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Sonic is to the Wachowski house as a rainforest is to the global ecosystem; vibrant, colorful, riotous life. Tails would follow him to the end of the earth and back, just to be in his wake.
So when Sonic brings home a battered and bruised Shadow, Tails feels only brief trepidation. A flicker of fear, a memory of that metal-soled shoe hitting him in the head. The cold surety with which the other hedgehog had dropped a miniature black hole to crush them in.
But Sonic said he'd switched sides at the end. That he'd realized he was wrong, and even helped save the planet.
The way Sonic had relayed the story to them– ears drooping, voice wrought with grief– had cemented Tails' opinion maybe more than the actual story. If Sonic thought Shadow was alright, even bringing him into their house after finding him miraculously alive, then Tails did too.
That said, he's still on unsure footing. Still not certain where he fits into the tableau; Sonic the rescuer, Maddie the healer, Tom and Knuckles the watchful father and big brother respectively.
It's almost a relief when Shadow's energy starts to go haywire. Not because Tails wanted anything to go wrong, of course not– but this gives him something to do. Something he can help with.
Seeing Sonic clench his teeth against the waves of Chaos energy rolling off Shadow and into him, it made the fox kit's admiration for his brother skyrocket. And the way Sonic collapsed after the fact nearly gave Tails a heart attack.
"Sonic!"
He's the first to reach him, the first to touch– and a good thing, too. Tails jerks as he gets a nasty static shock that ricochets up his arm and all through him. It makes his fur stand on end from nose to tails and sends him falling back onto the floor.
"Tails! Baby, oh my god–"
"It's fine! I'm fine!" he reassures quickly, shaking out his hand. Sonic's still breathing, thank goodness– he doesn't know what he'd do with himself if his own dumb idea were to–
"He is unharmed," Knuckles confirms, breaking his thought spiral. A big gloved hand helps Tails to his feet, and then gently brushes past, like the echidna still needs to physically confirm what he just said.
Tails steps aside, into Maddie's concerned arms, as Tom kneels on Sonic's opposite side. He looks so little between them it makes his heart pang.
On the bed, lying prone but still, Shadow seems just as frail in that moment. Tails tucks his head under his mother's chin and holds tight.
A couple hours later, he wakes.
Tails looks up from where he's been sitting at the foot of the bed. He's trying to study the strange gold band around Shadow's ankle without removing it or jostling the injured hedgehog, and it's proving an interesting puzzle. Sonic snapped awake twenty minutes after his dramatic collapse and started zipping around the room like a miniature tornado. ('To burn off the excess', or so he'd said.)
In other words, he's fine.
What's not fine is the way Shadow goes entirely rigid the moment he's conscious. Blue eyes meet shocking red, staring at him with bleary but forced vigilance, and the fox goes rigid.
"…Good morning," Tails settles on saying, fighting back an awkward little laugh. All at once his relative lack of fear comes surging back; the intense, laser-focused hatred in his gaze, the fire and wreckage all around, ducking behind Knuckles as a humvee was thrown at them.
Slowly, like he's backing away from a bear, he lifts his hands away from the hedgehog's ankle.
"Where–" Shadow starts, but his throat locks up and he starts coughing instead, dry and sore-sounding. Tails jumps up and hovers uncertainly for a beat, and then he's gone, zooming downstairs to grab a water bottle and alert his parents.
It's Maddie who takes the water up to Shadow, along with a handful of painkillers and some light food. "If he's awake, I wanna try and get some calories in him," she explains as she fetches a sleeve of crackers from the pantry.
Sonic's been buzzing around the first floor like he's dying to go see Shadow, but also doesn't dare disobey Maddie telling him to Give the kid space to breathe. He balks, "Crackers? Seriously? If you want him to eat you should give him something good! I have some ice cream left over–"
"Sonic, baby, he's also probably gonna be sick on his stomach. If not now, then after these," Maddie gestures meaningfully with a bottle of painkillers before pocketing them.
