#roooll credits!!!

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet's not afraid anymore.

That should be a good thing. His body has given up on being afraid, deciding to let whatever happens happen, and there's a relief in that acceptance. And if the past couple of days are any indication, he doesn't need to be worried about being abandoned - at least, not as long as he stays in one spot and just lets people pass him off when they need a break. He hasn’t really experimented on that front.

But here's the thing: if there's no point in being afraid, and no reason to believe that doing nothing will make people leave him, then what's the point in ever doing anything at all?

He doesn't need to act like a kid anymore. He doesn't have to pretend. He doesn't have to battle against the thick fog in his brain in order to be somebody worth keeping around. He doesn't have to try to be interested in all the things he used to like, he doesn't need to make sure other people still like him, and the only reason he SHOULD get out of bed has been kidnapped and he couldn't save her so honestly does he really deserve to be having fun, even if he could?

The fact of the matter is that Trumpet doesn’t have to do anything to survive anymore. He’ll be fed. He’ll be taken care of. And if he doesn’t have to do anything to survive, then he doesn’t really see the point in doing anything at all.

Trumpet’s not afraid anymore, and now there’s nothing left.

He lies in Maxo’s bed in the dark and lets the infinite blankness in his head and chest envelop his entire body.

[itsbrindleybinch]

Roooll credits (ding!)

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet’s only ever been a guest in the eight short years of his life.

The moment he tumbled free from his shell, he was a guest of the Federation, and lived his first seven years of his life under the premise and hope that he would someday leave.

Four days he was a guest in the light with Maxo, not nearly enough to settle in. The next six days were spent leaving - very slowly, but leaving. And then not even death had encouraged him to put down roots in her domain; the hours and hours he spent there were basically just her convincing him to leave. He’d tried to resign himself in the following months to being a more permanent guest of the Federation, but that fantasy had ended up as shattered as his shoulder. And now he’s here.

Trumpet likes his new toys. He likes playing with his dolls. He likes cuddling his plushies. He likes sitting down and building his huge new puzzles on the floor. Sometimes Maxo or Dan or Pierre or any arrangement of the three will come and work on the puzzles with him, and that makes him happy.

He likes wearing his new clothes. The first week, he’d sometimes change multiple times in one day. He likes waking up and getting to decide what he looks like. He likes smelling like good soap and having pretty, soft hair.

He likes making machines with his Papa. Pierre doesn’t sleep at the house anymore, but he still comes over every day, and Trumpet’s gradually starting to get more confident as a helper. Pierre is endlessly patient and quick to praise, and it makes Trumpet feel like he can do anything.

He likes hanging out with Dan. It's always willing to play with him, or build with him, or read to him. Sometimes he brings shiny rocks or pretty flowers and sits next to Trumpet and tells them all about the mod that they’re from, and Trumpet likes to sit and listen.

He’s starting to like food again, more than just soup. Maxo cooks and it smells good and it tastes like somebody caring. She sings weird little songs in the kitchen while Trumpet sits sneakily just on the other side of the doorway and listens and giggles, pressing his hands right over his mouth. Sometimes she gets quiet right after he giggles, but then she starts singing again, so it’s probably just a coincidence.

Between Maxo’s overflowing affection, Pierre’s steady positivity, and Dan’s quiet company, Trumpet slowly starts to live his life under the assumption that somebody will be there if he needs something. And he still views it as transient, but not in the way where he’s expecting it to go away. It’s more that transience is all he’s ever known. Trumpet’s Not-Eight-Ification has left him living squarely in the present, and the present is pretty damn good.

He’s more worried about the fact that he, as a humble guest, doesn’t have anywhere to keep all of his cool new shit that isn’t in the way - and no way to pack it all up if he needs to leave.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Things sort of blur after that. When Trumpet gets home, Pierre is there to wrap both him and Maximus up in the same hug, distributing kisses and French terms of endearment that Trumpet understands.

