longestnight_old | (no subject)

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.

Sam had hit the library after everything. He needed the time to clear his mind and focus. Research helped with that. Getting himself focused was the first part of trying to figure out what the hell to do with these new powers of his.

New. Old. It didn't make that much of a difference, really.

He looked up when he heard somebody enter the library, reaching unconsciously for the gun he'd left on the table within easy reach. He relaxed, though, when he saw who it actually was, withdrawing his hand and closing the book he'd been reading. "Hey, Harvey. You're looking better."

"Harvey" again?

"Is that supposed to mean me?"

There was a joke here Bunny wasn't getting. He shrugged it off. He'd gone looking for Sam for a reason. A couple of reasons actually.

"Most people look better when they're not being eaten, " he agreed wryly as he loped over. He glanced at the gun as he did with more than a little curiosity. "Speaking of, I wanted to talk to you about that. Got a moment?"

Sam smiled and shook his head. "It's a play and later a movie about a guy who drinks a fair amount and has an imaginary friend who might not be so imaginary. The imaginary friend's name is Harvey and...well, he's a six foot three-and-one-fourth inch tall rabbit. Phooka, actually."

He raised an eyebrow and sat back. "I'm not sure I know that much about being eaten, really. But I'm happy to talk."

Edited 2013-08-10 15:52 (UTC)

For a flash of a moment, Bunny looked surprised. More than surprised - almost stricken. But it cleared almost instantly.

"You really do know your stuff, don't you?" His tone, and his expression was appreciative. At least someone in the new party did. "That's why I wanted to talk to you. That little pest I brought home- I hadn't seen one in centuries. I thought we exterminated them all in the Dark Ages."

He frowned. He didn't like being wrong about much, and he really dislike being wrong about that.

"Since I'm wrong, we need to be better prepared. If you're up for it, I might have a task for you."

Sam wasn't used to reading rabbit faces, but he could see that much. It was long, long habit with Dean that kept him from pursuing that part of the conversation.

He put the book aside, leaning forward. "I do my best. Knowing stuff, I mean. That's what keeps me and Dean alive, either knowing it or knowing who to ask or where to look." Both of which were getting thinner on the ground these days. "What was it, then? And...yeah. I'll help out however I can."

"Ace."

There was loose paper on a couple of the tables in the library. Bunny slid one over, but pulled a paintbrush from the holsters on his back rather than reaching for a quill. With a few quick, smooth strokes, he had painted something football-shaped on the paper. "You seem like the best shot so you'll probably have the best chances at this. We see one of these in the field -" he painted a few marks on the football shape that somehow, despite the simplicity of the strokes, distinguished it with a clear pattern. "They're pretty much impervious until they latch on to someone. Best chance to destroy them before someone gets hurt is to get an incendiary inside them when the maw opens, but you've only got a split second to take the shot."

He painted another shape next to it, this one with the markings on the exterior starting to extend into the digging feelers that had been flaying him alive not a day ago. A mouth had opened on the front of the elongated shape, with rings upon rings of barbed teeth. "I'll see with the yetis about developing some explosive bullets. Unless - How's your metallurgy? You didn't make this, didja?"

He gestured to the gun with his paintbrush. He wasn't under the impression that humans generally crafted theirs personally, but Sam could be an exception.

Sam glanced over to the gun, then picked it up and checked, again, that the safety was on and the chamber was empty. It was easy enough to chamber a bullet, but he didn't want one there when he wasn't ready to shoot. Then he put it down again. "The gun? No, I didn't make it. I'm...fair, I guess, when it comes to metallurgy. Dean and I have to make our own bullets a lot of the time. You don't find consecrated silver bullets in Wal-Mart, after all."

He leaned forward, taking a good look at the drawings. "What are they, then? They look kind of like a changeling...or maybe a lamprey with those teeth."

"Talk to the yetis with me, then. I can make an incendiary with the best of 'em, but metallurgy was never my strong suit."

He shrugged as he pushed the papers over to Sam. "We never got around to givin' 'em a name. We usually leave that to the humans. I don't want to say they're harmless to humans, but, ah - let's say that one's never lived to name 'em." He shrugged. "Mortals aren't their favorite prey anyway. If we're lucky, that was the only one we'll see. That was definitely a trap set to eliminate me or Jack, so Kuk must've been sitting on it for a long time. If we're lucky, he doesn't have any more in reserve. He does, though? Under no circumstances can it latch on to any one of the kids. Or you."

Sam didn't count as a kid, technically, but he'd been a kid recently enough that Bunny might not be faulted for feeling protective of him.

The body, maybe. The soul was older than he looked, but even that was fairly recent and compressed. And repressed, as much as Sam could.

"Right. So, hope that that's all he was able to find but be ready because it may not be." Sam hummed. "Though the fact that only one was sitting waiting for you does lean toward him not having many. I suppose he couldn't have predicted that you would necessarily be traveling with Jack and he probably expected that one would do the job. But it's not something he could necessarily have counted on. Still. Incendiary bullets aren't just useful for things like that, especially if the other things we went up against are afraid of fire."

The way Sam's brain worked could handle this. He could handle it. "I'm a little surprised, though. He's...captured the other Guardians, right? It's weird that he'd want you or Jack simply killed outright when he hasn't done it to the others." He glanced up. "Sorry. I know that's not something you probably want to think about."

"Well he's got four Guardians to feed off already." Bunny shrugged, leaning against the table. "Jack and I have been thorns in his side for a while now. He might be ready to cut his losses on getting a full set, if it means he can get to the fifth faster." He paused, reaching up to pull on one long ear, as if there was still blood from his attack to groom from it. "I'd . . . not be at the top of my game if he got Jack," he admitted. "I have to be honest about that."

