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Time hadn’t been too kind to this diner.
It was never anything fancy—just a small, local place on a narrow street downtown. The seats had tears in them, the corners of the tables were chipped, and the white-tiled floor was yellowing with age. Soft oldies rasped quietly from the radio speakers, as if they were on their last breath.
Charmy loved it with all his heart.
He used to come here with his coworkers all the time; it was their spot of choice for a cheap bite after cracking a case. His memories of this place usually involved sitting by the window, sipping on a soda while he watched the stars come out.
This diner, with all its blemishes, felt like home to him.
Besides, a lot of time had passed since he was a little kid. Charmy, Cream and Tails had their own money to blow on milkshakes now, as they sat around their table eating dinner. Although, true to form, Charmy still didn't have that much on him, so...one drink would have to do for today.
"Ahhh," he let out his breath and leaned back after taking a big sip of his chocolate shake. He had to take care not to let the spikes on his leather jacket catch the torn upholstery behind him. "It's as good as I remember." He smiled across the table at Tails. "Bet it was worth the visit just to come back here."
Tails chuckled as he finished chewing a bite of waffle. "I mean, sure,” he said, “But I think you and Cream are more attached to this place than I am. I'm here because it's your birthday, Charmy."
Charmy gave him a playful eyeroll. “Yeah, that too.”
“And for that, yes, it was worth the visit.” Tails turned his attention to Cream, who was sitting next to Charmy, sipping her own strawberry milkshake. "You and your mom threw a lovely surprise party, by the way."
Cream smiled and moved the straw away from her mouth. “Ohhh,” she waved her hand, "You’re so sweet, Tails. It was nothing."
"Yeah, like she didn't stress about it for a whole month." Charmy elbowed her with a grin. "I could tell somethin' was up, but she just kept saying, 'Oh, I'm just tired.'"
"To be fair, I very much was," Cream said with a chuckle. "It's exhausting to plan such an extravagant party without letting you find out. I'm around you every day!"
"Yeah, but hey, you did a bang-up job." Charmy gave her a pat on the shoulder. "Oh, and tell your mom her hors d'oeuvres,” he snapped his fingers, “Her uhh, little puff pastry things? Yeah, they were really good. Vector ate, like, a million of 'em."
"Ahhh, so that's where they all went. He hardly left any for the rest of us, you know."
"Hey, don't look at me. I'm not the boss of him," Charmy held up his hands. "He's literally the boss of me."
Charmy picked up his burger, took a bite, and looked over at Tails, who was currently mopping a square of waffle around in a pool of syrup. Tails always ordered waffles. Ever since he was a kid, that was what he’d get. It was one of the few things that hadn’t changed about him, so watching him eat felt almost like a moment frozen in time.
As glad as Charmy was to have him here, it felt a little difficult to just sit in this moment and soak it in—he felt like it was already slipping through his fingers. After all, Tails’s visits were so few and far between. After today, how long would be before Charmy saw him again? Another six months? Another year?
In the past few years, Tails’s voice had gotten deeper. He’d shot up taller than Charmy and Cream both. His fur had darkened by a couple shades and gotten a whole lot scruffier on top of his head, poking out from beneath the racing goggles Charmy had matched with ever since he was thirteen.
He was growing up too fast. How much more would he grow before Charmy could see him again?
How long until he’d lose the goggles?
Charmy spoke with his mouth full after he'd chewed for a second. "By the way, Tails. I have a question for you."
Tails perked up. "Oh?"
"Cream and I got a case to look into tomorrow. Somethin' about a robbery across town. Vector got a call about it during the party, but I guess he didn’t wanna bother me with it ‘til after." Charmy gestured toward Tails with his burger. "You want in? Figured you might wanna do some poking around with us, like we used to."
Cream gasped and nodded at Tails. "Oh, yes, that's a great idea!" she said, "The case does sound right up your alley. And my mother's house is always open if you need to stay."
Charmy watched Tails expectantly while he chewed his bite of waffle. He hoped, against his better judgment, for an enthusiastic "yes," but it never came. Instead, Tails smiled apologetically and shook his head.
