For Luke, my adorable baby brother who is a lot like Tails.

Foreword:

Recently, I revisited my childhood love of Sonic X with my youngest siblings. My brother loved it, and related in particular to Tails. Naturally, he was quite moved by the finale, and told me that the one thing he was disappointed with was that we didn't get to see much of Tails' grief after losing Cosmo. Well, I've owned him a fanfic for quite some time, so I decided to grant this wish of his. The level of angst is necessarily higher than what would've passed in the actual series, but aside from that I tried to stay true to form as much as possible. Despite my early reservations about my ability to do this epilogue justice, I'm quite pleased with how it came out. ^-^ I hope everyone enjoys it.

P.S. Anyone following my work may notice that this is my third 'pie-fic.' :P I'm on a roll! XD

If I am guilty—woe to me! Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head, for I am full of shame and drowned in my affliction.

— Job 10:15

« ... »

"I'm sorry that I keep troubling you to the very end," her voice echoed almost audibly.

Tails' hand trembled in its grip on the wrench in his hand, then squeezed harder. He grit his teeth and shot a resolute frown at the battered engine of the X Tornado. This was his third time tearing the thing apart and rebuilding it after, and the damage seemed to get worse every time. Still, it never took long enough to fix.

"I want you to shoot me, Tails."

A slip of the hand pinned his wrist between his wrench and one of the X Tornado's turbines. He gasped and choked down a scream as a searing pain filled his fingers. He jerked his hand loose, and the wrench clattered to the floor. Wincing and biting his lip, he grasped firmly on his throbbing wrist while he waited off the pain. It was terrible, but so mild in comparison to the heartache it had momentarily distracted him from that by the time it was gone he would have given anything to have it back.

Tears stung his eyes while he looked down at his hand and saw a nasty grease-smudged scrape reaching from the bottom of his palm down the inside of his wrist, spilling a thin trail of blood all the way down his arm.

Seething under his breath, he tromped over to his workbench and set his hand on a thin strip of white cloth sitting in front of the window.

There he froze. His fingers trembled in their shaky grip, the feel of the light fabric seeming to cut right through his skin. This was the cloth Cosmo had used to bandage a scrape on his forehead not too long ago, stripped away from the petals of her own skirt.

"It's my fault that you were hurt," she had said in that soft, selfless voice of hers.

That was the moment when Tails had realized...

Seizing his eyes shut, he snatched the bandage off his bench. Between his free hand and his teeth he managed to sloppily bind up his wrist so tight that it might as well have been a tourniquet.

He let his wounded hand fall limp at his side, ignoring the dull throbbing of blood pumping against the pressure of the tight bandage. For a long moment he just stood there staring at the workbench, his eyes fixed on a tiny object that had been hidden beneath the cloth. It was the one part of her he had left. He still remembered with frightening clarity the moment when Sonic had placed it in his hand. A white seed. Ironically reminiscent of the name that was given to Cosmo by the Metarex. In that horrible moment, trembling from head to toe with tears streaming from his eyes, he had felt like the weight of Cosmo's entire life was resting there in the palm of his hand with that one little seed.

Now, a week later as he stood there staring at the last vestige of the girl he had loved, he still couldn't bring himself to touch it. He felt like he might destroy it, and every trace of Cosmo would be lost to him forever.

His wallowing was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and he turned around to see the cheerful face of an uninvited guest.

"Hi, there," Amy greeted with a smile. "I brought you a pie."

She held up the desert for him to see. It was topped with a fluffy cloud of white stuff as opposed to the textured top crust he was used to seeing on her pies. Not that it mattered. What was she doing here, anyway? Did she really think he wanted to eat sweets at a time like this?

Tails ignored her and lumbered back to the open engine of his plane.

"How are the repairs coming along?" Amy asked, undeterred as she strolled into the workshop and set her pie down on the bench.

"I'm almost finished," Tails dryly answered. "Shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

"Oh, that's good. Hey, maybe when you're done we should all go on a picnic somewhere."

Tails felt a deep resentment rising in his heart. In a toneless voice he muttered back, "A picnic?"

Was she serious? It had been one week. Seven days since he had lost the most important person in the world to him. A picnic?!

"Don't you think it would be fun?" she asked, and he thought he noticed her voice getting quieter, her tone a little more reserved. It almost seemed like she was having trouble softening her usual demeanor enough to come off as kind. Amy trying to be gentle. That was a laugh.

"No," Tails firmly replied. Refusing to look at her, he just continued working in the engine of the X Tornado.

Amy was uncharacteristically silent for a long moment, until Tails was almost curious enough to turn around and see her face.

