Closed: The World is Quiet Here.

[biteybaby]

Nightmares are nothing new for Sunny Baudelaire. There was a time when she had them somewhat infrequently, before her birth parents tragically perished in a sudden house fire that may or may not have been started by an individual who may or may not have recently died any number of painful deaths, though research into the exact specifics of those events is still ongoing. After previously mentioned arson, Sunny Baudelaire experienced a period of very frequent nightmares, followed by a few months where her nightmares were lessening, a word which here means "became less frequent, though did still happen from time to time".

Unfortunately, she has been having very intense nightmares every time she has fallen asleep in recent days, and in general her waking hours have been less than ideal as well. Recently it seems like everyone but her got to be reunited with their loved ones from home, but all Sunny got was --

She wakes up, multiple times during the night, screaming at the viciously frightening dreams her subconscious has decided to inflict on her. Count Olaf, dead, getting up though and continuing to menace her. Count Olaf kidnapping her and taking her back home, away from her daddies and her brother and everyone else, and keeping her in another birdcage. Count Olaf killing Violet and Klaus in all of the many several ways many several people killed him. Magnu's mommy, who by all accounts was a very lovely person in real life, but in Sunny's dreams she's mean and horrible and laughs at her because her mommy didn't get to come here, even though they're both equally dead and therefore equally as likely to show up.

Sunny is very glad that every time she wakes up crying her daddies are there to hug her and calm her down enough to go back to sleep. She is also very glad that she is still wearing her bedtime pull ups every night. Most of all though, she is glad that Count Olaf is definitely incredibly dead, and even though she can't be with Violet and Klaus, she knows they won't be harmed by him any more. She just wishes the nightmares about the whole situation would stop.

This morning she wakes up screaming from a nightmare at almost the same time she gets up normally, and so she decides to just stay awake. She has big plans to go get groceries with Magnu anyway, and after a bit of a touch and go start to her day, she's finally dressed and out the door with Magnu.

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[biteybaby]

"Okay." She climbs off of Magnu and walks over to the nearest Sunny-height drawer. She opens it, stares at the contents for a moment, then closes the drawer.

[summerdude]

Magnus watches her for a moment, aching. He wishes there was something, anything he could do -- something specific, something helpful, something that would definitely make her feel better. But he's pretty sure there's nothing -- nothing except time. It sucks.

He starts rummaging through a drawer above the one she looked through, keeping an eye on her.

[biteybaby]

She moves to the next drawer and does the same. No balloons here, either.

[summerdude]

Okay, so the thing is, Magnus is almost positive that the balloons are in the next Sunny-height drawer over. And he's really hoping that she gets a little excited about finding them. So he rummages through another drawer, making grumbling noises when he turns up bupkis.

[biteybaby]

Sunny is, in many ways, quite an unusual two year old. This is due largely to her being what might lovingly be referred to as a "protagonist", a word which here means, "someone to whom a great many incredibly tragic circumstances have occurred", but can also mean, "a main character in a series of novels in which a great many incredibly tragic circumstances happen to a trio of unlucky orphans". She is often very mature for her age, and thanks largely to magic of varying sources, several residents of this pocket dimension have been able to understand her much more clearly than most people would be able, which does help her greatly when it comes to frustrations about not being understood.

Regardless, it is important to note that she is still, despite all evidence that might point to her being a fully grown businesswoman, just a two year old child. Furthermore, she is a two year old who very recently had an incredibly difficult and trying day, and even though her dear brother Magnu has been able to understand her speech quite clearly for as long as he has known her, she doesn't have enough words to fully articulate all of the myriad of complicated reasons she has been upset the past few days. Many people will refer to a period of time in a toddler's life that is hard to handle as being "the terrible twos", and while this typist feels that might be an unfair label to give to Sunny Baudelaire (mostly because her entire life has been terrible, so it hardly is her fault if she occasionally has a bit of a meltdown), she is starting to tear up at not finding the balloons yet.

