#finchlore

[darkfinch]

it is christmas at babusia's house of murderchildren!! what do people get rabbit? what festive treats or traditions does he gravitate towards? (do that many cats make a decorated tree unwise)

Merry christmas in july!!

Baba’s cats are suspiciously well trained because everyone at Baba’s is suspiciously well-trained, so the tree is mostly left alone - Rabbit (tall, good uncle) comes down to help decorate it early in the season with any younger kids in the family. He’s the guy lifting babies up to put the star on top because he’s 100 feet tall. Most of the ornaments have been made by him :) some have been painted by murderchildren :) they are doing the strings of popcorn/dried oranges thing it's all very cute

Rabbit predictably is the worst person to get things for because he actively does not want anything. The shelves in his cabin are for pickled root vegetables and little wooden fish he’s going to paint later, leave him alone you are giving him an inconvenience. you gift-wrapped a burden. What’s he going to do, build another shelf? Please no items.

Traditional Rabbit Burdens are as follows:

—From baba, a sweater/socks/scarf that matches quinn’s christmas gift sweater/socks/scarf. this is tradition. they both act like it’s a delightful coincidence every time :3 matching lads :3 :)

—From Quinn, wood carving tools (risky, but quinn is Gun Specifications Georg he does research he knows what rabbit has and what he needs and what he’s ok with having be bought by someone else etc); books he thinks Rabbit might like; paint sets; a photo album of cool pictures he took that year since you know rabbit you don’t leave the cabin you probably haven’t seen a beach in a decade (shut up) do you remember what buildings look like (shut up) 

—From Masha, usually baked goods (she baked them <3 sometimes they are rabbit-shaped <3 sometimes they are weird flavours that only he specifically will enjoy due to he has no tastebuds <3) or really fancy jam that he would never in a million years buy for himself because *rabbit voice* dont fuckin buy jam you can make jam. fruit’s free (he loves the jam) 

—From Alina (Nadiya), fancy cigars. Rabbit smokes once every 3.5 months when he hits a wall of “i need a vice or i’m gonna do some ophelia shit in the river outside” and she thinks he should treat himself etc. Also occasionally Very Expensive Alcohol because Rabbit only drinks during family gatherings and, again, treat yourself

(No one else is daring to hand rabbit an item)

Rabbit prefers to sit in the corner of all festivities with a few cats, in his quinn-mandated party hat, not making conversation. however he’s also been a participant in the decades-long annual board game/card game grudge match between quinn and several other cousins, gambling is involved, there is yelling (rabbit is not yelling rabbit is sitting in his chair petting a kitty and enjoying the satisfaction of being a champion at, like, cribbage <3). 

Other activities: eating a superhuman amount of food in absolute silence with beloved nephew chattering next to him. Nodding at people who are singing holiday songs and resolutely not participating. Losing to Quinn at darts and pretending to be grumpy about it. He also occasionally joins in on the arm wrestling later in the night if he thinks someone else is getting too cocky and needs to feel bad abt themselves for a minute

[falderaletcetera]

help I'm at it again (relistening to In Strange Woods and buzzing with the possibility that in the vast empty spaces of his backstory, howl used to be a hitter)

[wolves-in-the-world]

not me finally getting the stuff queued that I've been setting aside for weeks and only then realising I never copied over the finchlore stuff I rb'd when I abandoned this blog

[darkfinch]

i think babusia's incredible success at domesticating feral baby quinn was due to the following

1 - existing experience with Competitive Bastard Enrichment TM

2 - the immediate and VITAL understanding that his reaction to positive reinforcement is *does task while smiling quietly :3* and his reaction to negative reinforcement is *gleefully puts a brick through your windshield*

bonus: combining the above to make all tasks a Game with Reliable Positive Reinforcement as a prize. yes quinn you CAN cheat by volunteering for extra tasks and helping other people, what a good grandson, gaming the system for bonus fond head pats and dessert options you are SO clever

[darkfinch]

i think quinn's baba meets alec hardison one (1) time and is like. is no one going to put this nice boy in a cozy beanie. is NO one going to knit this sweet man a beanie. no. nobody. well i've made 5 and im making more,