"Tails," she muttered at long last, her voice as caring and tender as he'd ever heard. "I know you're still grieving for Cosmo. Believe me, we all completely understand."

She hesitated, and Tails almost softened toward her. Then she went and added, "Just... try not to let it bother you too much."

Tails just about threw his wrench at her for the pang of rage that screamed up into his throat. He turned to face her, eyes flaming, and repeated her careless words in a frighteningly serious tone, "Try not to... what?"

Amy shied back. Apparently she realized too late how her comment had sounded. "I mean, it was what she wanted—"

"What was what she wanted?" Tails shouted. "Are you saying she wanted to die?"

"No, that's not—!" Amy waved her hands frantically, tripping over her own words. "What I'm trying to say is that she wanted you to—"

Amy bit her tongue mid sentence and froze. It must have been obvious even to her that there was no redemption for her now.

"To what?" Tails demanded. "Finish, Amy! She wanted me to kill her, is that what you were trying to say?!"

A fearful look consumed Amy's face, and her eyes glazed over. She slowly took a few steps back, then turned tail and ran, disappearing from the workshop within seconds.

Frustration gnawed at Tails while he stared after Amy, his fists trembling at his sides. He spun around and slammed the engine hood without running a final system check. He climbed into the cockpit and began takeoff procedures.

It didn't matter where he went. He just needed to get away from here.

« « « « « ж » » » » »

Trees, rivers, and rock formations sailed past as the landscape below blurred into multicolored streaks. Furious grief played across his face while he kept his hand planted firmly on the accelerator. What was he doing? Did he think he could escape her memory like this?

All across the control board warning lights and alarms blinked like crazy, but he was deaf to them. His single-minded focus was firmly rooted in the past. Memories he couldn't shake and times he couldn't forget blazed through his mind—a whirlwind of wishes and regrets.

"Can you please open this?" he remembered Cosmo asking the one time they had flown in this plane together. After he'd complied with her strange request, she jumped out of the cockpit and dove towards the ground, as though she had no fear of death. He had wondered then whether she was strange or just plain crazy.

Wincing and squeezing his eyes shut, he hit the hatch release. The domed windshield overhead pulled back, and a loud hiss issued through the cabin as air blasted his face, drying his tears within seconds. The warning alarms kept getting louder, and Tails kept ignoring them. He forced his eyes open against the wind sheer to the image of a huge tree, and imagined he saw Cosmo's smiling face transposed over the visage of its flowery pink leaves.

He gasped, and on pure, mindless instinct, he slammed the brakes and jerked his control stick to the left. The X Tornado swerved, and one of its wings struck the bough of the tree and broke off. Tails' survival instincts took over as lights and alarms blared across his control board, too late to heed their warning. He desperately pulled back against the control stick and manually injected short bursts of fuel into the failing engine. Another huge tree was coming up fast in front of him, and with the controls barely responding he knew he'd never be able to dodge it.

Without a second thought he undid his seat belt and leapt out of the cockpit. The earsplitting crash of the plane roared behind him as he fumbled into a clumsy hover. A jagged piece of metal from the plane's battered frame sliced into his shoulder as it plummeted past him on his left. He cried out in pain and seized his eyes shut, clamping a hand over the wound. Blood pooled against his palm, and it was all he could do to keep from joining the Tornado in its freefall to the hard ground below. A thundering boom issued through the air, and Tails opened his eyes to see the mangled carcass of his pride and joy settling into the dirt below.

His heart sank at the sight of it as he drifted closer. It was only a machine, but still... Remembering the look of heartbroken shock on Amy's face before she'd fled his workshop, it seemed to Tails that all he could do lately was bring harm. He'd hurt Amy, wrecked his plane, and worst of all...

He couldn't even finish the thought.

What had happened to his ability to fix things? To help people? To make his friends smile?

With a woeful sigh he landed beside the wreckage of what was once the X Tornado and stared in self-loathing frustration. One thing was for sure: it would take plenty of time to fix now.

Lowering his head with a bitter sigh, he turned away and walked alone into the forest toward home.

« ... »

The sting in his shoulder had abated somewhat, and now there was just a dull ache in the wound where Tails kept his hand pressed. The bleeding had all but stopped, but blood had since flowed down his arm and dyed red the cloth binding the cut on his wrist. Both his body and his heart were as broken as the X Tornado.

The sun was setting. His feet ached and his stomach growled. He'd been walking for hours. It felt more like years.

A familiar gust perked his ears, and he looked up to see a blue streak in the distance seconds before Sonic appeared a few yards in front of him.

"Finally, I found you," the hedgehog muttered cheerfully. "Where've you b—?"

He cut himself short and flashed to Tails' side. "Are you okay?" he asked, eying his mess of an arm with deep concern.

