Bartonia

Bartonia is the het ship between Bartleby and Sonia from the Sonic Underground fandom.

Canon
Sonia and Bartleby both grew up in rich conditions. The two were engaged, although the hedgehog later called it off the engagement for unknown reasons. It may have been because Sonia became a member of the Freedom Fighters while Bartleby was an aristocrat.

Although narcissistic, Bartleby has been shown to care for Sonia’s wellbeing. He disliked the fact Sonia risked her life by becoming a Freedom Fighter. He thought her brothers Sonic and Manic were a bad influence on her.

Cartoon
At the start of the second episode, Sonia says that her top priority is to find a gift for her dear Bartleby. In the tenth, Sonia receives an invitation to a ball. Enter a series of flashbacks of both dancing. Sonic gets into Bartleby’s manor and asks for his help to make Sonia happy. The mink suggests to Robotnik a masked ball to lure the maroon hedgehog in. At the night of the ball, Robotnik asks Bartleby who is he walking with, to which the mink replies that she was Sarah, his “cousin from out of town”. When the mouse announcer presents Bartleby and “Sarah” to everyone, the latter corrects him to as Princess Sonia then unmasks herself to Robotnik. The trio then flee from the doctor and his lackeys.

In the next episode, Bartleby was personally invited to a race. Manic steals his tickets to a private box, to which he and Sonia have a good view of the starting line. The mink was relegated to stadium seating and later a Speed-Bot falls into him. The trio then flee the racetrack.

In “Artifact”, both were in a party hosted by Robotnik. The trio pose as waiters as Sonic thinks that the doctor will announce something troubling for their Resistance. Sonia presents the tray to the mink while he still continues to socialize with the aristocrat, blindly eating each piece one by one. Bartleby demands for the waiter after the hedgehog flees the scene, but he gets distracted by the same aristocrat calling his attention to Miffy Squinkington. As Robotnik advises the mink to bid higher on the next artifact, Sonic throws two plates of food at the nearby robots, causing havoc. Sonia snatches the artifact from Bartleby, telling him “next time to thank [his] waiter”. Later at his mansion, Bartleby is seen relishing on the orb. Sonia insists that it is a bomb that can explode at any moment. Sleet and Dingo kidnap the mink, and though Sonic was able to stop the two, all parties involved vie for possession of the orb. When the orb explodes in front of Bartleby, the trio use their music to detonate the other bombs, while the others flee for their lives.

Bartleby was eventually announced Robotnik’s enemy. He was put on trial in a later episode and purposely found guilty. Bartleby was willing to risk roboticization to protect Sonia, and told her not to rescue him as she could be captured. As it turned out, the trial was a plot to lure Sonia and her brothers into a trap. The hedgehog siblings managed to save the mink and avoid the trap set by Robotnik. Sonia and Bartleby said goodbye to each other outside of an airport, the latter going into hiding while Sonia continued as a Freedom Fighter.

Fanon
Although not very popular, this rare pairing has quite the few supporters. Shippers of this pairing feel that Bartleby gets undeserved hate. Others want the mink to have more screen time, possibly bring the two back together instead of the hedgehog beginning a relationship with Knuckles.

In Archive of Our Own, this pairing has over 10 works: the third most written ship for Sonia, and currently the only ship for Bartleby. It is also the second most in terms of romantic pairings for the former after Knuxonia.

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Bartonia