[darkfinch]

okay. I had a thought the other day (it sustained me during chores so thank you) and feel morally obligated to share it. you don't have to do a single thing with it I just hope it brings you joy.

the thought was: eliot having to go find rabbit, or rabbit having to find eliot, to help rescue quinn from a job gone bad. I pictured them both totally and utterly focused on just Getting Him Back (no room for friction or awkwardness, they're Professionals, though it could be a very different vibe if it's pre-basic-trust) until quinn's back to safety. patched up. finally asleep, not just unconscious. and rabbit and eliot can maybe sneak the odd glance at each other like "huh," with all the complexity and recognition that "huh" encompasses.

(and quinn gets to wake up, maybe hazy still, halfway to alarm before he realises where he is, to BOTH his favourite people - maybe a little more at ease with each other than they were before.)

hi i've just been staring @ this lovingly in my inbox for a bit (SUSTAINING IS THE RIGHT WORD FOR WHAT THIS THOUGHT DOES) but i want to post it....soft kind warms the heart,

it's just so good. it's SO good. eliot opens the door to his apartment to find a panicked cabin gremlin looking to recruit him for the very important mission of Get Quinn Back....eliot & rabbit being gruff terrified professionals who say like 3 words to each other for the entirety of the time they're working together but who, like, Work Together, with single-minded focus, animosity is on pause they are going to get their little bastard back :3

quinn snoring on the couch (head in eliot's lap, feet in rabbit's) and they're like. hm. huh. hm. he wakes up a couple times to two very grumbly grumpy punch dudes being like "go to sleep you're Fine" and he's like :'3 safest room on earth safest couch on planet earth they're GETTING ALONG, WOLVES I'M. HEAD IN HANDS

[darkfinch]

i now think that if archie and babusia were ever introduced it would go EXCELLENTLY right up until babusia figured out that archie didn't actually Adopt parker. like

archie: she wouldn't have fit in with my family, of course, but really she didn't need it. look at her, she's turned out wonderfully. perfect thief <3

parker: :)

quinn: :3

babusia, nodding politely, mentally calculating the pros and cons of briefly coming out of retirement to do a single homicide & also drafting parker's permanent holiday dinner invite: hm yes interesting

[darkfinch]

1) so I'm assuming "rabbit" is a chosen name from the "congratulations, you're a hitter now, you need a professional name" graduation thing? it's a good name, hitters SHOULD be quiet and unremarkable, but did no-one. just. it's rabbit. did no-one look at his choice and go "ah. maybe you're not… best suited for this after all."

(admittedly I feel like show-off hitter names could well be overdone and also make you a target. but still. that's a Choice on your front to make this scarred antisocial looming-in-ominous-silence walking-shovel-talk character answer to something like "rabbit" and gosh blimey does it do SOMETHING with his backstory. seven-year-old found under the bed, unspeaking, scared as a rabbit—)

2) does quinn actually have a "my beloved uncle might attempt to kill my best friend and I should be there to get in the way and make sad faces" plan at any point or does he have too much faith in him. does eliot have a plan. does babusia (if she would even intervene)

Question 1: So baba gets this new kid (who doesn’t talk and doesn’t have a name and won’t, until either he talks again or they can find his records etc) and is like. Well i’m not just going to rename him, that’s fucked. But I’m not just going to call him boy. So he’s darling and sunshine and sweetheart and little dear and anything else she can come up with, and she’s already cycling through designated pet names for the grandkids, so there’s a goose and a monkey and a honeybee and a tadpole and captain and a stringbean and—

(The one that sticks for Quinn, if you’re curious, is sun/sunny/sunshine, because he’s a furious little bastard and it’s FUNNY for her, and also he’s her golden child. Watching your demonic little shitheel terrorise the household like don’t kill your cousin, sonechko, no dessert if you do—)