Sonic wilts. "Oh. Well– we can put some dip on the crackers! That's light!"
His bargaining for more palatable food continues all the way up the stairs and down the hall. Tails, lingering in the living room, shakes his head a little at his brother's antics.
The normalcy of it is soothing, especially after the shock of realizing I am still a little afraid of Shadow.
Shadow does end up being sick to his stomach, after all. Tails lingers at the end of the hall and listens as his Mom issues reassurances and comfort in soft murmured tones. Sonic had been sent to grab a trash bin early on, but Tails hasn't seen him since.
He startles clean off the ground when Knuckles puts a hand on his shoulder. "Apologies, fox. I didn't mean to frighten you," he tips his head to look up at his brother, now hovering a few feet in the air.
"N-no, you didn't– I wasn't scared," Tails protests, taking a deep breath before dropping lightly back down.
Knuckles regards him for a moment, then turns to look down the hall. "It is alright to be."
Tails blinks up at him, following his gaze to the closed door. Knuckles doesn't seem like he's ever afraid– not even when they were about to launch themselves out of an orbital cannon to save Sonic.
"Are you scared?"
It's quieter now, no more retching sounds or Sonic's nervous babbling. But there is a voice, deep and almost too quiet to hear, speaking in short uncertain refrains and followed by Maddie's lighter voice in answer.
The echidna seems to think for a moment, and then decides "Yes." At Tails' sudden look, he explains. "The new hedgehog is a formidable adversary. Was. We still do not know exactly what his motivations are, now that the Robotniks are no more."
"But… Sonic said he helped save the planet," Tails reminds him. Sonic said he was good. Sonic brought him home. Sonic–
"Sonic is eager to forgive and form bonds. It is his gift, but perhaps also a weakness."
"You think Shadow might still be, um. Dangerous?" Tails keeps his voice even. Tries not to think about how close he'd been to Shadow earlier. The way those eyes had snapped to him, sluggish though they were.
Knuckles sighs through his nose and something in his posture eases a little. "No. Not now. It will take time for his body to mend, even with his claim of healing fast." He gives the fox a sidelong look. "In the meantime, you and I will ascertain whether he is still a threat. Yes?"
Tails perks up immediately. " 'Course!"
It's one thing to promise Knuckles his help.
It's another altogether to follow through on that promise.
Sonic looks half-relieved, half-disappointed that their new houseguest– after being sick on his stomach and then coaxed into some water and more meds– immediately falls back asleep. "He has sooooo much energy, seriously Mom, what if what Shads really needs is to burn it off! I felt like I was gonna blow up if I didn't run out all that extra energy, it was–"
"He's not gonna be running for awhile, bud," Tom reminds him. He'd mostly been relegated to the sidelines after Maddie took over tending their new guest's injuries. Each time he asked if his wife wanted help with anything, he was gently told, "I've got it under control, honey."
Tails thinks that his Mom is being nice since Tom's the one Shadow got a hit on back in London. She's minimizing how much Tom might have to relive that moment. The time spent in the hospital, the weeks of painful physical therapy…
Tails shakes his head to clear it. He's not gonna talk himself out of this, not after telling Knuckles he'd help. And this is the perfect time– Shadow's asleep for the next two or three hours at least, according to Mom. Sonic got bored staring at him and went outside to play catch with himself. And Knuckles…
Knuckles is leaning against the wall next to the door. "If he wakes, alert me," he instructs solemnly. "I will be here."
Tails holds his scanner a bit more firmly and nods.
And then he goes inside.
Shadow is on the bed, in the same place he was before. His chest rises and falls evenly, making the little wisps of white fur on his chest sway incrementally with each breath. Tails creeps over on foot, then hops up and uses his tails to feather the landing.
Nothing.
You were fine before, he reminds himself, tapping his scanner. It blinks on silently, muted for stealth, and a moment later he's got it open to start reading energy signatures and analyzing metallic compounds.