(Too nice. Pierre is still too nice. But he takes Trumpet from Maximus and holds him close in a way that's deeply loving but utterly unworried, and when Trumpet tries to apologize, his Papa just shrugs and says "you were gone, and now you are back! There are no problems," and Trumpet understands their dynamic a little better and nuzzles gratefully into his neck.)

Then it's inside the house, and after a bit of a to-do that Trumpet is barely present for he's being given hot soup while three unprecedentedly talkative adults update each other quietly on what's been going on.

Trumpet becomes aware, with a stab of guilt, that there's stuff not being said because he's there. But he told them it didn't matter anymore what they do with him, and it doesn't, so if they don't wanna talk about shit because he's there, that's their problem. And hands keep alighting on his head and shoulders, tousling his hair and rubbing his back like the world is checking to make sure he's still a part of it, and that's pretty nice. He probably wouldn't be without their help, to be fair.

It's Maximus who picks Trumpet up again after dinner, which is great, because Trumpet's starting to get worried about when he's expected to walk and talk and think again. A brief conversation is had, and then they're going upstairs.

Dimly, Trumpet knows that eight years old is too big for human kids to be getting help with their baths. And it's something that he already does on his own, usually. But he doesn't have the sense that he CAN right now for some reason. He doesn't feel like he's eight. He barely feels like he exists, but if he did and was a person he thinks that person would be much younger than eight.

(Maximus puts an arm around Dan and starts giving it directions. Gloved hands at the pleasant edge between warm and hot start to massage shampoo through Trumpet's hair. His eyes drift shut and he purrs, a "don't stop" purr. The hands listen.)

He ceases to exist for a while, dissolving into touch and water, but there's never not arms and there's never not voices and it's never not good. Eventually he's plucked out of the bath and quickly bundled in a warm towel, and it's not Maximus or Pierre who picks him up, so it must be the third option. The blue one. The bonier, but warmer one.

Cushioned silence betrays the bedroom. An oversized shirt slips over his head, his wings folding to fit beneath. There's fear, for a moment, that he'll be put alone on the giant bed and abandoned in lieu of talking about grown-up stuff, but that doesn't happen either. His body is arranged to hold theirs down - easy enough to remove, but not without waking him up.

...Trumpet isn't better at the end of all this. He isn't back, and he doesn't think this will last. This is either a fluke or an insanely good dream, but he can't find it in himself to care about when it's gonna go away. He's given up too completely to even be anxious.

What Trumpet IS, though, is clean, and wearing clean clothes, and held and safe and warm and full of soup. And given his track record, that isn't too shabby.

His body sighs and melts completely, the last vestiges of fear or stubbornness giving up and slipping away.

Distantly, through ears that don't seem like his own, he can hear whispered voices treating it like some kind of touchdown.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet tries to lose track of time, but in the back of his mind the knowledge that three days is how long it takes to officially lose a life to neglect looms over him. He finds himself shaking at the end of the seventy-second hour, feeling minutes tick in his head, waiting to be zapped back into white walls…

And the hour passes. And then another thirty minutes. Entirely uneventful, still just laying there.

It’s official. The Federation has decided Trumpet doesn’t need parents. Nobody’s obligated to him anymore, even on paper.

Because parents are there to keep bad things from happening, and all the bad things have already happened to him

It should be a relief.

His body starts crying again instead.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

The door and windows are shut tight and Trumpet is huddled beneath the bed, hidden from prying eyes and flapping wings. He's good to spend the rest of his life here away from everyone.

Only something's bothering him. Trumpet wonders if Tio Bad knows that Asha is gone.

...Trumpet wonders if anybody knows that HE'S gone.

Not in a cynical way; it's just that if Tio Bad knows that HE'S gone, and Trumpet tells them that he knows that ASHA is gone, then Tio Bad will be able to figure out where Trumpet is.

Trumpet doesn't want anyone to know where he is.

So the question is what Trumpet wants more: to tell Tio Bad something that they might already know on the off chance that they DON'T know, or for nobody to know where he is.

The long moment he takes him to decide makes him feel like a selfish coward. Asha is his sister and her blood is on the floor. He opens his comm.

...

