goneawayworld | an incandescent glow [closed to Dan]

Entry tags:

an incandescent glow [closed to Dan]

Who: Bunny and Dan
What: Easter's not cancelled, but Bunny is.
Where: A supply closet somewhere
When: After Don't Touch That Dial, but before Easter on the ship.
Warnings/Notes: None yet

All year, Bunny had been submitting procurement requests and timetables and requesting volunteer assistance to make Easter happen under his severely limiting conditions for, at minimum, the kids on the Rig, and Jorgmund had ignored his requests but taken his plans and now - with the time limit absolutely up on whether or not Easter is going to happen as it ought to - they've given him orders.

He's been absent ever since, whenever he could be, not to be found by his tree (where there's nobody to check on and check in with now that Gadget's disappeared) or anywhere in the garden, because just for a little while right now having to explain to everybody how this is the straw that's made him angrier and sadder and cracked enough to go find a dark corner to curl up in - having to explain it over and over would be too much. He needs an hour. Maybe two.

A whole week on orders to escort a tech delivery, there and back, a whole week with Easter Sunday right in the center. They've taken his world, his powers, his freedom, his sense of safety, hooked a trigger right up to his life at all times and now - of course you THINK you're the Easter Bunny, but be reasonable. You can't hide eggs all over the world in one day. That's simply impossible, no matter what your memories tell you. Stuff is a very convincing substance to be made of - and the needs of the company are greater than one person's self-actualization, especially when that self-actualization is based on a fantasy -

It's too much to be angry about on top of everything he was already always simmering over, too much for the false comfort of the greenery of the garden or the exposure of the roof or for any company at all, so Bunny found a storage closet and curled up in a corner there to ride the feelings out where no one is likely to come looking for him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Through their garden chats, through Dan's visits to pick up fresh versions of the plants he uses to ward his dorm room against spirits and beasts that almost certainly don't exist here and have become more just excuses to hang out with Bunny, Dan's picked up on some of Bunny's plans for Easter. The passion - no, purpose - Bunny has for it is palpable, and up until Dan catches wind of the schedule for April, he's certain that the kids on the Rig will be having the most wonderful Easter of their lives.

He feels a wave of disappointment by proxy from a lot of people when he finds out that schedule.

He isn't surprised not to see Bunny at the gardens, because he already has a sense of where a pooka might go when hit with a bodyblow of discouragement: a burrow, of some sort. Somewhere enclosed and quiet, where the prey instincts are unstimulated enough to leave room to process just the sadness and the sense of futility. He knows the storage closets like the back of his hand by now, and he finds Bunny on the second door he cracks.

"Oh, hey. You mind if I come in?" He gives Bunny some plausible deniability. The air in here feels heavy, like their powerlessness to the Jorg is so palpable. "Just came by for some spot-cleaner for the laundry."

Naturally Bunny leaps to his full height as soon as the footsteps stop at the door, soon as he reminds himself that everyone over the age of 7 can still see him. He regrets not locking the door, even when he hears that it's Dan.

"Not at all. Why would I mind? I don't mind."

He didn't come up with an excuse to be here. Shoot.

"I needed a dark place to sleep. The garden's always light."

Dan didn't ask. And he never sleeps in the dark - the warren is also always bright, and sleeping in the dark means sleeping in danger away from home.

It's fine. He's just here for laundry cleaner. Soon as Dan's on his way, Bunny can get back to his processing.

"Is it good and quiet in here for that?" Is being in here helping? Dan's gentle as he rummages through some of the supplies, not, of course, actually looking for spot cleaner but instead sifting through the boxes of solvents and paper towels where he hides whatever tobacco- or alcohol-related bounties he gets from the cafeteria staff.

He tries to divine if he should push past any attempts Bunny makes to dismiss him and handle this alone, or if he should respect them, and ends up coming to the conclusion that Bunny's likely to respond to Dan being direct instead of subtle.

"I, uh, I heard about some of the schedules people are going out on this week. I thought I might could offer to do any, you know, last minute errands that you can't do while you ain't here for the holiday. So your work don't all go to waste without you."

