Sam's words were meant to be comforting, but Bunny would have preferred a monster of some kind behind this mess. A human was someone he should have been protecting as a child, someone he might have been able to prevent undergoing the sort of experiences that made them need to do these things.
If the woman who'd done this was strictly human, maybe she'd seen something like this as a child, and was only continuing a cycle of violence that turned good kids into monsters. And that was a worse thought, to Bunny, than something that was made monstrous, instead of ruined into monstrosity.
"I'm gonna give the souls their rites," he said, slinging a nearly-full body over his shoulder and loping on three legs back to the semi-circle he was making with the remains. He laid the 10-year-old child down and sniffed the air for her missing hand, which was - wired to the body of another 10-year-old girl, this one in a much less advanced state of decomposition. The puppet family suspended around their television were piecemeal. He carefully undid the wire through the hand and brought it back to the child. "Enough to make sure their souls aren't stuck in this mess, waiting for their bodies to be found, and then waiting because they don't know how to go on -"
He pulled a little blade from the pack on his back, and carefully severed the threads holding the corpse's mouth in a rictus grin. The face was sunken and rotted beyond where her features could have been discerned, and the rotted, stretched out lips stayed mostly in the position they'd been pulled, but Bunny carefully removed the threads anyway, pausing with one paw on the ruined flesh as he closed his eyes, then closed what remained of the little girl's eyelids.
He did this with every body when he'd assembled all the parts of it he could find, muttering soft words over them, too soft for Sam to hear. Private words between him and the children he'd failed to save - and every one of them, no matter their age, was or had been a child under his protection.
"You know I'm - I'm a spirit of rebirth, of life," Bunny went on, as he continued sorting the remains, arranging the bodies in a more complete circle. "I'm springtime and summer and the new growth, but you - you can't have life without death," he said, his words a little rambly, but aloud. It was part of doing your departed their honors to let them know who you were. "It shouldn't be like this, though. This sort of death - any kind of murder, that's not how it's supposed to go. But even if the whole world lived like they oughta, there'd still be death, right next to birth on the wheel of life. They're not opposites. They're not supposed to be like this, but they're -"
He was losing his train of thought, losing it in memories of having done this before, buried too many bodies and prayed over them, that time with only himself to talk to. Someone had to do this. He was glad that because he was there to do it, others didn't have to.
"You gotta know both if you're gonna know one," he went on. "Being a spirit of life means knowing how to honor when it ends," he said, picking up his own thread. "So I'll give them the honor of last rites. That means sendin' the souls off with a promise to find whoever did this to them and stop them from doing it anymore. And it means making sure their families find the bodies. They need that closure, you know. They need to conduct their own specific rites."
He gestured to the twisted, puppet corpses, the mockery of living in the murderer's work.
"They don't need to find them like this, though," he said, darkly, snipping another pair of stitches. "So I'll make sure they're found, and make sure that when they're found, at least their remains will have been given some dignity before another mortal saw 'em. They deserve that. Their families deserve that."
Some cops would be mad at him, for tampering with evidence, but they were never going to solve this murder anyway.
"I can't give them their final rites, though, because they're not my family. That's up to their loved ones to finish, both for them and for their spirits. If they were my family, though," he went on, almost lightly, as if he hadn't once had to do something so like this for his own family, so long ago that he had to be holding Tooth's hand before he could remember their voices - "I'd build a mound in the earth, and I'd bury them there. That's how we honored the cycle."
Oops. He'd slipped a 'we' into there. This was getting more personal than he'd intended.
"Not just death, but life," he went on. "That's where the Earth comes in, that's where burial comes in. If they were my family, I'd bury them, and build a mound over their graves, and plant flowers. When you bury something that came from the earth long enough, it becomes earth again. We all go back to being part of this living thing."
He closed another dead child's eyes, and bowed his head to speak his quiet, private words over it.
