Someone who looked a lot like Shadow the Hedgehog limped along the desolate white corridors of GUN's regional headquarters. He ran his fingers slowly along the cracked plaster, riddled with bullet holes, scratched with deep claw marks and smeared with blood. Beneath his feet an obstacle course of rubble, dead bodies and inactive silver robots awaited him, and through walls and floors he heard the muffled sounds of gunfire and panicked screams.
He felt sick at the sight of the carnage endlessly stretching out before him, but he also knew that he didn't. Across his vision red lines of code swarmed like insects, words and number telling him to feel sick, telling his stomach to turn and his balance to waver. Looking down at the spindly silver robots strewn across the floor, he knew that's all he was underneath his outward appearance, but he still felt real, even though he could see the numbers telling him to feel real.
Sonic had caused this; his Sonic, the one that wasn't real either, but who still lived in the insidious fantasy of existing. The Fake Shadow had loved him once, and used to revel in this amount of destruction, but those emotions had no foundation; it was all lies, nothing meant anything anymore.
As he limped past a wooden door to his right, it opened a crack with a quiet creak. Peeking out at him through the gap, a female white fox in a white coat looked straight into his eyes, trembling and clutching a large bundle of papers.
"Is it gone?" she quavered, tears streaming from her eyes, "I hid in here but I... I saw what it did to those soldiers through the window. Their guns were useless, and it just... it just tore them apart... "
Fake Shadow's head began to pound, lines and crosshairs fixing upon the fox's timid face, red letters screaming at him from behind his eyes.
TERMINATE. TERMINATE. TERMINATE.
"NO!" he screamed, holding his head in his hands and crashing into the opposite wall, "I won't do what you tell me anymore!"
"Are you okay?" said the fox.
"Get out of here!" said Fake Shadow, falling to his knees, "run, before I hurt you!" The frightened fox didn't need any further prompting, and took off down the corridor, disappearing around a corner. Fake Shadow rose to his feet, his head pounding with error codes. The building around him began to shake, and a low rumble thundered through the floor from the floors below.
Fake Shadow quelled the errors hounding him, setting his focus towards the source of the noise. He had made a decision, the most important decision of his brief life. Even the numbers processing the decision before his eyes, reminding him of the futility of his existence could not quell his determination.
He would end this madness here and now.
~o~
Tails didn't want to die, at least not like this. He always thought he would go out in a blaze of glory, performing a kamikaze attack on one of Eggman's flying death machines, or being struck by a laser as he pushed Sonic to safety. Sacrificing himself for the greater good and most importantly going out quickly, just like Sonic would want for himself. Not the slow torture Super Sonic had begun to inflict upon him.
The hideous mockery of his best friend continued to grip his narrow arms, his fur burning in agony under the flaming gloves, his bones at breaking point against the supermobian strength. Tails had never felt more alone in his life than at this point, and the face of the beast before him only reminded him of the one he needed most, the one who had abandoned him in his darkest hour.
All Tails could do was scream. Hot tears flowed freely along his fur, and his agonising wail penetrated the walls of the lobby themselves.
"Please!" he bawled, "please, don't kill me! I don't wanna die!"
Super Sonic's sadistic grin didn't falter, and the burning yellow hedgehog leaned towards him, casting a shadow that strained before the hedgehog's burning light over Tails' face. An unnaturally long and flexible tongue snaked out from between the rows of jagged teeth, slithering along the little fox's muzzle and lapping at his tears with a leathery touch that made Tails want to puke.
"Mmmm, salty," said Super Sonic, "cry some more for me, Tails! Let me taste your fear!"
Super Sonic's grip tightened, and a cracking sound reached Tails ears, pain shooting along his arms. He cried out again, but he had no more cries to give, instead retching from the agony. This was it, he thought, the moment he feared was almost upon him.
"No-one's going to save you now, Tails!"
"Enough!" issued a deep voice from the shadows behind the pillars. Super Sonic hesitated, looking around in disgust to see who disturbed his moment of victory.
