, a layer of wet gloss just barely holding back the feelings within. For a moment, Sonic wondered if they reminded him of Sally's eyes, but they didn't. They were all Nicole. And it hit him, harder than ever, that this was no robot, no AI in an android body or anything of the like.

She was one of them. She was Nicole. Nicole, the queen of Mobius South. Nicole, the Freedom Fighter. Nicole, the serene, humble and beautiful. Nicole, his friend and confidant.

With some surprise, the hedgehog realised that they'd drifted closer during the conversation, and their faces were now an inch apart from each other. Sonic let his head droop just slightly, and they both sat there for a few moments more, across the bench, foreheads propped against each other.

He listened to Nicole take a deep, slow breath. In. Out. Watched a little smile play across her face, then vanish again.

"It's late now," she whispered without moving. "We should get some sleep."

Sonic was quiet, looking down at his gloved hand. Looked at hers, fingers small and snow-white, adorned with a simple royal ring, resting on the table right next to it.

He sighed. "Yeah."

It didn't take long to find the bedrooms. At the end of one hall was the master suite, and at its sides were doors leading off to the no-less-grandiose family and staff quarters.

They stopped at the end of the hall, and looked at each other.

"Uh..." Nicole motioned a hand toward the master bedroom door. "Would you like this one?"

Sonic bowed politely. "Master bedroom's the one for kings and queens," he said, his characteristic hedgehog smirk coming through. "That'd be you, last time I checked."

She closed her eyes. "I'm just another one of the guys now. And that's fine by me."

"Heh, I think you were overdue for a holiday. I ain't fussed about where I crash anyway." He peeked though the door to one of the smaller rooms, at the double bed with the silk sheets, the full-length crystal mirror, the mahogany wood drawers. "And these other rooms aren't exactly modest, either."

Nicole peered in after him and laughed. "No, they're certainly not. Well... I'll see you in the morning, then. We shouldn't have long to wait then until the others arrive. Chuck knows how to get in."

"Okay. Later, Nicole." Sonic turned to enter his room, but stopped to look at Nicole.

"Goodnight, Sonic."

They both stood for a moment, saying nothing. Finally, Sonic went over to Nicole and pulled her into a light squeeze.

"You know everything's gonna be okay." He spit and coughed the words out, suddenly feeling his face flash bright red. He never stuttered... unless it was at exactly the time he didn't want to.

Nicole hugged him back, but her movements were jerky and awkward, sensing Sonic's unease. "You alright?"

He stared into her eyes again for a moment.

"I'm fine," he stammered. "Peachy."

They ducked out of each others' embrace quickly, and retreated to their separate quarters, each closing the door behind them.

Sonic sat down on the massive bed and kicked off his shoes and socks. He reached for the lamp, flicked it off, and then laid down, pulling the covers over him.

Listened to his heart beating like the way it used to when he'd run at full-tilt all the way from Robotropolis back to Knothole.

He turned over and took a deep breath, but he still didn't feel tired. He held a hand out in front of him, but the room was pitch-black. He was stuck a half-mile underground with Nicole in the next room until the sun rose again.

A minute passed as he stared into the darkness with his eyes wide open, thinking about everything. Two minutes. Ten. Thirty. One hour.

No more.

He threw the silky sheets off and reached for the lamp - everything here was unfamiliar. The smell was different, the colours were different, the sound of the flowing air conditioning was so far removed from the gentle breeze he was used to feeling on the surface. As soon as the light flickered on, he breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the walls retreating again, back where they belonged.

I'll just get a drink, he thought. Yeah.

He creaked the heavy oak door open as quietly as he could, and tiptoed barefoot out into the hall. The automatic lighting system had switched everything off except for the dim down lights in the walls of the lounge ahead, and he began tiptoeing his way up the hall. When he got half way, he turned around, noticing a faint glow coming from under the master bedroom door.

Nicole's light was still on.

He became acutely aware that his heart was beating harder than ever, making him giddy.

He crept back to the door, and gave it two very light taps. "Yo," he whispered.

"Yes?" he heard her saying from within. He held his wrist to stop it from shaking, and turned the handle. He slowly pushed the door but found it stuck... then smacked his head mentally as he realised the door opened outwards to him.

Nicole was standing in front of the full-length mirror, her blouse half-open like she'd started to prepare for bed but something had distracted her midway through.

"Whoa," Sonic hummed quietly. "Uh... are you okay, Nicole?"

Nicole looked at Sonic in the mirror, her back still turned to him. "Yes..." she said quietly. "I'm okay."

"I've heard that one before," he quipped, tilting his head. "You don't look okay. Spit it out."

"I can't shut down my empathetic capabilities," she said in monotone. "There's no function for it in this body. I can't stop myself from feeling things..."