And this new one, who’s the hide-and-seek champion, who goes missing and ends up being found curled up in a closet, sometimes, wide-eyed and shaking a little; who she’d sigh at and coax out from under the bed, oh, little rabbit, mon pauvre lapin, мій зайчик—ends up being rabbit-themed. bunny, little rabbit, peter rabbit, honey bunny, don’t-be-scared-don’t-be-scared-you’re-okay. It’s an oh-god-he’s-small thing. It’s a freezing thing and a silent watching thing and a fear thing. Eventually they do figure out his name, but they never use it, because at that point he’s just…the little rabbit guy, already? Thanks, grandma,

anyway, the hitter graduation party thing is like, okay, you’re a hitter now. you’re not a scared kid anymore, you’re not whoever you were, you’re this shiny new thing with a reputation to build: what’s your name?

and Rabbit—who has long since stopped being Timid but continues to be internally fucking terrified, who has learned that being quiet is an Asset, who is maybe the only one of them who hasn’t developed a vicious competitive streak—sips his tea with his party hat on and goes. Actually i absolutely am still that kid, and i’m scared, and that’s why i’m going to live. “Still rabbit. Still going with Rabbit, thanks”

he's like. very much the only one who's ever done this, but it’s not his Legal Name, there’s no…real reason why he Can’t. He gets a lot of slow nods and some scattered applause, but like, even THEN rabbit’s the weird one, so they kind of move on without too many questions

(babusia, however, stares at him for the rest of the night and thinks, oh god. Ohhhhhhhh no. okay. She’s had Talks with him about Having Other Options a few times, Is This What You Really Want talks, and rabbit’s looked her in the eye and lied to her, and rabbit’s choosing this anyway, so she accepts it and respects it and just kind of braces herself.) 

---------

Question 2: quinn doesn't leave eliot and rabbit alone in a room together for two and a half years, and has a lot of “if eliot died i don’t know what i’d do :( imagine if eliot got hurt…that’d wreck me i’d be a mess :(“ chats with him. sad face look at his sad little quinn face rabbit :( :( :(

Babusia will not intervene, but she Has made her acceptance of eliot very very clear, so unless rabbit’s hurting/killing eliot in Revenge for something he’s done to quinn, he’d be getting shit from the entire family. Social pressure will shame this man into nonviolence we know it we trust it (quinn does not trust it quinn is living in anxiety PLEASE don't fight his little punchy friend. he's a pocket-sized cowboy, rabbit, look at him. he made dessert

[darkfinch]

you know, the montage of quinn thriving at babusia's when he's given Tasks to chop wood and prep veggies and hit targets (general training and usefulness stuff) reminds me a lot of that post by someone [popsun] who didn't realise they were handling their adhd by going and chopping wood, 'cos their mother used to send them to do that when they were Full Of Energy and now it's just a routine.

so like. quinn holed up in a hotel room with no access to good distractions like sparring or world of warcraft, and he's checked and cleaned all his weapons three times over and he's just. sweating. going on comms to say like "hey do you think the marks will notice if I slip out and find some wood to chop? people use stoves around here there's got to be some wood around. I can borrow an axe and get it back before they notice it's gone, it's fine, I just really need t. to chop some wood—"

!!!!!!! YES the parenting hack of giving your adhd gremlin a repetitive physical task to do is TRIED AND TRUE,

quinn, normal, doing fine: yeah yeah i j ust need. th, wood, to chop wood i will be RIGHT back,

you are absolutely correct tho i 100% think this man has like. a metaphorical pressure valve at the back of his head where if he does not do enough Engaging Sensory Gremlin Tasks TM (do Job Tasks, hit dude, break thing, jump off of thing, kill virtual bandits, chop wood, chop potato) he's like. leg bouncing. pacing around hotel room. asking if we're SURE no one needs to punch the mark, like, to add flavour to the con. the boredom it eats the brain, please supply your hitter with enrichment or he is going to, like, throw a mug at a wall purely for the brief satisfaction of following through with an impulse

(#1 best emergency mid-con quinn task is to ask him to tail someone. the bastard looooooves 2 follow a guy like :3. watch person from distance and take notes on their daily schedule. Harmless Job Tasks :3333 but this ONLY works if he can't tell that it's busywork)

(eliot maybe perhaps lowkey has a System, lovingly crafted by talking with quinn's babusia and also watching a lot of episodes of my cat from hell while recovering from a fucked up knee: mandatory sparring immediately before all meals + quinn chops all veggies for dinner. give quinn a knife and a potato and he's like "oooooh enrichment :3")

[darkfinch]

I would like you to know that I am obsessed with rabbit for reasons that are absolutely unknown to me

I don't know if the was already implied somewhere, but what does he do all day in his cabin? (Because I gather he doesn't have a social life that's anything but sparse.) Does he fish? He seems like maybe the kind of person who fishes.