From the darkness a black and red hedgehog emerged, wearing a face as solemn as night.
"Sonic, my love," he said, "what have you done?"
Super Sonic turned to face the black hedgehog, releasing his grip on Tails, and the fox gasped a huge breath in relief, wincing from the lingering pain coursing through his blackened and smouldering wrists.
"Shadow? My Shadow? Is it really you?" The other hedgehog hesitated for a moment, before clearing his throat.
"Yes, it's me, Sonic," he said, "I've come back for you."
"It really is you! You should be so pleased with me, Shadsy!" said Super Sonic, sounding less like a psychotic monster and more like a small child trying to please its parent, "I've become strong for you, strong enough to tear down the world."
"Yes, I can see that," said Shadow in a flat monotone, "you've... done well. Will you let me share in this power? So we can finish this together?"
"Yes, oh yes, Shads, I will! We'll burn this world together, as we were always destined to! Come to me, let me share my gift with you."
He held out his arms, and the black hedgehog tentatively approached him, slowly sliding into a lover's embrace. Super Sonic closed his eyes, lost in the hold of his partner, but Shadow's eyes stayed open, flicking over to Tails with a hollow sadness. The black hedgehog began to glow yellow, his spines rising as the light swept into him.
"Yes!" said Super Sonic, "it's happening! It's happening!"
The light within Shadow continued to intensify, shifting from yellow to dazzling white, and Super Sonic began to glow brightly alongside him, the rays almost blinding Tails. Letting out one last heavy sigh, Shadow closed his eyes and seized Super Sonic in a crushing grip.
"What are you doing?" cried Super Sonic, looking around in panic, "No! Stop this! Shadow, no!"
"I'm sorry, my love," said Shadow, a tear slowly moving down his cheek, "but I'm not Shadow, and you're not Sonic. I don't think we ever were."
A searing, whining noise began to drone through the lobby, and the light from the two hedgehogs became blinding, piercing through Tails closed eyelids. The heat surging out of them began to burn him, and ignoring the pain in his arms he scrabbled blindly over the desk and cowered beneath it.
From behind him he heard the rushing sound grow to a deafening roar, mixed with the cry of anguish from Super Sonic. The ground beneath him began to shake, and Tails put his head between his legs, bracing for impact.
"It was a lie, Sonic," he heard Fake Shadow say, "Nothing we felt was real, and it never will be. We can't go on living like this, acting out someone else's dream. Accept it, this is end for us. Let us both die free."
Super Sonic's roar of pain became overpowering, the noise pounding upon Tails' eardrums. But over the dreadful din he heard Shadow say a single word, sounding like it was inside his own mind.
"Sayonara."
With a deafening bang the top of the desk caved in, showering him with splinters. The whole room trembled around him, and burning heat danced through the air. After a moment the howling wind ceased, and the only sound he heard was that of debris clattering against the floor.
Tails opened his eyes. He was alive, and his heart skipped a beat; somehow he still lived after all that chaos. Slowly he crawled out from under the destroyed desk, breathing heavily in response to the pain in his scorched wrists, to lift his head out to survey the scene.
The hedgehogs had gone. Where they had stood moments before, the marble floor was stained black with scorch marks, the fingers of seared stone creeping along the pillars and floor in all directions. The plaster on the pillars had been blasted clean away, and many of the bodies littering the lobby had been completely turned to ash, including some unfortunate Mobian corpses in range.
Trembling he crept over to the smouldering scorch, the lingering phosphorous smell invading his nostrils and turning his stomach. Around him the silence fell like a tolling bell; there was no more gunfire, no more screams, only the bitter aftermath of death and destruction was left to keep him company.
Tails fell to his knees, holding his face in his hands, and wept without shame. His nightmare was over, his monster slain, but he found no solace in such a costly victory. The silence only served to taunt him with a horrible truth, a feeling of childish terror he had long since overcome. His regression overtook him, dragging him further into his long-forgotten memories.
