Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole

[donttasemebro]

WHO: Not-kid-anymore Bruno and suddenly-shorter-than-him-again Franziska
WHERE: Mmmmmmmoonybase
WHEN: Early Saturday morning following kidplot
WARNINGS: Why would you even
SUMMARY: Bruno wakes up as a grown-up? robot again with fuzzy-but-passable memories of what's gone on for the last week. Including the most important thing.
FORMAT: far more

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[littlebratziska]

Franziska was in a corner, curled up in a chair, and given the size of her and the size of the chair and the relative positions of it all, Bruno might not see her at first, not until he looked for her a bit. But she was there.

Her world had been thrown into chaos and disarray in about as much time as it took for a person to blink, and there was nothing she could do. She wasn't in control any more, and she needed to be in control. And so she was studying. Knowledge was power, the more you knew the more you could orchestrate things to your favor, the more knowledge you gained and the more things would go your way. Besides, you didn't feel quite so lonely when you were concentrating, and everything had changed so much that sometimes Franziska did feel very lonely.

She had been pushing herself hard, burning the midnight oil, but no matter how indomitable one's will might be, there was only so much that the body could take, particularly the body of a teen. And so, after having stayed up all night again, Franziska had slipped, and had fallen asleep on her textbook.

She didn't hear him come in.

[donttasemebro]

Bruno wasn't about to do a half-assed job of looking for her, so even if he didn't see her at first he still walked in a bit further until he caught sight of her curled in the chair. He couldn't help but smile a little at the unsurprising scene.

Very carefully, Bruno kneeled down and slowly slid the book out from under Franziska's head and set it on a nearby coffee table. Then he stepped to the side to pick up a lap blanket from thee armrest of the couch and returned to lay it very gently over her, before sitting down on the coffee table himself next to her book.

[littlebratziska]

Franziska was a fairly light sleeper, even when exhausted. It was a habit that she'd trained herself into; ideally she would not sleep at all, but that particular habit seemed frustratingly difficult to break, and there was nobody she could reasonably blame this on but herself, though occasionally she found someone else anyway. And she had not been asleep long by the time that Bruno found her, and so his motions - however careful they might be, disturbed her. It was around the time when he got the blanket when she rather groggily blinked and started pulling herself up.

[donttasemebro]

Bruno had only barely just set himself down on the table when Franziska stirred and began to sit up, and he froze stiff and blinked at her guiltily for a moment. But then he just settled himself and smiled a warm, apologetic little smile.

"Sorry," he said in an instinctual early-morning sort of hush, "I didn't mean to wake you up."

[littlebratziska]

She blinked, her vision fuzzy from sleep, and tilted her head haughtily as best as she could manage.

"Hmph, I..." Then her voice trailed off, and she blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes a little. "B-Bruno?"

[donttasemebro]

Her half-awake attempt at being haughty at him very near made Bruno chuckle under his breath, but he admirably held his tongue and just grinned a tad brighter when she caught up.

"Yep." He lifted one arm from leaning on the edge of the coffee table and cocked his hand to one side in a dorky little wave. "Is it a little bit late to say 'welcome home'?"

[littlebratziska]

Her thoughts were moving slower than they normally might have, as they did when one woke up, but she was thinking coherently enough to get to her feet, whip Bruno, glare a bit, and then hug him, her head against his shoulder.

[donttasemebro]

The whipping and the glaring were both pretty well expected, and he took them with his usual knowing tolerance. It was the hug that caught him by surprise.

For a moment he actually stiffened slightly with bewilderment while his hands hung awkwardly in midair. But soon enough his posture settled again and he gently moved to hug her back, although he was still giving a faintly concerned side-eye to the back of her head in the corner of his vision.

"Franziska?"

[littlebratziska]

His first reaction made her remarkably uncertain, and she hesitated for a minute, but it was odd anyway.

"Hmph," she said, her voice muffled a little by his shirt, "clearly I'm not allowed to go anywhere' it appears that nobody here can manage themselves without me."

[donttasemebro]

Almost as soon as she spoke, on the other hand, most of Bruno's uncertainty fell right away and he smiled.

"It definitely hasn't been the same around here, at least," he said. He hesitated for a moment himself before going on. "... Sorry things were a little, uh... complicated, when you got back."

[littlebratziska]

She pulled back to glare. "Only a fool would assume I had not observed as much, which I am not. You appear to have forgotten absolutely everything again."

[donttasemebro]

Bruno pulled back obligingly himself with a little self-deprecating smile. "Right, sorry."

But something in what she said seemed to derail him mid-thought and a hint of a look like apprehension crossed his face. 'Forgotten...'

That's right, Franziska would want to hear if he had remembered anything new from before his amnesia while she was gone. Bruno had never really given serious thought to how much he wanted to tell Franziska about his revelation if she ever came back, if anything. Ruka was one thing, she was someone from his own world and she herself had experienced more unnatural stuff even back there than Bruno ever did, but... Franziska was a normal person pulled from a normal life.

... Well, relatively speaking, anyway.