Better Late Than Never

[morethanmyth]

The yetis and elves had been extremely welcoming when they arrived back at the Pole. As soon as they shook themselves out of their shock at how battered they'd looked, they'd immediately brought out the blankets, spare clothes, first aid kits, food and drinks. Cocoa was pressed into people's hands whether they wanted it or not.

"Blughbloghughblug?"

"Out of nowhere. In broad daylight, no less," Katherine said to one of the yetis, holding her half-finished cup of hot cocoa in her hands. "It goes without saying that this is very, very bad."

"Ooghughaugh. Blughooghablorgblurgh?"

"Oh, well, that may be because they're still tethered to their worlds to a degree." She looked to the others. "He said someone named Wonder Woman, a Mr. Stark, and some undead fellow that had stayed behind at the Pole disappeared while you were meeting with me. I suppose that supports my hypothesis about the trans-dimensional tethering."

It had been a little while now since they'd returned and there was still no sign of Jack and Bunny. It was obviously bothering Katherine. In between her idle chatter with the yetis, who seemed to regard with her great fondness, she was pacing back and forth through the area that had been made into a "common area" while they'd been away. It was comfortable, full of plush red couches and cushions and tables for them to sit at to eat. Board games in many varieties had been stacked around.

The yetis were on standby, ready to get anything they needed, or show those who hadn't seen the Pole yet around.

"They should be back by now. I don't know why they're not back by now. Maybe the lindworms gave them trouble. Perhaps they had to take shelter in the Warren."

She chugged down her cocoa like someone else might nervously down a shot of whisky and then went for a refill.

[ooc: This is just for a few minutes of post-fight mingling and then the return of Jack and Bunny, then it'll be free-threading after this.]

Comments

[spellitonce]

"Oh my God!"

Creepy giggling shadow monsters and dragons were bad enough, but no one had said anything about enormous scorpion-tick terror-beasts. Nico lurched to her feet but moved no further forward, frozen in horror.

"Get out of the way!" she shrieked at Jack and Katherine and the scrambling yeti as her brain tried desperately to come up with a spell that would burn the horror-thing without barbequing the Easter Bunny.

"%$#&, healing flames!"

She stumbled forward as the head of the Staff burst into writhing violet flames, half-blinded by the light that she shoved at Bunny and the bug-thing.

[mywarrenmyrules]

The parasite didn't shy away from the healing spell. If anything, it grew faster, the healing magic affecting it just as well as it was affecting Bunny.

But it was still doing Bunny more good than it was doing the parasite, if only because there was more good to be done for him. The red leeched back out of his eye, his ears stopped bleeding, and the skin underneath his fur that had already been flayed from his meat reattached, soothed. The invasive feelers went to work redoing the damage, but more slowly than Nico's magic could heal it. His dislocated shoulder slid back into place with the same popping noise that had accompanied the injury.

The sting was still in his shoulder, poisoning him. He reached up and pulled it out, the barbed, six-inch spike ripping a new gaping wound in his shoulder. Blood spilled down his arm before Nico's healing fire touched and sealed it.

He bit back the scream of pain, sorry as he did that there were so many children around to see this. But he'd be sorrier if the parasite killed him in front of them, then moved to feed on them, too. He'd been broken, bitten, burned before, but nothing had ever compared to the pain of this - of something flaying him from the inside out, while it gnawed at the force that gave him life as a myth. There was a lot he needed to consider as he - and the others - killed this thing before it killed him, but the most important, the most pressing, the most towering thought screaming over all everything in his mind - over even the pain - was that this thing could not possibly be allowed to put this pain into any of these children.

A mundane fire burned, as always, beneath North's towering portrait. He looked at Nico, grateful, but without adequate time to put words to his gratitude. "Nice work on the healing flames. Keep 'em going."

He bounced to his freshly-healed feet and rabbit-quick, threw himself at the fireplace. He only turned the shoulder carrying the parasite into the blaze, but the smell of burning fur and flesh filled the workshop anyway. With it was a fouler smell - a searing stench of chemical fires, as the parasite screeched and detached its rings and rings of teeth from Bunny's shoulder. But the fires only glazed its tumorous form, searing something oily but not - apparently - flammable from its surface. It didn't smolder, as Bunny did.

He reached up, burned, fur smoking, grabbed the thing, ripped it from the feelers it had dug deep into his skin, and reached right into the fire to grab a flaming log with his bare paws. He jammed the burning log down the parasite's gaping mouth, and dropped his full weight on it, holding it down and away from the children as it smoked and screamed.

