Archive of Our Own ^beta

nine has never been given the luxury of looking back, and this is no different.

if sonic wants to treat him like someone he’s not, then he has no choice but to leave on his own. create his own world, forget about everything else, leave everything behind in favor of something better. the grim, in all of its empty glory, is better than anything new yolk city could ever offer. it’s better than anything sonic’s home could offer, too, with the real tails and all of the normal versions of his friends there.

it’s a blank slate. nine is smart enough to build an entire life for himself– and only himself– that ensures he never has to worry about anyone or anything. an entire world to do whatever he pleases, with no restrictions or anybody else to stop him.

so why is he wishing sonic was here with him? why is he worrying about what’ll happen to sonic when he doesn’t even care about the real nine? everything is about tails, who isn’t even here.

he really should not care. there’s no point in looking back at everything that’s happened with any sort of melancholy that this is what it all resulted in. going to live in the grim was always the plan. his plan, anyway.

sonic assumed everything would be fine once the shards were all together, as if everyone was going to live in harmony together. he assumed no one would vanish, everything would return to his normal, and that everyone else would be okay with that.

but if nine’s life has any kind of meaning, any real meaning, why should he so easily accept he’s going to lose all of this and go back to…

what does he go back to, if he isn’t real? if everything he’s ever known has never been his to begin with?

what if sonic was right to think of him as tails, instead of his own person?

the universe has nothing to offer him, in truth. home was never meant to be real, it’s not somewhere he can happily return to. the other shatter spaces are the same– places he’s not meant to explore or even know of their existence whatsoever. the grim is the only place he can live now, but even this place serves as a reminder that things have gone horribly wrong.

before meeting sonic, nine would’ve been content being in a place like this all on his own. he’d never get lonely, never feel bored or isolated in any way. it would be the perfect place– no one to bother him, no council to deal with, no need to hide away in the subway tunnels.

but now? now he wonders if he was too impulsive, taking the shards and running away.

he stares at the fake palm trees and wonders if sonic would have been receptive to living in a world like this even before he met nine. he doesn’t know what sonic’s home was really like, but he understands nature is important to him. it’s why he created these trees in the first place, wanting to have an environment that felt somewhat familiar and homelike. it was meant to be welcoming, to serve as a replacement for a place they’d never go back to.

maybe he just doesn’t understand that home means a lot more than a few fake palm trees and coconuts. maybe someone like sonic, who has plenty of friends, would hate living here.

some part of him wonders what tails is really like, if they share similar pasts. do they also share the same feelings? is tails as closed off? is sonic his only friend, too?

the silence was never meant to be this suffocating. it was meant to be comforting, far better than the constant noise of the council’s robots surveilling and the occasional train running through the tunnel, but now it feels like more of a reminder that he’s here alone. his original plan was supposed to be foolproof. he wasn’t supposed to look back– he can’t afford to look back.

would sonic happily accept him back if he returned now? would he be easily forgiving, understanding, willing to admit nine is as real as tails and everyone else is? would he be wasting his time by trying to reach any sort of compromise?

the fear of whatever is meant to happen when the shards are fully reformed lingers. nine’s experiences, his life, his feelings, are all real . no matter what the universe says, no matter if he’s an extension of someone else, it doesn’t matter. he’s real . he has to be real. all of the misery he’s lived through has to be for something. what does anything amount to if he’s a fake?

will sonic remember him if he vanishes?