Chapter Text
Sonic grins and laughs with Knuckles, and Tails narrows his eyes. Recently, he’s been on edge and nervous, eyelids twitching from time to time. It’s confusing to watch when Sonic tries to talk to Tails and a strange growl exits the young fox. Siblings fight from time to time, and the brothers are no different, but nobody has seen Tails this angry for this long, not with Sonic. Tails has a reason for his anger, though. His hostility. The reason is simple, one he knows well: that’s not Sonic. It laughs like Sonic, it grins and mocks like his brother. But Tails knows it’s not Sonic because it forgets things Sonic would never forget. Shadow buys the lies easily whenever they arise, however, because he thinks Sonic to be careless despite how much the black-and-red hedgehog respects him begrudgingly. Knuckles doesn’t look too into it, but he knows something is wrong. Tails can see it in his eyes, and how often Knuckles looks between him and Sonic. Amy knows something is off too, but It has been avoiding her. She’s gotten frustrated, and arranged this party to try and draw it to her. It can’t decline, because the excuse is the celebration of a battle.
So, It laughs, and grins with Knuckles. It grins nervously around Amy and side-steps her questions with the same grace as Sonic once did. It pokes fun at Shadow until he’s riled up and they race, and interacts with Rouge by flirting with her back. It’s so confident in his skin that if Tails didn’t know, he would’ve fallen for the same tricks. He’s been planning to confront It, but he’s scared of what it’ll do when it’s aware he knows. Now is not the right time, even though it would be satisfying to call the lies out in public. Eventually, the celebration party begins to die down. Tails forgets why they were celebrating, he spent the entire time watching It. He climbs into the cockpit of the Tornado, flipping switches and preparing it for flight. It climbs in behind him, sitting in the passenger seat. Tails decides to be risky.
“Feeling tired?” He asks, keeping his voice carefully light. The passive aggression seeps through anyway, and his throat tightens. He swallows past it and finishes up the preparations.
“Uh?” It says, a dumb look on its face no doubt. The Tornado begins to roll forward, and it feels painfully slower than the usual fast speeds at which they take off.
“You usually ride on the wing.” Tails points to the right wing. Sonic’s favorite spot.
“Oh,” It says quietly. As if It didn’t think Tails would hear It. “Yeah! I am. Between you and me, Tails, I think those chili dogs are starting to disagree with me.”
It lies so easily that Tails grips the wheel harder and doesn’t respond until they’re both in the air and the Tornado is smoothly bringing them back home.
“Ok.” He says quietly. It’s a far cry from what he would usually give Sonic, but he has no energy to play house with It. He figures the conversation is over, and prepares for a tense ride back. It has other plans. He feels its fingers on his shoulder, eerily cold through the gloves. A sharpness pokes through the fabric, and he no longer feels safe.
“You know.” It has warped his voice into something serious and low. Tails hates how it confirms every single thing he’s thought. He keeps his eyes ahead of him. “Answer me, Tails.”
“Yes.” Tails’ response is icy and cold, fearless. He doesn’t flinch when the grip tightens. “You aren’t Sonic.”
“Ouch,” It laughs nervously. “So blunt and direct!”
Tails doesn’t entertain whatever humor It found in the situation.
“Er… right. I suppose this is the part where I do something nefarious, or tell you about my evil plans.” It sounds awkward, but its grip tightens. “But I just want you to hear me out.”
It sounds desperate. Tails feels his ears angling backwards, anxiety sending chills throughout his body in rapid waves. He wants this to be a nightmare. It’s not.
“Uhm. I don’t know where to begin, ha.” It sighs. “I guess I’ll start with how I found out? Work our way up until you have questions.”
Why are you being so friendly? Tails thinks. He knows he’s a risk to this thing’s plan, and yet It’s trying to act like they’re pals. They’re not.
“I thought you’ve been behaving as normal, to be honest. It’s hard to get through the memory barrier, so I don’t know everything but I figured that his familial feeling towards you must mean that you’re like… conventional brothers. I was wrong. Rouge pulled me aside earlier, uhm. When you weren’t watching me. Asked why you were so mad since it’d been more than a week.” It let go of Tails for a moment, just to grab at his neck. “I don’t want this to end, Tails. I really don’t.”