"Forget about it. What's happening is happening. I can't do anything about it just now." You can't do anything about it either. Dan is wholeheartedly sweet and considerate but this year is a wash due to adversaries. Last year was a wash due to adversaries. A trigger is permanently embedded in his spine, he's slow and tired and pain lingers all the time, and Dan's virtues, many though they are, won't change any of that.

The only thing he can do is accept the present and look to the future.

"My mates back home will look to the day while I'm gone. There's nothing to get hung up on over -" over the most important day of his year, over the thing he was most looking forward to giving this small band of kids who've never not known a life absolutely ransacked by war and horror.

"Next year we might've made more progress against the cogs, that's what needs looking to." That real problem, the one so big it hasn't been solved in a year, so big it might not be solved next year, when he goes through this same problem all over again.

"What's that thing you're looking for look like? I'll help you find it," he says, holding Dan and his concern at the most figurative arm's length he can, because the last thing that needs to happen now is for him to crumple in front of a mortal again, when Dan has already seen him compromised so intensely in so many ways that he wonders if Dan has any faith in him to be the Guardian he insists he is, without this weapon constantly about to go off under his skin.

As if at the reminder, he twitches again, a lingering reminder of the zap he received today to shut him up when he protested his orders.

Edited 2021-04-04 04:43 (UTC)

Dan thinks that it must somehow be that Bunny's tied into Dan's memories being redisplayed those months ago, how often Bunny reminds him of his older sister sometimes, and here with crystal-clear definition as Bunny tries to bottle up disappointment and set it aside in favor of what's next, of a future problem to focus on instead of current pain. The slightest snatch of a soft smile crosses Dan's mind as he thinks, grimly, of how Kitty would be the first to start cleaning up and planning for what motel or trucker pullout to stay at next with dirt from digging graves still under her nails.

Dan was always the one more prone to linger, to tend to the emotions that aren't practical or cured through logic and convenience. He's keenly aware of the difference between moving past something and shoving it aside, even if it's so much easier to navigate that difference when he's an onlooker instead of when it's his own feelings.

"Are you sure there ain't nothing you want me to pick up for you here? You know, for the kids your mates ain't got covered." He steps back so Bunny can look at the rack of items, though he's aware there's no spot-cleaner. There are packs of cigarettes and bottles of contraband gin shoved into boxes of latex gloves and industrial vacuum filters, not to mention quite a few unused condoms that most amorous couples who come through the supply closets. "Should be the little white pen-looking fellas that smell like bleach."

"It doesn't matter what I want," Bunny says, a little sharper than intended, before taking a calming breath. "Jorgmund has the plans I made. However they're gonna screw them up is up to them. You're off the hook on my account."

The hunt for the little laundry pen is not going well. Bunny gives the air a final sniff.

"There's no bleach in here." Bunny pronounces it with finality. "You're gonna have to find your little pen somewhere else."

"I don't need to be on no hook to want to help out."

Dan doesn't take Bunny's sharpness personally. Bunny's upset, and when people are upset there's usually some shrapnel. Scraping your edges against people because you're too distracted to take the time to soften them is different than hurting others to let off steam, and this form of lashing out is easy to weather.

"Shame. Good thing I found you, at least. Not a total waste." He grabs a box of gloves and sorts through it to find a bottle of gin, tucks it into his uniform. "Look, if you want your space, let me know. But if you want someone to agree with you how intentionally dogshit their timing is, I'm in your corner all you need."

"I didn't mean it like that."

Bunny sighs at his own sharpness. All Dan has ever done is have his back and be kind to him, and he's letting Dan get caught in the crossfire of his indignation.

"Look, I just need to be angry a while. We've all got a lot to be angry about and I -"

And this is the straw that's so deeply personal its driven entirely home how under the enemy's thumb he is, how little chance he has of getting out from under it.

Bunny smelled the gin, of course, the juniper smell distinct from any of the harsh cleaning scents, but he wasn't going to take what someone else had hidden for themselves, for their own quiet moments of helpless anger.

But since it's Dan, since he smells the rest of the hidden stash, since his year is going so, so irregularly lopsided, since no one is going to find them in here after he locks the door -

"You got another one of those?"

