Chapter Fifty-Six: Believe in Me
My awareness is built out of the fragments of moments. I no longer see in the whole. I can only assume it's my brain or maybe the Chaos Emeralds trying to protect me.
I stand in front of C2.
And then I'm in the air over Greengate.
Did I fly through the roof?
But then I or all the Energy in me douses the thought. It's not important. The Chaos Emeralds have taken C2's knowledge of time and stacked it into scales of importance. I consciously understand none of it. Something subconscious in me, it definitely does.
I think that part is still me.
I stretch my arms out to either side of me. Immediately, Chaos Energy and fake Chaos Energy swirl together at my fingertips. Golden light, of the Chaos Emeralds reflecting my heart. Darkness of the fake Chaos Emeralds also reflecting my heart.
I am not whole without both parts of me.
And I let myself burst.
All the Energy within me flies out in hundreds or thousands of different directions. From my fingertips, from my body, there is no part of me not bursting with light or darkness. The heat and cold pour from me in equal measure. The sky is filled with a meteor shower in the midst of daylight.
Something too mortal inside of me tugs with the reminder that Cosmo crashed in the middle of a meteor shower.
My eyes spark with tears.
I also remember the way she transformed in order to stop Dark Oak, sacrificing herself in the process.
I know now. I understand now, why she did. What it took for her to be brave. Amy, once upon a timeline, told me I was young in love. I didn't get it then. I do now. Love is bigger than I ever knew it was.
This too, what I'm offering now, is love.
I'm starting to lose feeling in my body and that loss is spreading down my limbs now, even my tails. The last of the Energy is leaving me. This is it, all I have. I hope it's enough.
With that, the last spark of Chaos Energy light escapes my fingertips.
I hang in-between for a second. I forgot how to breathe before and my body's struggling to recall the muscle-memory of it all now, I'm sure a skill made only more challenging by the fact that I can't feel anything within me. There's nothing left to feel.
The darkness rushes in for my vision just as the first feeling fades back into reality for me.
Gravity.
-X-X-X-
Sonic's View
There was Super Tails crashing through the ceiling of the building.
An impossible show of light and darkness in the skylight Tails had made himself.
Sonic couldn't figure out how to move, how to feel. Maybe Amy was at his side but Sonic could only stare up at his little brother as he exploded with more power than Sonic could ever have fathomed.
Only when Tails's once more too-mortal body plummeted back down did Sonic remember who he was, what he could do, and why any of that mattered to him at all.
Sonic raced full speed for the wall. The room was shaped like a cylinder. He could use that. He sped from the floor straight onto the wall. With enough speed gathered, gravity ignored Sonic. He raced around the room in a spiral, climbing higher and higher, until he was almost level with Tails's falling body.
Sonic shoved off the wall and dove straight for the center of the room. Time hung there for one second, two seconds, and then—
Sonic's body collided with Tails's in midair.
Sonic's arms snapped around Tails's form. He twisted his body around in midair as the now pair of them plummeted from the sky. Sonic pulled Tails's limp body in toward his chest.
Sonic's sneakers hit the ground. His knees immediately buckled beneath him, and he crashed to the floor. But his grip on Tails didn't slip, not even a fraction of an inch. Something in Sonic's head screamed. But it wasn't the Chaos Emeralds this time. He couldn't figure out how to move his own body anymore, not after the adrenaline rush that led to his crash landing.
Amy knelt opposite him. Sonic didn't remember her arriving there but then there she was. She reached out and with gentle pressure, helped him figure out how to loosen his grip enough to lower Tails's body to the ground.
He looked….he looked like Tails. His fur wasn't the least bit charred from all the Energy he'd held in his body. He still had two arms, two legs, two tails. But his eyes were pressed closed and Sonic couldn't think much beyond that. Even as Amy checked Tails's pulse once, twice, three times.
"He's alive," she whispered.
Sonic's eyes flashed to her for a heartbeat, long enough to see her press her hand to her mouth in disbelief, before his eyes snapped back to Tails. Sonic's brain woke up enough to see the rise and fall of Tails's chest.
After all that, Chaos Energy and fake Energy and whatever vision of time C2 had opened up to him, Tails was alive.
Tails was alive.
Tails was alive.
Screw all of time and space. Whatever Tails had done to save them all. None of that mattered. What mattered was Tails was alive.
Sonic hung his head and forgot he had ever told anyone in his life not to cry as he himself dissolved.