He would stay inside his head until someone came to pull him out.
~o~
"Tails? Tails, where are you?"
Knuckles' voice echoed along the empty corridors, piercing the overwhelming silence of the facility. Moments before, the cacophony permeating the GUN building had reached its peak, the ground had begun to shake and a shockwave rattled the building with a deafening bang. Then, like someone had closed the lid on the source of the havoc, a blanket of silence fell across the place, leaving Knuckles immersed by a gaunt quiet, his own breaths sounding like a howling wind to his ears.
As he made his way past blood-stained walls and crumbling doorways, his mind swam back to how he had ended up here.
He had just touched down on the landing pad after gliding from the broken windows, turning around and expecting to see Tails fluttering down behind him. When he found no sign of the little fox, a shout from the window made him look up, and his heart rose in panic. Someone had a hold of Tails, a dark figure he couldn't quite make out, but then Super Sonic appeared in a blaze of fire. There was a sound of a gunshot, before blinding light poured from the windows, accompanied by a man crying out in terror.
Knuckles had wasted no time, his blood was up, and he sprinted back towards the building, barrelling past the guards covering the rear entrance, with Rouge following close behind. The real Sonic was nowhere to be found, it fell to the Guardian of Angel Island to protect the innocent, especially when that innocent was one of his oldest and most cherished friends.
Back in the present moment, Knuckles' search grew more and more despondent. He had passed many bodies, relieved that none of them seemed to be Tails. On the other hand, some of them didn't seem to be anyone, having been mangled or burned beyond any hope of identification. Knuckles felt guilt nip at his quills; better to find no trace at all and cling to hope that the little fox still lived, than to see his broken body lying among the ruins.
He pushed through a set of silver double doors, which stopped abruptly when they were half open. Pushing through the gap, he found it blocked by a slab of stone.
The scene before him stung his eyes to look at it. The lobby, once a scene of polished grandeur, lay in ruins, a black scorch blighting every surface, the ornate pillars stripped bare, and piles of rubble and twisted metal covering the ground.
In the middle of it all, next to the jagged edges of the shattered reception desk, an orange-furred figure lay face down, completely motionless.
"Oh no..." said Knuckles, his fear reaching interminable levels. He dashed over to the lying figure, sliding to his knees. Cautiously, dreading what the other side of the fox might look like, he reached over to the body, turning it over and resting it on his lap. Tails' shining blue eyes stared straight ahead, and his face remained unmoving, frozen in its blank expression.
"Tails?" said Knuckles, trying to stop his voice from breaking, "Tails? Little buddy? It's me, Knuckles. Are you gonna say something for me? Tails?"
No response.
Knuckles clung to the body, leaning his head tight against the fox's chest. His emotions swirled within him, and he had to stop himself, not only from crying, but from bellowing with rage. Sonic had run away like a coward, leaving his best friend to die alone. Regardless of who was behind the attack, he would make Sonic pay for this.
A soft breeze sifted through his quills, and Knuckles looked up. The breeze came from Tails' own nostrils, and Knuckles realised the fox boy's chest slowly expanded and contracted beneath him. Knuckles anger and sorrow were dashed to pieces in an instant when he realised the truth.
"Tails!" exclaimed Knuckles, grinning with happiness, "you're alive! Oh, thank the Master! Tails?"
The little fox gave no reply, but continued to stare blankly into space. Knuckles shook him gently, tapping his face a few times, but Tails' face remained unchanging, save for the soft breath flowing through his nostrils.
"C'mon Tails..." said Knuckles, laughing nervously to himself, "joke time's over... please, say something now... anything?"
After another moment of silence, and he felt his anger returning.
"Say something!" he bellowed, shaking Tails vigorously, a tear streaking along his cheek, "please Tails, please just... say something."
The sound of a door opening made him look up, and he saw Rouge standing over him, her search of the other side of the building leading her here. Her mouth hung open in shock.
"Oh no, Tails!" she said, "Knuckles, is he...?"