Tails momentarily lets go of the wheel to claw at the hands squeezing his neck. It barely flinches at his clawing, and doesn't acknowledge the sudden jolt of the Tornado. It sounds desperate, practically pleading.
“So don’t make me do this.” It whispers in his ear. “I don’t want you to die.”
“To—rn–ado—” Tails struggles to speak, his voicebox feels crushed.
“I’ll live if it crashes.” The audacity It has to sound sad. “You won’t. I don’t want that to happen, I really don’t.”
The Tornado jolts again, it’s not on autopilot. It begins to wander as a result, and Tails begins to wonder if it plans to crash the plane in order to cover up his murder. He’s terrified. Suddenly, it lets go of his throat and he lurches forward to set the plane into autopilot. He turns around, fury in his face and a growl in his aching throat. His anger is stopped in its tracks at sight of Its expression. It looks bittersweet, gazing at Tails as though he’s everything and yet melancholic all the same.
“You don’t have his memories.” Tails’ voice is hoarse. “Why are you concerned about me?”
“I have his feelings.” It responds. “He cared about you. All of you. I don’t want to get rid of you until I understand why.”
Those words are spoken with genuine curiosity, and awe. Something about it scares Tails, and his fear must be written all over his face because It leans forward. He flinches back from Its touch, but It hugs him all the same, patting the back of his head.
“So don’t make me do something drastic.” Its voice quiets to a whisper again. It pulls back, and grins like nothing happened. “You must have questions. Ask them?”
Tails struggles to find his voice, he leans away from It instead.
“Let—” Tails turns around to face the front of the plane. “Let me think about it.”
“Okay!”
—
Over the course of the plane ride, Tails had these questions answered:
Who are you? It’s— His name is X. He prefers to use the same pronouns Sonic did.
What happened to Sonic? Dead. X didn’t give the details, he was tight-lipped about it. Tails dropped it after X grabbed at him in frustration, hostile and upset. They didn’t speak for 30 minutes until X apologized dully.
What are you? X doesn’t think there’s a name for things like him. He woke up in Sonic’s shadow, though. An accident. Possessing the shadow was fun, and he thought he became fast friends with Sonic. X spoke about Sonic with such reverence that Tails wanted to rip his fur out. If you cared about him, why are you pretending to be him?! Tails wanted to yell. He didn’t say a thing, and instead, listened as X said that one moment Sonic died, and the next X woke up in his body. Tails called him a Parasite.
What do you plan on doing? Living life to the fullest is what X said. Experience everything, and live as Sonic would. Tails thinks that’s a cruel joke.
They’re home now, in the Mystic Ruins Lab, and X sits down at the couch. Tails stands in the doorway, face painfully blank. He stares silently at X, then walks to his room. X calls out to him before he can make it back.
“Hey, no.” X stands in the hallway. Tails is afraid. “Give me your communicator. And other devices too. No more unsupervised communications until I know you won’t tell, yeah?”
Tails wants to scream. He numbly nods instead, and begrudgingly hands over his communicator. Distantly, he wonders if he can make an excuse for the Miles Electric, or something else. X confirmed he didn’t have all of Sonic’s memories, that a barrier was there preventing him from digging deeper. He thinks about those hands on his throat in the Tornado, the way he talked about killing Tails like it was Tails who decided if he lived or died then. In the end, the Miles Electric winds up in X’s hands, along with other small devices Tails had.
“Glad you get it, Tails. I know you love technology, but this’ll be good for you anyway.” X smiles. An attempt to be sweet. Tails feels sick. “Spending too much time with a screen can damage development, I think. And, you’re still a liability until I can trust you.”
X leaves afterwards, and Tails opens his door. As soon as he shuts it behind him, he sobs. A dam breaks, and tears gush out uncontrollably. Everything feels like it hit him at once, like everything that had been loading in his mind completed at the same time and overloaded him. Sonic is dead, and there is something in his body. That’s not Sonic, that’s X. Tails waited too long to say anything, and now he’s alone completely. Sonic is dead. He can’t breathe, hyperventilating. It goes on like that for a long time, or a short one, X has completely left him alone to his own emotions. Sonic would’ve immediately come to him, hearing the loud crying and comforting him as soon as possible. It painfully confirms everything even more, forcing reality onto Tails.
The last thing he thinks before he passes out from hyperventilation is Amy’s in danger.