THRILLED DELIGHTED JOIN ME. i adore him. this is secretly a rabbit appreciation blog <3

you are absolutely correct he does Not socialize. what he DOES do is fish (for food) and hunt (he makes really terrible jerky and is constantly eating it), he hikes and collects cool rocks and plays the banjo really really badly. he forages for food, and grows root vegetables, and makes jam & pickled veggies. he's running the world's most depressing homestead

he also does woodcarvings of animals and little houses and little people to go inside of the little houses. then he either burns them or paints them. for a while he liked to carve planes and boats, but he's past that phase now. every member of the family has received a rabbit original woodcarving of Something for Some kind of gift (quinn gets a lot of kitties :3)

mostly he hangs out in absolute silence and refuses to have thoughts

[darkfinch]

Okay I have to ask , because I remember you saying before that Uncle Rabbit kind of sucked sometimes with Quinn , does he suck ? Because I'm enjoying his cat whisperering and I don't want to find out later that he sucks ....

sigh. sigh. yeah, this is a rough question, i kind of alluded to it a little in the original nonsense, but. yeah rabbit's been known to suck unfortunately, tldr, Yes

HERE'S THE THING: training kids to kill people is.....bad! it's bad! no matter how Visibly Fond/Likeable/Fun these people are, the shit they're doing is. bad. actively bad. it sucks

like, the whole babusia training system is, at its core, a horrible cycle of just...genuinely caring about a kid and wanting to Prepare them for the shit you Know is out there, and then exposing them to the horrible shit in the process of preparing them. like, teaching this kid how to fight (and run and hide and kill) so that if someone ever tries to hurt them, they'll survive—and then as a result (eventually a feature and not a bug) funnelling them directly into a career that'll traumatise if not injure or kill them.

good intentions inexcusable results

so rabbit is like. unwillingly, miserably fond of quinn (who is sweet and mischievous and determined to learn). and rabbit is put in charge of preparing him to be sent out on his own. preparing him for things that might happen to him (for things that happened to rabbit, for things that really really fucked rabbit up). he's got three years to teach quinn how not to die

and rabbit maybe makes some Choices during this process

[i'm dancing around this because it's one thing writing it out in a fic (which i've done, which is the origin story for all of this nonsense), with quinn's very matter-of-fact narration, and another thing entirely describing it in a tumblr post, which is a weird vibe, but like. yeah rabbit absolutely messed quinn up structurally from the age of fourteen onwards

content warning for child abuse & like....uhhh post-murder body cleanup ahead here bud. guns? harm, harming]

so, here's the reality of the situation: rabbit teaches quinn how not to get hit by sparring with him, rabbit teaches quinn how to dismember a body via demonstration in a hotel bathroom on his second ever job. he's fourteen. rabbit—watching him snore on the couch and not so much as twitch at the sound of footsteps—teaches quinn to be aware of his surroundings while sleeping by regularly sneaking up on him, pointing a gun to his head, and counting how many seconds it takes for him to wake up.

……….and, like, that's horrible, right. that's fucking terrible, the gun's not loaded but he knows it's terrible, and maybe quinn doesn't know it's terrible, but you and i and rabbit know that these are not good things to do to a kid

the only reason quinn's never been Afraid of him is that every single time, rabbit told him what they'd be doing first, and prepared him for it. because maybe rabbit didn't get that. nothing's done out of anger, nothing's done maliciously, nothing's done to Teach Him A Lesson;

it's all "in three years/two years/a year, you'll be going through this on your own, and i won't be there. you want to be this? here's what hunger feels like and how to work through it. we’re doing it together. here's how to keep your hands steady when you're freezing your ass off. here's sleep deprivation, here's getting back to a safehouse with someone following you, here's being stranded in the middle of the woods. please don't die please don't die please don't die"

so like, i'm never going to Excuse it, rabbit absolutely historically has Sucked with quinn, but its also a miserable understandable kind of suck where i'm still sighing at him like. fuck, i want the best for you, dude. there's a cycle and he's the only one in it that can See it but he's still trapped in it. he's watching the same story happen fifty times and knowing how it ends, and screaming abt it to himself.

