Lightning-Dono: Next chapter! Sorry, but I need to switch between chapters from Rouge and Sonic to Amy, Tails, and Eggman. This one is a Rouge and Sonic chapter. Even though this seems like a mere side story, the Rouge and Sonic part of the story is a turning point. Sonic is so...romantic in this thing. And so...dull. I apologize...

Oh, and what Knuckles says about women...I'm a girl, so...I'm not trying to be offensive.

--

Walking away a thousand steps

Taking a step back

To look at what

I had left behind

--

Rouge's life was falling apart, more or less. She had gone through what she had with struggling to meet up with Knuckles for a while...except after their break up, he had seemingly refused to ever lay eyes on her face again. Even now, every night when she buried her face into a pillow that steadily gained a pungent smell from its intake of tears, images from that day still flashed vividly in her mind. There were the images she woke up to as she shot up from her bed in the cramped apartment room, and these were the visions that she fell asleep to as she collided with her bed.

-

Flashback

-

"You don't understand anything, do you?" Came the shrieking of a moderately low female voice.

Rouge and Knuckles had just paid their bill after eating heartily at a restaurant. The hearty part was more in the eating, however, as conversation has failed when Knuckles had been presented with a slab of meat that was bigger than what he had pictured as he had stared at the menu prior to ordering. As much as the stunned bat tried to divert his attention from a lifeless piece of cow, he continued to chop it into uneven pieces and proceeded to ignore her. Perhaps it had been the fact that she had been starving and horrified that the chefs were taking so long with her order, but even so, she was beyond irritated. Just watching him pay more attention to something that couldn't have been less attractive made Rouge find his very image repulsive.

And what was more, Knuckles hadn't tipped the incredibly sympathetic waiter that him a smile that could've literally melted hearts as he spouted the fact that the kitchen had run out of chicken. All her life, Rouge believed in practicing proper etiquette, and that meant tipping the waiters and waitresses at restaurants that toiled away in steaming restaurants at the whim of restless consumers and merciless bosses. By the time Knuckles had gotten up to the front desk to pay the bill, graciously treating her and using his own money to do so, Rouge had resolved to scream until what was visible of his ears fell off...once they exited the restaurant.

"What do you mean? I just treated you to dinner and now you're going to stand here and yell at me?" Shouted a disbelieving Knuckles, who hadn't bothered to even question Rouge on what was irking her. "God, woman, you're even more frustrating than Eggman!"

Rouge's temperature reached boiling point, as did her blood.

"You didn't even pay attention to me during the span of time we were in that place! And what's more, I didn't even want to go there! You just dragged me there under the pretense that it had 'good food'! You know that ravioli I had? It tasted like something any hobo could dig out of a trash can!" Tears provided a misty cover for her eyes, but she fought them back. Rouge wasn't going to let Knuckles gawk at her tears in the middle of a street crowded with interested civilians. It was a bustling city, but a scene bearing the severity of this was uncommon.

The feisty red echidna growled in the most monstrous tone he could utter from his throat. "You're just saying that, you greedy hag. I buy you dinner and then you start to question my taste in food and whom I should be paying attention to?"

"You couldn't even spare a few dollars as tip for the waiter!"

Those words that had just slipped off her tongue proved to be a mistake. Knuckles had caught on. His eyes narrowed to the point that they were mere slits on his face, eyeing her malevolently. The words he then said stung like flames from hell and scorched Rouge's heart.

"You're just like all of those other girls, you know that? Everything to you is just a game. You're with me, but all you can think about is that 'awesomely handsome' waiter back there, right? Well, I'll tell you what. I'm not like all of those other clueless guys out there that fall and crumble in the face of all the crap women like you have to give. If you want a weakling like that who'll just stand by and watch you destroy their lives and turn them inside out, you can look for someone else." Knuckles' eyes flared open. "And if you wanted to give him tip so badly, you would've spared some of that money from that wallet of yours! I'm sure you have plenty of money...you're just using me."

There was an intense silence in which Rouge was groping around for words mentally, feeling completely out of place. All of her confidence had fluttered away and she couldn't grasp it and bring it all back. She had to stand there feebly as bystanders stared back and forth between the two of them, expecting her to retaliate with a slap. She wouldn't sink that low. Slaps were for people who felt so insecure with words that they had to resort to physical violence in order to regain their high stand.

"Nothing to say?"

She had never hated that man so much.

"I've always been dead to you, haven't I?" Rouge wailed in the most out-of-character way with obscenely large tears sliding slowly down her cheeks. She furiously brushed them out of the way, but that only made way for more as she squeezed them out by blinking. "I could tell! Every time I was around you, you'd be so indifferent! Everything about you changed when I got into your range of vision. You never did love me!"

