longestnight_old | (no subject)

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One very long nap later, Bunny was well enough to make a quiet exit. He had a few errands to run - among them, dashing home to eat something not in cookie form.

He returned just as quietly as he'd left. He wasn't being eaten or on fire this time, so it was a better return than his last. Still, something - maybe several things - seemed to be bothering him as he loped off in search of a few people.

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Nico was holed up in the part of the workshop where the Yeti kept the clothing. While she could sew things up from scratch, it usually took a lot longer, and it seemed silly to do so when there was pre-made stuff already available.

Plus, if she worked from pre-made stuff, she could use the scraps to make extra pockets on Howard's outfit, which he'd probably appreciate.

She looked up at the sound of someone approaching, then whipped around and began sorting through the sweatshirts with the intense concentration generally reserved for locating the venomous spider hiding in one's bedclothes.

Yeah, he hadn't forgotten the glare from earlier. Not that excess time made it any easier to figure out the best way to approach an angry teenager.

He opted for the direct approach. "Right. So, I owe you an apology." He paused only briefly. "I asked a lot more of you than I should've. You rose to it though, so - thank you. And I'm sorry."

He waited, monitoring Nico's response.

Nico stopped moving and took a deep breath, holding it for a count of ten.

The apology was nice. She'd probably even feel bad later about what she was about to say.

"The day before I got yanked over to this universe," she said, turning around to face him, "an alien invader literally burned alive in front of me. He was invading the planet and trying to kill me and my friends in the inferno at the time, so fine, whatever. Own petard, see: hoisted. The day before that, I was a minute too late to stop a bomb from exploding on top of all of my friends. A couple days before that, me and my friends helped put out a fire in a 1900's sweatshop; and a few hours before that, a guy with a rocket launcher blew up the roof one of my friends was standing on while he waited for us." She paused to let all that sink in. "So you can understand how very, very sick I am of people being on fire. Especially where Molly can see."

The last one was definitely a low blow, but Nico was still pretty pissed.

"So while I understand the necessity of the 'ruining-barbecue-for-everyone' plan, I refuse to like it." She pursed her lips, and added grudgingly, "thanks for realizing that it was completely messed up, I guess."

Edited 2013-08-04 05:42 (UTC)

That he'd scared Molly was already a needle in his conscience, but he couldn't get angry at Nico for pushing it in deeper. What a storied and unfortunate life this pair of girls seemed to have been pulled from. Bunny filed each anecdote away as one more reason to investigate Nico and Molly's home world, when they'd managed to put Kuk away for good.

He nodded, and spoke without a trace of sarcasm. "I'll keep it in mind."

There was no point in saying he'd never set himself on fire again for Nico or Molly's sake. He was a Guardian, and if that was what it took to protect the children, he'd set himself on fire again in a heartbeat.

But if he had to yell for someone to turn Molly away, and not call on Nico to help fix him up afterwards - Molly and Nico were children, and he'd protect them as best he could, too.

"Fine," Nico said, when that seemed to be all he was planning to say. "You can thank me by figuring out some way to make some form of communication technology work in your tunnels. Katherine said conventional stuff probably wouldn't work, but I've got a do-anything magic Staff and I'd like some warning next time so I can avoid getting blood on my shirt."

The torn sleeve of which, incidentally, she had already cleaned and repaired.

"I put a lot of work into this outfit and I have better things to do with it than clean blood out of it."

That was all she wanted? But that was so . . . logical a course of action.

"Sure, we'll work something out."

Bunny paused a moment, considering Nico thoughtfully.

"Y'know, you don't have to wait until you've saved my skin to ask for something completely logical. Long-distance communication is a good idea."

One the Guardians hadn't thought to implement yet. Cell phones were a technological flash in the pan in all of their lives.

She wasn't sure if he was calling her out on her unsubtle manipulations or if he was just trying to encourage her to share more ideas, but she turned her flinch into a shrug.

"If I'd known you guys weren't up to walkie-talkie technology before this whole thing went down, I'd have said something. With so many of us not in on whatever Guardian loop you and Jack have, I figure you're going to want something to call us on when we're out past curfew."

He wouldn't have even called it manipulation. She had her reasons not to trust him, and those were only fair. If she didn't believe that he and Jack were as devoted as they said to the children, well, it seemed not a lot of people had been devoted to a good other than themselves in her life.

"Let's get one thing straight, you're not bound to us," he said, when she mentioned a curfew. "You can go where you want, when you want, we just want to be able to keep you safe. It's dangerous out there, even for someone as powerful as you."

Long-distance communication was good, then. It would let the myths who grated a little at confinement go where they willed, but still be able to call him and Jack to their defense if they needed it. It wouldn't stop him from worrying, but it would give him one reason not to.

"You want to talk with the yetis about putting something together with me? Technology more complex than a basket was never my strong suit. I could use your ideas."

Nico shrugged at Bunny's correction of her word-choice, but it was a little reassuring. If he and Jack actually tried to set a curfew, she'd probably take Molly and Howard and run for the hills, dangerous out there or not.

"I'm not sure what good I'd be beyond "hey, make talk-y toys I can zap with magic"," she said. "I'm a witch, not a tech-head. That's what the boys are for."

She really, really wished that the boys were here. And Karolina and Klara and Xavin. And Gert, too, while she was wishing.

"Humans've got things they're used to using now though, right? Those, ah - you have to hold them right up to your ears."

He felt bad for calling attention to just how insufficient human ears were. Hopefully Nico wasn't sensitive about that.

"I've never used one."

"Cell phones," Nico supplied. "I'm aware of their existence and I know how to use one, but I don't know how to build one. And they mostly use satellites to relay information anyway, so you'd get crappy reception in your tunnels."

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