Chapter Text
Tails counts down the seconds until Sonic and Tom return, whispering soundlessly to himself as his fingers curl themselves back into his palm, one by one. Four. Three. Two. One.
Or so he hopes. He stays away from variables he cannot control — uncertainty proves to be nothing more than the functionless flipside of possibility.
It has been a while since they hurried off. The noiselessness is unsettling, rattling his heart sideways as if hitting the brim of a wine glass. He chews on the inner walls of his cheek, clasps his hands together in front of his chest, and prays.
The starchasers sway and rustle in the wind. A dark cloud drifts over where they stand; where the stars begin to run and hide. Beside him, a shudder rocks through Amy’s body, and she fastens the uppermost buttons on her cardigan. It is far too big for her; it reaches past the ends of her dress and her fingers barely peek out from the sleeves. She must have borrowed it from Heidi — its creamy toffee colour is a deadly sweet giveaway.
“Are you cold?” He imagines somebody like Heidi wouldn’t be so pleased when she comes to pick up her sister, frostbitten and feverish from trespassing the open fields, where temperatures plummet to the single digits and the air nibbles away at their ears. No , he frets, pulling at the loose ends of his scarf, she’s going to drop me in a deep-fryer and serve with a bowl of udon.
Amy shakes her head weakly. “I’m fine,” she stammers, “actually, I — Heidi was supposed to pick me up backstage about twenty minutes ago, but she wasn’t there.”
“What?” exclaims Tails, alarmed. “Have you tried calling her?”
She averts her gaze, and her tone is sheepish. “I…I don’t have a phone.”
“Oh.” It’s high time he made a phone for her — he promised her one back on Mobius, but in his starry-eyed departure for Earth it had slipped completely out of his mind. This wasn’t the first time he had procrastinated on a project — his own smartphone took a whopping six months to manufacture from scratch, not from the assembly process but from trying to find the right materials — he lost some pounds walking the extra mile scavenging from island to island. The final product thankfully works just as well as a regular Android, so he isn’t complaining.
As if on cue, the shrill chime of a glockenspiel emerges from within Tails’ knapsack. He slides it off his shoulders and rummages for his phone. There is a notification on the lockscreen as it flickers to life.
! High Energy Levels !
He swallows. There shouldn’t be any records of energy spikes at this hour. Knuckles should be safeguarding the Master Emerald back at home —
Then it dawns upon him, licking at his prefrontal cortex like blue flames. There is only one possibility. A lethal possibility; one that sends him breaking out in a cold sweat.
The screen blinks and changes:
INCOMING CALL
KNUCKLES
His heart starts to race, and his fingers tremble over the button on the screen. No way. They left it alone for only four hours. The worst that could happen is one in a dozen chances.
But when he finally wills his hands to stop shaking, taps the button, hears nothing but a rasp leak from the speakers; he is forced to face facts: it is one in only a dozen chances.
“I failed,” croaks Knuckles through the phone, “the doctor…he…”
Not an encouraging probability for a fox too clever for his own good.
*✧･ﾟ:
The dash stereo is switched off. Tails curls up his legs in the front seat, peering out the window for any signs of his brother: footprints in the shape of his Pumas, quills scattered in the grass, hopefully glittering a familiar shade of blue. His surroundings are starting to look all the same; the woods slowly swallowing them whole as the path ahead narrows. The engine rumbles on from underneath, piercing the silence every once a while as they cross a hump.
The festival ended as soon as he heard Knuckles’ shallow breathing through the phone. The panic that spread through his veins like a forest fire was of breakneck speed, like a noose had wrapped itself around his neck. The Master Emerald was the last thing on his mind — he let Maddie snatch the phone from his hands, and heard her raising her voice, “stay put, I’m coming over”; let nature do its work. He trusts the string of fate; he always lets it stretch out in any way that assures himself his family still stands before his eyes.
Tom raced over from the parking lot, his hair dishevelled and face pale, before dropping another bomb on his head: “Have any of you seen Sonic?”
All three family members sprung into action and booked it for the truck.
Tom made two pit stops: in front of the cafe, where they dropped off a dazed Amy without so much as a word; and at the sidewalk leading home, where Maddie leapt out of the backseat and flew down the garden path of trampled roots and snowdrops, straight for the front porch. And then Tom jammed the heel of his boot on the accelerator, speeding down the suburbs, his eyes trained on the road ahead — like he knew exactly where to find him.
“I’m sorry.” Tom’s voice is unnaturally quiet.
Snapped out of his trance, Tails tears his gaze away from the window. Tom’s grip on the steering wheel has loosened. The expression on his face is unreadable.
Tails rests his namesakes over his lap, mindlessly picking at a knot in their hair. “How long will you be away?”