anyway i am Very sorry if this ruins the rabbit enjoyment (but also like. hi, they teach kids how to kill people, it's not great from the jump unfortunately)

[darkfinch]

if you wish, and I am bracing already for what this might bring, tell us about rabbit as a child? (otherwise or as a palate cleanser, enquiring brits want to know how he takes his tea)

ALWAYS happy to talk about the beloved unhinged uncle <3

i’m glad you’re bracing! We’ll start here: one of Babusia’s friends kills an asshole for work, kills his mistress (who did NOT show up in the halfhearted recon and was NOT supposed to be there and WAS a surprise witness), and then finds a kid hiding under the bed while he's cleaning up.

a hundred and fifty utterances of the word "fuck" later, the kid’s dropped off very apologetically at Known Kid-Haver Babusia’s house. He doesn’t talk for a few months, but he Does eat his weight in soup, which is very encouraging. This is Rabbit, age 7.

he grows up as the youngest in the busiest era of Babusia’s kids (11 in the house at the same time, aaa, aaaaaaa; when he's 13 she takes in a few more, and he stops being the baby. 4 of these kids make it to 40).

he’s very shy and very quiet and is immediately involuntarily taken under the wing of a hot-headed dirty-blonde ten-year-old, who is impulsive and trouble-seeking and smug (and who, much later, has a :3-faced ringlet-ed gremlin baby). She beats people up for him. They're sparring partners. They do forbidden secret baby crime together (get infinite candy with this one simple hack: corner store thievery).

baby rabbit: is reigning hide-and-seek champion, is world’s tiniest survival-skills expert, is at his most confident when he’s telling you which plants would kill you if you ate them. Is a cat whisperer. Can mimic bird noises with terrifying accuracy. Is determined to be good enough to be Good Enough.

it’s widely known among the babusia kids that the first time you kill someone is half-test half-right of passage. It’s like, yeah, okay, Baba's decided you're ready to try this for Real (with a chaperone)—but also, some people are wired to be able to do this, and some just aren’t.

Quinn, for example, watches a couple of older kids come home throwing up and having night terrors about it, and then is himself completely fine. Quinn gets celebratory pie.

Rabbit, who knows Babusia tends to encourage the panickers into non-hitter lines of work—and who Knows she knows about how she got him, that she's maybe Expecting something from him—sneaks out to have his crisis in the privacy of the shed.

so: rabbit gets his pie, and gets a mentor, and gets to work, and he should probably not have done this, and like 12 years later he'll have a massive breakdown and build a cabin for himself in the middle of nowhere and be very normal about it :)

[quinn got his Tea Preferences from watching uncle rabbit with stars in his eyes, only quinn has like. tastebuds. restraint. the will to live. so imagine someone who uses three times the amount of leaves necessary and then steeps it until it's legally considered a health hazard, and then occasionally adds jam 4 flavour. that's rabbit. babusia shaking her head mournfully in the bg)

[darkfinch]

1) so… I don't know if I want to ask about rabbit retiring. certain questions might be better unanswered. (consider that a free space if you want to talk about it though.) but: how did babusia react? I feel like she must be very used to hitters dying or retiring in various ways by now, but this was specifically a failure of her methods, which do have a certain (dubious) ethical core to them. this is someone who she would've spared this if she knew where things would go. she couldn't still be doing what she does (what she did) if she has a crisis about this sort of thing every time though.

2) pulling out the big guns here: does rabbit ever meet the hitter who dropped him off at babusia's again, in training, on the job, stopping by babusia's? ……do we already know his name?