He quickly feels like even more of a selfish coward as his thumbs outright refuse to hit the keys.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet warps to Asha’s house, still in the same daze he was in when he left. His body aches with the phantom warmth and yield of cuddling his sister, needing to make it real more than anything.

The door is open. He walks into the house, croaking “Asha-”

Blood. Blood and claw marks on the floor.

Trumpet is far too smart of a child for him to not immediately understand all of the ramifications of what’s happened, and what could have happened, and what he doesn’t know and what the worst could be and what the best could be and ultimately the only things that are true.

It’s just a matter of his emotions catching up.

He falls to his knees, first. Mentally, the information is still ticking and ticking. Two plus two equals four no matter which way he adds it up. And then strange, shuddering breaths start to leak out through his nose. And then his mouth opens and the breaths start to come with noises and it’s- it’s probably crying, yeah?

Only it’s not. Trumpet is LAUGHING.

Everything all bubbles up in his lungs like carbonation, like steam shoved from an overworked engine. It’s not funny. It’s so not funny that it’s the funniest thing in the world. Of course this would happen. Of course this would happen to him. Why not? He has nothing left for this, nothing at all, nothing, nothing. He was already so far down. He didn’t know there was further to fall. So he laughs.

And then his laughs get higher and longer until he’s just shrieking, over and over, and then the tears come, so he also sobbing and then he doesn’t know if he’s laughing or screaming or sobbing as he kneels on the ground. Whatever it is, his lungs heave it out of his mouth like he’s throwing up, and whatever’s inside of him gets so big and overwhelming that he reaches up with both hands towards his elbows and digs in and scrapes long, deep, triplet gouges into his forearms and lets the rake and the sting and the throb alleviate the pressure in his chest. Only then his own blood is on the floor and there’s so much of it and there’s a profound feeling of loss and despite Asha’s love of color the floor suddenly looks Federation-white and he’s lost his sister and his shoulder hurts and then there’s terror and horror so deep inside of him that it pounds upwards like a piston into his stomach and his vision blurs…

…

…

…

Eventually he starts to exist again.

There’s new blood spatters on the floor, along with vomit. It trails to the corner of the room he finds himself huddled in, staring ahead with dead eyes. Blood still drips from his arms, lazily, like syrup.

Trumpet sniffles and sighs. With shaking hands, he pulls a health potion from his bag. He downs it and lets the cloying taste of melon and gold and wart slide down his throat. The wounds close up. The roiling blankness inside of him doesn’t go away.

Puppet-like, empty like a doll, he gets up. There’s some cleaning supplies in the corner. He cleans up his own blood and sick, moving achingly slow, careful to avoid the dark brown stains of what he knows to be Asha’s. Hers. Her.

Her scent is still everywhere. Trumpet grabs a blanket out from under the bed and smells it. Then, like he’s drinking water, he hugs it right and breathes it in deeply and feels tears start to drip down his cheeks again.

He wraps himself up tight in Asha’s blanket by one of her bloodstains and lets his mind drift away again, eyes open and blank. His finger traces the pattern of the spatter on the floor; runs lazily through the gouges she’s left.

Nothing Trumpet’s body is doing makes sense to him anymore. All he feels is a vague helplessness as it starts to cry again.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet finds the note from Maximus and doesn't know how to feel.

Ice lines his stomach and twinges like he has to vomit, but that's not a feeling he recognizes.

His face starts to get numb and to prickle a little bit, but that's not a feeling he recognizes.

His fingers feel thick and clunky and the cold needles creep down his wings, but that's not a feeling he recognizes either.

He's feeling something, but none of the words that he could use to describe it fit the situation, and so he doesn't know what he's feeling, or if it's different from how he should be feeling, or anything like that.

All he knows is what he wants to do.

Moving slowly through the house, he looks for things that are his. The backpack from Pomme and its contents. The cat plushie.

And that's...it, he realizes. The bed and the crayons and paper are Maximus's. The extendo arm is from Pierre, and so is the drawing desk that makes his neck and shoulders and back hurt less later. They're not his, so he can't take them, but he also can't really see anybody else putting them to use, so he puts them all with each other, arranging them into a neat little corner.

