Chapter IX

Control

Sonic found himself slumped over the floor, feeling borderline intoxicated and gurgling a mass of bubbles into an ever-growing pile. His mouth tasted like linoleum and everything smelled upside down. He struggled to get a bearing on his immediate surroundings, which frustratingly refused to stop doing their best Merry-Go-Round impression. Then he coughed up a ball of phlegm, grimaced at its worrying size, and shifted himself to look in the other direction.

Tails.

Oh right.

He'd been waiting for the fox to awaken and – apparently – fallen unconscious himself. So much for nothing being wrong with him. Had the G.U.N. medic lied to him? Or was this new? There was really no way to tell at this point.

He reached over and pet Tails, trying to express what many words he had to say to him in what meager gestures were currently available. He sighed loudly; he was petting Tails way too much. This would be kinda creepy if he hadn't thought the guy had been killed twice. Sonic shook his head. It was fine. Whatever; nobody's watching.

OK, that definitely sounded creepy. Sonic whipped his hand away from Tails and used it to massage his own aching brow. He felt really terrible, and it was only getting worse. Up to this point he'd thought he could fight through the pain, but after last night? He literally had to be carried by Knuckles, just about blinded from the searing agony.

Ugh.

When was Tails gonna wake up? This was getting concerning. He'd been out for...however long Sonic had been plus the time from before then to last night. Whatever that added up to. The seemingly-fresh scars on his head were a worrying detail Sonic was struggling not to think about. There were a million questions that demanded a prompt answer. Sonic couldn't help but already feel pangs of guilt for his abandonment of Nova. At the time he'd been too furious to think straight. Now he was just festering over the idea that in his rage he'd compromised the war against G.U.N. – the kind of thing he'd never thought himself capable of.

His own words, "The world can take care of itself for once!" haunted him. That wasn't him; it was profoundly unhim. He didn't believe those words, and he didn't like that he could ever think them. He was horrified to have even an enemy hear them coming out of his mouth, let alone Knuckles. He flinched involuntarily at the idea of Tails somehow having heard him, despite his unconsciousness.

For the first time ever, Sonic felt he wasn't coming out in one piece. He'd been pushed further than he ever thought possible only to be straight-up shoved off a cliff. No matter how things turned out in the end, he couldn't be sure his sanity would remain unblemished. He hadn't comfortably slept but a night or two since this whole ordeal started, and even those nights were subject to viscerally disturbing nightmares. Every night he'd dream about losing Tails or failing to save someone only to helplessly watch them die before him; always a complete loss of control.

Could he really blame himself for losing it over Tails' apparent death before his eyes? That wasn't just a nightmare scenario; it was his literal nightmare coming true. Again. AGAIN. How was he supposed to bounce back from this? He couldn't bear to let Tails out of his sight, but he also felt terrified to put the guy back on the field where anything could happen to him. Sonic scoffed. It was honestly kind of hilarious. He'd been a prisoner for so long, and his first certain freedom found him a prisoner to his own mind.

How pathetic.

Not that such thoughts were helpful, but they had their ways of inching in apropos nothing and declaring amnesty for several hours. He wondered where Knuckles was. He'd left in such a hurry he hadn't even spoken to the guy since they'd been on the plane. The moment he'd disembarked he'd bailed for home, carrying the unconscious Tails with him.

Maybe it wasn't such a big deal. Knuckles could find them if he wanted to. The important thing was Tails was safe, and Sonic was never going to let the fox out of his sight again. He couldn't stress this enough to himself: nothing was going to hurt Tails on his watch. The poor boy had suffered so much for being his friend, and enough was enough. Sonic would die before anyone laid a finger on him ever again.

Only right then, Tails stirred. Sonic responded by unleashing a tidal wave of joy to drown every negative thought permeating his conscience.

"Buddy! Pal!" Sonic exclaimed, alongside six or seven other synonyms.

Tails squinted his eyes. "...Sonic?" came a very unsure voice.

"Hey! Hi! How are you? Well, I mean, probably not great, but you're here!"

Tails immediately freaked out. "Where are we?! Is she here?!"

"Tails, buddy, nobody's around. We're safe."

"No no no, you don't understand, that fox girl is a big problem! You don't know what she did to me!"

"Calm down, just explain it to me." Sonic found himself for some reason not choking on his own rage at the revelation that Nova was definitely dirty.

"The Master Emerald! She took the Master Emerald! I was trying to..." Tails trailed off, realizing he was about to admit to Sonic that he tried to sacrifice himself. "She abducted me with the Master Emerald. I think it was an accident but when she realized who I was they forced me to integrate it into a plane or something to power a cloaking device."

Sonic suppressed the anger-contorted face he felt fighting to form, now equally mad at himself for bailing on Knuckles. "Oh, you be gotta be fu..." He quickly course-corrected to "...kidding me," not wanting to swear so obscenely in front of Tails. It'd been shouldering in on his vocabulary ever since that unforgettable night at the Shrine of the Master Emerald where he was sure he'd lost Tails; the night he couldn't stop reliving over and over in his dreams, somehow ever more traumatizing with each iteration.

"She hooked me up to this computer virtual reality prison thing." Tails furiously gestured at this scalp. "There were wires in my head! I have no idea why they didn't just use a real jail. Do I have scars?"

Sonic sighed. "Yeah. I was afraid to ask..."

"Where are we?" Tails wondered, squinting his eyes at the dark room. They hadn't quite come into focus yet.