(I'm only like 98% sure this isn't the question I sent it already, giggling about it, apologies)

Ohhhh a Question. Some Questions a Question. *deep breath*

Rabbit’s retirement is kind of a hush hush thing around the house, because it was a combination of just. sigh. despite his rabbitness, he was genuinely very Good at what he was trained to do, and he was very Effective during his time as an active hitter, right. He mentors a kid, he takes enough jobs to support himself, he holds it together. He makes some hitter buddies. He builds a reputation. He’s not Happy Tee Em, but he’s fine. 

Then, A Week of Events: he fucks up on a job and finds himself duct taped to a folding chair in an abandoned warehouse, losing a couple of fingers, Et Cetera ominously capitalized. A few days later, he’s left for Probably Dead somewhere, doesn’t die (matching nine lives kitty tattoo), crawls his way back to babusia’s place to be put back together—and finds out that the girl he’d mentored was killed on a job while he was gone. 

As you can Probably Guess, this is not ideal for him psychologically

He has what babusia charitably refers to as a Very Difficult Winter, during which time he is completely unable to function without Alarmed Prodding and eats a lot of porridge silently in his grandma’s kitchen. Spring comes, and he fucks off to the woods to build a cabin, and he’s absolutely adamant that he’s done with being a hitter and done with training kids and kind of done with everything. Would like to lie down in a bed in absolute silence, thank you goodbye, do not contact him, he does not own a phone. (Three years later, a man drops a curly-haired demon off on Babusia’s porch with a garbage bag full of clothes.)

Rabbit is Babusia’s first big failure, because he’s someone who is absolutely excellent at what he does, but he drops out of the game Specifically because he can’t handle certain things Psychologically, which is like. the exact thing her system is supposed to Prevent? And like. She’d kind of known, a little, is the thing. But he’d been determined, and she’d sat back and let him go out there, and she doesn’t ever a hundred percent forgive herself for that, i don't think.

It’s the last time she ignores her gut, which is good, i guess, but. Yeah, you’re very correct about her just kind of being Used To It, which is *stares blankly at wall* Interesting, Huh

2: Yes, actually: he pops by a handful of times to talk to babusia, and says a cautious hello to rabbit. then, seven years after he gets dropped off at Babusia’s, Rabbit’s gearing up for his mentorship, and he (casually, washing dishes like a good grandson) asks if that nice man jean-loup who brought him to the farmhouse might be willing to do it.

it's important to note that there's a certain Understanding of how rabbit Should feel about what happened, the understanding being that this was something that was professional and not personal, and you should blame the guy that hires the hitter, not the hitter. he brought you here, he did the kind thing, etc etc.

so babusia's not really taken aback by this, and she knows the guy, and has vetted him, so eventually she agrees; jean-loup’s kind of flattered (and also feels like. vaguely obligated), so he says yes, and he ends up being Rabbit’s mentor. Rabbit learns a lot. He works with him for three years. He graduates with flying colours. Then, two weeks after his 17th birthday, rabbit sets up on a rooftop, watches jean-loup eat breakfast through his kitchen window, waits for him to finish his crossword, and shoots him.

[darkfinch]

also, re: the ONGOING nonsense (in a new post bc that one is getting just. unreasonably long), uncle rabbit & quinn's mom grew up at babusia's house together and were super close

and rabbit is an expert in practising Forced Neutrality about All Uncomfortable things (like everything's fine. it's normal. he's moved to a cabin in the middle of nowhere to avoid the world at large, he's cultivating avoidance, he feels nothing abt his life experiences. fine), and he's as a Rule not emotionally attached to/admittedly fond of Any of babusia's kids—because they could die, because they have died, and he says he's fine about it but he Does carry a lot of Vague Unnamed Tension about it—

and yet: quinn's mom's like "yeah i'm not training him, sorry" and rabbit (who has been eavesdropping) materializes in the room like *a little too loudly with a little too much force* "that's fine, I'LL take him. yeah. he's a great kid and i'd be HONOURED to train him. that's MY kid now actually. thanks for the GREAT OPPORTUNITY i'm taking him CAMPING tomorrow and—"

he now sits next to quinn at christmas dinners and looks @ his mom like :^)