He should leave a note, too. He doesn't want to. He wants to be gone.

He hopes the neatness of the pile says "thank you" as he steps out of the house and warps away.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

After breaking the news about Maximus, Tío Bad asks if Trumpet is okay. Trumpet insists that he is. They ask if he wants to talk about it more. He says that he doesn’t. They say that they’re always available before warping away.

Trumpet doesn’t know what to feel.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet wrinkles his nose, trying to find the clearest way to tell Bad about Cucurucho. A way to tell the truth that he’ll actually believe. He’s still skeptical.

“Cucurucho,” he says slowly, chewing on his words as they leave his mouth, “is a robot, and one of its jobs is to take care of kids. It’s something they have to do, even if they don’t like it.”

If Trumpet had been watching, he’d immediately see Bad’s eyes widen in shock and recalculation. He’s not, though - he’s staunchly avoiding his gaze, fiddling with his claws.

“I liked that, when I came into the Federation,” he continues. “Machines do their jobs. People don’t. And- all mis hermanos were way more okay than I was. I was pretending to be the old me for them, and I hated it. So I started hanging out in Cucurucho’s office.”

He pauses, not sure where to go from there. That’s the first and best thing he’s ever understood about Cucurucho- it does what it’s supposed to do.

Bad saves him. “What did you do in there?”

“Oh- I just sat on the floor,” says Trumpet with a shrug. “I drew a lot. Like, a lot. Sometimes I’d just talk. I don’t know if they listened, but they didn’t tell me to stop. They didn’t talk over me, and they never ever yelled.”

He stops, stuck again.

“Did it ever try to make you do anything?” asks Bad.

Trumpet squints. “A couple of times,” he says. “But I was trying to make it do things too. That was how I started to learn what was really going on.”

Another pause, the end of an idea. Not sure how to elaborate.

“What- do you mean?” asks Bad. “What was really going on?”

Trumpet blinks, remembering. Then he turns to Bad and grins, teeth wide and blade-like. Like he’s briefly become the version of himself that discovered this, just by remembering it.

“They were scared,” he whispers, like he’s telling a secret. “They were scared and I wasn’t.”

He breaks eye contact again and frowns. “I learned that- that there’s people in charge of them, that could hurt them. I learned that they didn’t completely know how to do their job. I had to tell them that keeping us up late hurt us, when they kept making Flippa do chores late. And then, when they learned, they stopped doing that. So I learned that they would listen to me about stuff like that.”

He looks down and kicks his legs. “We were figuring each other out,” he says. “They didn’t know what I wanted, either.”

He stops again. That’s the end of that thought.

“So, what happened next?” asks Bad.

Trumpet looks up blankly. “Next?”

“When we were leaving the Federation- was it always that…physically affectionate with you?”

Trumpet snorts. “Nuh-uh. No, no no no. That- yeah. Something happened, and it got crazy emotional.”

He doesn’t elaborate, falling back into his default pose and blank expression.

“What happened?”

As if someone’s pushing in a quarter to make him come to life, Trumpet leans back, rolls his eyes, and heaves an exaggerated, exasperated sigh. “God…okay, so there’s this guy who works at the Federation, right? He does the announcements, he wears a duck costume. His name is Señor Jeremy, and he and Cucurucho are like, crazy homosexual for each other. Toxic style.”

Bad snorts and burst out laughing.

Trumpet blinks, startled, and looks over at them. Encouraged, he keeps going.

“So one day Jeremy kisses Cucurucho, yeah? And it must have been, like, super potent or something because Cucurucho started having huge feelings. It- it liked me before, but it was…”

Trumpet wraps his arms around himself.

“It was different,” he said softly. “They started to hug me without me even asking.”

Bad’s giggles trickle to a halt. He waits.

This time, Trumpet’s next idea comes out on its own. He furrows his brows, curling his claws into his arms. “It was- honestly kind of annoying,” he admits. “They liked Jeremy more than they ever liked me. It was all Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. He did something to hurt their feelings, and they left me, like, right away.”