"Your house. I turned down the lights cuz you were asleep."

Tails glanced at his wrist. "What's that?!" he exclaimed in another explosion of anxiety.

"It's just a chaos drive bracelet!" Sonic assured him. "I put it on you to help you wake up."

Tails quickly noticed the ball of slime on the floor. "...and that?"

"I have a cold," Sonic lied.

"Gross," said Tails.

"Yep," Sonic agreed. "Didn't want to leave your side though."

"That's sweet, but I'd really prefer you not be hacking up loogies next to me while I'm sleeping."

Sonic snorted in amusement.

"Eew! Don't cough up another one!" Tails objected with a broad smile on his face.

Sonic chuckled out loud. "Oh man, you have no idea. You have no fu–" The briefest of pauses. "...no idea how long I've been waiting to kid around with you again."

Tails smiled. "Are you accidentally dropping f-bombs but catching yourself?"

"You don't know what I've been through."

"To be fair, I've been swearing a lot too recently."

"You better not be. At least one of us needs to be able to go out in public."

"I hate to...well, cut this off...but I think it's a little important how you found that plane."

Sonic paused. "I was manipulated into working for Nova. Me and Knuckles were on a mission to collect liquid chaos before we heard really suspicious transmissions from her." He excised his sickness from the equation with surgical accuracy. "When we came back she'd locked us out of the plane so we had to break in. And–and Knuckles said earlier he sensed the Master Emerald on the plane but they kept telling us it was my chaos drive bracelet powering the cloak."

Tails scoffed. "Pfff, yeah, like that makes sense."

"I know! But I didn't have any other choice. Nova promised she would help me find you. I had no other leads. I didn't know what else to do..."

"Oh...dude," said Tails, piecing things together. "I was right there. If you were with her then I was always right under your nose."

Sonic tried to dismiss the rage this information was bringing out. "I didn't trust her...but I never thought she'd be this two-faced. She better not have ever hurt you."

Tails mulled this over. "No," he lied.

Sonic became visibly distressed. "...why did you have to think about it?"

"I mean she locked me in a room for so long I lost any sense of time. That hurt but she didn't, like, hit me."

Sonic stood up. "Be right back."

"What? Where?" Tails wondered, uneasy with the idea of being left alone.

"Obviously, I'm gonna go ice this bitch," Sonic responded, only half-joking.

"You're thinking about this the wrong way!" Tails insisted, brightening up. "We aren't prisoners anymore and we know what's really going on! All we have to do is claim some sort of amnesia on my part – I dunno, blame the stun gun – and then you go back to working with her."

"Why?" Sonic asked sharply, not remotely into it.

"Because now we have the power. We can use her and those terrorist people to our advantage. "

"Hey, you know..." Sonic began to like this idea. "She's not gonna try to cross us after what just happened. I basically tried to kill her after she shot you."

Tails paused. "Uh..."

"Hey, I thought she just killed you in front of me! After I'd fought so long and hard to find you! Honestly, I just beat her up a bit." He half-mimed a punch. "I don't think I would've, like, actually...killed her." Tails continued to sit in silence, not sure how to take this. "Don't tell me she didn't have it coming!" Sonic objected.

"She did," Tails conceded. "But that just doesn't sound like you."

"Really? That I would do anything for you doesn't sound like me?" Sonic snapped, getting kind of indignant. "Sorry for caring I guess!"

"Back off," Tails grumbled, feeling like he'd had the subject changed on him. "You know what I mean."

Sonic facepalmed. "I'm sorry. I'm under so much stress I feel like I'm losing my grip."

Tails gave a very serious look. "Tell me the truth. You're sick, aren't you? And I don't mean a cold. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Sonic tried to come up with some comforting answer that down-played everything. "It's not just sick. I heal...super quickly. Sometimes it hurts like I'm sick but real injuries just...go away."

"You need to be tested again. You were either deceived about the findings of your first test, or there were no discernible symptoms that soon after exposure. You've clearly been affected and something as unnatural as rapid healing is way more concerning than it might sound on the surface."

This confused Sonic. "Whaddaya mean? It's a frickin' superpower."

"It's biologically impossible is what it is." Tails was growing frustrated with Sonic's lack of concern for himself. "You're not even slightly worried that your body has been somehow corrupted by an unnatural substance?"

"I guess I haven't had the time to worry about myself," said Sonic, simply.

Tails sighed loudly. "I can't believe I have to say this, but maybe you need to stop caring so much about other people."

Sonic could only think of snarky retaliation, so chose to say, "Eh."

"I take it by your non-response that you've taken my words to heart," said Tails, mirroring the level of snark in Sonic's head.

"Whatever, just test me. If that's what you want, I'll do it."

"This isn't about what I want," Tails almost interrupted. "This is about not letting you die because you're too busy worrying about me to take care of yourself."

Sonic formulated several objections but decided not to voice any of them. "OK," was his response of pure acknowledgment with no value judgment.

"Come on," Tails told him, standing up without even a wobble.

Sonic mirrored the action, sans lack of wobble.

"Be careful," said Tails, holding his hand out instinctively as Sonic stumbled.

"I'm good, I'm good," Sonic auto-piloted, not accepting the help.

"Nobody expects you to be invincible, Sonic. You can't keep carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders."

Sonic didn't answer. Maybe Tails would shut up about his sickness if he got tested. After all, there were more important things to worry about.