"Uh...Sorry, guys, I can't. Tomorrow's Monday, remember? I have to fly back to the university so I can teach class." He lowered his fork and checked his watch. "...In fact, I should probably leave soon."
Charmy stared at him vacantly as his smile thinned out. Ah, here it was. The reason Tails never came to visit. He always had some kind of booked schedule halfway across the world—he could never stick around for too long before he was gone again.
Why would today be any different?
"Oh, that's fine!" said Cream, leaning forward with interest, "How have your classes been going? The semester's almost over, right?"
"Yep! I'm just prepping the students for the final now," Tails replied.
"Hm." Charmy plopped his burger back in the basket. "Cool."
Tails and Cream's faces fell as they turned to look at him. Tails spoke hesitantly. "Is...something wrong?"
"Huh? Oh, no, no, not at all," Charmy swiftly picked up the ketchup bottle, shook it back and forth, and squeezed some more of it next to his fries. "Really, it's fine. Not like you're always gone or anything."
"Charmy," Cream said in a warning tone.
Tails furrowed his brow. "...I’m sorry, Charmy, but I have to be there. I'm the professor."
“Yeah,” Charmy forcefully dipped one of his fries into the ketchup. “Because that’s normal.”
Cream folded her arms on the table. “Can we not do this now?” she glowered at Charmy, “I’m just here to have a nice dinner before we split up again."
"Right, because our smarty-pants friend has to go teach class." Charmy jabbed the french fry at Tails, and some of the ketchup dripped onto the table. "I'll tell you what I see. When we were kids, you'd always pal around with the teenagers. And now that we're teenagers, suddenly you wanna teach college students like you’re grown up.” He scoffed and leaned back again. “You’ll always be too good for us. Nothin’ we can do to catch up."
Tails looked a little hurt now as he folded his ears back. "...It's not like I'm unqualified to teach," he said. "I just got my doctorate."
"Yeah, and don'tcha think that's a little weird??"
"Charmy!" Cream hissed.
"I'm just sayin'. Vector doesn't even have a doctorate, and he's a dinosaur. You went and got a couple engineering degrees before you turned eighteen. That's weird." Charmy ate his fry, then leveled a glare at Tails. "I mean, you've got your whole life ahead of you. Would it have killed you to slow down and just be a kid every now and then?"
Tails balked at Charmy's question, but then his brow arched in anger, and he leaned in closer. "Well, maybe I'd rather spend time with people at my maturity level," he bit back.
Charmy's eyes went wide until his glare returned tenfold. The corner of his mouth curled up, an imitation of the snarl he’d seen Vector pull off a million times. "You wanna tell me what you mean by that?"
Tails squared his shoulders like he was about to yell, and Charmy braced himself for it, but then he suddenly paused, sighed, and drooped his arms as he slumped back in his seat. He raked a hand over his head like an exasperated teacher. A move he’d probably pulled at his job before.
After a moment, he sat up again and braced his elbows on the table. He spoke in a calm voice that made Charmy’s blood boil.
"...Look," he said delicately, "I really like hanging out with you guys, okay? I really, really do.” His gaze flicked lightly between Charmy and Cream. “I just...don't feel like we have that much in common anymore.”
For the first time, Charmy saw Cream’s anger melt into hurt beside him. “…You don’t?” she asked in a soft voice.
“I mean…” Tails filled the silence with an ehhh as he circled his hands around, trying to find the words. “It’s just…I've spent my whole life traveling the world, pursuing knowledge, doing research. And then I went to school, and now I have my job to deal with. But you two, well..." He shrugged his hands. "You live here. And you work here. And that's fine, but..." He sighed. "I guess I’m just going after bigger things."
Tails dropped his arms and looked at Charmy, who wasn’t trying to hide the betrayed look on his face anymore. “I’m sorry. I have to leave tonight.”
Charmy just stared at him in stunned, livid silence. Cream had nothing to say, either. She wore a wounded look as she glanced back and forth between Tails and Charmy.
After a moment, Charmy felt the bitterness well up.
"Hah." He folded his arms. “You’re just like your brother.”
Charmy watched Tails’s expression crumble—his ears folded back, and his eyes turned wide and glossy. He couldn’t respond, though, before Cream stood up abruptly and pushed the table back with her feet.
