Work Text:
It was a cool, wet, and late evening. Tails was outside, in between his house and the border of forest, working on his latest invention, a time machine.
Though Silver had once mentioned to never mess with time travel, the fox just wanted to see if he could actually accomplish that feat.
“Okay. Now time to put in that chaos emerald.”, Tails said as he finished building a vest
The experiment was going to be simple. Earlier, about an hour ago, his cookies had gone missing. While Sonic denied having been in the kitchen during the time of the crime, Tails didn’t quite believe him seeing that the blue hedgehog had some sort of crumbs on his face.
His goal was to travel an hour back to observe if Sonic really was the one that ate his cookies.
He inserted the power source and nothing happened.
(Insert scene where Tails is in his outside lab messing with a machine using a chaos emerald) time travel.
Random stuff happens to cause the future to be bad. Tails accidentally travels to a future where it’s apocalyptic.
at first it was Eggman’s fault then shadow escalated it.
Tails landed on the ground.
The fox coughed up sand. Sand? He wasn’t near the ocean.
It was a red desert.
(Where am I?)
Tails quickled checked his gps. It was funny. He was still on the island but the geography had changed.
He needed to find Sonic.
Trekking through the desert dunes, he beards some commotions(?)
Sonic finds tails. Very apocalyptic desert red sand.
Well you haven’t shown up in a while. Sonic said.
Tails gets injured and dislocated his leg and Sonic helps out by giving him some alcohol to numb the pain and tells the Fox to count to three but resets the leg back on two. He also gave him a towel to bite as he reset the leg so Tails wouldn’t bite off his tongue.
(Tails screamed.)
“Oww my leg.”, Tails said in pain as he held it.
The fox winced in pain.
“Fuck.”, the older sibling sweared. “Okay. Let me take a closer look.” Sonic bends down to examine the leg. When he went to hold it, Tails hissed in pain.
”Damnit. So you dislocated one of the leg bones okay? Well I’m going to set it back but you need to be very quiet.
Tails nodded.
“Let’s go back to the base. It’s not that far from here.”
(Talks about how he is going to relocate it)
Eggman barely has working robots and he and sonic were Allies until he died.
Blue rat
Egghead
You lived with Eggman?
I became desperate to have living connections.
Shadow is a dictator for some reason,(it’s never explained but something caused him to turn evil)(maybe a Super Sonic from the Archie comics situation)(like maybe all the chaos emeralds made him crazy)(Shadow is obsessed with capturing sonic but sonic has managed to avoid him. Sonic’s in hiding and was hiding with Eggman before he passed away because of stress and old age)
(After sonic shows tails his sock puppets and doesn’t talk about where the others are)
“Umm, so where is everyone?”, Tails asked. The place
“This is everyone.”, Sonic said as he walked with his arms opened as if to display the emptiness of the underground shelter. He went to a cabinet door and opened it.
Inside was a collection of sock puppets,
showed his collection of sock puppets to Tails. There was almost one of everyone of their friends and they looked all homemade based on the scraps of clothes and amateur work done.
“Sonic,” Tails paused. “Have you been alone for all this time?” Tails asked.
Sonic had his back facing tails but his ears twitch in response and a sad look passed his face.
“It’s only been three years.”
”What happened in the those years then? How could things gotten so bad?
Sonic sipped from his flask. “They just did.”
“Chaos, It all just happened so fast. Much faster than I was used to. And honestly? You already know this story, Tails. Don’t know why you keep wanting me to talk about it.”
”Okay?”, Tails said confused.
“Anyways, are you hungry? I’ve got some food I scavenged earlier that we can eat.”
(Sonic only takes out one can at first because he still thinks tails is imaginary)
Sonic took out the cans out of the fire. It was their dinner for tonight.
The brothers ate the chili beans straight from the can. Their dinner felt tense and awkward. Sonic would just look at Tails with a look that the fox couldn’t decipher and Tails would think about what could have happened to his brother in the past few years.
Assessing the situation.
The awkwardness made the stares become almost like a competition. A staring contest if you will. The two of them focused on the other person as they continued to eat. No small talk was made. Neither one of them had made the move yet but they subconsciously began to nod to each more than necessary.
The brothers both kept nodding at each other as put spoonfuls of spoonfuls worth of beans in their mouth with out looking away.
Until Tails blinked and sonic got up with the speed he used to have and fist bump the sky. “I won!” “hooray 🥳”
Tails is full of questions.
“Did Eggman do something to them?”, he questioned.
Sonic Scoffed(?)
