Sonic wakes up in his childhood bedroom.
It's exactly how he remembers it. The large four-poster with heavy, nearly solid curtains, the bare stone walls littered with portraits of uncaring ancestors, the stunning view from the window that he knows every inch of.
He's not restrained. He's not even wounded, aside from a faint headache. He's lying in bed like nothing ever happened. Like the last seven years were nothing but a dream.
He jumps up, looking down at himself with irrational panic. It's okay. He's still wearing his normal gloves, and his shoes are sitting by the side of the bed. His tail is still bare, and as a quick pat confirms, his hair, though messed up, still retains its spiked outline.
Sonic sighs in relief, before slapping himself in the face. He has to focus. He can't afford to let cheap tricks throw him off. He can't afford to lose his grip on reality so soon.
He gets up, pulling his shoes on and turning towards the door, and stops dead.
Sonic's wings are a vibrant electric blue, bordered with an almost-black shade of navy. There are four of them in total, two pairs layered on top of each other to form a rough triangle – a complex shape, yet simple by the standards of his species. The edges of the thin chitin sport several still unhealed cracks and tears, the marks of reckless adventuring.
As they hang on the opposite wall, he can just about see a few flecks of dried blood around the stumps.
"I have made an error in judgement."
He spins around. The man is standing in the corner. He looks exactly how Sonic remembers him now. All the glamour is dropped.
But, then again, how would he know?
"My intention was to combine punishment and rehabilitation. Your crime was, after all, born of naivety. My theory was that seven years of living as a Mobian would show you how unworthy they are of us."
"But they're not."
"Yes, you certainly believe that, don't you?" The man narrows his eyes. "I'll admit, at first, I thought you had discovered a way to lie. But if Mobius could teach us that, we would have found out centuries ago."
Sonic's fists tighten. The unsaid words are clear; Mobians can't teach us anything.
"No, the key is belief. We are not incapable of stating any falsehoods – only deliberate ones." Something strange enters his eyes. Pity? "You were able to say those things, because at some point in the last seven years, you began to believe your own trickery. You think you really are Sonic the Hedgehog."
He sighs. "I am truly sorry, Sonic. I allowed this to happen. I failed you."
"That wasn't a failure." Sonic tries to add "In a way, I was always Sonic the Hedgehog," but he can't. That part is still a lie.
"Yes, that's what you would say." The man smiles, and Sonic almost physically recoils at the near-perfect simulation of genuine compassion. It's wrong, somehow, in a fundamental way.
"I apologise for what I am about to do, Sonic. It is for your own good, and it hurts me just as much."
The fact that it isn't a lie suddenly fills him with fear.
"Promise me that you will not leave this world again without my permission."
"No."
"I thought not. How much do you value the lives of your pets, Sonic?"
It takes him a few seconds to understand what he means by that. The realisation hits him like a truck.
He tries to say "You wouldn't," but it's a lie.
"They aren't – they're my family!"
"Highly, then. More highly than your supposed freedom?"
Sonic doesn't know how to answer.
"Sonic, as we speak, my soldiers are holding blades to their throats. You saw that they were incapable of seeing through such highly trained glamours. If I give the order, they will die without even knowing it."
"Wait -"
"I promise you now that, if you make your oath, I will order my soldiers to stand down and return home."
A sensation of biting cold slowly curls around him. It's a feeling he knows well. The sensation of true, pure, utter helplessness.
"Why?" It's uncharacteristically quiet.
"Because I know you won't listen to reason. You've spent so long there that you think everything is a lie. I want you to come back to the family. I want to give you your wings back. But you won't listen unless I force you."
Sonic reaches deep inside himself for some kind of way out.
There's nothing there. He can't think of anything. He can't remember his training. All he can remember is the faces of his family.
"I hate you."
"I know."
"I promise never to go through the gate again."
"Any gate, Sonic. There's no point trying to find loopholes."
"I p-promise never to go through any gate again." He doesn't notice the despair-induced stutter until the sentence is done.
"Thank you, Sonic." The man snaps his fingers, and they blur for a moment. "They are safe. They will live their lives as Mobians now, until the end." A flicker of disapproval crosses his face at that, but he doesn't comment.