"-and you gotta be angry. I understand."

There's a sense of relief when Bunny just lets him in, asks to share a drink. That's a sense of what to do next, that he isn't intruding anymore but has been invited to help Bunny hold the space. "Sure do. Courtesy of Andy in the mail room, guess his folks got him some for his birthday but he was going on a health kick or something."

He pulls out another bottle and hands it to Bunny, taking a seat perched on top of the big rolling vacuum.

"How far does it go back?" He cracks open his bottle and takes a swig. "I know where I'm from, the actual history of global spring celebrations is pretty hotly debated. How many millennia's this been your work?"

Edited 2021-04-04 07:12 (UTC)

Bunny clocks Dan's relief, feels another little twinge of guilt. Again, Dan has never been anything but kind to him, to the point of wanting this much to help him feel better when it's not Dan's responsibility to take care of Bunny's feelings. It's not any mortal's job.

The day is what it is. The year's been what it has. Bunny locks the door before he takes the bottle, crouching down beside Dan at not-rest.

"It existed before I did," he mutters. A little taste of juniper goes down well, reminding him of real sunlight, grass with wind in it. "Once humans started celebrating anything what else would they celebrate but life coming back to their region? Birth, I guess, that celebration probably came first, but it all comes down to survival. New life. It's always been your first thing to celebrate before it got its handful of names."

He sounds wistful as he reminisces.

"It got serious when she would pick a village to show up in each equinox. Even when she didn't come, they'd still celebrate that she'd come at all. That happens when a goddess visits, a real one, the visit itself stays a reason to celebrate even if you never see her again."

Oh, strewth. He didn't mean to put it that way, but the little breath of cold blows over his soul, an echo of Eos' death all the same.

He hopes Dan doesn't need him to explain who he's talking about.

"Anyway. It won't be as good without me, but it'll happen enough to keep me believed in, and at least that doesn't seem to matter much here. The kids will still believe in me even if someone else takes my day over where they can see."

But he still sounds intensely bitter as he takes another drink.

Dan remembers exactly who Bunny is talking about, remembers those images of a power so benevolent and sublime that Dan had to lower his gaze even at her memory, and he can understand how a culture would form shrines and holidays around her fingerprints on their lifetimes. It's the most instinctive response. Life is primed to feel awe and marvel at things and then to try and preserve that feeling through ritual.

He remembers even my goddess is dead as if Bunny were speaking it to him at this second.

Dan nods as he hears Bunny rationalize why it'll be okay, even if it's not as good this year. "Good. That means you don't got to worry about tending no one's feelings but your own on the day of."

What is implicit is that Dan knows that Bunny does have feelings to tend. And that's what the gin is for.

"You been doing a good enough job so long that the Jorg can't throw anything worse than a hiccup at you."

Bunny grunts. "More like a continuous stream of hiccups," he mutters into his gin.

Hes not sure he wants to get into his feelings enough to articulate them right now, as if articulating them would make them too big to fend off. But Dan went through the trouble of finding him, of sharing his comfort contraband, of wanting to help at all and he wants to honor that kindness.

"I can't get over how easy this would be if they hadn't cut me down so far," he admits, voice a little softer than usual, but no less furious for it. "Not just getting a handle on the cogs, but - everything this world needs to get stable again. If they'd just asked instead of -"

The fury gets a little better of him and he cuts off mid sentence.

"Some folks got a whole life of a continuous stream of hiccups." Dan snorts and takes a sip. He saw how seriously Bunny took his obligations when he was anointed a Guardian. He knows how important this entire thing is to Bunny, at how what it all means is wound in Bunny's core. He's seen it. It was one of the memories that most eloquently explained Bunny.

"I reckon a lot of us would have helped them out if they'd asked nice. Probably a few of us for free, even." His voice is smooth but not boneless, somehow both gentle and firm. He's calm, but the central problem is grave, and it bothers him. "They ain't got no reason to keep starting off with enmity with us but it seems it ain't never crossed their mind to treat us like people from the start."