“Did Eggman do something to them, he said?”
“There is no way we can win.-sonic”
Sonic and his sock puppets.
“Everyone is dead.” I got puppets of all out friends.
What about shadow?
We don’t talk about him. He is dead to me.
Sonic eating chili beans from a can in an abandoned Eggman base of operations
Awkward staring and nodding to each other while eating beans.
The base was an decrepit, abandoned, should have been barely classified as a shelter.
It was frankly, almost unlivable. Had Sonic really been living under these harsh conditions?
Shadow cut off Sonic’s leg.
Sonic has a fucked up leg(or it got chopped off and he wears a prosthetic) and wears a brace. Sonic is wearing Tails’s googles.(the only thing he could save from the body)(they also have a crack on one of the lenses)(are those my googles? Tails asked. Yeah. It was the one thing that I could save. Sonic said)Sonic is a bit jaded(?) and is an alcoholic.(he’s 18) like a three year timeship. Sonic also knows how to deal with some of Eggman’s tech because Eggman taught him.
Eggman made the leg(with what he could) and helped save sonic.
“Wait a vest? Was it a grey dark futurey looking vest with a hole in the middle?
“Yes. It how I got here in the first place.
“It’s stuck at our house by the cliff.
“That’s good right? We can just grab it and go.”
“No it’s not good because Shadow is currently residing there.”
“Wait but you said that all of our friends died. So why isn’t Shadow included in that?”
“Because of what he did to me.”
“We were boyfriends once(insert a vague description of why Shadow became evil and why it was a gradual thing)
“I should have noticed.
I’m not a hero anymore. I’m just a guy who’s got nothing left to lose.
You’ve got your life to lose sonic.
Tails. You have been dead for so long and I hallucinate about you guys all the time. I don’t know what’s real anymore.
The gun has a Chaos emerald that tails needs to power up the device.
(Sonic was wandering the desert to kill shadow and stumbled upon Tails. He gets his exercise by running in a hamster wheel at the base. He goes crazy because he’s been in there for a long time without going out.)
I did give it my all tails. Sonic said angrily. (Then breath in and out) (now sounding defeated emotionally) but my all just wasn’t good enough.
Sonic sighed. “Let’s just get you back to when you belong.”
“Chaos, i must be going insane. Yeah I’ll help you get back home.”
(This isn’t freedom, sonic)line maybe
Sonic, why were you out in the desert today if Shadow is hunting you down and your leg isn’t working right?
I was going to end it.
End what? Please don’t tell me it
Sonic said nothing, choosing to focus on what was ahead of him
The reason sonic doesn’t run as often is because the material of his prosthetic leg isn’t that strong to withstand the full force of his speed which he need. It starts to break and disintegrated.
Tails manages to get home after seeing future sonic sacrifice himself to get tails home.(he runs so that shadow chases him and gets captured after all that time evading capture and hiding.)(Don’t forget me)
also shit(when sonic saw shadow) well I guess today is as good a day to die. Or today seems like a good day to die.
“Damn it.”, Sonic looked back and forth between his Chaos gun and Tails.
Making up his mind, the blue hedgehog took out the emerald and threw it at Tails, who fumbled but caught it all the same.
“I’m going to distract him! Fix the vest and get out of here!”
“Hey Shadow!”, Sonic taunted. “Come and get me job do
“See you on the other side, Tails.”, Sonic yelled out. He grabbed onto Shadow, wrestling to keep his grip on the other hedgehog, before he jumped off of the ledge.
“Wait!”, Tails cried out. He flew and tried to reach out his hand but it was too late. As Sonic and Shadow crashed into the dark waters, the fox had already crossed over.
Tails was finally were he belonged. In the present, his home. He knelt with his hand still stretched out for what seems to be hours.
Sonic had really done what he said he was going to do. What he was planning since before he found him wandering in the desert.
After somewhat composing himself, Tails flies home.
He arrives at his front door and unlock it.
Tails goes home looking like he witnessed death and present timeline Sonic comes to comfort him after noticing that something was wrong. Tails holds him tightly. and tries to figure out a way to stop this.
“Oh Tails, you’re back.”, Sonic said as he put his comic book down and hopped off the couch.
The fox did not respond. He instead grabbed Sonic into the tightest of hugs and trembled in his embrace. The blue hedgehog held him tighter.
Tails didn’t know what he could do to prevent the future he had witness but he was going to try his hardest to stop it from happening. Unaware of the catastrophic consequences that his actions would have if he continued on that line of thinking.
