Work Text:
Amy lets the routine of it take her, for a moment. She flicks off the lights, carefully lights a select few candles in order to fill the room with flickering orange ambiance, and when she slides into her seat, it’s with her eyes closed and a deep breath filling her lungs.
When she opens them, Silver could not possibly look more out of place. It isn’t just how shifty he is, though there is that— he’s fidgeting, rubbing his hands against each other, avoiding looking at her but also avoiding looking away— it’s also how the warm orange glow only serves to highlight him. He’s practically a light source on his own, silver quills catching and reflecting the fire in such a way that he doesn’t quite look real.
It’s fitting, given what they’re doing, so Amy doesn’t say anything.
She eases the lid off of her oldest, trustiest deck, inhaling deeply as the smell of warm paper and ink reaches her. Even though it’s been months since she’s done a reading, the cards fit right into her hands like they were meant to be there. She shuffles them back and forth, reminding herself of how they move, and then she meets Silvers eyes with a smile. “Your question?”
“Um,” Silver says, “actually, I don’t— maybe this is a bad idea, I mean, what if the cards predict a bad future? Or, uh, a good one, and I mess it up?”
Amy’s smile turns shark-ish, in the low light. “Alright, your question is how to avoid messing up a good future.” It’s a deliberate twist on Silver’s words, and he raises a finger to object before thinking better of it.
Amy keeps that question to the front of her mind as she shuffles, turning over its eddies and corners. She’s got a sense for it, which questions require which reading, and for this…
She splays the cards out into an arc between them, gesturing from right to left— so that Silver sees it as left to right. “Pick out seven cards, please.”
Silver purses his lips, glances a little over his shoulder, as though he’s contemplating just leaving instead. To her relief, he doesn’t.
He spends some time on selecting cards, as if he’s expecting the right ones to leap out at him. In Amy’s experience, sometimes they do. He makes a few hesitant choices, a couple more confident ones, and the final card he deliberates over for a whole minute. Amy gives him the time, enjoying the atmosphere. It’s been too long since she’s done this. For good reason, but still.
Once Silver has his seven cards selected, Amy plucks them from the spray, arranging them in a two-three-two pattern. She’s careful not to rotate any, and to keep them correct to the order that Silver picked them out in, before regathering the spray with a few efficient hand movements.
Just as she goes to set the extra cards away, however, one slips free, practically leaping from between her fingers to land on the table.
Interesting. She sets it aside.
“Um,” Silver says, eyes fixed on the eighth card, but Amy cuts him off.
“These first two cards represent your past,” she tells him. “They’re why you’re asking the question you asked.”
The first card is the King of Lightning, dark draw. The second, Phantom, hero draw. Amy frowns, caught off guard. Two interesting cards— the first, testier in her experience, and the second, one that she’s never pulled before.
“Cruelty in a time of uncertainty,” she sums them up.
“I guess that makes sense,” Silver says, leaning forwards as to see the cards better. “I can go kind of… overboard, sometimes.”
Part of Amy, a part that she can’t remember, thinks of events that didn’t happen in a place she’s never been, thinks of a Silver that tried to kill Sonic and maybe succeeded. The rest of Amy thinks about the multitude of times that Silver has shown up shouting, “WHO messed the future up THIS TIME,” as though they are a collection of particularly naughty chao, and he is the owner that’s come home to a shredded couch.
“You don’t say,” she says, flat. Silver gives her an awkward grin, before pointing at the next three cards.
“What do these ones mean?”
“Those,” she says, “represent your present. What brought you here and now, to ask the question you’re asking.” She flips them.
Eight of Fire, hero draw. Freedom’s Wind, dark draw. And Four of Water, dark draw.
There seems to be a theme running, Amy notices. “They’re saying you act in ways that are very impulsive and hasty. But… also, that things will be okay. It’s okay to be happy.”
Silver frowns down at Four of Water, which depicts a Chao looking forlorn over bad thoughts. “This one means it’s okay to be happy?” He asks, tone tilted towards disbelief.
