I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

It was almost a whole month ago when you found me in my lab, screaming and holding my arm, metal skeleton clearly exposed where I'd cut myself with a saw, standing about where you're laying right now, in fact.

There were tears in my eyes, I was so frightened and confused. It was twenty minutes after that before you calmed me down enough to run some tests. It was an hour more before you found out that Tails was a robot all along, sent to spy on you by Eggman all those years ago, ever since the day we met.

And nobody was more surprised than me.

My entire identity crumbled around me. The only mobian fox in the entire world? Turns out there were never any in the first place. Smart enough to give a supercomputer a run for its money? Well that just makes sense when you are one yourself. And my two tails that let me fly? Well that's easy when you're a machine, right? And of course, now you knew why I never really got any taller over the years. Or had any parents.

It was like you'd suspected all along. Like now you had this neat, tidy answer and suddenly I made sense to all of you. I wasn't strange, I was just a different kind of normal.

And you locked me up there and then. I asked you to, for your own safety, to be protected from whatever programming Eggman put in my head, to bring in G.U.N scientists, to bring in whoever, so they could see what signals I'd been transmitting, to see how badly I'd compromised our attempts to stop Eggman's plots over the years.

And they all came back with the same answer. It didn't look like I'd really done anything over the entire time we'd been together, that I'd been as loyal and faithful and true as any friend could be, and that those rare times I'd been lacking looked like genuine mistakes, not some villainous plot to sabotage our efforts at a key moment.

But who suspected Eggman of being able to plot for four whole years in advance anyway? There were so many times where I could have struck, so many perfect chances over the years where I could have spelled the end for all of you, or just not done anything. I'm the only other person who can do the sort of things that he can do, after all. If it wasn't for me Eggman would have won a dozen times already, maybe more.

So I was broken. A machine with a mission I'd long since failed, abandoned by my creator. It was barely a week before you let me out - against my protests. You promised me I was still your little buddy, that you all cared about me and that I was just as real and valid as ever. You all told me that it didn't matter to you what I was under my skin, because all that mattered was what was in my heart.

I reminded you that I didn't have a heart, but you all banded together to make me feel welcome again, to show me how important I was in your lives. You made me realise just how much I mattered to you as I explored my newly discovered robotic nature, slowly regaining my confidence in who I was and coming to terms with the new, robotic Tails.

But while you were so busy trying to make me feel better, while you were trying so hard to make me feel like you trusted me and cared about me as much as you always did, that nothing had really changed, that I was still normal, still Tails, still me…

Did you ever stop to ask whether it was true?

When Eggman kidnapped me and threw me in a cell, I was hoping you'd save me. Each day I suffered as he opened up my head, tweaked and prodded and measured and cut, I was waiting for you. And when he'd done with me, stuck me back together and left me in that cold, dark place, I whispered your names.

That was a whole month ago.

And when Eggman dragged me out of my cell, weak and starving and confused as he showed me what he'd done, I thought you'd find me. Day after day, I thought you'd realise the truth, that you'd find the real me until, in the end, I wondered if that wasn't the real me and I was the fake all along.

Eventually I stopped calling your names.

Because it turns out that while Eggman might not have the patience to handle a scheme four years in the making to kill you, two weeks isn't a problem. Because you were all so worried about hurting me, you never stopped to think about if I needed you to help me. You all thought it was so important to have faith in me that you denied every instinct not to until it was too late.

Until one by one you were left here on the floor of my workshop.

It took me a long, long time to get out of that cell by myself. Perhaps I never would have managed if Eggman hadn't forgotten me too. But I escaped in the end, and the first thing I did was to stop that robotic me from doing any more damage before I came here to find you all.

But don't worry, I'm not mad.

I'm just disappointed.

Despite everything, here at home once again, with plenty of tools and spare parts, I find that I still really want to be friends with all of you, and to put all this nasty business behind us.

You told me yourselves, after all, that it doesn't matter what's under your skin.

And I'm the only other person who can do the sort of things Eggman can do.

The End

Thank you for reading this alternative look at Tails the Fox.