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

[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."

[biteybaby]

"Uh huh," she says. It's possible that Polly really has changed, and isn't a bad guardian anymore, but she couldn't get a good enough sense because he cut the conversation so short.

[summerdude]

"Do you want help coming up with a list of questions for him?"

[biteybaby]

She's about to say 'yes', but then shakes her head. "Can't talk," she says, frustrated. What she means is, "He can't understand me when I talk anyway, not well enough for me to get complex questions across. Having a list wouldn't do any good."

[summerdude]

"I could write them down and you could give them to him?"

[biteybaby]

"Might work," she says. She's pretty sure Polly knows how to read, anyway. "Follow up?" she says, meaning, "But what if something he says makes me think of a follow up question I have, that isn't written down already?"

[summerdude]

"Good point," Magnus says. He offers her another bite of his granola bar while he thinks. "Do you have any ideas?"

[biteybaby]

"Why put kids danger? Sounded... unavoidable," she starts with a sort of sigh, meaning something along the lines of, "Well, first off I want to know why he thinks he has to put his kids in dangerous situations where they get hurt. He seemed to imply that it was unavoidable, that no matter what happened they would have to do that sort of thing, but he didn't really explain why."

[summerdude]

Magnus nods seriously and rummages through his backpack until he finds some crayons and construction paper. (His backpack -- his only remaining belonging from the apartment he'd shared with his mom -- is now less of 'the thing where he stores a change of underwear, a little food, and his most important stuff in case he needs to bolt fast' and is now more 'a repository for things a person might use to entertain a toddler-sized-eggplant-sized new baby sister.') On it, he writes, Why do your kidshave to be put in danger? I don't understand why there aren't any other options, and then reads the question back to Sunny to make sure he got it right.

[biteybaby]

Sunny nods. "That's good start."

[summerdude]

"What else do you want to know?"

[biteybaby]

"What do different now."

[summerdude]

"If you were back home right now," Magnus says, slowly, as he writes, "What would you be doing that's different to be a better dad?"

[biteybaby]

"Esactly." Sunny tries to think of another question, but it's ... difficult. Almost as if every question has left her head. She knows she'll have more, but right now she can't figure out what they are.

[summerdude]

"Very good." Magnus purses his lips. "Should we ask if he has experience with being, like, a guardian?"

[biteybaby]

"Yeah! Good idea Magnu."

[summerdude]

Magnus taps the corner of his mouth with the crayon. "What do you think are the main features of a good guardian?"

[biteybaby]

Sunny thinks about her daddies. How they always try to make sure she has what she needs, as well as what she wants, and how they make her take baths and make her eat good food, and tell her what she needs to do to stay safe. She thinks about her first set of parents, who made sure she felt so welcome when she first came home from the hospital, even though there were already other children living in the home (this she doesn't remember first hand, but she can remember stories Violet and Klaus told her about the first few months), and how they managed to shield her and her siblings from how terrible their world actually was. She thinks about Uncle Monty, before he died, who wanted to include them in his adventures, and made sure his home was warm and inviting after they'd been made to endure living with Count Olaf. She thinks too, about Aunt Josephine, who may have been scared of everything, and maybe didn't properly anticipate what sort of presents they would like, but she tried, and Sunny thinks that should count for something at the very least.

"Tries," she starts. "Looks out for. Pays attention. Tries to protect."

[summerdude]

Immediately, Magnus winds an arm around Sunny's tiny little shoulders, tugs her closer, and deposits a kiss on the top of her head. "That's a really good list," he says, and sounds, frankly, a little choked up about it.

[biteybaby]

"I expert," she says, which means, "I've had enough guardians by now that I'm an expert in the field."

[summerdude]

"That's a lot like the list I gave Hanguang-jun when I tried to explain why I want him to--" Magnus breaks off and sighs. "You know."

[biteybaby]

Sunny does know, and she wraps an arm around Magnu's back and hugs him tight. "Want me ask him for you?"

[summerdude]

"I think we're in a good place? I don't know if he actually wants to, you know. Be a dad. But he's okay with being family."

[biteybaby]

"Might want," Sunny says. She thinks it's only fair if she asks for Magnu, since he helped her get adopted.