There wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Miles stared out at the endless blue with a sad smile on his lips, drumming his fingers across his desk as he watched the day go by, swinging his legs at a chair slightly too tall for him.

The eternal child. Except now, more than ever, he was more like some eldritch horror, ancient and terrible, with enough child sacrifice to make any self-respecting demon king green with envy.

But children, even ancient ones, were resilient. Him more than most. The dull familiarity of normality was perhaps a little slower to soothe his restless heart than before, the weight of his sins and the people he'd lost perhaps a little heavier, but not unbearably so.

Mostly… he just remembered. Or forgot. Mostly forgot, despite his best attempts. A mind wasn't built to remember even one eternity, after all. That's why the ancients created the magic of writing things down.

Miles sighed, glancing down at the gloves he'd stolen from himself, He reached inside, fishing out a scorched scrap of paper he'd long thought lost from within, and he read it again.

Thirteen words written in a trembling hand were his substitute for family, after all. He might as well peruse them now and then.

Your name is Miles Prower.

And you are going to save the world.

Miles nodded, one eye turning crystalline pink. Rings tumbled from his body along with a puff of roiling smoke.

Part of the note became unburnt. And a line of text appeared, written in a flowing script that had always been there:

It's okay to be wrong, sometimes.

Miles breathed out a cloud of ashes as his eye faded back to blue, admiring his handiwork until it backfilled his memories. One last scuffle with time.

At least for now.

"Knock knock!"

Miles glanced up, sliding the note into his glove and hammerspace. A pink quilled hedgehog poked her head around in the doorway with a dazzling smile.

"Amy." Miles smiled back, faintly. "Here looking for Sonic?"

Prower, you're my hero. And you always will be.

Her smile widened into the glorious grin he knew so well, whichever face wore it.

"Just wondering if he was here?"

Miles shook his head, his own smile fixed in place. "He left for Emerald Hills this morning. Do you want me to call him for you?"

Amy shook her head, her bob-cut so different from the hard spikes of her youth.

"That's fine. I'll wait for him here." She plonked down on his couch uninvited, already searching for the TV remote. "So what are you up to, Tails? Gadgets as usual?"

"Something like that." Miles stood, fishing the remote from a cup on his desk where Sonic had left it last night.

"You're so cool." Amy laughed. "I bet if I could do all that science stuff, Sonic would be all 'Hey, Amy! Marry me! Also, build me a plane!' or something like that."

"... Heh. Yeah, you know me. Mister popular."

"You okay, Tails?" She glanced at him, green eyes wide.

"I'm fine." Miles rubbed his eyes with a smile. "Just a little grit."

"Huh. You really should dust in here sometimes you know. It's all over the place. Maybe I'll do it for you later. I know you're hopeless at cleaning things." Amy grinned again. "Anyway!" She patted beside her on the couch. "Get your butts down here. There's a movie I wanted to watch with you."

"Butt. And you know I always sleep through movies." Miles admonished.

"Oh come on, it's the middle of the morning. You'll be fine." Amy patted again. "Plus it's got a plot I know you'll love. Time travel, some corny "save the world" plot, robots, laser swords…" She waggled her eyebrows at him.

"...Fine." Miles relented with a sigh.

Like he always did.

"Wait who's that guy?" Amy leaned against him, pointing at the screen.

"That's the main character. They just introduced him last scene."

"I used to have that jacket!"

"Oh really."

"You should try wearing something like that sometime."

"Amy, enough people already think that I'm a girl already."

"Oh come on! I bet you would look super cute. I'll bring- Wait, who's that?"

"That's the main character again."

"No, the girl."

"The boxer? That's his friend, they just said."

"Cool. She looks tough. Who's that she's talking to?"

"Are you messing with me again?"

Miles made it twenty minutes before passing out.

And Amy, long forgotten implant sparking to life inside her head, smiled dreamily down at him, kneading the fur on his head with loving care while he slept, humming a familiar tune to herself.

It really would have been such a shame to waste her, after all.

The End

Authors Notes:

Thank you for reading this alternative look at Tails the Fox, and the final chapter in the Happy Days trilogy - Eternal Tails CD.

Our hero has saved the day, saved his friends, saved the world, and saved at least two fair damsels, even if he'd perhaps have preferred to save a few more. And, while he didn't quite manage to stop existing, life goes on all the same, and he found he had the strength to keep going after all.

As with all the ET stories, Chronos Divide was a story about an impossible problem only Miles could handle, while exploring content that wasn't particularly fleshed out in the original canon - something that all the beta content, extra special stages, and cut content for Sonic CD has in ample supply.

But in the end this turned out to be a story about so many things I'm still not sure which genre tags should be on it, a lot of which wasn't in the original plan.

A lot of this started when Miles lost his tail (thank you, Cytisus, for the review that inspired just so much misery for Miles), and what would have been a (comparatively) tidy plot exploring Miles' friendship with Amy and the oddities of Sonic CD's cut content went off its meds and started talking about determinism and free will.

A big part of the story was Miles' interactions with Doodle and her clones. There's always the concern when including OCs that they will either overshadow (or overpower!) the beloved originals, fail to live up to the quality of the rest of the cast, or, even worse, both at the same time. Hopefully they missed these pitfalls. Doodle's mad genius and tragic obsession for Miles, and Reason's balance between that and Miles' own quirky self. They were both a lot of fun to write, and I hope you had liked them too.

Comments, suggestions and requests are always welcome, however trivial. Things you liked, things you thought needed work, how Doodle x Elise would be the best ship, or how annoyed you are that I will never, ever answer the question of what happens to those darn rabbits. Heck, even scenarios you think would inflict sufficient suffering on our vulpine protagonist to tempt my interest or any Eternal Tails one-shot character introspectives you'd like to see in future, I love reviews.

While I may write more Eternal Tails stories in future if there's sufficient demand for two-tailed sidekicks solving impossible problems, with ninety thousand words written, the status quo restored, and only a few "minor" loose ends remaining, this marks a good point for me to go and work on some non-derivative writing projects I've been putting off while writing ET, which I may put up on my profile as and when things come of it.

In the interim, anyone is very welcome to take anything added in Eternal Tails for your own stories, whether they feature Tails front and centre or not (and let me know so I can read if they do). I also have a five thousand word Eternal Tails story bible written up detailing how TotF's Miles thinks and operates, his relationships, and various other things to help me write ET stories in future. If you think that would be helpful (or you're just feeling nosy) let me know and I'll be happy to polish it up for general consumption and post it up. The world needs more gritty adorable antihero stories, after all.

Since I know that these stories will probably sink without a trace into FF's giant StH archives the moment I stop updating, if you think someone would like these stories, please consider recommending them. We write words so they get read, after all.

Finally, as always, I hope you enjoyed reading.

~ Pan