Bad blinks. “Left you?”

Trumpet huffs. “They got crazy emotional and shut down for a week, like literally.” He holds his limbs stiff and slumps his head in an approximation of a limply hanging marionette. “Shut down.”

He sits back again and crosses his arms. “It wasn’t- it. I knew it wasn’t a machine for a while. It’s a person.” He looks down. “And people don’t do their jobs. Especially not when they’re in love, or hurt, or hurt because they’re in love.”

That’s the end of that idea. He sits still again.

“What happened when it came back?” asks Bad.

Trumpet shrugs. “It still cried a lot. I did my best to- to help them. I knew if it got too sad it would leave again.” He thumbs the bullet wound on his shoulder, beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. "But it was nice," he adds. "We helped each other- when I got super scared or had bad dreams it would come and help. It would visit me. It would purr me to sleep."

He falls still again.

"And- then we got out. So. That's about everything," says Trumpet.

Bad nods slowly, sorting and filing all of the new information.

"I'm sorry that you had to leave them," he eventually says.

Trumpet pulls his legs to his chest. "Yeah," he mumbles. "Me too."

[yaaay-propellerhat]

He thought it was his Rucho.

Trumpet had thought he was done with robots once he left the Federation, for better or for worse. But now he’s outside, practicing being outside, and through the trees by the nearest waystone he sees a glimpse of white and hears a whir of servos.

In his brain, his first instinct is to charge towards it and shout “YOU’RE ALIVE!” and wrap his arms around it. But his body, in spite of itself, freezes, and the ruined meat inside his shoulder gives an angry twitch.

And those instants of involuntary pause are what let him realize that something is very, very wrong.

Its movements are stiff. Its ears don’t bob or flick, its tail doesn’t wiggle. Its back is straight up-and-down, and its arms sway unnatural and puppet-like at its sides, like twin pendulums.

It turns its head just a little bit. Trumpet’s body takes over again, and he drops to the ground, three out of four sets of claws digging into the dirt. His bad arm flies to his chest and he holds his breath.

The robot looks cursorily left, and then right, and then keeps walking.

Trumpet breathes out through his mouth as slowly as he can. Grateful for the filth coating his body, he starts to crawl, lizard-like, through the dirt after it.

With the pounding of his heart and the sweat prickling over his skin, his body starts to change. Legs shift to be better suited to crawling, claws grow longer to dig better into the dirt, and his tail thickens and shifts on his body to better balance himself. It’s slight and entirely subconscious, his body falling into what it needs to be with the shifting of his center of gravity.

His brain is sharp monochrome as he starts to piece the facts together. The eyes, when he glimpses them, aren’t red, and the body looks new - fur white as snow, rather than the slightly yellowy color that Trumpet’s Cucurucho, GONE Cucurucho, had turned over time…

Oh. The new one. The shiny one that the residents blew up.

But Cucurucho- its body was exchangeable. So this one’s is too. So it makes sense that it-

Cucurucho’s body is exchangeable and its brain is in the Federation’s computers.

Trumpet’s breath hitches, and his heart stutters again, and this time it’s not with fear. It’s something scarier than fear. He stops following; holds still and waits while the shell of a bot that looks far too much like his Rucho vanishes from sight.

New robot. Same body. And the important part of Cucurucho still exists somewhere. It just needs a vessel.

Trumpet can still keep his promise.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Cucurucho had had a heartbeat, too.

Sometimes. If it wanted. It would turn it on for Trumpet, even in the early days.

The sound effect. The gentle thump, sent through its chest by some marvel of mechanics. The simulated swell and hush of gentle breathing. Its body had even been heated, beneath the fur.

Maxo’s are less regular. His heartbeat speeds up and slows down randomly, and sometimes his breathing swells and stutters. And he snores, sometimes.

But he’s also softer. And his warmth is real.

And Cucurucho has taught him how to feel safe in someone’s arms.