Because everyone in that room - everyone was a child in his eyes. The yetis, fully grown, but so shortly lived. Katherine, who'd been a child before he'd become the legend he was, but who was in so many ways the picture of why they protected the children as they did. Look at what children who were nurtured, protected, who knew they had such protectors who loved them - look at what heroes they became.

Poor Jack, who would always, in some way, be a child. He shouldn't have to see this sort of brutality, who had so much to lose, having only had anything worth losing for such a sort flash of his long life.

And the rest of these myth children now, too.

The parasite's thrashing slowed as thick, choking smoke poured from its sharp mouth, until its feelers only flopped limply against the weight upon it. Bunny kicked it into the fireplace, where it finally caught and blazed.

He tried to stand, but his foot was badly burned. He slumped over, rolling onto the least burned portions of himself.

The notion came to him that now that everyone was safe, he was quite safe to go into shock, and that was exactly what he was doing. His breath heaved in and out, and the fact that he couldn't feel much of the pain of his burns was not a good sign - but the crisis, now that it had become only him, was out of his control now.

[spellitonce]

Nico had never tried to heal someone while they were in the process of being eaten alive before. So that was a new, horrifying experience that she'd like to never ever have to repeat again. Then, when Bunny jumped to his feet and told her to keep doing what she was doing and then jumped into the fire, well, she couldn't very well stop doing it.

She did fall to her knees though, the smell of burning flesh tickling the back of her throat in a way that promised to end poorly, her mind flashing to a boy's skeleton burnt free of flesh and muscle and blood in a bare moment not three feet from where she'd stood...

The Staff kept burning with violet flame even after Bunny had pulled out of the fireplace and kicked the tick back into it alone. She wasn't thinking, about stopping the spell or keeping it going, she just sat there still and stunned and silent, waiting for some kind of jolt to knock her back into reality again.

[letskicksomeice]

A few lingering flames of real fire burned in Bunny's fur so Jack slammed his staff down and a cold wind blew them out. Then Jack cast his staff aside and dropped down next to Bunny, pulling him into his arms.

"Hang on. Hang on," he was very nearly sobbing. "You just need to heal up. You're gonna be fine. Stay with me. Just a few minutes. Stay with me, okay?"

Nico's healing fire continued to burn, until burned flesh melted away and new flesh grew in its place.

[mywarrenmyrules]

"I'm not -" his voice was faint, suddenly weak and slow, but firm. "going anywhere."

He couldn't die.

Well, no, that wasn't true. He could die, but he must not.

He reached up to grip Jack's arm with his unburned paw, and his grip was tight. You must not die. And he would not. Nico's magic was healing him faster than he could heal himself, with the unfortunate side effect that as he lifted out shock, he could feel his pain again without shock dulling it. He was too tired to do anything but shudder quietly at the agony.

He would not die. No one else would die, either. But this had been so much closer than he cared to think.

Those thoughts were for later. For now, he clung to Jack like the frost spirit was the only thing anchoring him to the Earth, his grip uncomfortably tight on Jack's arm as he rode out the healing.

[letskicksomeice]

The boy was nearly in tears as he sat there holding Bunny and only just resisted rocking in place in his panic - he didn't want to jostle the older spirit.

The ice coating Jack's skin finally melted away, now that the tick-creature was dead and he knew it was safe. His own wounds started bleeding a little more freely, but that meant they also were able to clot and start healing more easily.

He held Bunny very close to him, leaning down to press a kiss against his fuzzy forehead, and then he started to say something to him in a low, sonorous voice.

Though it was mostly too quiet for the others to hear the whole thing, it sounded like it was perhaps a lullaby, meant to distract him from his pain.

"Once our valleys were ringing
With songs of our children singing..."

[mywarrenmyrules]

It was distracting him, all right. His grip tightened on Jack's arm as his other paw, the one he'd grabbed a burning log with, healed slowly.

"Jack, mate."

His voice was soft, insistent.

"You couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."

[animalhats]

Molly, if she were thinking about it, would feel she had showed admirable restraint thus far, her hands pressed over her mouth so she wouldn't scream or sob and distract Nico or Jack or anybody who should be focusing on Bunny. Which had the added bonus of giving her hands something to do so she didn't get in the way trying to cling to Bunny.

But once he cracked a joke at Jack, that was when her brain decided he'd be okay, and she quite unintentionally let out a sort of keening half-sob, which she followed up by dropping to the ground and bursting into moderately hysterical tears.

