our true nature Who: Bunny and Eleanor Moriarty (NPC) When: Late evening Where: The party
After the announcement and happy funtime gift-giving bonanza (har fucking har), after dinner was finally over, Bunny managed to politely excuse herself. She wasn't sure where she was going, she just knew she had to get away for a few minutes. She ended up slipping outside, where she headed as far away from the drive and valets as she could get. Once she felt hidden properly in the shadows of a large oak tree, she tried to let go.
It wasn't happening. Dammit.
Bunny had trouble with crying. She didn't let her emotions out that way very often. It came out at the damnedest time. She'd cried on the camping trip, when she felt both humiliated and like the worst kind of asshole on the planet. Why couldn't she cry now? She was sure she would feel better.
And then all at once she was aware that she wasn't alone. The woman must have moved like a shadow on top of the grass. Bunny never heard a thing. Suddenly she was just there, smelling strongly of birds and treetops and wind, with a sympathetic smile on her face. Bram Moriarty's wife, Eleanor, was offering her a tissue.
Bunny stared at her, blankly. Her nose twitched. "I'm not crying."
"Of course not," Eleanor replied, shrugging faintly and tucking it away in her black clutch. "I thought you might for a moment, back in the house. You sounded absolutely terrified, dear." She would be referring to Bunny's heartbeat, of course. Bunny knew the Moriarty women were weres, and had to be birds. She'd never met a were bird of any form. It was kind of maddening to her senses. Birds were prey (though the elder sister smelled like something she wanted to stay away from). Though Bunny never fed in her animal form, or killed really, she did hunt – actually, chase would be the better word. She loved it.
Bunny didn't know what to say, though she knew she was supposed to say something. She found she could not. Her hands just kept ticcing at her sides. Eleanor didn't seem bothered by it. She had the motherly smile of someone who had raised two teenage girls at the same time, and had seen any freakout a girl had to offer.
"My husband means well," she spoke, her voice soft with just a hint of soothing. "I did try to tell him that his gift would unnerve some of you. You poor things, you've been through enough. The last thing you need is to be put on the spot like that. He would have done a lot more, if he didn't have a woman's heart to talk some sense into him."
Bunny wondered what more Bram Moriarty could have possibly done. Provided them all with Harvard acceptance letters and given them a free ride on his private jet? It didn't matter. What he gave was not the problem. It could have been a blue ribbon. A sticker of a gold star. Taking anything felt wrong. "Your husband is a very kind man. That was very generous of him," she forced out, mainly echoing the sorts of sentiments her parents had expressed at the table.
"And you have trouble accepting it," Eleanor finished, knowingly. "I knew some of you would. Honestly, I always thought it would be hardest for you, Mackenzie. Or do you prefer Bunny?"
The hairs on the back of Bunny's neck began to stand on edge, though she couldn't pinpoint why. Really, everything the woman had said made a cold chill run through her gut. "...B-Bunny...?" she managed. "How did you... why...?" Why did I stand out? Her hands would not stop ticcing, and she would have very much liked for just five minutes of them staying still. She thought about holding them to her chest, but it simply would have made the movements stand out more.
"Why, because of what you did that day," Eleanor said, as if this were obvious. "What you had to do."
Bunny wanted to throw up. She knew? How did strangers know? All the damn news articles had said one of the attackers had been killed, and in a fit of paranoia she's scoured the Internet, reading as many as possible, making sure she was never singled out. My parents told her, she forced herself to reason. They must have.
"Oh, dear heart..." Eleanor murmured, sounding like her heart truly bled for the little werecat. "Your parents tell me you've had a hard time of it."
Bunny couldn't say anything. She felt very angry with her parents, but more than that, she felt hurt. Did they have to tell people? Couldn't she just deal with it her own way and be left alone? She had thought her mother understood. Her dad had been the one pushing talking about it, and going to a stupid shrink.
"They seem very divided in how to handle it," Eleanor went on, her words mirroring Bunny's thoughts. "Of course your mother understands. But your poor father... purely human, if I'm not mistaken?"
Bunny's shoulder ticced, and she managed to nod, feeling rather numb to it.
Eleanor nodded back, knowingly. "I think your mother knew how well I could relate. Myself and my daughters being what we are, and my husband being a witch. Even witches are human. I love him dearly, but there are some things he will never understand. Some things your father, your friends will never understand."
"Like what?" Bunny managed to force out. Her throat felt very dry.
Eleanor tilted her head to the side, looking a bit surprised that Bunny had to ask. "You're a cat, am I correct?" Bunny managed another nod to confirm it. "Every were has two separate natures, and sadly, one of them is usually beaten down beneath the surface, allowed only to come out in your other form. That's the damage of being raised to live in secrets in shadows. We fight what we are, because it's not socially acceptable. But society isn't just humans anymore. All the rules have changed. Who is to say what's acceptable now? Humans might not like it, but anyone like you would understand. A were, and a born predator."