"I'll call the healers." He looks up at the wings hanging by the door. "You must be dying to get these back."
Sonic doesn't answer. He just stares at the floor.
"I will see you when the surgery is complete." He unlocks the door, opening it with a heavy creak.
"We can't lie deliberately," says Sonic suddenly. "Just unknowingly."
"Pardon?"
"You're wrong. I know you're wrong. I am Sonic the Hedgehog. That won't ever be a lie."
"We'll see." He glances back at him one more time. "Despite everything, I truly do care for you, son."
"Don't call me that."
The door closes, and Sonic sits down again.
For a few scant minutes, he allows himself to be vulnerable.
Close up, it becomes clear that it isn't a quill.
The single blue hair is more like a thick wire. It bends slowly with force and keeps whatever shape it's forced into. It also seems nearly impossible to snap. Clumped together, it makes sense that a few thousand of them could work as a weapon. Or, indeed, be mistaken for a hedgehog's quills.
When the healers move in, Amy places it back on the table. She pulls a cloth over the scrying mirror, and puts her head in her hands. She can't see the other two, but she imagines that they must be thinking similar thoughts.
Everything makes sense now.
Why he never talked about his past – didn't even seem to have one. Why he was so powerful, without any explanation. Why he never lied, not even once, and despised the idea of breaking promises. Why he would run off after every fight, and return unharmed but still looking pained.
Why he hated salt, avoided iron, looked at standing stones and clumps of mushrooms with suspicion, always introduced himself in that awkward way, was so fascinated with everything -
It seems impossible now that they didn't see.
"So. How do we break that promise?"
A crow soars over the roof of the fort. It flaps behind a statue, out of sight.
A wren flies down into the garden. It lands on a thick bush, and nestles quickly in to it.
A shrew skitters out from the grass. It slips under the gap in the massive door.
A lizard climbs quickly up the wall of the main hall. It sequesters itself in a crack, and begins to watch.
Witches fly on broomsticks because they are practical.
True, there are safer things, but they can be unwieldy to fly in and hard to store. A broomstick is light and fairly small, and can easily be carried around and hidden. They have an aerodynamic shape, and riding them is fairly intuitive. They are the motorbike of magical air travel, and their classic design is hard to improve on.
Of course, that doesn't mean it's impossible. For one thing, Amy feels that the inconvenience of fighting with a broom is a major flaw.
Her hammer hovers at a good vantage point over the fort. The proximity makes her nervous. The glamour should hold, though, so long as no one looks too closely at this patch of sky.
In one hand, she clutches her scrying mirror. In the other, a tuft of orange fur.
She watches the mirror intently. Knuckles, seated somewhat less comfortably behind her, looks over her shoulder at the image, occasionally glancing away to scribble something down.
They're not stupid. They know that they don't stand a chance. These people fight not with power, but with trickery – the paper to their rock.
The scissors, in this case, are knowledge and preparation.
A mouse reaches a heavy wooden door, and slips under it.
"That's the room. Did you get all that?"
"Yes." He shows her the crude map. There's a clearly marked route.
"Okay. When the sun goes down, we move." The hammer begins to descend into the forest.
It's even more painful this time.
Last time was the most pain he had ever experienced. He still vividly remembers the terror of waking up in the clinic, feeling half-dead, and realising he couldn't move his wings.
But at least he had passed out.
He's stopped worrying about his family. The creeping despair has given way to all-consuming agony. Right now, he can't worry about them.
All he can focus on is not crying.
He doesn't pass out until the last stitch is done. If he were capable of feeling anything complex, he'd feel annoyed at that.
He wakes up in his bedroom again. He's not worried about it being a dream anymore.
But it's still disturbing to wake up looking exactly like he did seven years ago.
A small swallowtail butterfly sits on his windowsill, and watches as he breaks down.
Their disguises, to them, look perfect. But they know better than to trust glamour completely.
They wait for cover of night, when less people will be wandering the halls, and sneak as much as they can. There are a few close calls, but their hunch is right; two slightly odd looking Fair Folk are much less conspicuous than two shimmers in the air.