Bunny's fur bristles noticeably at the comment, but he says nothing because yeah, some people's lives are, some people never have the upswing or the long stretches of triumph, they just have the tripping up again and again. It annoys him to be reminded you should be grateful. Others have it worse. And yet it centers him, too. Some people do have it worse. He can complain all day about a temporary reduction in the power he already tries never to take for granted. It won't change anything, won't get him his power back.

So instead he's calm when he says, "no, don't ever expect them to treat us like people. They don't think we are. They don't believe I'm real. Which, I'll give 'em, it's hard to argue covering an entire world in a day is possible for anyone BUT me with all the chains off, but they know just enough to not know what they're really dealing with." Just enough to be dangerous. "They don't think we're people. We're better off never assuming they could."

"I didn't mean it like that-" But Bunny doesn't hold onto the comment, so Dan doesn't circle back to it to clarify that he didn't mean Bunny should be grateful, didn't mean to dismiss him. What Dan meant was that Bunny has a goodwill of successes to fall back on, to draw strength from confidence.

So he lets Bunny vent instead, swinging one foot slightly as he rolls what Bunny says in his mind.

"You don't think they could?" It's a kind of fatalism that's surprising from Bunny, a finality that stands at odds with the concept of rebirth.

The gentleness of the question stops Bunny mid-rant, reminding him without saying so that he's barreling into the worst case scenario. The worst people scenario.

Putting deadly shock collars in their spines speaks the worst of whoever made that call, supported that call, executed it, but once again he's back on the thought of how quickly some of the New Hires were prepared - enthusiastic even - to murder the technicians back in Darlington for the crime of having been part of something inhumane, when a little distance keeps him thinking about the kids on the Rig whose parents are their only surviving families, whose parents lost other children and siblings and their parents and whole hometowns.

A lab tech in R+D who wasn't sent to Darlington walked across a desert after her whole town succumbed to the Go Away Bombs, almost died of dehydration carrying her little girl, who made it to the nearest civilization that would help with tears to spare because her mother gave her that much of the only water they had.

He knows this whole story because the little girl told it to him after a Storytime in the library about a baby beluga. She didn't tell the story with tears in her eyes. It was her story that she felt safe to tell because her mother had made sure it was never a deadly ordeal for her, and if that tech had been ordered to go and do unethical research or you will lose your job and your home and a safe place to feed and educate and shelter your child he can't accept a fast and easily issued argument that the Correct thing to do in that situation was kill her.

"There are some who won't," he amends, thoughtfully, to Dan's question. "The brass who chose to shackle us like they did - someone in that seat doesn't have a lot of wiggle room for what is and isn't a person. But not all of them." He pauses, rolling his own rant over in his mind a little. "What I mean is that we're safer not depending on the possibility that enough will come around to do right and fix the situation for us. We have to act."

He zeroes in on why Dan's question gave him so much to think about.

"But not forget that they're people, who can change. Even if they never change the way we want them to."

So where does that leave them? With a problem so much bigger still than him being iced out of his day.

Edited 2021-04-05 08:22 (UTC)

Dan thinks of that time he and Bunny and Sam went hunting Rose Tattoo, of Bunny's righteous anger when they were caught and told that company policy trumped Washburn's fatherly instincts, of how clearly at unease Washburn was with how things ended up. Bunny touched on something in Washburn that hadn't been smothered in all the corporatocrat, even if it hadn't gotten them anything.

"It got under my skin a little how quick folks were to talk about dealing out punishment." Dan rubs his wrist and pulls his mouth to the side. He's used to it. He's used to being around people with power who take meting out death and suffering lightly, and it didn't surprise him to feel that air from the other hires, but it did disappoint. He'd thought he'd found more like minds than he did. "But I knew you wouldn't let the trigger-happy folks run away with it. That's just why I asked for clarification."

Dan has thought, many times, of how lucky he was that he and Bunny met first thing when Dan got here. It's been such a consistent source of confidence, knowing that there's at least one other person here who orbits around the same moral gravity. "You're right, from a pragmatic level. Ain't nothing to be gained from relying on Jorg folk to do their best by us, instead of just encouraging it from them."