"That's enough!" She reached into her purse, took out a stack of rings, and slammed them on the table. "I'm done!"
All animosity dropped from Charmy's face as he sat up in his seat. "Hey, wait—"
"No!” Cream whirled to face him with that same wounded look, etched so intensely into her features. “I don't want to keep sitting here while you two ruin our only time together!" Cream glared sharply at Tails, then at Charmy. "...I'll see you at the office."
"Cream!" Charmy called her to no avail as she stormed out of the diner. Once she was out the door, Charmy shot a look over his shoulder at Tails. "Great. Look what you did."
"Wha—Look what I did??" Tails quickly wiped his eye with the back of his hand. "I was just trying to be honest!"
"Yeah, well, so was I, Mr. Big Shot." Charmy dug around in his jacket pockets and pulled out a couple loose rings, which he flipped onto the table. He sidled out of the booth and jammed his hands in his pockets. "Go ahead. Go back where you belong. You don't have to humor us anymore."
Tails’s ears drooped even further. "Charmy..."
He couldn't say anything else. Charmy had already turned his back to him.
Charmy flew the rest of the way home. As much as he wished he could properly storm his way through the streets, after a lifetime of flying, he wasn’t much of a runner. Or even much of a walker. Instead he weaved his way through the air, past tall buildings as their lights blinked on one by one in the twilight.
Charmy had been hoping that Vector and Espio were still at Vanilla’s, but as he approached the Chaotix Detective Agency, he noticed a soft glow coming through the downstairs windows. He could hear muffled voices through the front door, too. They must have come back here to wait for him, which would have been nice at any other time.
He landed on the front walk, unlocked the door, and pushed it open to reveal Vector and Espio sitting around the office's front desk. They each held a paper plate of leftover birthday cake—chocolate with cinnamon buttercream, Charmy’s favorite. And it had been a good cake, too. Charmy wished he hadn’t lost his appetite, and that the sound of his coworkers’ voices didn’t feel so grating right now.
Vector and Espio turned to smile at him as he walked in. "Hey, there's the birthday boy!" called Vector with a grin. "How was dinner?"
"You had better come and help finish this cake before he eats it all," teased Espio.
Charmy didn't say anything to them, just shot them a stink-eye, bowed his head, and flew off toward his room.
Vector's smile faded. "What's wrong?" He stood up from his chair. "Charmy?"
"Not right now, Boss," Charmy waved Vector away without turning to look. Vector and Espio watched him disappear up the stairs and heard a door slam shut.
Vector started a little at the door slam. He and Espio exchanged the same confused glance. “What’s gotten into him?” Vector spoke under his breath.
Espio closed his eyes, shook his head, and shrugged. “Could be any number of things,” he said. “He’s at that age.”
“Sure, but…he had such a good time at the party.” Vector stared at the stairs as if Charmy might come back. “Ya think somethin’ happened at the diner?”
Espio hesitated a moment before replying. “Well…” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I don’t want to make assumptions, but he did go with Tails.”
Vector sucked in his breath. “Right.”
Ever since Charmy and Tails were kids, things had been kind of tense between them. Everyone could see it: one moment, they’d be acting like the best of friends, the next they would be cold and aloof and neither would want to talk about it. At first, Vector thought they would grow out of it, but that dynamic had persisted into their adolescence with no sign of stopping.
Vector knew why they butted heads so much, though. It boiled down to a very simple fact: Tails was a prodigy, Charmy was not.
Tails had always been smart and reliable, more so than any other child Vector had met, but over the years his academic achievements had only accumulated in number. He’d become an accomplished researcher with a number of published papers, and he’d spent the past semester teaching at Spagonia University, surrounded by peers of a similar caliber. And he was only seventeen years old.
On the other hand, Charmy kept his scope pretty small for one of Sonic’s circle. Didn’t go to school. Didn’t travel much. Just helped solve mysteries wherever he was needed.
And he was good at it. Vector was proud of him, and he knew Espio was, too.
But maybe that wasn’t enough for Charmy.
Vector stood up. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”
Espio raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a good idea. He’ll kick you out.”
