Closed: An Ersatz Guardian

[biteybaby]

Like most people Sunny's age, she tends to wake up bright and early. Unlike most people Sunny's age, Magnu Chase is normally at her house when she wakes up these days. She honestly just expects it at this point. Today Sunny wakes up and her first stop is, of course, the potty. She's very proud of herself for making it all the way through the night without peeing in her diaper! Potty lessons have been going well. She even found some fancy diapers that she can pull up and get on all by herself, so she barely needs any help at all these days. She's a very independent woman, after all.

Far and Apu are still sleeping, so Sunny is very quiet as she picks out an outfit to wear, and she's very quiet as she gets Magnu to help her put on the outfit, and she's very quiet as she spills Lucky Charms all over the place while pouring them into a little baggy to carry with her on the adventures she and Magnu are going to have today.

Eventually Sunny is all ready to go, she even has a sippy cup of watered down apple juice (Magnu took care of that one, after the Lucky Charms mishap), and they are out the door ready to go.

"Plans?" Sunny asks, by which she means, "What are we going to do today?"

Comments

[summerdude]

"Kind of for the reasons you outlined," Magnus says, ruffling Sunny's ponytail. It's a little askew, because he's still learning how to do it right. "And he was wearing Percy's clothes when he got here. And I've, um. Heard stories from Annabeth about how he's acted on her and Percy's quests. And I don't like that most gods in my world neglect their kids."

[biteybaby]

"Sissy too?" She doesn't want Sissy to also be like Jerome, but if Polly is, and all of the other gods Magnu knows are, then odds aren't looking too great.

[summerdude]

"Uncle D is okay," Magnus says immediately. "He's from a different world than me. He has a ton of kids, but he knows all their names and the exact number and about their lives and stuff." He pauses. "Can you keep a secret?" (Obviously the answer is 'yes.')

[biteybaby]

That's a relief. She would hate to think that there's two Jeromes here. To Magnu's question about secrets, she says, "Uh huh."

[summerdude]

"You know Xie Lian?"

[biteybaby]

"Yes."

[summerdude]

"He's a god, too. I don't think he really wants people to know." Magnus leans in conspiratorially, as if the cave crickets could possibly overhear. "Wanna help me find out if he's a good god or a bad god? I bet you can be so sneaky. Like this morning when we were getting ready for our adventure today."

[biteybaby]

Sunny gasps. She didn't know that about him! "Yeah, Sunny sneaky!"

[summerdude]

"I think you know more about everyone here than anyone else," Magnus tells her. "Even Claudius."

[biteybaby]

"Don't know listen," Sunny says, a little annoyed, by which she means something along the lines of, "Yeah, because a lot of grown ups don't think I can listen to what they are saying, so they say a lot of things around me."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, that's really obnoxious," Magnus agrees. "But hey. You can use this information for good... you can trade it to the plants for their secrets."

[biteybaby]

"Yeah," she says, and then is quiet for a moment. "Magnu think..." she switches to sign to ask, okay Sunny play with Apollo still? Or too bad person?

[summerdude]

"Oh, Sunny." Magnus deposits a kiss on the top of her head. "You can play with whoever you want to forever, okay? It's a decision only you can make." He twists a little so he can face her more directly. "I actually asked Pops that question a couple months ago. Not about Apollo, obviously... about someone else. He told me..." Magnus pauses and dredges up the memory. "Basically that it's okay to be friends with people who have done bad things, as long as you're being friends for the right reasons."

[biteybaby]

"Trust?" she asks, which means, "Do you think I can trust him if something were to happen? He said he's trying to do better but then he did get pretty upset immediately after saying that. It was a weird conversation."

[summerdude]

"Can you tell me more about it?"

[biteybaby]

So Sunny tells Magnu all about how even when Polly first walked up, things were awkward, because apparently he and Apu had already had a fight about ...something? But they were going to make up and be friends, and Polly even turned into a hairy, weirdly dressed person and gave her a diet coke before going back to normal. Then they started talking about how a lot of people who are not Sunny Baudelaire have bad daddies, and Apu asked if Polly has kids. When he couldn't remember how many he immediately got very defensive, said he was going to go to a camp to see his kids before he ended up at the mansion and how they don't deserve any of the things they get put through. Sunny suggested he just stop putting them through things, which she thinks would solve a lot of the problems here, but what does she know, because apparently he can't do that? Polly said something about chaos happening otherwise. Sunny doesn't really know what that means. She knows what the word 'chaos' means, but she fails to see how that was relevant to the conversation she had been having with Polly and her father.


Sunny did not use quite as many words to get this same information across to Magnu.

[summerdude]

Magnus hates this!!!! He really, really hates this. He stuffs a handful of cereal into his mouth to hide his facial expression and, with his mouth full, asks, "Do you think you can trust him?"

[biteybaby]

"... Dunno."

[summerdude]

Magnus offers her a bite of his granola bar. "Do you want to be able to trust him?"

[biteybaby]

She takes a bite, and then answers with her mouth full, "Uh huh. Olly un." Which is an attempt at saying, "Uh huh. Polly's fun."

[summerdude]

He nods slowly."What will you need from him to be able to trust him?"

[biteybaby]

"...Need?" she asks, confused by what Magnu means.

[summerdude]

"Is there anything he needs to say or do for you to know that you can trust him?" Magnus rephrases.

[biteybaby]

"Think," she says, meaning, "I'll have to think about that." Then she adds, "No tantrum," which, of course, means, "It would be helpful if he could have a conversation about it without getting upset and storming off."

[summerdude]

"A lot of the gods from where I come from are like that," says Magnus, rolling his eyes. It's like they get mad when people don't treat them as the, like, most important beings in the universe. "It does make it hard to have a conversation, huh."