Taking Bunny off Easter - whether a matter of being intentionally petty and mean, or simply so bureaucratic and soulless that the idea of making someone's schedule nice for them is foreign - is a salient reminder. Shame the Jorg kids will be the ones really missing out.

"I'm disappointed in 'em." But Dan already heard his rant about it, saw the fallout. But speaking of- "don't know how much I can let or not let 'em dole out deadly force when they see fit. A few of 'em like me but that doesn't mean I got any kinda moral sway over them.

He eyes Dan, wondering if Dan is about to be disappointed in him too.

"Theyd call me a hypocrite anyway. That new witch - you know I threatened her life, when she proposed killing rig kids to meet our ends."

He'd rather Dan be reminded by him than by her.

"I just meant running away with the conversation unchecked. We got some strong personalities who think appointing themselves executioner is the practical solution. I'm glad we got at least one strong personality who disagrees."

Dan toys with a loose thread on his uniform and gives Bunny's shoulder the slightest friendly nudge when he says strong personality. Bunny's right, and they're on the same page. 'Disappointed' is the right word. 'Frustrated'. Dan's feeling misunderstood, too, by everyone around this except for Bunny and, it seems, Robbie Baldwin.

It's because he knows he and Bunny already have that common ground that he has no reaction at all to Bunny's confession. He knows Bunny doesn't take those sorts of threats, or their execution, lightly, which means there's justifiable context that Dan can just presume.

"We got a new witch who was proposing killing kids? She got a name?" His face and voice don't change for this news, either. If Bunny didn't know Dan's story already, he wouldn't pick it up from here. Internally, Dan runs a script in his head of the right ways to respond to having witch company, something he's just had to get used to when working with magicians in any capacity.

"There's no winning trying to hold moral sway anyway. If you got experience killing, you're a hypocrite. If you don't, you're naive. All we can do is hold the line whenever we see it needs it."

"I understand why they wanna." Goodness knows he benefits from his small circle of fellow ancients willing to get blood on their hands, but preferring to talk about it first. "It feels like a simple solution a lot of the time, doesn't it? Kill the threat and move on, deal with the consequences. But when the consequences are someone died who didn't have to, and that blood's on their hands - I don't want that for them, I don't want that for the people on this rig. Never been more grateful for the Oath than now that I can't call it in."

Dan will remember the Enkidu Oath, from the fight Dan witnessed with the Snow Queen. That awful battle where, maybe, Bunny reached a turning point of his own, where killing would have been easy, would have been justified, wouldn't have had any fallout except that there was one less evil person existing in his world, wouldn't have left anyone bereft of a friend because the Snow Queen had done everything in her power to make nothing but enemies of the entire world. But he let her go on existing anyway. He let her keep the hope of living something better than the life she'd built for herself. Many who deserved that chance died without it, but he gave it to her, even though she didn't much deserve it.

And he's glad he gets that control over his world. He's glad he gets to make those decisions. He's glad the other Guardians are there to temper his choices, and that the Oath is there to give him something to bring to battle besides deadly force.

"I can't get mad at them for wanting a simple, permanent end to a threat, but I just wanna yell at them for thinking it is that simple." This time, he sips his gin with a little chuckle. "Naive, is that what they tell you you are? Let them try that one on me, see which of us has lived through more world wars."

Not that he wants to talk about those either. Not that he'd bring it up with anyone but Dan, who has the grace not to follow that lead.

As for the witch. "Rowena." Bunny makes a face, like his gin's turned. "Didn't care entirely for her energy before she admitted sacrificing children was an option."

He thinks of Dan's past, considers reaching out to him, but this isn't a frozen memory requiring Dan be held to keep frostbite at bay. This is a stuffy closet with temperature control, and no need for contact between them.

Bunny puts a paw on Dan's shoulder anyway.

"You gonna be all right knowing she's here?"

"For whatever reason, it ain't never felt simple to me. Maybe it's just because my world's got plenty of stuff that comes back for you long after it's dead." Most ghosts that need laying to rest were ghosts that were killed in life, not ones that died naturally. Dan's work back home involves plenty of the spiritual cleanup that lingers years, decades, sometimes centuries after a murder - and that's just the actual fact of the metaphysical. Dan's aware more than a hundred times over of the way committing murder leaves invisible, intangible wreckage in the soul too.