There was a knot of dread at the pit of his stomach at the thought. He'd lost so many friends to Kuk already, with only the barest hope of getting them back. Now Kuk was trying very hard, it seemed, to take one of his friends away forever.

He might have even succeeded - if Bunny hadn't gotten in between the parasite and Jack in time.

There was real love, and fear, in his expression, before he breathed in and went back to warrior mode.

"You're right. It's not something I want to think about. But we're not going to save the world by looking away from uncomfortable truths. If ever Kuk was playing, he's not anymore. So, speaking of preparing - you were doing good back there. Powers starting to manifest, ah? Got a feel for 'em yet?"

The look Sam gave him was one of complete understanding. "I'd be the same way if it was my brother."

He had been the same way. But there was no reason to tell Bunny about that. No need. Some issues were ones that they didn't talk about.

Sam sat back down, still leaning his elbows against the table. "The powers...aren't exactly new to me. It's not exactly how they used to work back in my own world, but close enough. And probably only connected to an adrenaline spike because I can't seem to make them do anything here."

Bunny caught that, just as Sam had caught his tension at the mention of what he was.

They were near strangers. There were things you didn't push with near strangers.

And they had plenty else to work on anyway.

"Yeah? We'll work on that. Looked like telekinesis from the outside. Is there anything else you're expecting?"

Sam grimaced. "There are some other possibilities, yeah. I'm kind of hoping the visions don't come up again because those really sucked a lot." He really didn't want to have to deal with the headaches and bloody noses again.

"Visions?" Bunny repeated. "So if they weren't always connected to adrenaline, what triggered them back in your world?"

Privately he was wondering exactly how he and Jack were going to help Sam get a handle on his new abilities, short of throwing things at him to induce adrenaline. His abilities had nothing to do with telekinesis, and everything to do with a lot of rituals and rhythms he'd been born into naturally. But humans generally didn't have visions.

Sam went quiet for a few moments before shaking his head. "I haven't had those for years," he said finally. "There's...there's a lot of stuff caught up in the powers, the visions that...hard to explain." He mostly didn't want Bunny and Jack thinking worse of him because of the demon influence in his life. The darkness that probably still lingered on him. But he also knew that he needed to explain something. "The whole angels and demons thing? Well, it's true in my world. Religion gets a lot of it wrong, but enough. Including the whole Armageddon thing, the final battle between Heaven and Hell. One demon, while prepping for it, went around and...basically induced powers in kids by priming them with a few drops of demon blood. Not a lot, but enough to bring on the powers in their early twenties. Which is about when I got the visions."

Sam probably expected a negative reaction, and Bunny did not disappoint.

"Wait a minute, that's why you're so competent?" His jaw had dropped open in disgust. "That's why you're prepared to go up against parasites that eat belief - why you go around fighting monsters - because when you were a kid, some actual demon fed you its blood? To make you a soldier?"

He paused briefly to process that, his tension and anger building in the moment of silence.

"That scum-sucking ratbag better be dead already. Winchester, when this business with Kuk is done, you have our support. Me, Jack, the rest of the Guardians - nobody goes around poisoning kids while we know about it, other world or not."

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."

It wasn't QUITE the negative reaction that Sam thought he might get. He couldn't help but stare a moment, then shook his head. "He's dead. Though that wasn't where the competence came from. Believe me, we ran into a lot of the other kids who were the same way and only one of them became a soldier. Literal soldier in Jake's case, he was with the Army."

He'd killed Sam. He did his best not to hold a grudge there.

"What Azazel did do is kill our mom. Which Dad didn't handle very well at all. He got focused on revenge and took me and Dean along for the ride. That's how I ended up this competent."

He still hadn't named ages yet. It was...probably better for Bunny not to know that the poisoning had happened at six months of age. That he and Dean had never really had the luxury of believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny because their lives hadn't been normal, moving from one hotel to another. "Dad's gone, too. A few years back, saving Dean's life. But support...that would be nice, but you have your own problems here, even after this is all mopped up."

Bunny couldn't decide if that was worse, marking these kids out for soldiers then giving them no guidance. If you're going to exploit children - oh who was he kidding. Nobody exploited children within his earshot.

Six months or six years, it was clear that Sam had been very solidly denied a formal childhood. How he and the other Guardians had factored into a world where demons were able to slip into kids' houses, bleed in their mouths, and kill their mothers gave him leave to believe that Sam had had less reason than most as a child to believe in them, but worse than that, less reason to believe in what they represented.

And yet Sam had turned out so quick to help. Guarded, yes, but competent and protective, and ready to pick up another world's problems alongside his own.

He'd grown into what appeared to be a very good adult, with so little help in his childhood to do so.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, quietly. Whether he meant the loss of Sam's parents, or the loss of his childhood, or both, his tone was sincere. The look on his face wasn't pitying. It was respectful. And maybe a little proud - strange, on a near-stranger's face. A relative who hadn't had a chance to watch Sam grow, but been impressed by what he grew into, might have looked at him that way.

Bunny leaned back with a sudden smirk. "But you don't get to pick up our war and not get our help in return. You said armageddon's on your table? What do you call this? One good turn deserves another. But if the Judeo-Christian myths are the heavy hitters in your world, you might have to bring the rest of us up to speed on who's who and why."

Boy the Easter Bunny sure did just call the Biblical canon mythic.

"And I'd better do the same for you. Things around here are a little more -" he shrugged. "You could say 'Pagan.'"