Chapter Fifty-Five: Forgiveness
The moment Black Thorn shoves the seventh Chaos Emerald into my hand, I feel it. Feel the Emeralds Sonic and Amy hold glow brighter in response to the yellow Emerald's call. I feel it all even more than the hundreds, maybe thousands of fake Emeralds surrounding me. Even though I kneel in the midwinter of their false Energy, all I feel is the summer sun.
The Chaos Energy inside of Tails's body sparked into a flame. The heat spiraled out from the center of him and into his limbs. The first time he used all seven Chaos Emeralds, he thought they might just reject him. But that fear was nothing more than a memory. He knew what the Chaos Emeralds were now.
But more than that, he knew who he was.
The power radiated from his every pore. Where before his breath had been clouds of cold before his lips, they were now the sun-warmed breeze hardly stirring the leaves. He was alive. All of him was alive. And now, he would make sure the universe remained the same.
Tails's eyes flashed open. Black Thorn stared up at him in awe, sliding back. When her eyes jumped beyond him, he followed her gaze to Sonic—golden spines turned upward—and to Amy—her golden spines hanging longer than before. The wall of fake Chaos Energy was just beyond them. "Watch out!" Tails shouted.
Tails threw up his hands as Sonic and Amy were still turning. Golden Chaos Energy burst from his fingertips and rushed for the wall. Where the Chaos Energy hit, the fake Energy reverberated like it was the pool of water a pebble had just dropped into. Sonic and Amy added their Energy to his so they angled their pushback from three directions. The wall of fake Chaos Energy gave a few inches, then halted again. Tails gritted his teeth and tried to pour more power into it.
"What's the plan, Tails?" Amy asked, panic edging her voice.
"We can't let the fake Energy reach Thorn," Tails replied quickly. "If it swallows her grief, it will magnify on such a scale that the universe won't survive."
Sonic growled under his breath next to Tails. Tails glanced his way for a heartbeat. Still, one of Sonic's eyes was squeezed completely closed against the pain of whatever the fake Chaos Energy was doing inside of him. Not even the power of all seven Chaos Emeralds was enough to hold it at bay.
Tails shoved with all his strength against the wall. With Amy and Sonic doing the same, it crawled back inch by stubborn inch. It was working…Tails could hardly believe it was working. The wall pushed out closer to where it had all began with the fake Emeralds in the walls. It was almost there. Almost gone.
And then the sound of screaming exploded inside Tails's skull.
Tails grabbed his head, breaking his connection to the Energy he used to shove against the wall. He was dimly aware of Sonic crying out beside him, barely loud enough to be heard above the screaming in Tails's own head. For a second, Tails forgot where he was. The scream started in his head but spilled out into the rest of his body, just as his Chaos Energy had done before.
"It's the Chaos Emeralds," Sonic grunted. Tails struggled to crack his eyes open to look at Sonic. While Tails had kept his feet beneath him, Sonic was on his knees, with one hand pressed against the ground and the other pressed against the side of his head. "They were screaming like this when we first zapped into this timeline."
Was it all the fake Chaos Energy surrounding them? No, that didn't seem likely. They'd been pushing the fake Energy further away when the Chaos Emeralds started screaming inside them.
Tails shoved his arm out in front of him again despite the pain. The wall of fake Energy hadn't advanced closer, but only thanks to Amy. She stood on Sonic's other side, cringing but still pushing the Energy of the Chaos Emeralds toward the wall. Like she was the least affected between the three of them, whereas Sonic was the most. Like whoever was most intwined with the Chaos Emeralds was most impacted by their panic.
But why? Why were they panicking?
Then, all at once, the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place in Tails's head. The Time Stuff in the doorway, the fact that no Time Whisperers could get into this timeline anymore, the purpose of the wall of fake Chaos Energy, and what Black Thorn had said before about Dark Oak: "He had no sense for how the Chaos Emeralds could manipulate time itself."