“Well, he’ll feel better if he talks to someone, won’t he?”
“Vector, you can be so naive sometimes.” Espio folded his arms. “He’s not a little kid anymore. Do you think he’d want his employer to barge in on him while he’s having a rough time?”
Vector frowned. “Hey, it sounds weird when you put it like that. I helped bring him up, ya know!”
“Yes, which is precisely why he wouldn’t want to see you.” Espio met Vector’s sad eyes, sighed, and brought a hand to his face. “…Just give him a minute to be alone.”
Vector looked back toward the empty stairs. As much as he wanted to rush right in, he remembered how prickly Espio used to get when bothered before he was ready. And Charmy was already such an emotional person. Vector didn’t want to make him even more upset—especially on his birthday.
“You’re right.” He sat down in his chair again. “I’ll go talk to him in a little bit.”
Charmy lay there curled loosely on his bed, hugging the pillow. He’d thrown his spiked leather jacket onto the bedpost—he knew better than to lie down with it after he’d torn open his favorite quilt.
He stared emptily at the wall. Ever since his first big solo job, he’d been hanging up newspaper clippings on this side of the room, so he could always look back and remember what he’d done right. One of the earliest headlines jumped out at him: “KID DETECTIVES FIND MISSING PET.” Underneath was a picture of him, Cream, and Tails smiling at the camera, holding up a little purse dog.
That headline was from eight years ago. Tails had barely returned to town since, while Charmy and Cream were still here, doing the same local detective work.
Maybe Charmy was always meant to be a stepping stone in someone else’s life. And maybe, now that Tails had moved past him, there was no reason for them to be friends anymore.
The thought made the pit of his stomach feel light with dread.
He heard slow footsteps approach down the hallway—they seemed to sink into the creaking floorboards with each movement. Charmy recognized how those footsteps carried their weight and sighed, exasperated, into his pillow.
“I know it’s you, Boss,” he said before Vector could knock. He rolled over just enough to shoot a side glance at the door. “What, you wanna come in? Tell me everything’s gonna be just fine?” He waved his hand. “Go ahead and give me the whole spiel, I don’t care.”
Charmy heard Vector freeze in hesitation, but a moment later he opened the door and ducked through the doorway. From where Charmy lay on the bed, he really did seem as unshakably tall and sturdy as always. Just watching him enter managed to give him the same feeling he got as a kid, where he would look at Vector and think, It’ll be all right. He’ll fix everything.
He couldn’t admit his presence reassured him, though. He leveled a glare at Vector and hoped that would be enough to cover it.
Vector shut the door behind him and looked down at Charmy with a weary expression on his face. “I know why you’re upset.”
Charmy huffed. “How? I didn’t tell you anything.”
“You and Tails had an argument, didn’t you?” Tears welled in Charmy’s eyes, and he turned to bury his face in the pillow. He felt the right side of his flimsy mattress turn up a little as Vector sat down at the foot of the bed. “Come on, kid. You make it so easy to guess.”
Charmy said nothing, just let the tears flow out. He felt a sob welling up and held it back with all his might.
“You gonna tell me about it or what?”
Charmy allowed himself one sniffle to clear his airways. He looked up to stare at the wall again and grasped the top corner of his bedsheet.
“…He can’t even stay another night,” he finally muttered. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “When’s the last time he stuck around for more than a day, huh? It’s almost like he hates it here.” He slowly sat up and shifted his legs to dangle over the side of the bed. “…I think he’s got a point.”
Vector sounded a little surprised from behind him. “Ya do? How come?”
Charmy shot Vector a look. “Come on, Boss. Why would someone like Tails wanna stay here?” He gestured vaguely to the space around him. “What’s one city when you’re some kinda big genius who’s been all over the world a hundred times? If I were him, I’d be sick of this place.”
Vector watched him with a thoughtful expression. Then, his gaze drifted down to the floor. “Yeah, you might be right.” Charmy’s eyes widened incredulously, and Vector turned to smile at him. “He comes back, though, doesn’t he?”
Charmy wanted to retort, but as he searched for the words, he realized he wasn’t sure what to say. It’s not like Vector was wrong.
All that came out was a small murmur. “I guess.”