Would that the Oath were a tool everywhere. Sometimes people look at guns or swords or bombs and see the solutions to their problems to the point that the weapon becomes sacred-looking, and that's how Dan sees such a powerful tool, a way to make the values of mercy and preserving life and giving chances to improve into something actually binding. Watching Dan negotiate with the harpy was where Bunny realized Dan was a like spirit; Dan felt the same watching Bunny offer up that possibility of peace to that cruel, heartless, wretched creature in that castle of horror.

"No one's outright called me naive but the attitude prevails that if you hesitate on the trigger finger, it's because you don't understand what real stakes are. And I reckon if I were them I wouldn't disagree. Their certainty's hard and bitterly won." Wrath, Wash and Kenzie didn't need to say it so directly for it to be obvious, for the hammer blows that battered their iron cores into weapons to be so visible. "And ain't nothing to be gained from trying to rack up my losses and track record against super soldiers."

He'll never understand what they went through. That's a gift. He doesn't forget how lucky he is.

"Of course. She ain't got nothing to do with me. I ain't heard her name before, so I ain't got no reason to hold ire." Dan gives Bunny's hand a pat, as if it's Bunny who needs the reassurance, not him. He's worked with witches in the past, even had to grit his teeth through missions with necromancers. He can coexist with people without putting them into the same category as the woman who so vindictively ruined his life, tore open his whole little sheltered biome and year by year ripped the pieces apart. He can coexist.

"It don't recommend her highly to me that you don't like her, though. I generally trust your judgment." He plans on politely keeping his distance; better for everyone, especially him, if Bunny and Sam are the only ones who even foresee any potential awkwardness.

Edited 2021-04-06 17:06 (UTC)

"Yeah, you're right." No one wins in a game of Who's Endured The Most Suffering. "I'll point her out to you. The better to avoid."

Funny how much he appreciates the contact, how much he still feels he ought to pull Dan into a side-hug but can't quite entirely justify it. When they were stuck in Darlington, holed up together for safety as much as the setting allowed them, there were mornings he'd wake up having thrown an arm over Dan in his sleep, and that was nice. That was companionable and comforting to someone who never slept before this enslavement, and before never sleeping, barely ever slept alone.

But that was a moment of desperate insecurity and discomfort, when he'd needed more touch to ground him. He's back on his feet now. Was back.

Bunny sighs and just leans into his contraband bottle. "Thanks for this," he says, eventually. "Thought I needed to be alone but this is better."

This is being understood without really having to explain himself. What a rare gift.

"You know I ain't never going to turn down your company, Bunny." Dan appreciates the contact, too, lets his hand linger over Bunny's paw on his shoulder until Bunny pulls away with his alcohol.

Dan hasn't had a friend like Bunny before, in large part because Dan doesn't have many friends longitudinally; the closest is fellow hunters that he runs the same regions with, his Lionels and Ancient Ones, whom he goes on adventures with once or twice a year and rarely sees outside of when there's blood and boldness in then air. With the Rig, he's had friends that he could expect to see every day when he woke up, to watch their hair grow slowly, the cycles of their moods, their action-packed missions and the tedium of the day-to-day stripping away their pretenses like old paint. Some people say you know others best by who they are in their most dramatic moments, but Dan feels as if he gleans plenty of irreplaceable information from the comings and goings of quotidian living.

He and Bunny have shared the Rig for many months now. They've shared a bed and meals together, vent sessions over Planker's sadism, brainstormed strange situations together, passed each other in the hall putting gifts in the infirmary. In its own way, that's been as informative as the shared memories and as Bunny transformed into a blind, helpless shape and as Dan digging his feet in on the network over matters of life and death.

"Besides, I wanted to make sure you knew the Jorg schedulers don't speak for all us folk."

"I know they don't speak for about any of you." It comes out warm, even the New Hires Bunny disagrees with so far being firmly opposed to the corporate soulless unkindness of the rig.

