#parallels drawn and D.G. is like

[fanarchoslashivist]

Prompt! Post a peice of a WIP you started but never finished and probably never will.

Long ago Jackrabbit week, fusion day. Fusion was with Tin Man. Unlike other ideas this one will probably never leave the idea folder, and this is the only actual writing I've done for it. It became a monster during the planning stage and I was intimidated.

*

“He hoped you could fix him.”

The deep unfamiliar voice was the first thing Bunnymund heard as he entered the unusually quiet globe room, followed closely by the indignant protestations of the young woman in his immediate line of sight.

The workshop, normally loud and chaotic even through what passed for night in the arctic autumn, was disturbingly silent but for the conversation and the creak of metal from the ever spinning globe.

“Glitch doesn't need to be fixed!” the girl squawked in a voice that cracked between pitches like a preteen boy’s.

“No offense princess,” her companion, a dark figure in a hat with his back to Bunny, drawled, “but it's not your brain in a jar.”

“Bunny!” North rose from his seat at the sight of his friend. “Great timing my friend, we have unexpected guests it seems.”

Bunnymund adjusted the container of chocolates and sized up the two humans who turned to him. The girl, squat curly haired mess in a biker jacket, openly gawked but the man in the hat simply studied him with the same measuring eyes Bunny imagined were on his own face.

“That.. is one big rabbit.” The girl said bluntly and her companion rolled his eyes heavenward. 

“Pooka.” Bunny and the man in the hat said simultaneously. That earned the human another look, but North was there and blocking his view before he could ask.

“You have new chocolates. Good, good. We shall try them with refreshments yeti left. Come, you save me time to call you.” In a span of seconds North had herded Bunny towards the formal meeting table and fair shoved him into the booth. “Sit.”

Bunnymund glared at him, but wisely kept his mouth shut. If they were using the booth, and the workshop was cleared, it was something important. Either one of these two were someone, or from somewhere, that had North on the political defense. Santa didn’t hide his mystical toy making process for just anyone, show off that he was.

“Sooo.” the girl scooted down the booth until she was directly opposite him, with her companion perched on the edge. She folded her hands, fingers laced, in front of her and regarded him with wide eyes. “If he’s Santa, does that make you the Easter Bunny?” 

She said it with a little lift to the corner of her mouth, as if making some joke, Bunny had heard the remark before from non believers they’d had to drag in on the occasion. 

“At your service.” he said blandly, and watched her pale complexion flush and her altogether too large eyes dart away. 

“Oh.” She hummed, “that makes sense then.” She chewed on her lip as North brought mugs of cocoa piled high with whipped cream and plates of his new chocolates. “So, are there any other children stories I’m going to walk through or is this it, because honestly? I’m not really up to the whole extended universe thing. I was fine with just the one adventure.”

“Kid.” Her companion took his hat off and smooshed it onto her head, almost smashing her face into the cream along with it. “Shut up.”

She sat up, white cream on her pert button nose, and glared at him. “You can’t tell me to shut up, I’m a princess now remember? It's like a rule.”

“Like the rule against running away from home and riding storms across the desert to strange worlds. Sure thing your majesty, you’re all about those rules.”

“It's not strange to me. I grew UP here, remember?”

Bunny leaned back, amused. “Yer from the Outer Zone.”

The girl, princess, pursed her lips and tucked her head into her shoulders. “Maybe.”

“Sheila, ain't nobody outside the O.Z. ride storms.” He crossed his arms and side eyed North, who was humming as he sipped his chocolate. The O.Z. had been locked down for years, since the Witch had been freed. Sandy made sure of it. “What brings you to the Pole?” 

“Our friend Gl- Ah, Ambrose is missing.” The princess said, “He was on his way here when… he got lost.”

Ambrose, Bunny knew the man. Lanky pale man with a barely contained head of curls and a mind like a cosmic storm. He’d enjoyed many conversations with the brilliant advisor to the queen while visiting the Outer Zone. If he had gone missing then the situation on Oz must have taken a turn for the worst. Still.

“Sorry your grace,” Bunny’s voice was sympathetic, but firm, “Oz has laws against our interference, we’re not allowed in except on our holidays, and since the Witch was loosed we’ve been forced to shut it down. I’m sure ye noticed the Dream Sand.”

“How could you say that?” the princess demanded, “how can you just… LEAVE people to suffer like that.”

“Was not our decision.” North spoke up, and they exchanged frustrated looks. “We obey their laws or we aren’t welcome. Your mother,” North indicated the girl, “I assume the Queen, was firm on that law ten years ago when we offered.”

“So you just.. Just close us up in a wall of deadly sand?”

“Not deadly, just.. They just sleep. It wasn’t our first choice,” Bunny explained. “But we couldn’t let the Witch escape. There are forces, very old and very dangerous, that could do far greater damage than the Witch if they joined her.” The last of the fearlings had been sealed away all over the world, the Witch was only one of them. If she had loosed them all… Pitch would be more than just a bad dream. “If we couldn’t fix the problem, we had to contain it.”

“The Witch is dead.” Cain spoke up, face serious. “So the conversation is pointless. We’re not here for that.”

“Cain!” the princess objected, softer but just as fierce. “All the damage, everything. Cain, your family.”

“I know the laws D.G.” he turned to her, just as severe, “I didn’t agree with them, but I knew them. Your mom told them to go, they went. Not their fault.”

It was hard, Bunny knew, for the young to feel the weight of their parent’s mistakes. It had taken a great effort for Bunnymund to swallow his pride hundreds of years ago and let the Guardians share in his authority. There was a fear of loss of control, of usurpation, of being annexed into a greater power structure and finding everything you cared about, the lines you drew, the morals you held to only a small voice in a conversation. 

It was a hard thing, separating your own pride from leadership. The Queen had chosen pride, and belief in her own power. 

He had hoped she hadn’t chosen wrong.

“I’m glad to hear the Witch is no more.” North broke the tension, refilling their drinks though little of it was touched. D.G. took her cup and drank deeply, getting cream on her lip and nose. She wiped it off with the back of her sleeve, and by her sniff probably a few tears as well.

“So, what is the problem then? Why would Ambrose go missing?” Bunny asked once she’d settled.

“He was on his way here, to the Laughing Valley, to let you know we’d defeated the Sorceress. And…” She looked at Cain, who seemed intent on letting her speak. “He wanted help with… and injury.”

Bunny tensed. An injury from the Witch that needed the Guardians could only be one thing.

Infection.

“She took his brain.” D.G. burst out, eyes burning with tears. “She tortured him and when he didn’t help her she just, she took it, and she put it in a machine, and she used it to do terrible things.” 

“Hey, hey there sheila.” Bunny reached across for her hand and Cain had her other in an instant.

Children weren’t meant for wartime, Bunny thought, yet they were always the first victims. That same impotent fury he had felt when he had stood in her mother’s castle and been told to leave surged forward. This was the cost of isolationism, this was Oz’s most common affliction.

He met Cain’s eyes, stress lined and full of misery and pain, the man hadn’t wanted this, but it had been necessary. “He was headed to here,” Cain spoke up now, “because there was no one else could put him back together. He kept saying he had to catch the train. ‘Catch the train at Hohaho.’ We didn’t understand him at first..."