"He's alive, but there's something wrong with him. He just keeps staring and not saying anything."
Rouge knelt down to look at the prone figure. Gently moving his bangs out of his eyes, she clicked her fingers a few times in front of his eyes.
"Tails?" she said, "Tails, can you hear me?"
"It's no use," said Knuckles, grim-faced, "he's in some kind of trance."
"He's having an acute stress reaction," said Rouge, noticing Knuckles' confused look, "he's gone into shock." She gasped as she looked down, "but Knuckles! Look at his arms!"
Knuckles glanced down at the narrow orange arms slumping against the blackened floor, and felt his stomach turn. The soft orange fur had completely burned away, and the pink skin underneath glowed with reddened swelling.
"Yeesh, that's nasty," said Knuckles, grimacing, "we need to get that looked at."
"First degree burns, by the look of it," said Rouge, "Come on, sugar, there's a fleet of ambulances waiting out the front, let's get him to a hospital before those wounds become infected."
The two rose to their feet, Tails lying limply across Knuckles arms, and they made their way towards the front door, stepping around and over the debris and fallen robots. As they slowly marched through the desolation, Rouge turned to look back at the wrecked lobby with a heavy sigh.
"Chaos, Knuckles. It all feels so unreal. Just what happened here?"
"I think..." Knuckles said, looking down at his charge, "I think Tails did."
"What?"
"I don't know how he did it, but he saved us all. He must have whipped up some device, probably out of shoelaces or something, but enough to take out Super Sonic and the rest of those creepy Sonic fakes. He put his life on the line to save everyone, and he did it all without Sonic's help. Tails is the real hero today."
As they made their way through the absent front door, the sight of paramedics rushing back and forth greeted them, with throngs of injured people gathered in the parking lot.
Knuckles looked down at the helpless and prone form of Tails, admiration swelling in his chest at the thought of his friend's heroic sacrifice. He leant down over him, whispering into his ear.
"I'm proud of you, little buddy. Even if Sonic isn't."
~o~
White coats going by to the left and to the right, a stretcher passing through. Pagers beeped and phones rang off the hook, while wounded people lay on stretchers, moaning and gasping. Amongst the constant clamour and rush of activity of the hospital corridors, only one person remained still.
He could have been there for five minutes or five hours, it would have all felt the same to Knuckles.
"Excuse me-" he said to a doctor rushing by, but they kept on walking, lost in the rush to attend to all the new arrivals. Such had it been every time he tried to ask about Tails. The red echidna slumped into his uncomfortable plastic seat, allowing the roulette wheel of his emotions to spin again.
It landed on anger. Anger at Sonic, his supposed best bud. Not that one would think it with the way they snarked at each other all the time, but that was just their way of getting along. Despite all the name-calling, he would never have suggested that Sonic was a coward. Until today, when he had abandoned them all to go chase after a boy.
He had known that Sonic was gay for ages. Rouge had to point it out to him, but once he noticed the unmistakable way Sonic's eyes would follow some eighteen year old stud as he walked past he couldn't help but laugh. When questioned, Sonic clearly didn't even realise he was doing it, brushing them off and acting blasé as usual. Even with Rouge's teasing it was all just a bit of fun; Sonic always ragged on the idea of romance, and Knuckles never expected him to lose his mind over someone like this. Like he had feared before, he saw that Shadow had taken hold of Sonic, making him lose sight of the people who needed him most.
Next came sorrow. Sorrow at Tails' condition. The way his eyes stared blankly ahead, the horrible burns on his arms, the silence. He could never shut Tails up once he started talking about something that interested him, so to see the hyperactive little fox rendered completely mute broke his heart.
Tails was to be his responsibility now; he would take him to live with him on Angel Island. He would let him bring his tools of course, and with the island's defences active, there was no safer place on Mobius for the fox to play and study. Knuckles would teach him to be responsible, to impress upon him the duty it takes to be a Guardian.
Perhaps he would invite Rouge along too. After all, he told himself, a kid like that needs to have a maternal figure around...
