Breaking Point: A Sonic Forces Rewrite

16: Trusted Idea

Another hour has passed and nothing has changed. Amy is still sitting by Sonic, holding his hand but now there's a cold chili dog on his bedside counter. Not even the smell of his favorite food can bring him back to life. Knuckles is back in his seat still looking deep in thought, like he did in the waiting room. The silence is still dense like it was before, but this time with a beeping heart monitor. They got him home, sorta. At least he's not being beaten up by Dr. Eggman any longer. All of their thoughts about the ongoing war went out the window as they mourned for their friend. Amy was lightly rubbing the top of Sonic's gloveless hand when her and Knuckles both heard running footsteps down the hall. The door bursts open to reveal their yellow, two tailed, friend.

"I'm here. I'm here." Tails said, slightly huffing from running quickly on foot since he can't use his two tails in the hospital. It was a pleasant surprise to Amy and Knuckles to eventually see their lost fox friend after 6 months of no show.

"Tails!" Amy exclaimed, rising from her seat to quickly hug him. He hugged her back, giving back the sweet gesture after so long of not seeing each other. Knuckles holds a bit of a grudge for Tails ditching and not helping them in the war they've been fighting.

"I flew as fast as I could on the Tornado. How is he?" Tails interrogated Amy after they broke off the hug.

She stepped out of Tails' field of view to reveal Sonic laying on the bed looking out of it. Tails gasped as he first laid eyes on his best friend. Looking awful, beaten down, and broken. As he stared at Sonic, Tails flashbacks to when he had a chance to help, when he had a chance to stop this, when he had a chance to do anything. The feelings flooded in soon after. Guilty for abandoning him because he was afraid. Fear because what if he never gets better. Anger at Eggman and every evil person that did this to his best friend...himself included.

'What have I done?' Echoed in the young boy's head.

Knuckles and Amy had to explain everything they knew to Tails to get him up to speed, hoping that he's actually listening to them and not just soulfully staring and thinking about Sonic. It was about a 50/50 for him. He could imagine what things would be like if he actually fought alongside him instead of being a scared little kid.

"Do you know when he'll be back to his old self?" Tails asked, trying to stay hopeful for the future.

Amy and Knuckles sighed, looking down in defeat. "Nobody knows." Amy replied softly to the question that they wish they had a positive answer to.

"There has to be something?" Tails tries to barter with his friend, being in denial about Sonic's condition.

"Doctors are trying to find therapy treatments that might work. But with his severity, we don't know." Amy answered before Knuckles butted in.

"They were thinking about electroshock to snap him out of it but since he's been wearing a shock collar on for the last 6 months..." Knuckles trailed off getting the point across to everyone.

Everyone fell silent again thinking deep on what to say next, if it'll even be constructive to the conversion at hand. Tails always fixes gadgets, the Tornado, whenever Sonic breaks something, but he can't fix him. No matter how important Sonic is to Tails he can't fix him, he's not a machine and Tails isn't a doctor. Tails blames himself for that too, he should be smarter, he wants to help everyone he can. Even then, wounds take time to heal properly, and they're all running out of time in this warfare. There has to be something to bring back their hero.

After an unbearable amount of silence, the three of them deep thought, it was Amy that was the first to speak up. "I have an idea. It's a very stupid one, but it's something." She suggested softly. Tails and Knuckles raised their heads at her, listening to her idea.