Time had been manipulated, unraveled and re-raveled time and again until its integrity loosened to something thinner than it was supposed to be. Even if they stopped the fake Chaos Emeralds here, time would still crumble. This timeline was still impossible, and like C2 and Angel had said, time would seek to protect itself, even if that meant falling apart completely. The Chaos Emeralds must feel it too.
"Stopping the fake Chaos Emeralds isn't enough," Tails shouted. "It's time itself that's falling apart!"
"Time?" Amy shouted back. "We're not Time Whisperers! Can Chaos Emeralds fix time?"
Tails turned from Amy, wincing but steady against the screaming, to Sonic, who still struggled to climb to his feet again. Tails was perfectly between them. Standing but only just. Which meant…
It was him. It had to be him.
Sonic's wincing eyes cut over to Tails. For a second, Sonic said nothing. His eyes just searched Tails's. And then, they narrowed. "You got a plan, buddy?"
"I've got a plan," Tails agreed. "The kind you'd make."
Sonic's eyes widened, realization dawning across his face as he understood what that meant.
"Amy, stop pushing away the fake Energy!" Tails commanded.
"Are you crazy?" Amy snapped back.
"You said—" Black Thorn started.
"Amy, do it!" Tails repeated.
And maybe by shock alone, Amy dropped her hands, and the flow of Chaos Energy toward the wall ceased. Tails stumbled in front of all of them, clawing through his thoughts to remember how to move despite how much of his awareness was overwhelmed by the Chaos Emeralds' screaming. He shoved both hands out in front of him now.
Except he pulled the wall of fake Energy toward them.
"You're going to kill us!" Black Thorn screamed, her voice cracking as it went up an octave. Tails heard her footsteps behind him, but Sonic slid in-between them to stand back-to-back with Tails before Black Thorn could reach him.
"I'm not," Tails said tightly. "But if I'm going to save us all, I'm going to need all the Energy I can get."
"What are you…" Amy breathed but even her voice trailed away, like fear was starting to overwhelm her.
"The Chaos Emeralds can manipulate time and so can the fake ones," Tails explained as quickly as he could. Already the tips of his fingers were starting to go numb with the fake Energy melting into him. "Black Thorn and the Metarex specifically made these fake ones to do it. But alone, they ripped time apart. Maybe if I use both the fake Emeralds and the real ones, then I can put the timeline back together."
"Stop saying 'I!' Sonic and I are right here! We can help!" Amy protested.
"Amy."
Sonic said her name in such a low voice that it stopped Amy in her tracks. Though Tails didn't dare look away from the fake Chaos Energy he was pulling into his body, Tails knew both Sonic and Amy well enough that he could picture the silent conversation of expressions going on between them. Tension in Sonic's brow, even as he knew he agreed with the already made decision. Amy's anger giving way to horror.
"But…you could burn out just like Sonic did before, couldn't you?" Amy said tightly.
"You've got to be powerful to try this, Ames," Sonic said. "I'll burn out if I try; I'm already too close to the edge. Since you don't have as much Chaos Energy as Tails or me, it'll just fry you almost immediately. Tails is the best chance we've got."
Tails ground his teeth together. The ice of the fake Energy clawed its way up his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut. Focused his thoughts on the warmth of his natural Chaos Energy to make the cold bearable. He needed to gather all the Energy he could into his body. But his teeth were already chattering.
-X-X-X-
Amy's View
Amy's eyes flashed from Tails to Sonic and back to Tails. She couldn't bear the sight of either of them and simultaneously she didn't dare look away. Not from the resolution in Sonic's face as it went to war with the tension at the corners of his eyes. And not from the focus on Tails's, even as his teeth chattered and the fur against his forearms started to twinge gray. Like he was somewhere in-between Super Tails and Dark Super Tails.
She couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Not when she was watching Tails give up all of himself just because he was the strongest between them with something left to give. Amy knew she had the least Chaos Energy between the three of them. But she also knew she could use Chaos Control to stop time and to teleport. She had saved Sonic from burnout. She had triggered Sonic's own Chaos Energy inside him to set him free from the Metarex. Not to mention, she was gold with Chaos Energy. Something Tails could only need more of.