The material of Shadow's restrictor rings is unlike anything he's ever seen– alien, one might even say. Alien to earth and anything else Tails has seen, considering. "Fascinating," he murmurs, blue eyes skimming the initial readouts. The gold rings really are containing Shadow's energy output, not absorbing so much as dampening.
As for that energy– Tails switches to the heat map and gawks a little. The area around his shin, even with all the gauze and splinting, is nearly white on the display. It's like his Chaos energy is physically flowing towards the injury. That must be what accounts for his accelerated healing!
So engrossed does he become, Tails doesn't even notice Shadow waking up until he speaks, slurred though his voice still is.
"What're you doing?"
He freezes.
Slowly, painfully, he drags his gaze up from his readouts to meet those inscrutable red eyes yet again. Shadow is watching him. Not glaring, though he wouldn't exactly call the look on his face friendly.
Tails glances quickly at the door. Knuckles is out there. He could call for Knuckles–
"I'm," he eeks out, voice high. Swallows and tries again. "I'm, uh, analyzing your r-rings."
Shadow's eyes dart to the device in his hand, then narrow. "They're Inhibitor Rings."
Tails perks up. He's scared, of course he is, and he's still a breath away from calling for his brother. But… Shadow's volunteering information. Maybe it's to get him to go away sooner, but even so. Tentatively, the fox smiles and gives a nod. "I thought so. You were, um, I don't know if you remember, but you were missing two of them and…"
He trails off. The moment he mentioned the bands (Inhibitor Rings) around Shadow's wrists, the hedgehog had looked sharply down at them. He stares at the metal like– well, Tails doesn't know what to make of the look on his face. He doesn't know Shadow very well.
"I see," is what he says eventually. Then, in a lower tone, he adds, "Thank you for retrieving them."
Tails feels like he might fall over sideways from how much tension he's holding. Those two words, so innocuous on the surface, just about send him reeling. "Uh. Sure! You're welcome!"
Silence.
He wonders if Knuckles is listening at the door. He said to call if Shadow woke up, but Tails gets the feeling that the moment he does will be the moment any window to ask him things will close. "Do you, uh. I mean. I've never seen anything like these before–"
"Who are you reporting to?" Shadow cuts him off curtly.
Tails flinches, drawing the scanner closer to his chest. "…Reporting to?" he echoes back, confused– and then the memory comes rushing back. Colorado. The abandoned underground military base. "Oh, I'm not– I'm just–"
Shadow's expression remains shuttered. "GUN already has all the specifications on my Inhibitors."
His jaw clicks shut. "Oh. Uh, okay. I guess I'll just– Be on my way, then," the fox laughs awkwardly, scooting towards the edge of the bed to hop down. The clarification "We don't work with GUN anymore" curls up and dies in his throat, overridden by the impulse to jump into the air, to take flight (away from grabbing hands and pointing fingers and "Freak! Freak!"), but the fear of making a sudden move keeps his feet on the ground.
Shadow watches him all the way to the door.
Knuckles looks mildly perturbed when he reemerges, no longer leaning against the wall but standing beside the entrance, fists curled at his sides. Tails gets the impression he had his ear to the door to listen.
"Did you get what you needed?"
He doesn't mention Tails failing to call him in for backup, which is both a relief and a twinge of guilt. He looks down at the scanner clutched to his chest, having forgotten about it altogether.
"Uh– yeah! Plenty of data," Tails nods, trying to sound confident. The way Knuckles tilts his head at him, he thinks he missed the mark. "His energy looks stable now. I think…" I think he doesn't trust me. I think he hates me. I think Sonic might've made the wrong call.
Knuckles waits for him to gather his thoughts, one red brow ridge slowly rising as the silence stretches. "I think he was right about healing fast," is what Tails settles on, highly aware that they're still standing in front of the door. It's closed, but he has a firsthand account of just how well voices can carry through. "A-anyway, I'll let you know if I notice anything else about this data."
He ducks past the echidna before Knuckles can say anything in answer. Because of that, he misses the way Knuckles looks from his retreating back to the door, thoughtful.