Something cracks beneath the front left wheel. A sheet of ice.
“Six months.”
Tails balks. Half a year is an eternity for someone like Sonic, who blinks before starlight catches in his eyes. It’s no wonder the revelation was too much to bear for him.
The sigh that leaves Tom is racked with guilt. It would be better if he changed the subject. “Why the lakes?”
Tom’s grip over the wheel tightens again, his knuckles white. He draws in a shaky lungful of air. Speaks slowly, taking care not to swallow any of his words — like he has done that one too many times over. “Before you and Knuckles joined this family, Sonic and I would come here to fish.”
A beat of silence passes. Tails waits for him to continue. The inside of the truck harbours a lingering scent of maplewood — the same scent that followed Sonic everywhere.
“Did he tell you about his mother?”
Tails nods. “Mm.”
The engine growls a little louder as Tom sinks his foot down on the accelerator, speeding through a clearing cast in shadows; the headlights illuminating the cedar trees on both sides.
“He told me the first time I brought him here. When the water was calm, and no one could hear you but the trees.”
Beyond the woods, a lake unfolds before them, bordered by sweeping hills and wisps of silver-lined fog; the vivid ultramarine of the night sky reflected in its windless waters. Fireflies light up the air, tiny lanterns hovering over the surface of the water, they treat weddings like funeral processions;
and, near the bank of the lake, they flitter over the body of a familiar hedgehog as he lays sprawled on his right side, motionless. Like a comet once it collides with the Earth’s surface, where it is no more than an ordinary rock.
Tails swings open the front door in near unison with Tom; and next thing he knows they are both sprinting for the unconscious Sonic just ten feet away. He watches Tom overtake him and get on his knees, pat his cheek two, four, ten times in rapid succession; muttering “wake up” over and over like it’s got his tongue tied in a dead knot.
Tails’ gaze naturally falls to Sonic’s hand. Nestled snugly within his palm is a jewel, the light of the fireflies bathing its chiselled edges in topaz. A chaos emerald.
“What’s that?” Tom sticks his chin out towards the emerald.
Carefully, Tails extracts the emerald out of Sonic’s hand, holding it between his fingers. “A part of the Master Emerald,” he answers in one breath, “it is drawn to anything that carries high amounts of energy — ”
His breath catches in his throat. The ends of Sonic’s quills are enveloped in a cerulean glow that resembles the fireflies: faint, but it bears a slow, resilient pulse. That only means one thing.
“Including emotions,” he resumes grimly. “I think I know what happened.”
Tom freezes. Then his shoulders slump.
“This isn’t the first time.”
He slides one arm under Sonic’s knees, the other beneath his shoulders; and lifts him up with great effort, grunting softly as he stands on his feet. “We can talk more on the way home. Let’s go.”
But when Tails opts for the back seat with his brother, the ride home is silent once again. The rumble of the engine is a little louder, it nearly sounds like it is speaking something indistinct; and the truck speeds through the woods a little faster, where he finds himself occasionally bouncing in his seat and the trees have begun to melt into one another. From the dashboard mirror, Tom’s eyes are misty, and they remain frozen on the road; as if daring not to look anywhere else.
Sonic is fast asleep, the back of his head warm against Tails’ lap, shut eyes and damp lashes returning his pleading stare. And his breathing is only heard if he leans in close to his face, his chest alarmingly still with every shallow inhale — like the surface of a frozen lake.
*✧･ﾟ:
He feels himself sinking deeper into the couch as Maddie’s voice only grows louder, echoing through the empty hallways as she paces back and forth, her iron-tight grip on her Huawei threatening to snap it in half. “You did not answer my question. Where are you now?” she barks into the phone.
The speaker has been switched on; and out comes Knuckles’ response, his tone the slightest bit weary and words slurred if one strains their ears. “You must understand, Lady of Pretzels — ”
“My name has never been ‘Lady of Pretzels’ or whatever ideas Sonic has been feeding into your head, it is Maddie. Even just ‘Mom’ will do — ”
“Mom.”
Maddie freezes in place, the phone nearly slipping out of her hand. The word isn’t spat out, and it departs from his tongue at its own effortless pace, severing and taking with it every scrap of good faith that once adhered it to the tip of his tongue. The word sounds like an oath. A chance, one he implores her to take, to hear the sound of his heartbeat and the truisms it speaks.
“The emeralds are only safe under our guardianship,” Knuckles resumes, “and currently they could be in the hands of somebody far more belligerent. Somebody like the doctor.”
Maddie recollects her composure, breathing shakily as she places a hand over her chest.
“I need to find them before he is even presented with such an opportunity.”