Amy braced her boots against the ground. Sonic's eyes found hers in a heartbeat. "If I can help, I'm going to help," she snapped at him. She took a deep breath and slid her eyes closed. "Tails, I can use my Chaos Energy to trigger yours, strengthen yours. Take it. All of it."
-X-X-X-
Sonic's View
With Amy's last word still on her lips, the golden light of Chaos Energy burst from her center and poured into Tails. Sonic watched as Tails's fur, which had before been fading from gold to gray to something much closer to a toxic black, now illuminated gold once more. Tails continued to pull the fake Chaos Energy in toward himself but his Chaos Energy was again more powerful than that darkness was, at least for now.
But then the flow of Chaos Energy between Amy and him thinned before drying up entirely. Sonic flashed to Amy's side as she swayed on her feet. All sign of gold faded from her quills and their length shortened back to normal.
"Are you okay?" Sonic said in a low voice.
Amy blinked. The red fire in her eyes smoldered back down to a natural jade green. "I couldn't do nothing," she muttered.
A smile grew across Sonic's lips. "I know," he told her.
Now that he was confident Amy wasn't about to keel over, Sonic eyed the space between Black Thorn and Tails. The Chaos Emeralds still screamed in Sonic's head, loud enough that he could hold only one thought in his head at a time, but he didn't dare give up his Super form yet. Not with the leader of the Metarex right there, not with Tails vulnerable so long as his attention was focused on gathering all the Energy he could.
But while Black Thorn had been ready to rush Tails when he first started gathering in the Energy of the fake Emeralds, she stood staring at Tails now, looking utterly dumbfounded. "I don't understand," she breathed. "Why would he…he doesn't stand a chance, and he's still going to try. Why?"
Sonic turned back toward his little brother, bathed in gold light. His edges still pulsed with the darkness of the fake Chaos Energy he pulled into himself. But it was only the edges, a sliver of the reality of what Tails was.
Sonic loved all that Tails was. All that his little brother had grown to become. While also hating that it meant Tails was willing to do exactly what Sonic would try if he wasn't already on the edge of his limits and likely to die before he came anywhere close to finishing the job.
"Hope, love, take your pick," Sonic explained. "It's what heroes do. We give everything we have for what we believe, if it means a better life for everyone else. Even if it means risking we might not be there too."
-X-X-X-
Tails's View
With Amy's Chaos Energy joining him at his center, Tails could keep the fake Chaos Energy at his periphery, even as he gathered in more and more, as much as the fake Emeralds had to give. Hundreds and hundreds of Emeralds, the power of them all pulled into his one small body. Was the screaming louder now, or softer with the fake Chaos Emeralds to dilute it? It was somehow both and neither.
There was so little of Tails inside Tails now, in order to make room for the Energy. And even then, there still wasn't enough space for all the Energy he needed. He had to start using it to make room for more.
But how? How would he know where to start in piecing time back together?
A whisper. There was a whisper in the back of Tails's brain. He could just barely hear it beneath the screaming. So he followed it down.
-X-X-X-
Sonic's View
Sonic may have been hovering an inch above the ground in his Super form, but he too felt it when the ground beneath them began to sink. On instinct, his hand snapped out to steady Amy. A couple feet away, Black Thorn stumbled a step but caught herself. "He's pulled in so much of the Energy of the Chaos Emerald duplicates that there's no longer enough to power this facility," she said in an awestruck voice.
The platforms that had before held them high up in the air now descended toward the ground once more. Sonic stared at Tails in proud disbelief. "You're actually doing it."
But Tails didn't respond. He drifted a solid foot above the ground now, though he descended with the platform like the rest of them. Sonic twisted around until he and Tails faced each other. But Tails's eyes were pressed closed. "Tails?" Sonic tried.