He was okay. She could get upset and distract people now without anything bad that might happen being her fault.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack stopped singing.

"What kind of bucket? Do you mean the kind of bucket I'm gonna hit you in the head with if you keep making fun of my singing? That kind of bucket?"

Apparently the two of them were very bad at maintaining melodrama.

Jack still looked like he was near tears, but they at least looked more like tears of relief that Bunny was okay enough to joke around.

"I thought we were having a Moment here. You're not supposed to crack jokes in the middle of a Moment."

Jack sniffed and leaned down to press his forehead against Bunny's.

That was when Molly started crying and Jack remembered they had an audience.

"It's okay," he said, looking over at her, conflicted over his urge to comfort her when he also didn't want to let go of Bunny. "He's okay."

He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself just as much as anyone else.

[animalhats]

"I kn-know," Molly said, hiccupping through her tears and clearly trying to stop even though that obviously wasn't happening just yet. "B-but I was so sc-scared he was gonna die like-- like Gert!"

Her tears come back in force and she buries her face in her hands trying to hide from everybody. Even if she was scared and it's totally acceptable to be crying after all that, part of her is completely mortified that she's crying in front of everybody.

Especially Howard. He'll probably make fun of her for it.

[madeforthis]

Zac had been watching the whole thing unfold while on pins and needles, but thankfully it was over quickly - if a bit nasty in the process. Nothing terribly new to him, though.

Molly, however...well, that was an appropriate reaction. And seeing as the person she seemed close to was busy with healing Bunny, Zac decides to take it upon himself to try and do a little defusing. He plods over to where Molly is, and pats her back a bit as he stoops down. "Hey, it's alright - if Mister Bunny there has held out this long against everything so far, I got a feeling he can take most anything the bad guys can throw at him."

[mywarrenmyrules]

Bunny let Jack go with a squeeze to his arm.

They probably weren't done hugging and staving off panic, but there was a kid in distress and that was enough to get them to both put their problems aside for the moment.

"Listen to Zac, Molly, he's got the right of it. Bouncing back's my middle name. Little bloodsucker like that? We've got bigger mosquitoes in Oz."

He shouldered himself up so he could see Molly, his pains mostly faded to a dull ache, aside from his still-burned paw.

Nico wasn't moving, and for a moment her blank stare ignited his concern. "Nico. Sheila. You with us?" He flexed his burnt paw slightly. "You can take a rest. I'll be fine."

He started to stand, then wavered and fell back into a crouch against Jack. He slipped back to the ground with a groan. "Just- just gimme a minute down here. I'll be right."

Not as fast as he might pretend, for Molly and Nico's sake, but they didn't need to know that.

[letskicksomeice]

"Hey hey, whoa! Who said you were allowed to be vertical?" Jack said, as Bunny tried - and failed - to stand up.

Cradling him again, Jack held on a bit more firmly this time, hoping to preclude any other attempts at bravado.

"Stay still for a few minutes, take some deep breaths, and then we'll have Phil and the guys help you to a room."

[mywarrenmyrules]

"C'mon Jack, I can hop it off."

Not that he was putting up a serious fight. He was due for a good long rest after this, if he could get one, but at the very least he could find a quiet corner to curl up in himself. Once the kids were reassured. He tried to sit up - very slowly this time.

"What are you going to do, sit on me? You have hollow bones."

[spellitonce]

Nico took a deep, shuddering breath and the violet flames snapped off like someone had thrown a switch. She staggered to her feet, her torn sleeve peeling stickily away from her arm where she'd bled on it, and moved through the crowd to throw her arms around Molly.

When Bunny spoke again, she pinned him with a furious bright-eyed glare that looked fit to take off a couple layers of the skin he'd just grown back with her help.

"Come on, Molly," she said quietly to the girl in her arms. "It's okay. Let's-- let's just go get more cookies or something."

[letskicksomeice]

Oy, that was some glare, but Jack understood why Bunny was getting it. He needed to sit his fluffy butt down and not undo all her hard work, especially after he gave everyone such a scare.

"I'm not going to sit on you, I'm gonna do this."

Jack very gently belly-flopped across Bunny's stomach, bearing him back to the floor with his body weight. That meant, unfortunately, that he was bleeding on him a little but that had slowed to a trickle anyway.

"Stop trying to move, at least for a few minutes. I can do this aaall day."

Mostly because he was hurt and exhausted and didn't feel like moving anyway.