“You are not in a position to go anywhere until I take a good look at you,” she retorts, her tone rising once more. “Young man, this is the last time you run out the front door before I even step onto the — ”
“Maddie,” Tails interjects meekly, “could you…pass your phone to me?”
Maddie pries the phone away from her ear, and the expression on her face is somber. Her thousand-yard stare in his direction bears no trace of defiance; rather, it feels like a silent plea. Knuckles treads a little more carefully around things that were smaller than him: wildflowers, puddles of rainwater, his little brother. Sometimes he wouldn’t pass by them at all, and instead he would come into a squat, stay there for a minute or two; and listen to what tales they have to tell, let the memory imprint itself in his mind like mud on the soles of his shoes. He’d carve constellations on his arms before turning a deaf ear to Tails.
So Maddie shuffles over from across the living room, and when Tails plucks the phone out of her grasp it radiates the last of her body warmth. On the screen is Knuckles’ name, and a timer ticking away by the second. She has been on the phone with him for five minutes.
“Can you hear me?” asks Tails.
“Is this the fox speaking?”
“Yes.”
All Tails can see is his brother’s name, in a font too plain, too bleak for his liking. He tries to make out his expression on the other end of the line, the way the muscles on his face would twist and shift like wisps of stardust with every word uttered through the speakers.
“We can start looking for the emeralds tomorrow,” Tails continues, “we all know you’ve been injured. And we are all really worried for you. We haven’t seen you since we left for the festival. We need to make sure you’re alright, so — come home. Right now. Please?”
Pause. Tom stands at the doorway, pinching the bridge of his nose. Sonic sleeps soundlessly on his side; his body occupying one half of the sofa and the heat of his breath licking at Tails’ wrist. The silence prickles the back of his neck.
“I failed to protect the Master Emerald, so I must take responsibility. That was a promise we swore to uphold all those months ago.” Knuckles’ persistence sends his heart rolling off the edge of a cliff, and it plummets deep down to the pits of his stomach. “Please. Let me do this for our family. Let me do this for us.”
Tails feels his throat close up. Any attempt to respond will end in him choking on his own tear-stained words. His mind races, what to say , what to say , something that will catch his brother off-guard, between his fingers.
“Fine.” Maddie has her face inches away from the speaker, startling Tails as he jumps in his seat. “Don’t say I was never there for you. But I want you to call me back tomorrow — if I don’t hear from you by evening, I will find you and drag your ass back home myself.”
There is another lengthy silence. He hopes he hasn’t hung up. Or he says “yes”. Or he says anything at all. His heart likes to slow at the sound of his brothers’ voice, the traces of where he used to belong, somewhere far away and out of his reach. And, like the stars heard his wishes, Knuckles’ voice emerges from the phone one final time, bitterly comforting like a shot of espresso:
“If so, I must depart at once.”
The call ends, and instead of Knuckles’ name, white and italicised, Maddie’s home screen blinks back at Tails.
“He will manage on his own.” Tom wraps one arm round Maddie’s waist. Rests his forehead against hers, their noses brushing against each other. “You’ve already got your hands full with Sonic, anyways.”
Tails lets his eyes fall shut. He imagines the pitch blackness before his eyes is the vast outer space; somewhere in the far corners of the galaxy, where no star has ever crossed and the voices are those of spirits in perpetual purgatory, thrown to the orbiting rings of Saturn; he watches the things they say be eroded by time.
“Tom, I don’t even know where he is. How can I be sure he will be safe?”
“Our boys are stronger than you think. This kind of crusade is probably second-nature to him when he’s done this his whole life. You have to put a little more faith in him.”
Put a little more faith . Tails bites back a scoff. Starts to contemplate exactly how much of what comes out of his mouth is words he himself abides by — and how much of it is simply putting red shoes on his own hypocrisy.
As if on cue, quiet snores reach his ears, barely drowned out by Tom and Maddie’s exchange. They possess a familiar rhythm; it reminds him of the ocean’s currents, how they hum a little song as they pull you away from the surface, its steadfast tempo weighing on his eyelids. He remembers the first time he slept in the same room as him, in a dim-lit cabin on the mountains of Siberia; the blizzard drumming against the glass window panels, how it melted into the sound of his brother’s snoring, like falling, tumbling snowflakes. And he remembers best how he fell asleep to it in minutes.
“Miles?”
Tails’ eyes fly back open. Maddie has squatted down to see him at eye-level.
“Go get some rest. Tom will tell you everything in the morning.”
Hesitantly, his hand crawls over to Sonic’s. He lets their fingers coil and intertwine, a newfound warmth racing down his fingertips and up his arm like a meteor shower.
“I think I’ll sleep here tonight.”