Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Madam, you’re supposed to be spayed. I have the pictures of your shaved belly, and you still have the scar -” the human sounds exasperated, but not in a bad sort of way, “- and where did you find a boy bunny, anyway?”

She’s chinned gently, and then picked up, first by Mama and then by the human, her hands gentle and she squeaks at the indignity involved in her Mama’s human checking her over. Her sister’s checked, too, and then they’re both tucked back into the nest that Mama had built in her hidey-box.

“I’ll get you the good hay, Madam. Keep looking after them and no biting when I handle them, fahmehdum -?”

Her Mama chins her again, which makes the human sigh, and she snuggles back into her sister’s side.

Her Mama’s human likes to scritch them and talk to what she’s learned is her computer, telling stories to other people; she likes her Mama’s human’s voice, but Mama has made it clear that neither of them are making their Mama’s den their permanent home.

(The brightly coloured moving shapes that her Mama’s human keeps on one screen are fascinating. Her Mama sighs and grooms her viciously when she says that; her Mama’s more inclined to snip cables than watch her human’s screens.)

“You are an adorable little menace, and we need to talk to certain people about finding you and your sister a better home before your Mama resumes her old habits when it comes to other bunnies, missy.” Her Mama’s human sounds reluctant about that, and she stuffs her head under her chin, making her Mama’s human laugh, and reach for a book that she starts reading out loud; it doesn’t really make sense - not like the stories she tells the computer - but something in it keeps her ears pricked.

(Mama is getting frustrated with both of them. She’s taught them how to bunny, but she’s getting less and less tolerant of them stealing a snack from the milk bar, and while Mama is bright - she’s watched her break out of their pen and seen her care for her human - she doesn’t think the way her and her sister do.)

“We’re going to go and see someone tomorrow, missy; they’ll help you find a home with someone who can look after you properly.” Her Mama’s human is crying softly, and she does her best to comfort her. The tears are salty, and she nuzzles her cheek affectionately. “Let’s get your sister, and we’ll watch another couple of episodes of Reborn; I’m trying to see if any of Dino’s Guardians want to star in my next story -”

Mama’s human is asleep, and the pretty pictures are still flickering on the screen; her sister sighs when she noses at it, knocking over the screen, and she paws at it gently, trying to remember what her Mama’s human had said about bunny burrows and liminal spaces.

Will. Will made the world go around, made fun things happen in Mama’s human’s favourite show in all of her stories, and she wanted to pick where Home was.

(She and her sister had different choices for ‘Home’ in Mama’s human’s stories. She liked Tsuna, but her sister was rather fond of the idea of bullying Dino the way Mama bullied her human.)

Mama’s human had told them a story about Mama’s bunny-ways and a library outside of the time, and all she is sure that all she has to do is wriggle her nose and will it open ... and it does; she and her sister have a brief nose war, and then they’re both burrowing ‘through’ the screen, and their tunnel divides, and she hopes she’ll see her again.

(When they’re bigger and older, and the territoriality that makes Mama glare at them both when they get too close to her has faded. It will fade, right? Mama’s human had just said Mama was a contrary Cloud-type.)

Chapter Text

He slithers out of his first floor bedroom window and drops down onto the lawn; something mildly hypnotic is tugging at his Flames, in exactly the same way that Romario had before his father had sighed and assigned his Rain to him. He’s not entirely sure how he gets past the various guards - luck, maybe - but he does, and the tug is very clearly coming from the loose boxes that the mares who were Flame Active could chose to use if they wanted to foal in peace.

The stablemaster gives him a ‘look’ that makes him quail, but then she sighs. “You’re here for Ms Stella and the foal she’s currently refusing to ‘drop’, aren’t you?”

“I, um, think so?”

“She’s in the stall at the back of the stable, Cavallucio, the one that they can let themselves in and out of, and lock if they want privacy. We’ve been expecting her foal for the last few hours, but she’s refusing to lay down; something has spooked her.” The stablemaster makes a face. “Don’t make me regret this. And don’t do anything that will make your father fire me.”

“If it helps, Papa was pleased when he realised Romario was actually my Rain, rather than just me being precious about who I preferred to have trailing me.” The stable master tilts her head.

“I’m not sure why you think that would be reassuring, Cavalluccio.”

“It’s um, a Sky thing. He’ll forgive a lot if it ends with a Sky-Guardian bond, Ms Alanna. And it feels like the same sort of tug that led me to ’Maro -”

“- ah.” She ruffles his hair. “You’ve helped me with foaling in the past, Cavalluccio. It’s easier with the Flame mares; they know they sometimes need a set of opposable thumbs, and they’ll ‘tell’ you what they need you to do.”

