Chapter Text
He dreams.
The life bleeding out of them. Sonic, drowning among the stars – swallowed in the depths, so afraid of water. Amy, so afraid of Sonic dying; screaming, roaring, wielding her hammer until it’s ripped away along with her life. Cosmo, salt on her cheeks as she turns and turns and walks away, the rest of them fretting or frozen and nobody notices until Tails looks down from his seat at the bridge and sees her-
In his nightmares, nobody even knows what Cosmo is about to do before Tails is crying across the communicator. He doesn’t know why he’s the one who always knows what she’s doing. Why he’s always the one, whose voice can’t reach her. And in his nightmares, everyone still alive stands quietly, just waiting for him to do it. Just waiting for him to press the button, just waiting with disappointment like it’s-
He always wakes up just as light, malicious killing light, pierces the distance between them…
-And he wakes, sits up and breathes and breathes, hands running over his face- until he’s calmed down enough to think, and then he always looks to the right. Tonight there’s just a shimmery fog hanging next to his bed, but still there comes a soft, gentle voice, “You did the right thing. You saved them all.”
Tails would think he was slowly becoming mad, if it wasn’t for the fact that ghosts had been proven to exist in this universe.
“You died,” he says very flatly, and turns his back to the spirit.
“One life, one spy, sacrificed for the whole of the universe.”
Tails doesn’t reply, staring stubbornly at the wall. He’s got photos, hanging there. Most of them are of Sonic, Amy, Cream, or Chris – because all his photos of Cosmo (which are so few) are safely tucked away in a little box.
“I wanted this,” Says Dead-Cosmo. And then, firmer, “I wanted this, I chose this.”
They’ve had this argument, different script every night, about fifty-three times now.
-Sometimes Tails just tries to tell her to go away, leave, but she just hangs around silently. He can feel her presence, so he still knows she’s there when she turns invisible… you can’t see much usually, anyway. Just a sort of blue tinged shape, short hair, flowing dress. Sometimes her hair is longer. Sometimes her eyes are glowing blue.
Sometimes it’s just mist and a voice.
“…I’m happy with this outcome.”
Tails really hopes that’s a lie. “You aren’t.”
“Yes I am!” She exclaims, and the curtains ripple, the photos flutter. “You’re all safe! No one can turn me against you anymore! No one can- can use my eyes to spy on you.”
“Cosmo,” Tails says slowly, a bit angrily, “Your entire race went extinct because of me. Your-“
“No!” Dead-Cosmo blurts out, irritably. “It didn’t! My race will grow back. New life is being born out on the distant worlds-“
“Your entire family is dead because of me!” The entire YOU is dead because of me!
“…Actually,” says Dead-Cosmo. And finally, Tails feels a chill of… something, up his spine. “No. My family isn’t dead, if that’s what matters. I left my sprout with you.”
“You-“ oh. Oh dear. Oh what. “The f-flower-?”
“It’s my child,” says Cosmo sagely.
----------
He dreams.
The Blue Typhoon glides slowly through space, and in his dreams there’s a ballroom. In his dreams Chuck and Ella and Tanaka are there, even Frances and Danny, and they all wear suits and dresses. Vector dances with Vanilla, Amy tries to dance with Sonic, and Tails is just walking through the crowd, letting the colours and sound wash over him. Everyone’s voice echoes, in his dream.
And then there’s a gap in the crowd, and he sees Cosmo. She’s wearing a long green dress which shimmers underneath the lights, and her hair is full of roses, her smile full of warmth. She waves at him breezily with a slender hand, and her eyes glow so blue… He always starts walking before he knows it, and the crowds part like it’s magic. Like it’s- like it’s fate-
He’s close enough to touch her, when she collapses. She always collapses, and when he reaches for her, she always melts away through the floor…
When he wakes, he’s clutching desperately for his sheets, for a hand which isn’t there. His heart beats so hard it hurts, his eyes burn- and then he remembers to think, forces himself to breathe. He glances to the right, like always, and there’s a faint blue silhouette hovering in the air. When Dead-Cosmo sees that he’s looking at her (through her), she raises a slender hand and waves carefully.
He throws a pillow. He thinks he might be crying, and throws the second one, so angry, so full of hurt-
“Why are you here?” he cries. “Don’t you have other planets to look after?”
The silhouette looks at him sadly, hunching in on itself. “Because you’re here. And her.”
-He just knows she’s talking about that – that plant again.
One-hundred and eighteen visits. He’s keeping count.
And her.
…After that, all fight just leaves him.
“I – I can’t-“ I can’t just raise your child. I’m what, thirteen? “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“So I thought, the first time you beat the Metarex.”
“…I cannot deal with this discussion right now. Goodnight.”
----------
He remembers.
Embarrassing discussion. Smiling, feeling reassured, trying to walk away—and then, then they’re promptly launched into the air, falling into the lake. The moon, so large and wondrous and bright, seeing that brightness reflected in her eyes. The water lapping at them, but Tails recalls that he couldn’t have cared less about getting wet-
He tells a little bit of that, a little less awkward, tells it as a story to The Child.
The Child is tiny, with big green eyes and frizzy blue hair, some sort of leaves tucked into it. Cosmo named her, the child, Galaxina, after her own deceased sister…
Some days, Tails doesn’t know what to think.
But Cosmo looks twice as alive when she talks to Galaxina, tells her about culture and peace and war and how plants grow and wither. So Tails doesn’t mind Not-Knowing, for once.
…Galaxina calls Cosmo big sister.
And Tails is just Tails, because Tails doesn’t want a title which wouldn’t fit anyway.