[darkfinch]

so, if you are willing & to heal a little of the wounds we totally asked for (<3), tell us a nice thing about quinn and rabbit? like, quinn cooking for rabbit or giving him a gift that isn't a terrible but deeply touching rabbit carving, or visiting and taking over rabbit's least favourite chore while he's there. or, did rabbit ever call quinn sunshine too?

some rabbit and quinn things: 

rabbit’s not much of a talker, and quinn never stops running his mouth, so most of their conversations are like [extensive quinn thought] *eyebrow raise* [amended quinn thought] *grunt of agreement* [“yeah that’s smart rabbit, good idea”]

rabbit lost 2 canadian dollars to quinn in a game of cribbage when he was 13 (rabbit maintains that he was cheating). quinn's been calculating interest out loud for decades. he now owes quinn 23 canadian dollars. rabbit adamantly denies this

Quinn is not successfully motivated by threats or consequences etc, but is SUPREMELY bribeable. Please strike up a bargain with the eleven year old. Rabbit’s like…i have been unsuccessful at intimidating this suburban demon into going to bed because he can Tell i’m bluffing this is a Nightmare, i have no good snacks in my depression cabin, he doesn’t believe me when i say he’ll be tired tomorrow, i am so tired Already, *sigh* “i'll give you two bucks to go to bed” “make it five and we’ve got a deal” “fuck”

Quinn's a GOOD GRANDSON so he immediately takes over Most household chores when he's visiting babusia or rabbit. he's gonna get a good grade in nephew. he's chopping wood. he's serving them tea. he's :3ing about it

Quinn gets rabbit Utility Gifts i.e. hikes up to the cabin like "look, a pair of boots that don't suck. bye"

Babusia knits quinn infinite socks and sends them to his safehouses. No one knows how she knows where all of the safehouses are. Quinn hasn’t told her. He just comes home to sock packages. Sometimes, his safehouse will be hard to reach, and he’ll wake up to a knock on the door to find Rabbit standing there, apologetically, with socks

(note: this is in part an effort of baba's to get rabbit out of the cabin and get them to hang out. the hangouts are successful. neither of them suspect this)

(rabbit gets a lot of custom gloves and also sweaters. Some of them have bunnies on them. sometimes they match quinn's. He loves them)

re: nicknames !!!! i have great news: rabbit refers to quinn almost Exclusively via pet name. Like, absolutely not babusia’s brand of honey darling sweetheart, but 90% of the time, if he’s addressing quinn directly, he’s going for like. Nice shot, kid. Sure you wanna do that, bud? p’tit monstre. hey. quit botherin the squirrels. Молодець, сонечко. Go chop wood, p’tit bête. Bedtime, sunshine. Sunny, if you punch him, we’re gonna have t—now look what you’ve done. 

This is partly out of habit, and partly because quinn was like “my name is Mister ‘Mr’ Quinn now” and rabbit was like. *grimaces* 

Like he’ll refer to quinn as quinn when talking to Other people About him (the butcher of kiev is finally done telling them about his daughter getting accepted into her first choice college [again, telling them Again] and now wants updates on everyone else’s kids) but like. Talking TO quinn hes like no no no your name is whatever tangle of grudging fondness comes out of my mouth next <3 

(quinn, in turn, matches nicknames. Sunshine (derogatory) is answered with Bunny Rabbit (derogatory), Sunny with Bunny, сонечко (sonechko) with зайчик (zaychik) , etc etc.)

bonus: every year for birthday parties, quinn puts a birthday hat on rabbit, and every year for christmas, quinn puts a little paper crown from the christmas crackers on rabbit, and every year rabbit glares and lets him. Heart emoji

[darkfinch]

so. I'm less inclined to be charitable to her for obvious and unfair reasons but. quinn's mother. if rabbit felt betrayed by her decision (and if he was initially reassured that she would be training quinn) then they must have been friends in adulthood as well as childhood? what was that like? did they ever work together?

sigh. yeah. quinn’s mom (who has kind of a sophie relationship to names, but is currently going by Alina, so let’s please call her alina for the sake of me not having to write “quinn’s mom” 30 times and Also because reducing her down to just Mother Of Child She Does Not Know is. weird).