Tails said nothing and walked on past him, stubbornly insisting, "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"I know."

Tails didn't know or care what Sonic would do, but he was a little surprised when for a few seconds he didn't do anything. After a moment a gust of wind brushed Tails' back and Sonic was once more at his side, matching his steady pace.

"Everyone's really worried about you," he stated casually.

Of course they were. Tails kept walking, turning his face away from Sonic.

Undeterred, Sonic zipped around to his other side and dipped his head down to meet his friend's eyes again. "When I left to look for you this afternoon, Chris was about ready to organize a search party."

Tails remained silent, stubbornly dragging his sore feet a little faster so that Sonic fell behind. Of course there was no way he could lose him that easily, but maybe he'd take the hint.

The second set of footsteps stopped, and from a few feet back Tails heard Sonic's voice gingerly ask, "Hey...are you sure you're okay?"

For the first time since he'd crashed Tails stopped in his tracks, then turned about-face and frowned angrily at Sonic. He expected this kind of cluelessness from Amy, but Sonic? Sonic was his best friend. He should know better! Huffing a deep, frustrated breath, he steeled himself to make the answer glaringly, painfully obvious.

"I killed Cosmo," he shouted. "She told me to shoot her, and I did. I pulled that trigger and watched her turn into dust right in front of my eyes! How do you think that feels?"

Sonic didn't so much as blink—just stood there and held Tails' gaze with a slightly sympathetic expression. "I know how it feels."

Tails flinched, finding it difficult to believe that even Sonic could have that much nerve. Making a fist, he seethed through his teeth, "What?"

"You may have pulled the trigger," Sonic added plainly, "but I'm the one who killed her."

Tails choked on a gasp, his clenched hand falling open. How was it that he had never made that connection before? The weapon that had finished Cosmo fired a living bullet. While Tails was able to look on from the safety of the Blue Typhoon, it was Sonic who had to be there in the kill zone, and actually feel Cosmo's life force slip away.

Standing there looking into Sonic's steady green eyes, Tails felt absolutely wretched, bogged down underneath the weight of a whole new sin. It had never occurred to him that Sonic had been feeling the same sickening guilt he felt in that moment after the battle when he had given him the white seed. And even so, Sonic hadn't said a word in reproach or retaliation when Tails had unleashed his own grief in all its ugliness upon him. He remembered the harsh words he'd said to his best friend. Words of blame, as though what happened was Sonic's fault.

"I thought you'd be able to save her..." he had rasped through his tears, weakly pounding a fist against Sonic's chest. "I believed in you!"

And even now, his ever faithful friend just stood there waiting for him to speak. His smile was soft and genuine, as if nothing was wrong.

Unable to hold back a fresh wave of tears, Tails looked away in shame and waveringly muttered, "I was right. All I can do anymore is bring harm."

"What was that?" Sonic asked stepping closer so he could hear.

Frustration washed over Tails' weary soul, and he forcefully pushed Sonic away.

"Leave me alone! I'm not like you, Sonic! I can't just forgive myself and move on. I'm not strong enough."

Eyes downcast, Tails turned away from his best friend yet again, exacerbating the guilt he already felt. "If you trouble yourself worrying about me, I'll only drag you down... Just forget about me!"

"Tails..."

For a moment there was silence. Tails couldn't see Sonic's expression, and he was afraid to turn around and look. He hated that silence. He wanted Sonic to say something, or to just turn and leave. When he couldn't take the waiting any longer he took a step forward, intending to walk away, and suddenly Sonic spoke.

"I heard Amy made you a lemon meringue pie."

Tails stopped mid-step, and this time he couldn't resist the curiosity to turn around.

Sonic just chattered on, as though talking about the weather. "Her specialty is apple, yet she made you lemon meringue. Do you know why?"

Tails frowned in confusion. What was he getting at?

Sonic smiled and crossed his arms. "It's because it was Cosmo's favorite."

Tails' eyes opened wide. His ears and shoulders perked as he listened.

"Apparently Cream made one for her to cheer her up after the thing with Shadow, and she loved it so much she asked Cream to teach her how to make them. Said she wanted to make one for you when we all came home."

Tails choked up, tears flowing freely down his soggy cheeks. Sonic just shrugged and flippantly added, "'Course, there's no telling how accurate that story is. I heard it from Amy earlier today, so it's probably exaggerated. She was really upset. She said she never thought you could be so scary."

Here Sonic paused for a long moment and patiently looked at his friend. If he was waiting for Tails to respond, he'd be waiting a long time. Right now Tails felt like he could hardly stand, let alone talk.