People see what they expect to see, after all. They're both intimately aware of that.
When they reach the room, Amy stops Knuckles, and asks him to keep watch.
When she opens the door carefully, she doesn't quite understand what she sees. There's a vague lump of blue streaked with black on the bed, shimmering oddly in the growing moonlight. She doesn't realise what it is until Sonic shifts to look at her.
It becomes clear to her, then, that she had been looking at a pair of butterfly wings wrapped around a person.
"Sonic?"
He's nearly unrecognisable. The last vestiges of his disguise are gone, and the cold, tired, broken look in his eyes is one she never thought she would see.
"What do you want now?" The words are devoid of any distinct tone.
She doesn't answer for a moment. "What did they do to you?" she says at last, pointlessly.
He looks up more, raising his hands to push his wings out of the way, and squints. "Amy?"
She drops her disguise, and smiles as kindly as she can. "Hi, Sonic. Sorry we're late."
"We? Did you all..."
"Knuckles is outside. Tails..." She glances for a moment at the window. "He'll be showing up later, apparently. He said that he's got something important to do."
"Important -" Sonic's eyes widen. "Are you trying to rescue me?"
"What kind of question is that? Of course we're trying to rescue you!"
He shakes his head. "No," he says, quietly.
"What?"
"There's – there's just no point, Ames. These aren't people you can just fight. They're – I never understood them, and they raised me."
He smiles weakly. It doesn't come anywhere near his eyes. "I appreciate that you tried. Really. I love you guys more than anything. But you have no idea what'll happen to you if you don't go."
There is silence for a long time.
"You don't really believe that, do you?"
"I can't lie. You know that, right?"
"I know, but you can twist the truth. Hyperbole and omission are a fae's greatest weapons." The way she says it makes it clear that she's quoting. "I was raised here too, remember?"
"That's -" He stops.
"I think I know what you're talking about. This household – I heard a lot of stories. And judging by what they did to you, I think they're probably true. But don't make it out to be some incomprehensible thing. You only think it's hopeless because they spent your childhood telling you it is, right?"
Sonic's silence speaks volumes.
"Right. But if you didn't have any hope, you wouldn't have left yourself a loophole."
He looks up suddenly. "A loophole?"
She grins. "I was scrying you when you made that promise. 'Never go through any gate again', right? So, in other words, you can go wherever you like in this world, and if you leave, you're not going to be able to come back of your own free will. Face it, Sonic. You're getting out of here."
"I still can't move my wings," he says. The tone shifts upwards ever so slightly.
"You're Sonic the Hedgehog. Who needs wings?"
The butterfly watches as Amy reasserts her moth-winged disguise. Sonic's magic is still busy reattaching his severed nerves and muscles, and he's too weak for glamour. With clear effort, Amy takes his hand and pulls a rough invisibility spell over him. Knuckles greets them with an admonishment for taking so long, and a ghost of Sonic's usual attitude returns.
As they leave, the butterfly remains on the windowsill for a moment longer, before following.
They almost make it.
The man appears in front of them. There's no warning, no sign.
"I would say that I thought you would last longer. But it would be a lie."
Swallowing his fear, Sonic steps up to him. "Get out of my way."
"Did you think I didn't know what you were planning? My soldiers were watching you the entire time – and by extension, me. That was quite the touching scene, but it's time for this little game to come to an end."
"Full of cliches today, aren't ya? Get out of my way."
"This is the end." He addresses the two standing behind Sonic. "I offered you safety, and you threw it away. You -"
Sonic grabs them and bolts.
Just before he does so, the butterfly flutters down onto his shoulder. He doesn't notice.
The gate is a ring of ancient standing stones. Sonic was never sure who built it.
He's vaguely aware of Knuckles and Amy shouting behind him, fighting someone. But he's too busy dodging to look.
The man is fast, and has the advantage of flight. Sonic's own wings weigh him down – he still can't move them, he's still not used to having them back.
But Sonic hasn't been idle this past seven years. He's gotten stronger. Faster. The Fair Folk don't change.
He rolls under a swipe, laughing with adrenaline. "Is that as fast as you can go?"
The next moment, he's sent flying.
