In the aftermath of the tables being turned on Starline and his minions the platypus found himself being snapped out of his dreary rest by Sonic as he helped Starline up and held him gently.
"Hey... sorry about before..." Sonic apologized. "We wanted to get back at you, but... we went a bit too far." The hedgehog admitted.
Slowly the platypus reached out and held Sonic too almost instinctively needing some sort of physical connection. "So... where does this leave us?" Starline asked, not having much hope for what was going to happen next.
"Well... what you did wasn't the worst thing in the world... in fact I think a lot of us managed to de-stress immensely. You never abused us and never made us do anything super awful, just spying for you or stealing supplies and shucks... we've forgiven people who've done far worse than that." Sonic said.
"You forgot I stole away your free will." Starline pointed out.
"But did you really? Sure you made us do things under hypnosis, but you never made us do anything that was against who we were at our core. And it wasn't like you had us under constant control, you actually let us live most of the time without compulsion." Sonic said. "What I'm trying to say is; you didn't try to wipe our minds or mentally reprogram us. You could have done way worse if you really wanted to."
The white mobian sighed tiredly. "What are you even trying to say Sonic?"
The hedgehog chuckled softly. "Right... what I'm trying to say is... I don't think you're as bad as Eggman, not by a long shot, in fact... I know there is more to you than this... you kept showing glimpses of it in how you treated Jet and Infinite and us."
"Hedgehog... are you... offering reconciliation?" Starline asked a bit surprised.
Sonic smiled softly. "Would it be so bad if I did?"
"How would that even work? Where would we even start?" The white avian asked.
"We'll figure it out... okay?" Sonic asked.
Starline felt a hint hope ignite within him. "Okay..." he agreed. Starline did not know where this would go, but... Sonic wasn't just locking him up and he seemed genuinely sorry about taking his payback too far.
"Okay... first things first... we're laying off the hypnosis." Sonic said with a teasing smile, which got Starline to faintly smile... maybe this wouldn't be to bad after all?