she’s a few years older than him, so she was already out of the house and working by the time he started his mentorship with jean-loup, and they only really saw each other for holidays (but it was one of those friendships where you can see them after a year apart and it’s like you hung out yesterday). 

usually part of a mentor’s job is to be kind of an In, if they’re good, so they’ll set their kid up with a couple of contacts to make getting into the business a little easier. rabbit, uh, does not get that; alina hears about the jean-loup thing and flies back to babusia’s the next day, like, “so is this a funeral dinner or are we clapping for you” (it’s a “babusia needed something to do with her hands so we’ve got a lot of food now” dinner), and then she offers to let him tag along for a bit.

they settle into a system: rabbit plans, alina fulfills the contract, rabbit sets up across the street with a rifle in case of emergencies, they split the paycheck and anything they steal. neither of them Like Teamwork, but they were trained together, they fight well together, and they trust each other which is fucking RARE, so they keep the partnership going for a couple of years (taking solo jobs in between).

(eventually, rabbit’s established enough that he’s getting good work on his own, and alina’s looking to get more into grifter-y long con type jobs, so they go their separate ways, no hard feelings <3)

when it gets Weird is when alina shows up to christmas dinner in Province, Canada, after six months of radio silence, with the most normal man you’ve ever seen. the most boring possible guy, the guy whose picture shows up when you look up Guy in the dictionary. Bathroom-gender-sign-ass dude.

Also, she’s pregnant, and she’s going to be Normal now, don’t worry about it. please don’t talk about crimes in front of Normal Guy <3

when it gets Weirder is when she 1) distances herself further from the family over the next few years “for a clean break”, and then 2) SUDDENLY ditches the toddler with Normal Man and calls rabbit out of the blue like “hey i’m getting back into the game :3 are you free”. and he’s like, *double checks that he’s not hallucinating* “what the fuck are you talking about”

Anyway, he says yes (he kind of always does), and they do take a couple more jobs together after that, but alina’s more interested in more grift-heavy jobs, more blackmailing and homicidal dinner parties etc, and rabbit’s more interested in Shoot Guy From Distance, so it doesn’t really work out. she still visits babusia to say hi, she still mentors a couple of kids, they all still kind of act like Normal Baby never happened—

—and then quinn shows up. and suddenly Normal Baby is an actual physical child who, it turns out, was NOT okay with Normal Man living an idyllic suburban lifestyle. and rabbit knows what alina’s like, she is how she is, he sighs about it but accepts that she just…isn’t particularly Concerned about other people’s feelings, and that’s fine—except now rabbit’s watching this kid watch alina, when she visits, and watching him get Nothing from her, and he’s like. ohhhhhh that’s a problem

(quinn’s thirteen and poking at their campfire with a stick, a little dejectedly, because baba showed him some photos of baby rabbit + alina, and he’s like, do you just like me ‘cause you knew my mom, like he’s thinking maybe rabbit’s just looking at him and seeing her, like his dad did, maybe

and rabbit drags quinn’s chair back a safer distance from the fire, and adds another log, like, I like you ‘cause you’re you, and if i’m honest i like her a little less now that i know...you…… where’s—did—look at me, did you seriously eat half a bag of marshmallows? …don't laugh, I was gone for like Five Minutes, sunny, what the Fuck—)

the mentorship thing’s a betrayal because there are exactly two people on earth rabbit can go to when he’s having a crisis about something. Alina, who is Historically Speaking one of them, watches him try to breathe around what if someone’s fucking awful to him, what if they do a shit job, what if they get him killed, and very hesitantly goes, “well. I could maybe do it, if it comes to that. I mean i’d have to think about it, but you have a year left, don’t worry about that yet” 

And babusia talks to her about it too, and reassures rabbit, and so when the Time Comes rabbit’s like. well, of course she will. right. of course she will, even if it makes her uncomfortable, even if it’s awkward. this one person he loves is of course going to do the right thing for this other person he loves, of Course.

and then she doesn’t, and he doesn’t speak more than two words to her for the next three years