So, Sonic spoke up once again, going on as casually as ever, seeming oblivious to Tails falling apart right in front of him. "This morning Cream and Cheese went to pick lemons for her while she made the crust, and Chris got me to help him find eggs." He paused to shake his head and inserted under his breath, "I still don't understand how you can get meringue out of eggs... but anyway, we all helped with it, because Amy thought it would make you smile."

Sonic turned away to look at the sunset, and wistfully added, "Tails... was Cosmo the only person in your life worth living for?"

"Of course not," Tails exclaimed, surprised at how fast the answer had come. Was it really that simple? After all the countless hours he'd spent crying alone thinking he'd never be the same again... could he really step forward into the future with his head held high for the simple reason that he had something—someone—to live for?

His deceptively wise friend turned to face him, and held out a friendly hand. "Hey, Pal... what do you say we go home?"

« « « « « ж » » » » »

Thanks to Sonic, Tails made it back home before the moon was high in the sky, and there was just enough twilight left to see by. It didn't take long for all his concerned friends to start flocking to his house, pestering him relentlessly with all the standard questions, worries, and what-have-you.

Amy looked like she would cry when she got her first look at the bloody double injury on his left arm, but instead bullied her way through a gruff nursing effort, ignoring Tails' cries of protest as she applied various medicines and disinfectants, making the open wounds hurt about ten times worse than the initial cuts had. He had never hated—or liked her more.

By the time he finally managed to convince everyone he was okay and shoo them all out of his house, the moon was high in the sky. Heaving a long yawn, he realized that he was thoroughly worn out—physically, mentally, and emotionally—but somehow just wasn't ready to go to sleep yet.

Rubbing his swollen red eyes, he wandered into his workshop, absentmindedly dreaming up a plan to go and fetch the X Tornado tomorrow, as well as starting a mental list of things that would need to be fixed or replaced.

The first thing he saw when he turned to face the work bench was the lemon meringue pie that Amy had brought him. His heart swelled as he remembered what Sonic had told him about the significance of that dessert.

Gingerly he stepped up to it, and saw that it was already cut into slices. He picked one up, hesitated for a second, then closed his eyes and took a bite. He had never tried lemon meringue pie before, but he now understood why it had been Cosmo's favorite. It was full of wonderful contrasts. The lemon filling was dense, viscous, and tart to the tongue, while the sweet, airy meringue crowned it like a cloud of cotton candy.

Bittersweet. Like the ups and downs of life.

As he slowly chewed the morsel in his mouth, savoring every subtle flavor, he thought he would start to cry again. Instead he did something even more surprising.

He smiled.

He took another bite, and this time he almost laughed. What was happening? Was he losing his mind? Or could it be that he was actually... beginning to heal?

He finished the slice of pie in his hand and was about to go for another one, when he noticed the faint glimmer of a small object reflecting moonlight. He turned to his right and saw the tiny white seed, shining its very best as though calling out to him.

Tails' ears drooped at the sight of it, and after a moment's hesitation he slowly reached out and picked it up. The little seed sparkled in his palm like a pearl—a precious, living treasure. It was Cosmo's child, whom she had entrusted to him, and all that was left of a race that had nearly driven itself to extinction. How could he have let it sit so long without the touch of a caring soul to nurture its fragile life into being?

Grunting in determination, he snuffed the guilt rising up once more within him and focused instead on action. He turned to a pile of tools by the wall and dug around until he found a small ceramic pot, then ran outside and filled it with the richest soil he could find. As gently as he could he fingered the seed just a little below the surface and covered it with a blanket of topsoil. Resisting the urge to run for fear of dropping the pot, he went back inside and headed straight for the sink to give his seed its first taste of water.

What would come from this seed? Would it sprout a vine with little pods that each contained a miniature Cosmo? Would it simply grow into a single form that would one day separate from the ground and gain consciousness? He couldn't even imagine what the birthing process would be like for a child of a plant-based race. All he knew was that it was his responsibility to care for the life in his hands until it opened its eyes to the world, and then forever after.

He had made up his mind. Whatever came out of that seed, he would raise as his own, and the story of Cosmo's great sacrifice would be passed on to the first free generation of her race in a millennium..

In the morning he would seek out the spot in the workshop that got the most sun, but for now he set the pot on the windowsill beside his bed and lay down, his fatigue overcoming him in seconds.

"Good night," he whispered to the pot, then pulled the covers over his head.

It was the first sound sleep he'd had in a week.

Author's Notes:

- Lemon Meringue Pie— Strangely enough, I didn't used to like lemon meringue pie. O.O I always hated the meringue, so I would scrape it off and eat the rest like a pudding pie. ^-^ I'm happy to report, however, that I have at last acquired some degree of sanity, and like Cosmo I totally love this pie. :3