He shook his head briskly, trying to put the sassy bat and thoughts of family life out of his mind. No sooner had they loaded Tails into the ambulance when a call came in summoning all able-bodied GUN personnel to the main headquarters in Empire City. He could tell from her distant expression that Rouge didn't want to leave him, but she had her duty, and he had his. Whatever else they felt for one another didn't matter in the long run.
Round and round the roulette wheel goes, where she stops...
"Mr... Nook-lez, is it?" he heard a voice say, making him look up. A doctor, a female rabbit with a tawny coat stood over him, holding a clipboard and scrutinising it closely.
"It's Knuckles."
"Oh, I am so sorry," she said, "it's a bit more of an exotic name than I'm used to."
"Mmm-hmm," Knuckles mumbled, rolling his eyes and not even bothering to stand up.
"I understand it was you who brought in Miles Prower?" Knuckles leapt to his feet, his heart pounding. The ball had landed squarely on panic.
"Tails?" he said, "I mean, Miles? Yeah, I did, how is he? Is he okay?"
"He's fine," said the doctor, and Knuckles felt his heart sink back into place, "he's currently resting. He had first degree burns on his arms, and hairline fractures along both ulnas. We've treated the burns, and fitted casts on both forearms."
"Can I see him?" asked Knuckles, eager to get the medical talk out of the way. The rabbit eyed him suspiciously.
"May I ask how you know him?"
"I'm his best damn friend!" he barked, his blood surging through him, "so let me see him, already!" Technically the statement was not untrue, without Sonic, Knuckles was the closest thing Tails had to a big brother. The doctor jumped back a little, her eyes wide in alarm.
"There's no need to get snippy," she said, holding her clipboard up like a shield, "I have to ask these questions for security reasons, and I do have one more, so please calm down."
"Fine," Knuckles huffed, his shadow looming over the rabbit, "What is it?"
"How did he come by these injuries?"
"You see all these people?" said Knuckles, pointing around at the myriad of stretchers containing wounded soldiers and office workers, "They're from GUN HQ, which up until recently was a freakin' warzone, and Ta... Miles was right in the middle of it." The doctor's face fell, heavy with shame.
"How awful. That's no place for a child to be. I'm sorry, I had no idea."
"You really don't," said Knuckles, unmoved by her apology, "none of these people would be alive if it wasn't for him. He saved so many people today, including you, so take me to see him!"
That was enough for the doctor, and she quickly led him down a corridor, guiding him through a pale wooden door into a private room.
The sunlight streaming through the windows glanced off of Tails' orange fur, leaving him with a gilded edge. Knuckles felt himself relax at the sight of the little fox dozing peacefully in the hospital bed. Plaster casts covered his wrists, leaving only his thumbs and fingers free, and white bandages tightly wrapped around his arms further up. Creeping slowly over to him, Knuckles began to run his hand through his bangs, slowly stroking the boy's head. Tails stirred, and Knuckles caught a glimpse of blue as the fox's eyes partially opened.
"S-Sonic?" he wheezed quietly, and Knuckles heart skipped a beat to hear Tails speak again. All was not lost.
"Hi Tails," he whispered, "it's Knuckles. I'm looking after you now."
"What happened? S-Super... Sonic..."
"He's gone, thanks to you. It's all over now, little buddy. You saved us all!"
"No... not me..." Tails said, his eyes slowly closing again, "Shadow..."
"Huh?" said Knuckles, turning around to face the doctor, who shrugged her shoulders.
"He's probably just drowsy from all the painkillers," she said, "we should really let him rest."
Knuckles turned back to face Tails, but he had already nodded off again, snoring gently. Knuckles mind raced, trying to decipher Tails' cryptic statement.
"I'm going to stay here," he said, "where I'm needed."
"Are you sure? He could be out for quite a while."
Knuckles didn't take his eyes from the sleeping fox.
"I'm stay as long it takes," he said, "that's what it means to be a Guardian. That's what it means to be a friend."
~o~