But speaking of Dan's willingness to help, the feeling Bunny knows is so important in BEING able to help at all, in the kids he feels so partially responsible for now on a far more personal level than ever -

"I got enough time to make one good gift for each kid on the Rig," he mentions, thinking out the timeframe. "You'd be doing me a favor if you made sure they got where they should go, instead of into some cog's pocket."

"You'll just have to walk me through which gift goes to which kid before you go." Dan beams. This is exactly the sort of outcome he was hoping for, one which will be an incontrovertible good thing for Bunny, for him, and for the kids who'll still get something special this Easter. It's something Dan's good at, too. He knows the names of all the kids on the Rig, all their parents.

He takes another drink and caps his gin. He can't imbibe nearly as much as he'd like to day-to-day, on account of having to ration his supply, but the Jorg at least has a medicine patch prescribed to him that takes away the physical symptoms. Dan could swear the patch itches when he drinks, like it can tell he's cheating on it and is upset with him for it.

"You want them delivered anonymous or you want the kids to know it really was the Easter Bunny?"

"I'll make you a list," Bunny says, unaware of how helpful that's not. Dan's capping of his drink is his own cue to cut it out, but he takes another swig before actually handing the bottle back. "Of course you can tell 'em it's from me. Isn't that what every adult tells their kids when they get 'em something for Easter?"

He cracks a little smile over it. This is how it has come to pass that his day is still associated with the dime store fare jorgmund will no doubt use, but he couldn't begrudge adults for leaning into the spirit of his day for the sake of their children.

"Sure. That'll work." A few people on the Rig already know about Dan's literacy issues - it's not a secret - but he's not being entirely forthcoming about reminding people or letting people in, so he just figures he'll avoid the conversation for now and just enlist someone already "in the know" to help him with the deliveries.

"Just didn't know if you actually being here to be the object of their affection instead of benefacting the kids from afar changed anything." He hides the bottles inside a box of gloves, shaking it slightly to make sure the with doesn't feel too far off-expected in case someone else finds it. "How's that feel, by the way? It didn't look like you got too much one-on-one time with kids at your usual job."

"It's different."

Sometimes its upsetting. The kids with a low tolerance for large animals and strange appearances are scared of him, and that's crushing in a way he can't do anything about, can't even get mad about, shouldn't take to heart but can't help doing.

And other times it's restoring something in his soul, when the kids who aren't afraid of him at all gather at Storytime and tell him their own little stories, not to make a point or convey anything in particular most of the time, but mainly to get his attention, get close enough to pet him, remind him why this was always so important. They are all so sweet and unjaded even against the background of their global trauma. They're all funny and creative and ready to play and things that he desperately wants to be able to preserve for them for the rest of their lives, and knows that it's going to be so difficult to do so.

"I just want the best for them, you know? And I can't even give them a fraction of it. Even if I weren't suppressed, this worlds so stacked against them. So many are."

He's thousand yard staring a little as he says it.

"I never tried looking for other worlds. It didn't even cross my mind they were there to be looked for."

"Yeah, I know."

Every child who's ever remained in Dan's care has died. They've died bloody and screaming and in pain. Dan's held himself at a distance from most kids since Eliora passed, had been doing so for years until she crossed into his life, and watching the Rig kids from the sidelines is the full extent of his interaction with youngsters.

But his reason for being doesn't orbit around them. He isn't held intact by purpose the way Bunny is, and just the same, the flaws in the world don't lay themselves at his feet the way they do to Bunny. Dan can opt out, volunteer his way into heroism, or live a smaller, emptier life without feeling like it's hurting others to do so.

"There's always going to be work to be done, though. Didn't nobody in this world ever do all the good they might could have." He pats Bunny on the shoulder, trying to wake him from that stare. "I reckon if we could center it more for everyone else, get them to remember that these Jorg staffers and scientists impact the kids they see on the Rig too...maybe it'd stay some hands."

"Reckon so," Bunny agrees, but it's a little listless as his communicator pings and he checks the new messages to see -

His eyes widen and he sits up as he sees K's new network post, and he has to struggle to contain his sudden smugness. "Look! Look at this-"

He reads the post out loud to Dan, smugger with each word. "I told you," he crows, when done. "Remember I told you? I knew the cogs in command were sending grunts to do work like this against their will. Strewth. Sometimes the consequence of murder is just that someone dies who didn't need to, why isn't that everyone's first thought?"