—
X watches the TV static, waiting until the sound of the fox’s heartbeat slows down. He sighs, and leans forward. He stares at the technological devices in front of him. He feels awful about it, he does. Tails looked so numb, and hurt, that X can’t bring himself to break these things. A selfish part of him knows that once this is all over, once Tails enters a delusional state of denial, X can give him everything back and they can be brothers in the way that Sonic felt they were again. But he knows how childish those wants are. How unrealistic they are. His heart aches, because Tails probably won’t see him normally again. He won’t see Sonic anymore. Something about that hurts worse than knowing Tails is sad, and he wished he killed the fox instead with how much it hurts. He can’t, though, and that’s frustrating on its own.
Sonic cares about his friends, and those feelings are being leaked into X, consuming his entire being until the only thing he can think of when he sees those friends is I love you and I’m so glad he died, so I could meet you. It’s messed up, and X loathes it because he loves Sonic fiercely. He admires the hedgehog’s tenacity, freedom, everything! He regrets what happened, it wasn’t supposed to happen. But he doesn’t miss being in that shadow, doesn’t miss the frequent times he’s misunderstood Sonic because he didn’t know what these things felt like. It’s unique to feel this much, and X is agonized by it just as he can’t give it up.
He needs to feel more, to be alive, because it’s the best experience in the world. He stands up, and walks down the hall. It’s full of memorabilia, pictures that they took—wait, no. X plays the memory in his mind. Amy made Tails hang the pictures that she took of them, complaining that it was getting sad and dull without something to remind them of life. Tails is grinning wide in one photo, his smile matched only by Sonic. Their expressions are so similar that X could believe they were biologically related. Biology tells him they aren’t, though, so X only assumes they spent a long time around each other. It’s not the first time he’s spent time in this hallway, staring at these photos of happiness and joy. Moments of mischief forever frozen in time, or quiet moments that had been sneakily stolen. Moments that X has never been a part of, but hopes to one day be.
The door to Tails’ room creaks open, but quickly stops. Blocked by something. X feels even more hurt. Did Tails barricade his room? X worries. He hopes not. They were making progress back on the plane. X can’t let this go, not now. He pushes the door open roughly, practically slamming it open, ready to have another talk with Tails about how that’s no longer allowed, but he’s stopped in his tracks by a yelp of pain. He steps inside, and behind the door—having been pushed against the wall and slammed by the door—is Tails. X feels awful immediately, and grabs for Tails in a panic. He didn’t mean to, he just wanted into the room so he could check on the fox. Tails struggles in his grasp, gasping in fear with fresh new tears from the pain. X holds him steady with strength that Sonic never had, studying Tails for any signs of major injury. All that’s revealed is a bleeding nose, and a bump on the back of his head. X brings Tails into a hug. The guilt feels like too much, he wants to cry himself.
“I’m sorry,” X apologizes. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
He cradles Tails, his grip tightening and untightening in intervals. Tails breathes heavily against him, sobbing and speaking incoherently. X catches small pieces of it. Why and I didn’t do anything, all spoken swiftly in mumbles. X feels worse. Does Tails think of X so lowly that he thinks X will rage at him violently? X wants to cry too now. He feels so much overwhelming hurt, a new shame to carry, and strange guilt being faced with Tails’ heartache and unwillingness to accept him as Sonic. X wishes they could go back to what they were, with Tails being passive aggressive but referring to him as Sonic and not being a risk. He regrets broaching the subject.
Eventually, Tails quiets and stops struggling. X is grateful. He picks Tails up and sets him on the bed, uncaring of the blood steadily dripping from the nose to the floor. X swallows thickly, his throat strangely feeling closed up as he tastes words on his tongue that won’t come out.
“I’m sorry.” He says, again. “How do I make your nose better?”
He’s never been able to heal, and he doesn’t know how. Tails looks at him blankly, then shakes his head.
“It’ll stop on its own. Go away.” His words feel like knives. X stands up, stiff and shaking. He turns around to leave without another word, but stops, fear striking his heart.
“You won’t tell anyone, right?” X looks at Tails. Hopeful. Desperate. “Promise?”
“...Promise.” Tails isn’t looking at him, but X is grateful.
“I’m sorry,” He says one more time. Tails ignores him now. “Thank you.”
X feels strangely happier, despite the fact Tails is getting blood on the pillows. He promised! They made progress, after all!
He can’t wait to have a little brother for himself.