They should have been in the first drawer, she thinks. She shouldn't have to be hunting them down. They probably aren't going to be here at all, and Magnu won't be able to show her what he and Galahad do, and she really wants to play with water balloons today, so why aren't they in the drawers she has already opened? Magnu can't find them either! It's just not fair, nothing lately has been fair, it's just like her old life and her old bad luck are back, but this time without Violet and Klaus, even though other people here get to see their family, and sometimes their family even stay, and all she got was Count Olaf!!!!

Sunny lets out a very frustrated scream and flops down on the floor and cries.

[summerdude]

Magnus immediately flops down on the floor next to her. "I'm here," he tells her. "Would it help if I asked you to show me just how loud you can scream?"

[biteybaby]

"No!" she screams.

[summerdude]

"Okay. Would it help to squeeze my hand as hard as it hurts?"

[biteybaby]

"No!" she screams louder, then just screams without saying any words at all.

[summerdude]

Magnus nods. Even though she's screaming wordlessly he can still understand her. He rolls over from where he's flopped down, tucking his body next to Sunny's and then curling up, like he's protecting her from anything and anyone. He strokes her hair back with one hand. "Can I scream with you?"

[biteybaby]

She screams again, kicking her legs at the air as she does so.

[summerdude]

Magnus doesn't mind when her legs whack his arm. Her heels are hard, but he doesn't bruise that easily. He gives the worst, quietest, most lukewarm scream known to humankind, and then makes a face. "I don't think I scream very good," he says. "Show me again how it's done?"

[biteybaby]

"Nuh uh!!!" she screams. She doesn't want to do that! She doesn't want to do much of anything right now, is the problem.

[summerdude]

Magnus screams again, a tiny bit better than before. "How was that?" he asks. "Still bad?"

[biteybaby]

"Stop it!" she hollers and continues thrashing around for another few seconds before she finally lets out one final frustrated yell and stills. She's crying, but much quieter now.

[summerdude]

Magnus waits for a long few moments, cuddling her close, wiping her face with the Baby Handkerchief he's been carrying around every day for a while now (he's learned that babies are capable of so much snot and such dirty fingers; the Baby Handkerchief is a fresh, clean one every day). When her tears start softening into hiccups, he says, "Can I tell you a secret?"

[biteybaby]

She makes a noise that is somewhere between a grumble, a groan, and an 'uh huh'.

[summerdude]

"You know how everyone is asking how they can help make you feel better? Me included?"

[biteybaby]

She nods.

[summerdude]

"We're asking because we love you and we're sad that you're so sad, but you're allowed to feel bad for as long as you feel bad and we'll still all love you."

[biteybaby]

She doesn't know how to respond to that. She doesn't know if she's sad, actually. She feels like she's all of the emotions she knows all at the same time, except maybe most of the good ones, and she doesn't like that. She's also all screamed out at this point, so she just keeps laying there as Magnu talks.

[summerdude]

"Or smurt, or whatever it is that you're feeling. It's all okay. It's okay that you felt complicated about meeting my mom. It's okay to feel complicated about Auntie Phelia. It's okay to feel complicated about your first siblings and Olaf and everything."

[biteybaby]

"Not fair," she says, because nothing lately has felt fair to her.

[summerdude]

"No, bug. It's not fair. It's not fair at all." Magnus won't tell her he would have traded his mom's visit for a better day for her, because he's not certain he could have brought himself to do that. Plus he knows that by the time she's six she's fine with it, so... at least that's something?

But she shouldn't have had to see Olaf at all.

"Someone really stupid once told me that life isn't fair," Magnus says instead. "And that the sooner I realized that, the happier I'd be. But I'll tell you what, Sunny. We can find a way to make sure that even when it feels like it's really unfair, there's something we can do to balance it out a little. Okay? Like how when people were being really unfair to me after I lost my mom and my house, I'd make myself feel better by, um. Taking their money and using it to buy myself a really nice lunch or a change of clothes. It didn't bring me what I really wanted, but it made me feel like I had some kind of control over some stuff. You know?"

[biteybaby]

"Don't want monies," she says quietly, but very emphatically.