“When it’s a dark draw, it does.” Amy tilts her head, considering how best to explain. “Every card has two possible meanings. The hero draw is straight forward, so,” she rotates the card, “like this, it would probably mean something like, ‘you think too poorly of the world!’, or ‘you’re making yourself miserable’. But,” she rotates the card again, “when it’s a dark draw, the meaning is inverted. So you should think positively, and be happy!”
“Ohhh,” Silver says, nodding his head. Despite himself, he’s been drawn in— no longer is he fidgeting, or glancing around. His focus is firmly on the table, as though the cards hold the secrets to the cosmos. In some ways, they do.
“These last two cards answer your question,” Amy tells him.
Then she flips the final two cards.
Seven of Rings, dark draw, and Knight of Lightning, hero draw.
“So…” Silver pauses, narrowing his eyes at the cards… “I shouldn’t carry a burden all by myself, and… um… I’m not sure what this one means.”
Amy claps her hands, delighted. “That’s okay! The King, Queen, Knight, and Page cards are hard to read without experience— same with the Arcana! Knight of Lightning as a hero draw means you’re focused on your beliefs and mission, and that’s good, but you should watch out for acting impulsively.”
“I guess the cards really have my number on that front,” Silver says. “So… I acted cruelly and without certainty in the past, which has led me to act, um, impulsively, in the present, and so to secure a good future, I should share my burden and act less impulsively? Is that right?”
Amy sticks her hand out for a hi-five, which Silver returns. He grins, but his eyes catch on the final, eighth card.
“But wait, what about this one?”
“Oh, right!” Amy slides it across the table, so it’s resting perfectly between them. “This card only appears sometimes in a reading. It’s called the Master, and it has control over the reading as a whole. If it’s a hero draw, then your reading will come true in the best possible way. But if it’s a dark draw, then the opposite is true.”
The light atmosphere they cultivated dries up like that, both of their focuses completely on the card as Amy flips it.
“Yes!” Amy cheers, at the exact same time as Silver groans “No!”
A pause, as they look at each other. “It’s a hero draw,” Amy says, confused.
“But it’s upside down,” Silver says. “That means it’s a dark draw.”
Amy folds her arms, and, in an old habit that she’s been slowly indulging in more, works the corner of her thumb between her teeth.
“I guess it depends on which side we’re meant to be viewing it from… it’s your reading, but the card jumped out at me.” She says, trailing off into thought.
“Maybe that means it is a hero draw, then!” Silver says, forcing some cheer back into his tone. “That’s good, right?”
Amy doesn’t answer, mind spinning over the possibilities. In one card, her certainty has spun into uncertainty.
One of the candles flickers, casting an uncanny light, just briefly, over the Phantom card.
Even the Master card itself isn’t the most reassuring. Strictly speaking, what card the Master is doesn’t matter. It only matters if it’s a dark draw, or a hero draw.
But still.
Nine of Rings.
Hero draw, it means that good things are coming.
Dark draw, it means that things aren’t going nearly as well as you think.
Amy forcefully shakes these thoughts from her head, gathering up the cards with a smile that doesn’t feel nearly as convincing as it needs to.
“Yeah,” she says, “a hero draw. It has to be.”
But that uncertainty doesn’t leave.
Just as she’s sliding the lid back on to her box of cards, their dark little sanctuary is breached, Knuckles yanking back a handful of curtain with reckless abandon. Some of the rich fabric swings dangerously close to the candles, which Silver extinguishes with a thought, leaving Knuckles with a dramatic backlight that they both wind up squinting against.
“They found him!” Knuckles says, and there is no asking who he means. “They found him— he’s alive!”
Even as hope seizes Amy’s heart, as battle plans are drawn, as people are outfitted, as they move in a desperate strike towards the Death Egg, that last card remains in Amy’s mind.
Good things are coming.
Things aren’t going nearly as well as you think.