The nightmares come and go. All the horrors he’d been expecting pass through his mind as predicted. But here, bundled up against someone else’s bulk, they don’t…reach him like they normally do. They don’t sink in. He doesn’t scratch. He doesn’t scream. A couple of twitches, now and again, chased away by the hand in his hair.

Trumpet sleeps like a baby.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Trumpet wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling like his chest is on fire.

After blinking blearily in bed and clawing at his own ribs for a moment, he rolls out from under the covers and onto the floor and stands there, swaying a little bit in pain.

Maximus is snoring. Dan is breathing. He doesn’t know how they’d react to waking them up, and he doesn’t want to know. Even if they were to help him, it would just feel wrong, and scary, and weird.

Instead, he looks up what’s happening on his tablet. It’s called heartburn, apparently.

He patters, barefoot, to the bathroom and finds some anti-acid. He pops it open, takes some, then sits on top of the toilet and rocks back and forth while it subsides.

…And that’s that. Problem solved. He didn’t need help from anyone, and nobody will ever know.

It feels GOOD. He feels safe. He feels…powerful. And when he goes to bed again, he sleeps more soundly than before.

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Day 5

Trump is furious. He's spent the entire day drafting up ideas on paper, then crumpling them up and throwing them away.

"People having fucking KEYS," he spits. Another paper sails into the basket. "How am I supposed to keep people out if they have KEYS? I'm literally, like, four feet tall. And he talked about my siblings so NOW I have no idea if he's going to be going after them por venganza, as payback..."

He looks at his bruise again. It's still mostly red, but it's starting to purple.

"And YOU'RE in here and I can't leave YOU alone and UGH..." he curls up and covers his eyes.

"See, the thing is, I'd ask Jeremy to watch you," he says. "But I promised. And I know he's part of the problem. I can't do that to you. But I can't ask him to watch my siblings, either. I just don't...I can't. It-"

He sighs.

"It's for me," he says. "The nightmares are better when I wake up in a pile with them. And if I have any dreams about them getting hurt, it'll help if they're right there. I want to sleep with my siblings tonight. So. I gotta figure this out."

He chews on the eraser of his pencil. After a moment, he arches his eyebrows.

"That might work."

-------------

Trump finds a large battery and some wires among Cucurucho's tools and starts fixing up a makeshift circuit.

"I can't get shocked, see?" Trump explains as he wraps bare wires around the terminals. "It just...goes into me. Feels kinda good actually. But humans can. Soooo..."

He hooks up the other ends of the wires to the doorknob.

"TA-DA! Now I'm the only one who can even TOUCH your door!"

He checks the mechanism a few times. Satisfied with his work, he crosses back to the desk and sits on the edge, facing Cucurucho.

"So..." he says. "I hung out with Jeremy earlier today. I don't know if you can hear me, but I think...I think he's actually nice. Just really really sad. He didn't mean to hurt you. It..."

He crosses his arms. "The thing about feelings and people is...sometimes people can hurt you without even meaning to. Like...my siblings. Sometimes I would start to talk about the shapes in flowers and they would tell me to shut up, or make fun of me. And they- they love me, I know they do. But it doesn't feel like it when they say stuff like that. It just hurts really really bad, and I don't know what to do with that. I get so mad sometimes. And so lonely, even when they're all around me. So I guess, just..."

He sighs.

"I read the file on what you asked them to do to you and- I guess- I just want you to know that sometimes I wish I couldn't feel either. It doesn't seem like either of us has a choice, though. But I don't actually want you to know that. Which is why I'm telling you while you're asleep."

Trump looks into Cucurucho's face, as if waiting for a response. The fact that none is coming is almost a relief this time.

"I'm still really mad at you," he says. "I don't want to be. That's a feeling I wish I didn't have. But I'm mad. You left me alone because- because you were sad and you couldn't handle it. And now I have humans grabbing me with their dirty hands and I have to choose between protecting you and cuddling my siblings and it's not fair."

He sighs, reaching out and cupping the Osito's cheek.

"But...I don't think it's your fault, either. It was your first time being that sad and...it's okay. In my chest I'm really really mad, but in my head I also know it's okay. That probably doesn't make sense. Whatever, though. You can't hear."