Knuckles frowned in his quarter turn to dramatically walk out of her life. Instead, he felt the need to explain.

"Rouge, you know I wouldn't be with you if I didn't even love you to begin with."

"Oh yeah? Prove it."

"Can't you tell?" He tried to keep the despair out of his voice. Instead, he dropped it a notch on the volume scale and stepped precisely three steps closer to Rouge. "I've never been attached to anything else but Chaos Emeralds. But you grew on me – your independent nature was what made me like you. I've never met a girl so strong and willing. You would do almost anything to get what you wanted, and if it didn't happen, you could always find the energy to try again."

The tears that had melted away into Rouge's hair, clinging like dewdrops to her fair grayer strands, had returned.

Refusing to notice, Knuckles turned his head away to lay his eyes on a shadow cast by a streetlight pole.

"Even in love, I could NEVER get close to anything!" He suddenly raged, slamming his fists into the pole, creating a mere dent in the iron that had endeavored the force of something close to two oxen battering each other at the same time. "Not even you! And look where that got me!"

"But why couldn't you? If you truly loved me, why not?" Rouge spluttered, standing as rigid as the pole Knuckles had just struck.

"You could never understand," Knuckles breathed, grasping the pole for support. "I have never dealt with people in excess, as you will understand. I have always indulged myself in my duty, guarding the Master Emerald. That's the only thing I have ever attached myself to before you came along and seduced me into a freaking helpless thing!" Mortified by his own words, he struggled to keep his voice under control. "When I was around you, I felt something I had never felt before. It was like...like the feeling you get when you've lost something and recovered it again. And now, I've lost that feeling." He feigned a faint smile. "But atleast you know I really did love you during that time we spent together."

With that, he turned and walked away.

As the crowd around them dispersed, Rouge fell from her spot, collapsing to the cold cement that countless people have treaded, probably none as heartbroken as she was now. She could never hold onto a man steadily. All she ever was to them was a target for lust as they stared at her physique rather than into her soul. Knuckles was the one person who she thought had seen beyond that outer shell that she haunted, but she had been wrong.

From the shadows beyond the sheet of light that the streetlights held in their grasp emerged a spiky figure with eyes that shone with newfound promise. His pearly white-gloved hands cradled her body, rocking her back and forth as he brought her to her feet. A voice that was raspy from lack of use whispered into her ear.

"What's wrong?"

Even through her tears and discontented feelings that arose in block her throat, she noted that Sonic was the owner of this voice. As he released her, the warmth of his body continued to linger in the imprints he had made around her shoulders as he had caressed her.

"Every single thing," Rouge blubbered into her hands, unable to show her weeping face to the rest of the world. "My life is a total wreck."

Sonic, surprisingly, seemed untouched by this statement. "Ssh," came the whoosh of air that rushed through his clenched teeth. "No one's perfect. You seem so perplexed...and beyond that. Now tell me what's wrong."

"Knuckles d-dumped me." Knuckles had never been this dreamy and caring...she felt comforted slightly as she stood before Sonic, hands clasped around her nose and mouth, containing every breath she released in them.

"Why?"

"Being his girlfriend...was so much more than I had bargained for. I expected him to be strong and open. Instead, he cooped up everything inside his puny little heart and decided to retreat back inside himself. He loved me so much and he d-didn't t-tell me until it was too l-late!"

To her surprise, Sonic felt his way around her and was wrapping her in a hug that simply pressed what breath she had left in her body out.

"Don't worry...you don't need Knuckles anymore...Because now you have me."

In the shadows, beyond the area that the streetlights commanded, a possessive pink hedgehog was keeping a watchful eye over the entire situation.

"Sonic...even when you have someone like me..."

-

End Flashblack

-

To compete with her sorrow was also the idea that Amy had somehow vanished off somewhere with no clues as to her whereabouts. But even with that feeling of happiness, it was completely overshadowed by her encompassing feeling of rejection. How much would she have to compete with before she collapsed and gave up?

But remembering that moment made her realize that now she had to repay Sonic for what comfort he had brought into and provided her in moments of need. Rouge needed to do what she dreaded most – facing the one she had left behind not so long ago and apologizing for the hurt she had inflicted.

-

Sonic pulled on his shoes, plucking at the ends to allow them to feet snugly around his feet. Tucking the buckle in securely, he clicked his toes a few times to make sure that his shoes were in running condition. Without hesitation, he turned the door knob and he was out. He needed to go get Amy.

He needed to tell her what had really happened.