"Kuk and all his minions will never take that from us," he finished out loud, a growl back in his voice as he went for another body. "No matter how horrible the murder, they'll never stop us from still being a part of that which is always alive."
no subject
If the woman who'd done this was strictly human, maybe she'd seen something like this as a child, and was only continuing a cycle of violence that turned good kids into monsters. And that was a worse thought, to Bunny, than something that was made monstrous, instead of ruined into monstrosity.
"I'm gonna give the souls their rites," he said, slinging a nearly-full body over his shoulder and loping on three legs back to the semi-circle he was making with the remains. He laid the 10-year-old child down and sniffed the air for her missing hand, which was - wired to the body of another 10-year-old girl, this one in a much less advanced state of decomposition. The puppet family suspended around their television were piecemeal. He carefully undid the wire through the hand and brought it back to the child. "Enough to make sure their souls aren't stuck in this mess, waiting for their bodies to be found, and then waiting because they don't know how to go on -"
He pulled a little blade from the pack on his back, and carefully severed the threads holding the corpse's mouth in a rictus grin. The face was sunken and rotted beyond where her features could have been discerned, and the rotted, stretched out lips stayed mostly in the position they'd been pulled, but Bunny carefully removed the threads anyway, pausing with one paw on the ruined flesh as he closed his eyes, then closed what remained of the little girl's eyelids.
He did this with every body when he'd assembled all the parts of it he could find, muttering soft words over them, too soft for Sam to hear. Private words between him and the children he'd failed to save - and every one of them, no matter their age, was or had been a child under his protection.
"You know I'm - I'm a spirit of rebirth, of life," Bunny went on, as he continued sorting the remains, arranging the bodies in a more complete circle. "I'm springtime and summer and the new growth, but you - you can't have life without death," he said, his words a little rambly, but aloud. It was part of doing your departed their honors to let them know who you were. "It shouldn't be like this, though. This sort of death - any kind of murder, that's not how it's supposed to go. But even if the whole world lived like they oughta, there'd still be death, right next to birth on the wheel of life. They're not opposites. They're not supposed to be like this, but they're -"
He was losing his train of thought, losing it in memories of having done this before, buried too many bodies and prayed over them, that time with only himself to talk to. Someone had to do this. He was glad that because he was there to do it, others didn't have to.
"You gotta know both if you're gonna know one," he went on. "Being a spirit of life means knowing how to honor when it ends," he said, picking up his own thread. "So I'll give them the honor of last rites. That means sendin' the souls off with a promise to find whoever did this to them and stop them from doing it anymore. And it means making sure their families find the bodies. They need that closure, you know. They need to conduct their own specific rites."
He gestured to the twisted, puppet corpses, the mockery of living in the murderer's work.
"They don't need to find them like this, though," he said, darkly, snipping another pair of stitches. "So I'll make sure they're found, and make sure that when they're found, at least their remains will have been given some dignity before another mortal saw 'em. They deserve that. Their families deserve that."
Some cops would be mad at him, for tampering with evidence, but they were never going to solve this murder anyway.
"I can't give them their final rites, though, because they're not my family. That's up to their loved ones to finish, both for them and for their spirits. If they were my family, though," he went on, almost lightly, as if he hadn't once had to do something so like this for his own family, so long ago that he had to be holding Tooth's hand before he could remember their voices - "I'd build a mound in the earth, and I'd bury them there. That's how we honored the cycle."
Oops. He'd slipped a 'we' into there. This was getting more personal than he'd intended.
"Not just death, but life," he went on. "That's where the Earth comes in, that's where burial comes in. If they were my family, I'd bury them, and build a mound over their graves, and plant flowers. When you bury something that came from the earth long enough, it becomes earth again. We all go back to being part of this living thing."
He closed another dead child's eyes, and bowed his head to speak his quiet, private words over it.
"Kuk and all his minions will never take that from us," he finished out loud, a growl back in his voice as he went for another body. "No matter how horrible the murder, they'll never stop us from still being a part of that which is always alive."