Stella is a little wild eyed, snorting and stamping and clearly not happy when he gets to her box. He can see why Alanna had been concerned about her; this isn’t her normal response to foaling - their Boss mare was very much a veteran at the process.

She actually bares her teeth at him, and it’s only the tug at his Flames that has him unlatching the door to her stall, but he stays on the stable side of it.

“What’s gotten into you, Donna Cabbadu? This isn’t like you at all -”

Stella snorts again, neck stretched out in a weird way, and then there’s a faint rustling sound. He goes very still and Stella makes a sound as if to say ‘see, there’s something wrong’.

“- okay. Yes. Do you want to shift boxes? I mean it’s probably just one of the barn-cats, -” she stamps, and backs up into the corner of the box, and he sighs, “- I’ll take that as a no. If I get bitten and need a shot, I’m holding it against you, Madam.”

She snorts at him again, and he makes a face and approaches the uh, very scary pile of straw carefully; now he’s paying attention, there’s something like a small Flame presence under it, which really did make ‘barn-cat’ the most likely option.

Not the only option, but the most likely one … and if it was one of the barn-cats they were probably terrified; he certainly would be if Stella had let herself into his suite while he was sleeping and had then got grumpy when he dared to move.

“Pspspspspsps -” the straw shifts a little bit, and the very faint Flames he can feel, a little Stormy, a little Cloudy but mostly young and still a little unformed, hunker down, defensively; he crouches beside the pile Stella had indicated and starts to brush away the straw carefully.

He’s a little surprised, when rather than one of the cats, his excavation reveals a medium-sized rabbit, one with very long ears and strawberry blonde markings; they had to be a domestic rabbit, but no-one on the estate kept them.

“Where did you come from?” The rabbit scoots backwards, trying to vanish back under the pile of straw, and he sighs and holds out his hand to them, the way he would to a horse he was approaching.

Unfortunately, Stella snorts again from behind him, and the rabbit reverses at high speed into the pile of straw in the corner of the room.

’It’s just a rabbit, Momma Stella. Certainly not big enough - or carnivorous - to be a threat to your foal, and as scared of you as you are of her.“ That earns him a stamp and he sighs. ”Either we switch you to a different stall, or you stand very still and very quiet for a few minutes, Stella, and I do my best to catch the rabbit."

That gets him another snort, and the straw meeps. It’s an adorable little sound, and he tilts his head.

“Are you as smart as Ms Stella, bun?” His question is rhetorical, he knows that their Flame Active horses and the one or two Flame Active cats currently in residence are all notably smarter than their counterparts. “Because if you are, this was not the best place to take a nap, even if there was lots of straw to hide in; maybe we could find you somewhere better to camp out, si?”

He rocks forward onto his knees, reaching towards the pile of hay that’s shivering slightly, and there’s another rustle and he sighs, and starts to shift the straw again, only for the rabbit to meep a second time. He stops for a moment, and the straw moves, and he’s fairly sure that the rabbit is belly crawling closer to him; he leans forward and he isn’t ashamed to admit he squeaks as the rabbit dives into his hoodie’s pocket, big feet - that she clearly hadn’t grown into yet - the last thing he sees as she squirms into the makeshift ‘burrow’ he hadn’t even realised he was offering her.

Stella shifts in response to his squeak, and he’s a bit alarmed that she’s positioned herself between him and the stall door. Especially as she then promptly drops into position, and he can see the contractions making her flanks ripple.

“You need to stay very still for me, Ms. Bunny Rabbit -”

“- who are you talking to, Cavalluccio?” The stablemaster leans in, careful of Stella, and gets a snort for her trouble, but the mare doesn’t stand up again, and he’s relieved.

“So, um, Stella’s issue was a very pretty - and Flame Active - rabbit.” That earns him a confused look from the stablemaster. “I have the culprit in my hoodie pocket, but I don’t think Stella’s going to let me out for a while, ma’am.”

“And I don’t think she’s going to let me in, so I’ll talk you through what you need to do, Cavalluccio, because something’s not quite right from what I can see -”

What follows is twenty minutes of terror, and why does he always forget how weird foal-slippers are until he sees another pair?

His hoodie is going to be a complete write-off and so are his pyjama pants and he has no idea why the rabbit in his hoodie pocket hasn’t tried to bolt, but he’s grateful that she hasn’t; his reward is a Guardian bond snapping into place as he helps Stella’s new foal to stand up and find a teat for the first time.