"Shutting out your feelings is what makes people like 'Buttnik," Sonic frowned. "I'm glad you can't do that."

"Julian was a man who was defined by his fears, Sonic. Fear makes people like him. You can't feel fear when you feel nothing."

"Well, you don't have that luxury anymore. So tell me how you're feeling."

"I... I..." He saw her chin starting to tremble. "I've been a bad woman... a terrible, terrible woman..."

"What ever are you on about?" Sonic left the safety of the doorway to approach her again. "You've been stellar, Nicole. You haven't had it easy all these years. You're tops!"

"I wasn't good enough!" She belted the words out as loud as she could, making Sonic jump. She turned around, a look of total desperation in her eyes. "The way those Mobians out there have been treating me... it's exactly how I used to treat everyone else! Every gods-damned day!"

Sonic grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her around to face himself. "They aren't bad people, Nicole. You get me?"

"But..."

"They're scared, Nicole. They don't know who to believe or who to turn to. They don't know how to deal with being scared."

She stopped trying to respond, and just stared into his eyes, listening to him.

"Nicole. Your name is Nicole. You're not Courtney Russell anymore. You're Nicole. You're my friend. You know what I learned I need to do when I'm scared?"

"What?"

"Well, it took me forever to actually get the hang of it, but... I tell someone..." He put a hand on each of her shoulders, rubbing gently.

"But..." She bowed her head, staring at his navel, hair obscuring her face again. He brushed it out of the way, and lifted her chin with one finger.

"Say what you feel, Nicole."

"I'm scared, Sonic. I'm so afraid."

Another tear trailed down her cheek. And another still.

She took a deep breath, shutting her eyes tight. "I... Sonic, when I was in that prison cell in the castle, I thought I was going to be executed, and I was okay with it. Maybe I've done better as Nicole than I ever did as Courtney, but I've still got to atone for her sins. But the thing that really terrifies me, is that you've come with me, and that if they find me, they'll kill you too. You're all called traitors because of me... no matter what I do, I just drag down the ones I love the most with me and... and..." She fell silent, unable to think.

"Nobody's following you because we have to. The ones you love," Sonic said aristocratically, "are the ones that hold you up, when you're ready to fall. The gods know I've had my times when I've been ready to throw in the ol' towel and just tell everyone to get bent. But the people I love never let me do that."

"Have I, then?" she half-smirked, trying to put her defences up again.

"Nope. You've changed a lot all these years I've been gone, though."

"Maybe it seems that way," Nicole said sadly. "Personally, I think I'm just a tired old woman these days, who's getting her due."

"Nicole..." Sonic looked down, taking a breath, and faced her. "No matter what you've done, or what you've been, you're a gorgeous, kind, beautiful, amazing woman, right now. Right now, that's what you are. One who's been given a second chance, not only to right the wrongs in your head, but to make the world we live in better again. And I'll be damned if you haven't made some major headway in both of those things. You've been reborn. You're a miracle."

"I..." she trailed off, her face softening. "No one's ever said something like that to me before."

"Never?"

"Never."

Nicole felt something stir inside of her. An old feeling, one that she thought she'd forgotten forever, left in another world, another life, another woman's chest. She rested her cheek gently against Sonic's shoulder, wrapping her arms around his waist. She knew it wasn't blood pumping through her veins, but whatever composed her body, the feeling was powerful, vivid, and most surprising of all, authentic.

"Thanks," she said. "Really."

Sonic found his hands running through the silky black of her hair, wondering if she would be able to hear the pounding of his heart in his chest. "You know I wouldn't just say this stuff."

"I know," she said. "That's why it means so much to hear you say it."

Suddenly, the room felt very quiet, and very small. Nicole leaned back, and took one of Sonic's hands in hers, her delicate fingers seeming frail against his bandaged paw.

She took two fingers and began peeling the ribbons from his hand, layer by layer, revealing pale, mottled skin underneath, covered in old pock marks and scars, chief among them being a gigantic, fresh burn wound, no more than a day old.

Sonic began to reach with his other hand to pull the strips back, but Nicole's hand batted it away gently. "They need changing, Sonic."

He looked at her. Those big green eyes. Glossy again. "Fine..."

He pulled the remaining bandages off and let them drop to the floor, watching her wince when she saw his palms.

"Uhm, my hands don't see a lot of daylight..." he mumbled, "kinda makes 'em a bit pasty."

"How did you get these burns?" Nicole asked him.

"Scala, the sadistic piece of crap," Sonic said. "Decided to take a hot poker and have a little fun with me. I ended up grabbing it from him and using it to burn the ropes off me. That's how I got free. By some miracle, I spied Tails making his own escape on my way out, and ended up dragging him out of sight with me."

