When someone's life depends on your decision, you can never be quite sure you made the best choice. There's always a 'what if' in any situation, and in one like that even the tiniest doubt can seem huge.

Tails sat down on a nearby chair and sighed. Had he made the right choice? He supposed so, but his mind insisted on asking 'what if'? What if it was worse than he'd thought? And yet, more than anything else, Shadow's will to live was what would really be the deciding factor. He might not have much influence. If Shadow wanted to slip away... to fade into the peaceful darkness...

A sound to his right cut into Tails' thoughts. He turned his head, gaze flashing to Sonic, who opened his eyes and looked towards him. Even that little movement was painfully slow to Tails' eye, but he knew it was only what could be expected, after the amount of energy Sonic had used up.

"Tails..." His voice was little more than a whisper, but it seemed to hold again some of his old self, though still somehow different. "Tails... did he... make it...? Did I... bring him back...?"

"I don't know how you did it, Sonic, but you made it, you brought him back! He's going to be okay." He'd better be okay, or Tails didn't know what he would do. But he didn't want to tell Sonic how bad it was, not until he'd rested, or he'd insist on getting up and trying to do something, when Tails knew full well Sonic didn't have the energy to so much as walk around the room.

"You just stay there and rest, okay Sonic?"

"If... if you want..." Sonic's eyes were already closed; he was already drifting back into the dark embrace of sleep. Tails watched him for a few minutes, noticing how he seemed more at peace now that he had succeeded in saving Shadow, where before he had continually blamed himself for that failure, and it had been written across his face even when he slept. Such a change... what did Shadow mean to Sonic? Why? Would he have been that way had Shadow been anybody else?

Why did that matter? What did Tails care, just so long as his friend was all right again? He looked to Shadow once more, noting his slightest movement, the rise and fall of his breathing, a movement of one closed eye, flitting across some inner landscape that Tails could neither touch nor hope to guess at. And he saw again how very similar Shadow was to Sonic. Perhaps it was that very similarity that threw his judgement off, because surely Shadow would not do everything that Sonic would. And yet he had seen them act together at the end, the same idea flashing between them across an unspoken look, whatever words there might have been left unsaid. So he did not know as well as he might have done otherwise, where to draw a line between how one and the other would react to this...

And Shadow, what was he to Sonic? Certainly he was much like him in many ways... was it possible that he was too much so? Tails worried that through Shadow, Sonic was representing the failures of his past, trying to undo the irrevocable events of several years ago. He feared that, through Shadow, Sonic was trying to, in his own eyes, make everything all right. As if, by saving Shadow, he could through him save Metal, others too, but Metal especially. And then, what if, when Shadow woke up, he was not who Sonic had needed him to be? What then? What would Sonic do?

There was no point in continuing that argument, not even an argument, just half-formed doubts and fears, coming out now that Sonic was so terribly exhausted, Shadow close to death, and Tails uncertain whether he had done the right thing for either of them. Alone, afraid, his mind was working on overdrive, and pouncing on the tiniest suspicions. But still he could not dismiss them.

Shadow moved slightly, and Tails at once looked across to him, fully alert for any sign that Shadow was slipping away. But he seemed caught in some dreamscape, a land of his own invention or recollection, and after a while Tails turned back to his own worried thoughts.