He stands up on the desk. "Anyway. I'm going to go to my siblings now. You'll be safe in here now. I'll see you tomorrow."

He turns the light off before leaving. Not that it matters, but it just feels right.

At the door, he turns around and hesitates.

He runs back, taking the blanket off of his bed and tucking it in around Cucurucho's shoulders. "I know. I know you don't need it. You just- looked cold," he says.

He kisses the Osito on the cheek before hurrying to the door, as if he's running from the scene of a crime.

"Goodnight."

[yaaay-propellerhat]

Day 4

Trump wakes up on Cucurucho's lap. Again. It's just easier for him to fall asleep there. Comfortable? No. But his heartbeat and thoughts can actually slow down this way, making it way easier for him to feel how tired he actually is.

WHY he's awake is more of a concern, however.

Someone's knocking on the door.

Trump clambers up on Cucurucho's desk and crouches in front of him, tail lashing back and forth. He put a sign on the door. It keeps the dumber robot bears away just fine. And he’s locked the door. He just has to wait for this person to leave.

The door begins to open.

THEY HAVE A KEY.

Snarling, Trump leaps off the desk and sprints to the door. He shoves himself into the crack between the door and the wall, putting himself between the intruder and Cucurucho.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER? THE SIGN FUCKING SAYS 'DO NOT DISTURB,' CAN'T YOU READ?"

A chill runs up his spine as he looks up at the intruder. It's some human. They're wearing a white jumpsuit and smell like bitter smoke. There's a folder in their hand.

"What the hell?" they grunt, taking a step back.

Trump resists the urge to do the same. He stands his ground and narrows his eyes at the human, baring his teeth.

"What are YOU doing here?" he snaps. "We're in a meeting."

The human huffs. "Out of the way, huevo. I've got orders," they say, going to grab the doorknob again.

Trump snarls and snaps at his hand. "SO DO I," he spits. "NOBODY IN. THOSE ARE MY ORDERS."

The human flinches away, pulling their hand up out of reach of Trump's teeth. "Jesus- fuck!" they spit. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Trump just growls. His eyes give their familiar ache, his vision sharpening, and he knows that he looks even less human now.

The human huffs. "Look, little egg," they say. They kneel down to get eye-level with Trump. They tap their folder with the back of their hand and talk very slowly, like Trump won't be able to understand them if he doesn't. "A few days ago, we ran some repairs on the robot. It needs to keep a hard copy of what we did to it on file, but none of our WORKERS have been able to get IN HERE," they say, looking from the sign to Trump suspiciously.

Trump's tail goes between his legs.

"So now I gotta haul my ass all the way over here because some dumbass dragon egg thinks he's a big boy now," says the worker with a smile that doesn't reach their eyes. "So do us both a favor and get out of the way before I do something we both REGRET."

"You can't touch me," Trump spits. His eyes narrow. "You're not allowed." There's a slight quiver in his voice. He hates it.

"Wanna bet?" asks the human. "I've had a loooong day." They stand up to their full height and snap their fingers, making Trump flinch. "Outta the way."

"No," says Trump, standing his ground.

"Don't be stupid, huevo," the worker spits. "We made your mom disappear, we can do it to you too. And your little clutch. We've done it before. Just step out of the way and-"

"No!" Trump snarls. "No! I promised! I pinky-swore! I'm not moving!"

"C'mere," the worker growls. They grab Trump roughly by the wrist and yank, trying to pull him out through the door.

"NO!" Trump screeches. He braces his feet inside the office, clinging to the inside of the doorframe. "DON'T TOUCH ME! LET ME GO!"

"Come ON, EGG, don't be an idiot." the worker twists Trump's wrist, hard.

Trump screams in pain and terror. "LET ME GO! YOU'RE HURTING ME!" He lets go with his other hand to scratch the worker's forearm.

The worker cusses loudly and takes the opportunity to pull Trump out of the office, holding him off the ground with one hand.