[animalhats]

Molly accepted Zac's comfort and quieted down (though she didn't stop crying entirely) at Bunny's reassurance, but she didn't really seem to start calming down until Nico was wrapped around her.

She turned and buried her face in Nico's chest, but she didn't start crying harder, and her breathing seemed to even out. Familiar arms were a comfort, clearly.

"Yeah," she mumbled, and pulled back to wipe her nose on her sleeve. "In a second." She got up and stalked over to Bunny and Jack in the middle of their half-hearted not-really-a-scuffle.

"Hey," she says firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. "You just got half eaten by an evil bug and then set on fire. You gotta sit still for like an hour at least." She lifted her chin, challenging him to argue. "I know, my parents were doctors."

[madeforthis]

A faint chuckle leaves the green goo-man as Molly essentially sasses the Easter Bunny for his own good. He pushes back up on both feet, and plants his hands on his hips. "The kids do have a point there. Bouncing back can't happen without the right amount of rest."

[mywarrenmyrules]

The half-hearted scuffle was really more like quarter-hearted. Bunny sprawled back on the ground when Jack sprawled across him, lifting his unburnt paw to ruffle Jack's hair. He kept it there, the gesture almost unconscious.

Nico's glare kept him from delivering his next joke to Jack. They'd been jesting their way through the darkness for such a long time now, it was easy to forget that not everyone coped best by not taking a bad situation seriously.

This was serious, of course. He'd have to thank Nico for rising to the occasion, later, and apologize for putting that kind of pressure on her. In the moment, he'd been focused on eliminating the threat, but he'd had no real way to know if she was able to uphold that kind of healing magic before he'd given her a lot more damage to heal.

Later, when he'd rested. As per Molly's demands - which, he suspected as he considered the sniffling but stalwart child, he might not be capable of refusing. Especially if they continued to be so sensible.

He raised his brows in silent agreement with Zac, before looking back at Molly. "If you say so, little Sheila." He nodded, solemnly. "I'll do it."

It was easy to take her seriously when she was so right. He had every intention of sitting still for more than an hour - though his pride still twinged as a set of yetis broke through the ranks carrying a stretcher. He was conscious, and mostly repaired. They could at least give him the dignity of a shoulder to lean on.

He looked at Molly, his expression deeply set-upon. He pointed to the stretcher. "Do I have to?"

[animalhats]

"Yeah-huh," Molly says. "Or I can carry you," Sure, she needs a nap and she knows it, but she can manage carrying a 6-foot talking rabbit to a bed without passing out.

Her nose is still running a little, and she sniffles and scrubs at her nose again with her sleeve. ...Yeah, if she hadn't needed a clean shirt already, she would now.

[mywarrenmyrules]

If Nico hadn't mentioned Molly breaking walls to get to her, and if not for all the stunts she'd pulled back with the falling coaster, he might have questioned how she was going to do that.

"Think maybe you could get this off me first?" He ruffled Jack's hair where the frost spirit still lay stubbornly across him.

[animalhats]

Molly grins a little, and her eyes light up pink. "No problem," she says.

And proceeds to pick up Bunny with Jack draped over top of him. With no apparent effort required. She may take the opportunity to press her face into an un-injured patch of fur on Bunny's side, just for a second. He's okay. Thank goodness.

Then she turns her grin up at the yetis. "Where should I put him?"

[letskicksomeice]

"...You know, I'm pretty sure we actually had dignity once," Jack said awkwardly from the top of the Guardian pile Molly was carrying.

He would have gotten off, but that would've meant an awkward stumble to the ground since he wasn't holding his staff anymore and he really was almost too tired to move himself.

One of the Yetis stepped forward to show Molly the way.

[mywarrenmyrules]

"I used to have dignity," Bunny snarked back to Jack. "Then you showed up."

But all snark aside, this . . . was touching. He could, in theory, have been recuperating alone in the warren, and that would have had its own upsides. Grass to lie on, the sound of spring in his ears, and his dignity intact.

On the other hand, it also would have meant a long, long recovery, with no one to help him recover. And he had already done that, many times before, for many centuries in the past. He wasn't used to being carried around when he was six feet tall, but he couldn't complain about it. Molly's unabashed sweetness was a rarity. When she buried her face in his fur, he patted her hair gently. He'd protected her, but scared her in the process. The hitch in his breath was slight, but there.

The yetis lead her to a yet-unoccupied room, with a neatly turned-down bed that looked far too soft for his liking. He eyed it without complaint, glancing around the room for a corner to curl up in instead.