“He came back for your birthday, bud,” Vector pointed at Charmy. “I can’t tell you he likes it here, because I dunno if that’s true. But I do know he likes you.” He stood up, walked around the bed, and plopped down to sit beside Charmy. “…Fact is, you’re good enough friends that he’ll fly all the way here on a freakin’ school night just to come to your party.”
Charmy nodded distantly as he looked down towards the floor. “…Yeah.” He paused—something uneasy was still swirling in the middle of his chest. “I just feel like he looks down on Cream and I. Ya know?” He pulled up one of his knees and wrapped his arms loosely around it. “We’re still just kids to him. We’ll never be anything better.”
Vector let out a long sigh and leaned back on his arms as he gazed up at the ceiling. Charmy still had glow-in-the-dark star stickers up there from when he was a kid. He was maybe a little too old for them now, but the stars seemed to know that. They still gave him a little comfort in their faint familiarity, and that’s all that mattered.
Vector spoke before long. “It’s easy to look at Tails and see a bunch of stuff you can’t be, right?” Charmy nodded. “Just because he’s different doesn’t make him better, though. You’ve got a bunch of qualities Tails doesn’t have.”
“Oh, yeah?” Charmy gave him a skeptical look. “Says who?”
“Says me. Says him, too, I bet.”
Charmy let out a dry laugh. “You think he’s jealous of me?”
“Could be.”
“Vector, he thinks I’m a loser.”
“And yet you’re still friends.” Charmy fell silent, and Vector gave him a knowing smile.
Charmy thought of the argument he and Tails had just had. Tails had seemed pretty serious when he'd said all those hurtful things, but…the more Charmy thought about it, the more he regretted a lot of his own words. He couldn’t always trust his temper to talk for him, anyhow.
Maybe Tails felt the same.
“…I’m gonna go talk to him.” Charmy slid off the edge of the bed and circled around Vector to grab his jacket. “If I hurry, I can catch him before he leaves.”
Vector’s smile deepened. “Ah, attaboy, Charmy.” Vector tousled his hair, and Charmy let him do it, just like old times. “You’ll make it in time. You’re the fastest guy I know!” He hesitated and scratched his head while Charmy pulled his jacket on. “…Second-fastest.”
For the first time, Charmy cracked a grin. “Pssh.” He took to the air and gave Vector a loose hug around the neck with one arm. “Thanks, Boss. I’ll see ya later.” He zipped to the door, opened it, and flew into the hall. “And you better not eat all my cake!”
Vector laughed and waved after him. “No promises!”
The Tornado was parked in the field next to Vanilla’s house—its bright red color stood out even against the night sky. As Charmy circled through the air towards it, he searched for signs of life and only saw a faint bluish light peeking out from under the plane’s wings. Maybe Tails was on his phone or something.
He landed in the grass a few yards away and approached the cockpit on foot. For a second, his eyes went down to the ground as he pondered what to say, but when he looked back up, he startled to see Tails already climbing out of the cockpit.
Tails locked eyes with him and froze. “Charmy!” He cleared his throat. “…Hi.”
Charmy’s eyes widened. He slapped a polite, conceding smile onto his face. “Hey.”
Neither of them moved or said anything. They just stood there staring at each other.
"Sorry," Charmy broke the tension with a nervous chuckle. He scuffed the ground with his foot and stepped back a little bit. "Didn’t mean to, uh, get in your way."
"No, no!” Tails held up his hand and finished stepping out of the cockpit. “Don’t apologize, I—was actually just leaving to see you.” He pursed his mouth and looked down at something he was holding, wrapped loosely in a handkerchief. Charmy could see the shape of a square corner beneath the drape of fabric.
Tails held it up. "I have something for you."
Charmy raised an eyebrow in confusion. "…Really?" His smile grew a little more genuine. "Tails, you already gave me somethin' at the party, remember? That uh, hi-tech magnifying glass doohickey?"
"I know." Tails hesitated. “…This is a different thing."
After a moment, he offered it to Charmy.