"STOP! STOP IT! GO AWAY!" Trump screeches, kicking blindly. "HELP!" he screams into the vast, echoing hallways. "HELP ME!"

The worker grabs Trump's face with their other hand, squeezing his cheeks and smothering his nose and mouth. "Shut the fuck up," he growls low.

Trump’s eyes are wide. He gives a high warble, a draconic call for his mom. He hates himself for it.

A door opens down the hallway. Jeremy steps out, rubbing his eyes blearily. His gaze finds the tableau in front of Cucurucho's office.

Trump and the worker turn to him, frozen in place.

Jeremy looks at the worker. He looks at Trump. He looks at the worker, then at Trump again. His tired eyes narrow, mouth setting into a firm line.

"What's going on here?" he asks, his voice cold and clipped.

Trump takes his chance. He opens his mouth and bites hard into the worker’s hand.

"ARGH-!" the worker yells in pain. They drop him. "YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

Trump doesn't waste any time. He ducks immediately back into the office and slams the door, locking it. Fueled by adrenaline, he pulls the cabinet crashing down in front of it, blocking the entrance.

On the other side, the worker starts banging on the door. "OPEN UP! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, YOU UGLY, BRAIN-DEAD LITTLE REPTILE!"

"What do you think you're doing?" Jeremy's voice asks. It's trembling slightly, sounding like the sky before a storm.

"THIS FUCKING EGG-" the worker starts ranting.

Trump ignores them. He runs back to Cucurucho and climbs back up into his lap, hugging him tight. He's shaking. His wrist hurts where the worker grabbed him. "It's okay," he whispers to Cucurucho, his voice quavering. "It's okay, it's okay, don't be scared. I'm here. I've got you, I'll protect you, I promise, you're safe in here…"

He keeps whispering the reassurances that he wants to hear to a bear who can't listen, trembling as he strokes the fur on the back of its head.

Eventually, someone knocks on the door again. This time it's softer. Trump still flinches.

"Trump?" a voice asks. It's soft, regretful.

Trump looks over his shoulder. "Señor Jeremy?" he calls back, voice unsteady.

"I'm so sorry about that. Are you okay?"

Trump sniffles. "...Y-yeah…I think so."

Jeremy sighs in relief. "Okay, good. E-everything's okay now, okay? I took- I took care of it. They won't bother you again."

Trump sighs in relief. "Good."

"I got the file from them, I'm putting it under the door, okay? Can you give it to Cucurucho for me?"

Trump nods, then remembers Jeremy can't see him. "Y-yeah, I can do that."

"Great. You've got real guts, kid. Everything's…everything's gonna be okay."

Trump nods again. "O-okay."

He hears the footsteps start to recede and calls out before he regrets it. "Señor Jeremy?"

The footsteps stop. "Yeah?"

"Thank you." Trump hugs Cucurucho tighter. "Th-thank you so much. I don't know what would've…"

"Hey, don't think about that," Jeremy's voice says from the other side of the door. "You can't think like that, it'll drive you crazy. You're okay, and that's what matters. Focus on that."

Trump closes his eyes and sighs out slowly. "Okay."

"...You're welcome, by the way" says Jeremy. "Just- be careful with yourself, alright?"

"Mm-hm."

Jeremy seems to hesitate outside the door. "Good night," he says.

"Good night," Trump calls back.

He leans his head back into Cucurucho as he hears Jeremy's footsteps recede. "...Okay," he says quietly to the Osito, with a weak smile. "I admit it. As humans go, you could've done a lot worse."

Cucurucho doesn't respond.

"Fuck," Trump whispers. "That was really scary."

He clings to Cucurucho like a baby monkey, squeezing his eyes shut and doing his deep breaths.

"When- when we get out of here," he says quietly, like he's telling a secret, "I'm getting you out with us too."

[yaaay-propellerhat]

*a crow hops over, carrying trumpets cat plushie*

Trumpet finds it at the entrance of Asha’s hut.

“Oh my god! You brought Hand Grenade!”

He picks up the plush and hugs it tight, pushing his face into it and nuzzling.

“NOW it’s a party.”