Tails didn't so much as twitch in response. Was that a good sign? A bad one? "Tails?" Sonic repeated. He reached up to wrap his hands around Tails's shoulders. Rather than hot with Chaos Energy, Tails felt lukewarm. Had he taken on too much fake Energy? The longer Sonic held onto Tails, the more he felt him cool, his golden hue glowing ashen like it had been before Amy shared her Chaos Energy with him.
"Okay, little buddy," Sonic said, trying to ignore how fast his heart was racing, "looks like you could use some juice and I've got plenty to spare."
Sonic drifted a step away from Tails and held his hand palm out toward Tails's chest. He shoved his Chaos Energy to that single point of his body, and it erupted from his palm to drive straight for Tails's chest. Tails gasped, eyes flying wide open. "Tails?" Sonic exclaimed.
"Keep…going," Tails grunted, like he was having trouble finding even those two words.
Sonic shoved harder, pushing at much Chaos Energy as fast as he could into Tails. Sonic's feet lowered to rest on the platform. He felt the weight of his spines as they turned back downward. And just like that, he was out.
Sonic curled his hand into a fist as he pulled it back in toward his body. But then he turned his gaze upward, he saw Tails—Super Tails—illuminated by all that Energy. His eyes were open again, but glazed over, like Tails wasn't quite there.
"Tails!" Sonic shouted again.
Tails didn't reply. He drifted a little higher now and as the platform descended the rest of the way to the ground, Tails didn't descend with it. Power from the fake Chaos Emeralds continued to flow toward him, but even those gems were flickering like they were on their last dregs.
How was Tails holding all of this? Was Tails even still alive in there? Sonic gritted his teeth. His eyes flashed around the room, documenting the angles he could use to make his way up to Tails in order to knock him out of the air. But what if that just made things worse? What if he broke Tails's concentration? Before, Tails had told him to keep going. He had to trust that Tails knew what he was doing. Even if it killed Sonic inside.
"Sonic! Amy!"
The pair of them swung toward the entrance of the room that Sonic had dug a hold though earlier. Spinning through it this time was a spindash of black that widened the hole, quickly followed by the flash of a hammer that wasn't Amy's.
Sonic bolted to stand in front of Black Thorn, arms stretched out to his sides. Just as Shadow uncurled from his spindash to land directly in front of him, with C2 only a half step behind.
"Move out of the way, Sonic," Shadow said in a low voice. "Even if the Metarex claws are in your head, I would hate to have to harm you."
Sonic shook his head. "No, it's not that."
"This is what Tails wanted," Amy confirmed. She stepped up to Sonic's side, resting the handle of her own hammer against her shoulder. A second threat to bolster Sonic's.
The color drained from C2's face. Her grip on her hammer loosened and the handle slid in her palm. "'Wanted?'" she repeated, emphasizing the last two letters.
"He's alive," Sonic clarified. He stuck up his index finger to point toward the sky. "Just occupied."
Shadow's and C2's eyes flickered upward. And even Shadow's eyes widened in shock. Just in time for Nova to pass through the hole in the doorway, half-carrying Angel. Shadow's wide eyes shifted into a narrow gaze he directed at Sonic once more. "Why is only he utilizing the Chaos Emeralds?"
"This isn't just the Chaos Emeralds." It was C2 who said it. She hadn't pulled her eyes away from Tails. "He's manipulating time itself."
Nova muttered, "I guess that explains why enough of the Metarex poofed out of existence in space so we could slip down here and offer you back-up."
Sonic's eyes widened. Maybe against better judgement, he tore his eyes away from Shadow to look up at Tails. Tails had already managed that?
"He's…" Black Thorn started. Sonic's attention snapped back down, making sure Black Thorn's voice didn't spurn Shadow into action. She cleared her throat. She looked so small, so young, so utterly shocked. Sonic failed to miss how much she looked like Tails had only a few days ago when Sonic went to talk to him about becoming Dark Super Tails. Like she believed so much in her darkness that she no longer believed in her light. But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.
Sonic understood Tails had realized the same.
Black Thorn tried again, "He's trying to fix the timeline. He's…cleaning up the mess I made. I don't…it's going to kill him."