Charmy took the gift and uncovered it to reveal a rectangular object. It looked kind of like a bulkier version of Vector’s old handheld game, with a few buttons below a screen. Charmy pressed what looked like a power button, and the screen flashed to life, showing a top-down map of the area and a tiny two-tailed symbol in the middle.
He looked up at Tails, the smile still on his face. “Kinda retro. I like it.”
“It shows you where the Tornado is at any given time,” explained Tails. He leaned over to point at each button. “That’s the power, the big button recalibrates it, and the small one there sends me a signal.”
“A signal?” Charmy smirked at him. “What, so you’ll know I miss you?”
Tails paused. “…Yeah.” His ears flopped forward a little bit. “To be honest, I actually made this for Sonic when I was little. I never knew where he was, and it freaked me out. But he…doesn’t really like to be tracked.” Tails perked up again. “So…I figured you could have it. If you want, of course. I can just take it back if you don’t like it.”
Charmy kept staring down at the device. That little two-tails symbol would always be in his pocket, no matter where in the world his friend was.
He untensed his shoulders. “…No,” he reached out and gave Tails a pat on the arm. “No, I like it. It’s sweet.”
Tails drew a breath, and his eyes softened with relief. “Oh, good.”
Another waiting moment lingered in the air. Charmy began to catch the sound of chirping crickets and distant, peeping frogs all around them. He was glad that nature was here to fill these weird lulls in the conversation.
After a bit, Tails looked up toward the back of the Tornado, then cycled his tails and flew up to sit there . He leaned forward to beckon for Charmy to follow. Charmy watched him for a second, then pocketed the tracking device and buzzed his way up to sit next to him. The metal side of the plane was cool even on this warm evening.
As the silence wore on, his gaze turned to the sky. Out here at Vanilla’s house, the light pollution wasn’t quite as bad, and he could see a few key constellations blinking down at him.
Tails spoke first, in a soft voice. "...I didn't mean what I said at the diner."
Charmy looked out toward Vanilla’s house. "Me neither."
He saw Tails’s head turn slightly to follow his gaze. “I spoke with Cream, too, by the way.”
“Yeah?” Charmy glanced over at him. “Is she okay? I still need to talk to her.”
“She’s all right. I apologized for escalating things.” Tails met his eyes with a small smile. “She just told me I needed to set things straight with you.”
Charmy snorted. He chose not to comment on that and turned back toward Vanilla’s house instead, where he knew Cream was sitting in her room right now. She might even be observing their conversation, watching through her window to make sure they were getting along. She was a detective, too, and a sharp one at that—chances were, she’d recognized the sound of Charmy buzzing past her house a minute ago.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll uh, go see her when I’m done here.”
“That sounds good.”
The two of them drifted back into a lull.
After a few seconds, Tails braced his hands on the plane and puffed out his breath. He looked at Charmy sidelong. "You’re a smart person, you know."
Charmy chuckled and waved it away. "Ah, come on. You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better."
"I'm serious. You've been a detective for over ten years, that's nothing to sneeze at."
"Ehhh,” Charmy shrugged, “Sure, but, ya know. Vector didn’t have me on the team because I was good . He just had to look after me somehow." He lowered his head and ran his finger over a tiny patch of peeled paint. "I was a stupid little kid."
"You were an integral part of the detective agency then and now,” Tails insisted. Charmy flashed him a thin smile. “It’s true! Don’t be modest.”
Charmy stared emptily at him, then broke eye contact and looked down at his dangling feet instead.
They both paused for another beat.
“You know,” Tails piped up, “If you wanted to, you could come with me.”
It took a second for those words to sink in, and Charmy chuckled at the suggestion in spite of himself. “Sorry,” he faced Tails, “You mean to your school?”
Tails nodded.
“Wow.” Charmy looked to the front, leaned his elbow on his knee, and slicked his hand back over his antennae. “Look, Tails, that’s nice and all, but I don’t think a guy like me would fit in a place like that.” The corner of his mouth curled up. “Besides, I’d be younger than most of the students. Can you imagine?”
“Yeah,” Tails replied, “…I can.” Charmy glanced at Tails and found him wearing a distant kind of expression, a visual equivalent of trailing off. Then Tails met his eyes, perked up his ears, and kept talking. “Regardless, people at the university have problems all the time! And you’d be the perfect person to help solve them. You could be a, uh…resident detective!”