“- shall we see if she’ll let you out now, Cavalluccio?”

He shakes his head, earning him a look from Alana.

“That wasn’t a request, Cavalluccio. You’re shaking, and covered in gore, and if you’ve really got a rabbit in your hoodie pocket, she must be terrified, and they’re surprisingly fragile little creatures.”

Stella snorts, clearly unhappy, and the foal makes a pitiful sound as he moves away from her, and Alana eyes him.

“Confession time, Cavalluccio.”

“Um. It’s Sky BS?” Alana laughs; it’s clearly a release of tension, and he finds himself giggling, too.

“You bonded with Stella.” He shakes his head. “The foal?”

“She’s a Cloudy little thing. There’s even a purple sheen to her coat, so I’m guessing, um, didn’t we have that moment when we thought Stella had miscarried? Because she got into a fight with one of the bachelor stallions who was chasing a filly -”

“- mmm. Trying to get her in for an ultrasound after that was interesting.” Alana sighs. “And the threshold has been getting lower and lower for the mainline. You really think that might be the cause, Cavalluccio?”

“It feels like it is? I don’t know if I got the, um, mechanism right, but the rest of it, yeah.”

“We still need to get you cleaned up - Stella’s a very good mama and a Sky in her own right, so lets see if she’ll cooperate -” extracting himself from the foaling stall, with the samples and swabs Alanna had talked him through taking, is a little hairy, and the foal is very displeased with the fact he’s leaving her.

(Foal tantrums are worryingly cute, given he knows they can also be dangerous in a number of ways.)

He squeaks when he realises that Alana hadn’t been alone on the other side of the foaling box’s wall. Romario just looks a little exasperated, and he’d sort of expected his Rain to come and investigate why he felt panicky and exhilarated, but the presence of his father, and one of his father’s consigliere was a little more anxiety inducing.

(He didn’t know why; his father had approved of Romario, and had been the one to teach him to ride and bargain with their more sentient horses. He wasn’t going to be in trouble. He knew he wasn’t. His father had his own Horse-Guardian, after all!)

“You are a menace, Dino.” His father’s voice is fond and exasperated. “You really can’t do what you just did though; you gave Petronella a real scare.” He makes a face, and his father sighs. “You hadn’t realised that we’re at war, had you?”

“We are?”

“Whether some of our allies would agree is another matter, but the pattern of incursions and disappearances is very revealing.” His father’s consigliere sighs. “I know, I know, Marco. You think I’m jumping at shadows. I know I’m not; I just can’t decide whether it’s the Coreleone or the Estraneo who are lurking in those shadows.”

“Boss -” Romario’s tone makes him tilt his head. His Guardian-cum-senior-bodyguard sounds almost wary? Like he doesn’t think his Papa should be sharing this with him.

“- no, Dino’s old enough to know what’s going on, Romario. Especially since he has a choice to make about whether he attends the Academy this year, or stays home with a tutor for another year or two.”

“Um.”

“You have two months or so to make a decision, Dino. There are definite advantages to finding at least one or two Guardians from outside the core Family, though. They can provide a useful alternate point of view.”

Chapter Text

The tunnel spits her out under a bed. The slats above her head creak, and she huffs and settles down to nap - she’s exhausted - and once she has, she’ll work on food. And water. And a litterbox. She’s not annoyed enough at anyone to pellet bomb the way Mama had been for the last week or so.

She’s still camped out under the low bed when dawn breaks. She wants to wriggle and dance and binky, but she needs to be good and make sure that her human will let her stay. And she remembered from Mama’s human’s stories and the pretty pictures that her new human didn’t cope well with surprises. Or with loud noises. Or people being mean to him.

(She’d bite Reborn. Hard.)

… her human is um, younger than she’d expected. Like lots younger. She’d been expecting to have to work around Reborn - her Mama’s human wrote lots of stories about having to do that - but her human looks maybe nine. Ten.

Too young for her to try and herd away from his mama, even if she didn’t like his mama much.

(Mama had gotten mean, but it was understandable mean. Mean that had been apologised for, mean that had earned them both scritches and reassurance and treats. Her human’s mama used mean words, and those hurt humans.)

Young enough that she had years before Reborn, and before Mama’s human’s stories were (mostly) set. Hopefully for her sister’s sake, Reborn had already left her human.