"All this pain you've been through..." Nicole said, rubbing a thumb against his naked palm. "Why did you come back?"

"Well, there was this whole thing about an invasion, and-"

"No," Nicole stopped him. "I can tell you would've come back anyway, invasion or no. So why? What's the real reason?"

"Well, Duruga's cool and all, but I figured it'd been a while since ol' Tails and I stopped by for a couple of-"

"You can't bullshit a bullshitter, Sonic." He saw the glassy sheen of her eyes harden for a moment, a smirk crossing her lips. "Tell me."

He stared again, arrested by her gaze. "Because I've had enough," he said.

"Of playing explorer?" Nicole asked.

"Of fighting," Sonic said. "When I left here all those years ago, I told everyone that I was looking for something. Like Tails was. But I wasn't... I was running away," he said, the thoughts only crystallising in his mind as he spoke them. "Man..."

"What did you have to run away from? From us?"

"I... oh, man..." Sonic closed his eyes. "From everything! I mean, how could I not? Not even two years later Antoine and Bunnie were having kids. Kids! You become a queen. Tails is all wrapped up with his woman and his ancestry and his Thamaellic business. Then we don't have bullies to cut down to size. We don't have adventures to go on. We've got houses to build. Crops to harvest. Mouths to feed. Conferences to attend. I wanted to keep living the dream. I wanted to keep fighting the good fight. But somewhere the good fights got lost. And then there was just... fighting for its own sake."

She twirled her fingers among his. "Sick of getting these scars?"

Sonic chuckled sadly. "Well, just look at 'em. Gross." He took her wrist, guiding her fingers to his waist, digging in under the fur. "And they're all over me."

He was right. Nicole could feel as she pressed, the places where skin had been ripped open and sealed shut again, hardened callouses, soft bruises. "You know they'll heal, if you'll give them some time."

Sonic nodded. "Yeah... and then there's something else. I wanted to run from you too, Nicole."

"Me?"

"You remember when you first took that throne back in Castle Acorn?" Sonic started, quietly now. "I remember dropping in every day to see you working. I saw you had all those regal political bozos to appease in the courts. You had all those bills to sign, all those speeches to write. Yet you still took hours out of your day whenever I swung past. Just for me."

The cat giggled at the memory. "I remember we were walking through the courtyard one night, just after it'd been raining. The grass still hadn't grown back yet because of all the pollutants Robotnik had left in the soil. I tried to trip you up, but I missed and ended up pulling a full-on face plant in the mud myself!"

Sonic's frown began to turn. "Yeah, then I threw you in the fountain to wash you off."

"And then I dragged you in with me."

The hedgehog allowed himself to laugh at the memory, then a thought hit him. "Did you know you were the only one I could talk to? The busiest woman on Mobius, and still the only one who'd give me the time of day?"

Nicole gave a weak smile. "I didn't know that." But she understood. "The times weren't any easier then, you know. It was hard. Robotnik and Naugus had just fallen. People were still healing. Still grieving."

"Yeah. I understand it now," Sonic said. "I guess goofing off overseas was just kind of my way of... running away from that, too. And since you were the only one to take a good amount of time to hang, I guess I started feeling like I... needed you around..." He stared at his feet. "And I felt like I shouldn't have that feeling. Needing someone."

Nicole took her turn to lift up Sonic's chin with her finger. "I needed you too. That's why I saw you. You helped me to forget. I'd never have made it through those years without you by my side."

Sonic felt his ears getting hot. "And what about now?" He added, grimacing, "Now that I've brought a full-on invasion with me to pay you a visit?"

She put a hand on his shoulder. "That was going to happen one way or another. Don't you dare feel guilty about it. And..." she stopped short, thinking.

"Nicole-"

"Sonic-"

They looked at each other for a moment.

"I'm sorry-"

"I just-"

Nicole took a hold of Sonic's naked hand and pressed it to her bared chest.

Sonic's eyes went wide.

Within that synthetic body, was a heart beating.

Nicole reached out to touch his cheek. "I've missed you a lot, Sonic."

"I've missed you too," Sonic said softly. "There's something I've been meaning to tell you, Nicole. For a long time, from before I even left. But..." He paused.

She looked at him disarmingly. "You can tell me. Don't be afraid."

Sonic froze, his heart pounding harder and harder, as he tried to muster the courage, and the realisation hit him that this woman, Nicole, was the real reason he'd left all those years ago. He'd chosen to run, instead of staying to confront what'd grown in him over the years of knowing and being near her. Maybe it was the fear that he'd let someone in too much. Maybe it was his silent vigil over Sally's memory that he'd wanted to hide behind.

Either way, he'd run long enough. And he knew that Sally would've said the same thing.