Oh, Jesus. Even knowing that cats were predatory animals, and even thinking not five minutes ago about how the birds smelled like prey, hearing it in the context of this conversation was absolutely horrifying. "Humans aren't prey," she managed to force out.
"Of course not. You're a cat, not a monster," Eleanor agreed. "But when a predator is threatened, they will always react the same way. You reacted how any cat would have in that situation. You fought. And from what I hear, you lasted longer than the wolves," she said, with the slightest chuckle. "And you would have kept fighting, if you could. I've often thought about what that must have been like for you, someone so young, who has surely never had to physically defend themselves like that. Never had to fight for your life. I can imagine... that thought wasn't part of the process. I picture you as relying solely on your instincts – instincts you didn't even know you had."
Part of Bunny, the part that was freaking the hell out over this conversation, wanted to run, and just put distance between herself and this woman who knew too fucking much. But that was only the losing half of her brain. Despite how creepy this was, and how much it made her stomach turn, it was still the first conversation she'd had about it from someone who seemed to understand.
Eleanor took her silence as confirmation. "I think I know why your parents are troubled," she said. "Your poor, human father could never understand, and your mother has never had to fight for her life like you had. They couldn't understand... the way you don't regret it. The way it doesn't keep you awake at night. The way you don't wake up screaming, or ask questions about who the man was before you ended him." The world felt silent. Bunny wasn't sure if she was even ticcing anymore. Eleanor's expression had gradually shifted over the course of the conversation, in a way Bunny hadn't noticed until now. Her features weren't soft and sympathetic anymore, but harder, surer, with a bit of a spark in her eyes. "Well?" she finally asked, tone still soft as ever.
Bunny looked away. When that wasn't enough, she turned away. Her hands were ticcing, and this time she crossed her arms over her chest, as she stared out into the yard, seeing absolutely nothing. She felt Eleanor shift behind her, but knew she was still there. "Bunny?" she asked, now voice whisper-soft.
Eleanor nodded behind her, and put her hands on Bunny's shoulders. "Mackenzie Beth Digby. Bunny. There is nothing wrong with what you did, and how you feel about it. I know you, I know what you're going through. I have walked in your shoes. You feel bad because you don't feel bad for what you did. Because you know you'd do it again, and only try to raise the body count. You'd make them all sorry if you could, you'd stop them from hurting your friends, you'd make sure none of them were ever made a victim of, because you'd make the opposition the true victims. You'd make them regret their choices that lead them to that point, and walk away from it a hero. A hero, Bunny. That's what you are. That corpse meant another one of your friends escaped a horror you can't and don't want to imagine. Society may not understand, and your parents might not understand as they are part of it. But listen to me, from someone who has been down that road – fuck society. It is a human society, and if they had it their way, they'd never properly understand. They don't want to. And they don't want to because it scares them. That any teenage girl could be hiding the true nature of a predator, and is really capable of anything and everything. They would feel guilty because they only have one nature, the proper, modern socially-acceptable nature they've been molded into. And people like us will never fit into any mold. We are evolved. And you should never, ever, feel shame for that."
Eleanor's words brought it all back, exactly how she'd felt that day. She'd been in such a frenzy, but she knew what her intentions had been. Make them stop, by any means necessary. Making one stop had meant ripping her throat out with her teeth, and she hadn't hesitated in the slightest. She would have kept going, if she'd been able to. She would have. Maybe she could have stopped it. Maybe she could have saved them all.
No, no, no, no. This is fucked up. I am evolved, but she's got it backwards. We're evolved because we're able to think like humans. Not the other way around.
"Embrace what you are, Bunny. Your true nature," Eleanor whispered. "Even the dark and scary parts. Once you aren't split in two anymore, you'll find it's not such a bad thing after all. If you allowed yourself, you might find you quite enjoy it."
Bunny didn't say anything. She did not feel capable of saying anything, and she feared for whatever it would be had she the ability to speak. She was deeply troubled, and all this talk of embracing animal natures was making it mighty tempting to put the bird in her place and run the hell away from this place. This is insane. I've never been an angry person. She'd never been a violent person, and when angered, all it took was a hiss and some snark and she was over it. But she was angry now, and worst of all – she wasn't sure what she was angry at. It wasn't all directed at Eleanor. Maybe she was angry at the world.
Eleanor finally left her, as quietly as she had come in the first place. Bunny felt no particular way about being alone again. At the end of the day, Eleanor had been the first person to understand what she'd been going through.