Once her human has left for school, she eels out from under the bed and snuffles her way around the room, looking for things that she could snack on and somewhere she could make into a discreet litter box. There were big windows … maybe there were plants there. She couldn’t eat them or she’d get caught, but they would do for a place to pee without making things smelly.

She finds a glass of water and knocks it over and drinks it greedily; she needed to find food, too. Mama had warned her about make sure she ate little and often and she hadn’t eaten since the burrow. There isn’t much, but there is a reed mat that she drags under the bed to chew while she tries to figure out how to get to grass. Or hay. Or something that she should be eating.

(Her new human’s room wasn’t on the ground floor. Which meant stairs and trying to be stealthy and Mama had shown them the basics - how to squirm through small spaces and do so quietly - and how to nose open doors and the theory on using door handles, but there hadn’t been stairs to practise on, and Mama’s human had been good at closing the door to the room with her desk and all the spicy hay. Mama had been a little too fond of biting the power cables to make her human take a break to let them have easy access.)

The door isn’t actually closed-closed, but she still waits until the noises from downstairs stop before she investigates the hallway. There are rugs, and she pads between them very carefully - it would be easier to jump, but that would leave the rugs wrinkled up and make her presence too obvious.

The stairs are just as terrifying as she’d assumed they would be, and her heart pounds at how much noise her claws make on the wood; she hopes she’s not leaving a trail of scratches that’ll led her new human’s mama to her hiding place.

She makes her way out into the garden and sets to work on a patch of grass with some bushes she can bolt into if someone other than her new human sees her. They should make for a safe-ish place to camp out too, if she had to, but under her Home’s bed would be much safer nap-platz.

“Hn. You are interesting, herbivore.” She freezes, not even her nose twitching, as she’s addressed directly by some one other than her new human, or her new human’s mama. She vaguely recognises him - he looks like he must be her human’s protector, just … little.

The boy crouches, putting away the sticks he’d had in his hands and holds out a closed fist to her, so she can sniff at it, and she does. He smells odd but not scary, and she nudges the hand with her nose; he responds by opening the fist and, then, when she nudges it again, pets her gently.

(He has fingers like Mama’s human; really good at finding the perfect scritch spots. She tooth purrs for him, and huffs when he stops.)

“So, Usagi-chan. Did the little tenjō-tan lure you here?” She huffs gently and nods, and he resumes scritching her cheeks. “Does he have what he needs to look after you?”

She shakes her head and the boy huffs; she’s fairly sure that doesn’t mean the same thing when a human does it as when she does.

“Hn. I will send the tenjō-tan home with supplies.” She binkies, grateful, and her human’s protector smiles in that human way that’s not meant to be scary, but would be very scary if she hadn’t been told what it meant. “Come here, little herbivore; I need to make sure that no one decides you’re food or a feral, hai?”

She gives him the stink eye, and her human’s protector waits, patiently; his fingers glow a soft shade of purple she recognises and she huffs and crawls forward a little, tucking her ears a little submissively. The Flames tickle, and sink into her ears, and she wonders what other people will see; her human’s Protector seems confident it’ll help.

There’s a crunch of gravel-on-gravel, and she tucks herself further under the bush she’s been using as snack and shelter; it’s only her human’s mama, but she has no desire to test whatever it was her human’s protector had done. Her human’s mama is carrying several bags, two of which smell really tasty, like the leaves that Mama got to eat that they hadn’t been allowed to taste because Mama had been being crabby.

She’s tempted. She’s really tempted, but she doesn’t want to get into trouble, and she definitely doesn’t want to get her human into trouble, either. The problem is that she can’t sneak back in again, now her human’s mama is home, and she hunkers down under the bush with a very soft whine. Maybe she could sneak in when it was dark?

“Kyōya-senpai is terrifying, Usagi-chan. He told me I had to take very good care of you, or he’d bite me to death.” She wrinkles her nose and crawls out from under the bush; her human clearly knows she’s there, and he squeaks as they come nose to nose with each other. “Hiiieee! You’re a big Usagi-chan!”

She licks his nose, making him squeak again, and tumble backwards. She huffs and waits, keeping her body language relaxed. Eventually, her human offers her his hand, and she nudges it gently, rubbing her jaw against his knuckles.

“I can’t keep calling you Usagi-chan, can I? Kyōya-senpai told me I had to look after you and that it would be good for me, and that means you need a name, right?” She huffs gently and licks his hand again. Her human chews his lip, and she rubs herself against his hand again, trying to coax him into actually scritching her. “What about, um, Chōko? It means butterfly child, and you’ve got a nose marking that looks like a butterfly -”