Charmy laughed again. “‘Resident Detective’?”
“…I could suggest it to the board?” Tails sighed. “Okay, so I don’t really have a plan. But my point is...I think you’d feel at home there.”
Charmy’s smile faded to a more neutral look. With a small nod, he turned to look up at the sky again.
He thought about all the nights he’d spent right over there on Vanilla’s roof, trying to puzzle out a case with Cream while they listened to music on her radio and stargazed during the quiet moments. How Espio liked to watch the sunset with him during those nights at the diner, and point out the brightest stars as they winked into view.
If he suddenly moved halfway across the world, all those stars would be different.
“No,” Charmy said with a sigh. He gestured loosely to the scenery around him. “No, this is my home.” He shook his head. “They need me here, Tails. I can’t just up and leave.”
Tails’s expression thinned before he gave him a tenuous nod. “…Yeah!” he said with a false-sounding uptick in his voice. He pulled up his knees and curled his tails over his feet. “Yeah, of course. I understand.”
Charmy watched Tails’s face scrunch as he held back tears. Realization began to pool in the back of his head.
“You feel a little lonely up there,” he said, “Don’t ya?”
Tails looked at him with wide-eyed surprise, and his mouth curled into a wobbly, sheepish smile. “Wow, you, um…You really picked up your mentor’s intuition,” he said with a chuckle before his expression grew sad again. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great to spend time with all these accomplished professors, but…talking to you and Cream…it makes me remember what it’s like to be a normal kid.”
Charmy laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry. No one ever thought I was normal.”
Tails laughed a little, too. “…Yeah. I guess none of us are, really.” After a moment, he sniffed and met Charmy’s eyes with a sincere look. “I really did enjoy being here, Charmy. It was nice to just have… fun for a while. Especially after I spent all yesterday grading papers.” He drew a long breath and puffed it out in a big sigh. “Maybe it was wrong for me to work at the university. It’s been months, and…I’m still such a fish out of water. I’m still not even used to people calling me my real name.”
Charmy snorted and leaned in. “What, you mean ‘Miles’? Dr. Prower?”
“Ahhh, stop, stop! It’s so weird when you say it!”
As his laugh trailed off, Charmy rocked back to lean on one of his hands.
So Vector had been right about Tails. He pretty much always was, when it came to understanding people. But Charmy didn’t want Tails to regret all he had done, where his accomplishments had landed him.
He reached into his pocket and took out the tracking device Tails had given him.
“Ya see this?” he said, holding it up. “It goes both ways, right? You’ll be able to see me on the Tornado? ”
Tails nodded silently.
“So if you ever feel lonely up at your fancy school, then just look at it and see where I am.” Charmy gave him a friendly rattle on the shoulder. “…You’re happy there. And you’ve got people who need you, so…go back and do what you need to do.”
Tails gazed down at the device, then let out a soft sigh. “…You’re right.” He smiled. “Thanks, Charmy.” He looked up at the stars, and his gaze lingered upon them for a few moments, as if he was clinging to the sense of place they established. “I really need to leave if I’m gonna make it back in time.”
“Hey, no worries.” Charmy offered a fist, and Tails bumped it. “Safe travels.”
Charmy stood up on the back of the Tornado, then hopped off and hovered back down to the ground. He turned to see Tails sliding into the cockpit.
Tails powered on the plane, and as its engine roared to life, he put on his goggles and cast one last look back at Charmy.
“I don’t know when I’ll make it back,” he called. “Are you going to be okay?”
Charmy knew he probably wouldn’t see him for a long time. It gave him a little pang of sadness in the middle of his chest, but he wasn’t about to let that warp his words.
“I’ll be fine,” he laughed. “I’ve got the agency to keep me company. Same as it's always been.” As his expression faded, he raised his hand to give Tails a loose wave. “…See ya when I see ya, buddy.”
Tails gave him a single nod and one last confident smile. Charmy stuck his hands in his pockets, stepped back, and watched as Sonic’s plane rolled out of the field and arced into the open sky.
As the Tornado disappeared into the night, it blended with the stars.