"C2," Angel breathed, the room so huge and her voice so small that the space alone nearly swallowed the sound. She was hardly upright, even with Nova carrying a majority of her weight.
Even so, C2 tore her eyes away from Tails to twist back to Angel. "Help him," Angel whispered.
Help him? Sonic's eyes jumped between them. Two Time Whisperers in a space where Tails was trying to gather every ounce of available Chaos Energy—real or otherwise—to fix the timeline. "You can?" Sonic exclaimed.
C2 winced. "I'm not a Whisperer right now, Angel. I can't."
But Angel's exhausted face hardened. "Not with Time Stuff. You don't have to manipulate time. You know your dad. He's smart. Just tell him what you know and he'll figure out what to do with it."
-X-X-X-
Tails's View
Tails's own Chaos Energy swirled inside of him, wrapped in the Chaos Energy that Sonic and Amy had been able to share with him. Even stronger beyond that was the wall the seven Chaos Emeralds built, through which they—rather than Tails—routed the absolutely massive amount of fake Chaos Energy he was holding.
A tiny voice inside of him had told him where to start. Clean up the Time Stuff around Greengate that prevented the Time Whisperers from seeing it, remove the Metarex whose existence was too much of a paradox. But that was hardly a drop in the bucket of all the time that needed fixing. All this power but Tails didn't know where to point it.
"Tails!"
Someone yelled his name. A voice he didn't expect. A voice that, in one possible—and one impossible—timeline, he was meant to protect.
Tails woke up.
In an instant, Tails flashed from where he hovered to appear directly in front of C2. She winced at his sudden appearance but stood her ground, even as her twin tails twitched with anxiety behind her. "You need to know the timeline to fix it," she told him.
Yes. It took Tails a second to think his way through the Energy inside him, but once he did, he offered C2 a slow nod.
"I've seen more of them than Angel has," C2 said firmly. "And I'm not a Whisperer now, so sharing my knowledge with a mortal should be…" She winced. "You know what? It doesn't matter. We have a chance to save the universe. You need my knowledge? Take it."
And with that, without waiting for an invitation, she clasped Tails's hands in her own.
Image after image poured through Tails's head. Tails couldn't pull his eyes away from C2's. He saw places that couldn't possibly exist, populated by creatures of all shapes and sizes, many of which Tails didn't have words for. He watched as C2 dove in front of bullets and turned away from them. He watched her wax philosophical and stand at a complete loss for words. He saw his own face from her eyes, him older than he'd ever been and her younger than he had ever seen her be.
He saw the beginning of time and several ways it might end, though today's events were not among them.
He watched the Metarex rise and fall, in a half-dozen ways in either direction.
He saw timelines where Majyk thrived, others where it merely survived, and still others where it died.
So many possibilities. Time was too big and too complicated to fathom as one singular thing. Tails understood now why C2 held back so much information when she attempted to assist them. Was this in her head all the time? How did she keep it all straight? Tails's mind ached with even the cursory effort. But before he got too far, the Chaos Energy started distinguishing the important details, stacking them into piles. Chaos Emeralds were built to navigate time-space after all. The piles grew taller and taller. The images from C2's head didn't stop.
Tails saw the look of fear on his own face when C2 had stepped out on the Blue Typhoon's runway to take a shot meant to destroy the craft during the Changed War.
He watched Angel's mortal face blossom with hope and dread when C2 explained to her how she could go back in time and save the lives of the ones her parents missed most in the universe.
He watched as Amy wrapped her arms around C2 on the wrecked bridge of the Blue Typhoon and simply held her close.
And Tails knew what he had to do.
C2 seemed to know that Tails had reached the conclusion he needed. She released his hands, took a step back, offered him a watery smile. "If anyone can manage this, it's you, Dad," she whispered.
Tails sucked in a deep breath. Maybe this was the last mortal thing he would ever do. "I love you. All of you," he exhaled. As Angel had before when she gave the last of her she had left.
And Tails shot straight up toward the sky to do the same.