"Where exactly do you think your speed comes from?"
He scrambles to his feet quickly, but stops dead. He's metres away from the stones.
Apparently, that's too close. He can't move. When he tries to step towards them, his body doesn't respond.
"I'm starting to hate promises."
"As I was saying, Sonic, the game is over."
Sonic turns towards him. He's hovering above him authoritatively, blade held at his side.
"You may have tried to fool me with that promise, but you won't get the chance to avert it. It still binds you. You cannot escape it."
The butterfly on Sonic's shoulder flaps its wings, and folds outwards.
Tails' foot slams into the side of his head with enough force to draw blood instantly. He falls over, stunned, and the hard ground knocks him out.
"But if he can't keep his promise," Tails says, panting, "then that's not his fault, right?"
Sonic wakes up slowly, and in bits.
As his vision comes into focus, he sees a sky just beginning to lighten, and hears voices next to him.
"Are you two okay?" For all the concern in Tails' voice, it's music to his ears.
"We're fine." He's almost surprised at how happy he is to hear Knuckles' gruff tone.
"This place still looks the same..." Amy sounds genuinely scared, and that cuts in to his good mood. "I don't think the time dilation affected us."
"C-course not, Ames," he says weakly. "O-only works if you're alone."
"SONIC!" As he tries to sit up, something orange and fluffy knocks him down again.
"H-hey, bro. N-nice kick."
"Sorry I couldn't warn you," Tails mumbles, hugging him as tightly as he can, being careful to avoid the fresh scars on his back. "I didn't know if it would work without surprising you."
"It's fine, buddy." He's avoiding the scars. Somehow, that brings Sonic back to the present.
"Tails?" he says, quietly. "I-I'm really sorry."
"What, about not telling us?" He smiles up at him. The innocence in his gaze is heart-wrenching. "It's okay. You didn't have a choice, remember?"
"Well, yeah, but..." He trails off for a moment, hugging Tails back. "I still feel bad about it. And anyway there's... something else."
"What?"
"I – I could never tell you, but I did something really bad to you, kiddo."
"You stole my name, didn't you?"
Sonic looks down in surprise. "Wait, you know?"
"I guessed. After what that guy said, it wasn't hard to figure out." Tails pauses. "He was your dad, right?"
"Not any more."
"That's good, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Tails, look, I wouldn't have taken your name if it hadn't -"
"It was that time on Westside Island, right? A few days after we met? When those people were chasing us? I never really thought about it, but it didn't make any sense."
"They wouldn't have stopped. I had to make them forget about you."
Tails is quiet for a long time. "Was it a good name?"
"... Not really. Actually, it was kind of a terrible name."
"Terrible how?"
"Really bad pun."
"By your standards?" He laughs. "You can keep it. It's probably more trouble than it's worth."
Sonic laughs back. As his family gathers around him, he finds that he can't stop.
It's a perfectly ordinary day for Doctor Ivo Robotnik.
Attacking the city with an army of robots, unveiling his latest airship, cursing that blue hedgehog and his little magic friends...
Come to think of it, where is that hedgehog? He was normally the first to arrive, but today he wasn't anywhere to be seen.
"Nice ship, Eggy. Modern. Stylish."
He spins around. Sonic's standing behind him casually. How did that damned hedgehog get here without him noticing?
"Why, thank you, Sonic. I'm glad you'll enjoy your doom!"
He presses a button on his hovercraft, and his latest, state-of-the-art battle mech assembles around him.
Sonic laughs, as usual. And then, he vanishes.
The doctor blinks. "Wait, what?"
"Oh, man, Egghead..." For some reason, Sonic's standing on top of the mech now, just behind him. And there's something wrong with his silhouette. It seems to be flickering.
He blinks again, and regrets it. As he stares up at the massive blue butterfly wings, he thinks a very bad word.
"You have no idea how good a mood I'm in right now."
A/N And that's the AU I came up with one fine 1 AM while on copious amounts of caffeine and hyperfixation! God, my hands hurt now.
If you liked this, A. please leave a review, they mean a lot, and B. feel free to base some stuff off it! I'd love to see this inspire people.