Edited 2021-04-09 06:41 (UTC)

Dan laughs, thrilled for a bevy of reasons and at least a little bit smug himself. What a nice reminder that they have more allies than they thought, instead of enemies, and what a vindication for pausing before acting out violence.

"Oh my God. Lord keep me from going on that network and saying anything right now, it'll come out patronizing no matter what." He shakes his head. "You were right. I ain't never been happier to tell someone they were right."

"You can tell me I'm right all afternoon, no matter how patronizing it sounds, I won't mind." Bunny has a little chuckle over it, clinging to this little rush that being right gives him, the contrast it finally casts against his collapse beneath the weight of all of this. Someone lived who no one can argue didn't deserve to be spared. Several who some would argue didn't get to hold on to the chance of growth, of something better to choose and think and stand for down the line. Several who won't ever change but are inextractably wound into the lives of others were spared, when their lives were in question, and so are all the innocents who never deserved any of the suffering they were pulled into in the first place. This is a win. An unadulterated win, physically and philosophically.

He is still iced out of his day, still being dishonored and denied by his slave drivers, when he'd never known any meaningful imprisoning before this rig yanked him out of the world that will die without him. But this isn't forever. Nothing ever is. The old certainty returns to him so much more easily than it left.

He puts a paw on Dan's shoulder, the taste of juniper still in his mouth, gratitude back in his heart. "Thanks for finding me," he says, again, though he already said it once. "Has anyone ever had to ask for a better friend than you?"

He asks it as a joke.

"Well, then, you were right. You were right and I was right to agree with you the whole way." Dan laughs again, any trace of unhappiness he had coming into this closet erased by the alcohol and, much more so, by the way that the chips have fallen in their favor, the universe having struck a harmonic note with their cores.

"You're sweet." He wobbles his head with the soft momentum of Bunny's pat on the shoulders. "Not that I know of. But would you believe I don't got much in the way of friends back home?"

"Pull the other one." Bunny waves off the comment before noticing - "You're serious? How is that possible? Everyone on this heap is your friend, seems like. Aside from the folks that try real hard not to have any."

"Oh, those folks on the Rig are my friends too, they just don't know it yet." Dan laughs. "Honestly? Same thing as we just saw go down on this mission. Same philosophical difference between me and most of the monster-hunting industry."

But that's not it entirely, or even probably mostly. It's different, to be in constant contact with others than to be drifting across a continent, touching down only occasionally, always briefly and never honestly.

"Besides, I tend to come and go places. I ain't in the habit of setting roots down nowhere."

"You befriend em so I don't have to," Bunny agrees, frowning over the implication of Dan's monster hunting crew, frowning over the idea of Dan not setting roots down.

Roots need to be put when one has a kid, and for a while there, he knows, Dan had one. Bunny is sure that whatever happened to Ellie, if it were something good, Dan would have told him what it was already.

He still thinks about asking, but edges away from the question.

"Never set any down at all?" He asks it more to make conversation than anything else. Dan is so social, so quick to connect, that it seems odd to him that none of those connections would take real hold. "Must be lonely."

He would be - if not for his connections, his team, his home, his myriad ways of intertwining his life with millions of.

"It is."

Dan doesn't fool himself into thinking that he doesn't long for the connections that he chooses not to make, and since Bunny knows him relatively well, he doesn't try to fool Bunny either. He's chosen a difficult, lonesome, unstable lifestyle, and often it doesn't even feel like he's choosing it so much as that forces beyond his control has molded him to feel restless and vigilant and stressed to stay in one space too long. Not often, certainly not the majority of the time, but enough of the time to be notable, Dan wishes he could slow down a little.

"But it makes it easier to tolerate the Rig, you know? I wasn't never going to calm down enough to get to know folks, so now I been forced into an opportunity to be part of a community." Which means continuity, which means commitment, which means the responsibilities and obligations that come with then social contract, and for someone who knows people as well as Dan does, he doesn't actually have experience being a part of a people.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

an incandescent glow [closed to Dan]

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