[05] Fortunate

By Fahiru

Sunny Baudelaire was learning to make friends with the morning.

It wasn't that she didn't like morning; being a punctual and stubbornly practical sort of child, it suited her just fine. But lately, she had been having a falling out with the sun. It seemed they no longer agreed on what was an appropriate time to show up in someone's room, and Sunny was losing the argument.

Yes, no matter how early she got herself to bed, the dear old sun couldn't help but arrive before she was ready. It was an uphill battle, but at least it wasn't exactly with an enemy.

Of course, she could always face the fact the sun was only doing its job, and the real reason why she was tired happened to be much smaller and a good deal younger.

Beatrice Baudelaire; baby extraordinaire, charming and toothy and much more energetic than Sunny herself.

Sunny, as it happened, had been an equally charming baby, but had also had a great deal of sense and natural sobriety that most children apparently lacked.

Violet and Klaus, the only baby they had raised being Sunny herself, were equally puzzled with their ward. It wasn't that they didn't think a baby would be difficult to take care of, but rather that they had not had this sort of trouble in a long time.

In their minds, escaping a troubled world full of hate, death, poor taste, and tone deaf singers, only to find themselves faced with the trial of raising a sweet but taxing baby...It was comparable to fighting a war and then going home to do homework.

Or finding that your previously overgrown garden has become neat and bare, with only one seed to plant.

And sometimes they almost found it funny, that after all they had gone through together they were now caught completely off guard as to how to deal with a baby. It was like they had gone through all the trouble of outsmarting death only to be stumped by life itself.

But, Sunny supposed, that was the difference. They had spent so long finding ways to escape dreadful situations that they had never gotten the experience of enduring through necessary ones. This was not quite the same as running all night, nor was it like watching for crows or waiting in closets for hotel managers.

It could not be compared to any other experience simply because there was no other experience like it. They had been trusted to love and care for a motherless child, to shield them from the horrors of the world, but not from the truth.

They were to raise a decent human being, which may have been the most difficult task they would ever undergo.

And it worried her. Nearing the time that they came to the island, she had begun to doubt herself. She had bitten a volunteer and been infected with a deadly fungus and suggested the arson of a hotel full of villain and heroes and innocent bystanders as well as average and malicious ones. She had drunk fermented coconut milk at an inappropriate age and let her dearest reptile friend drift out to sea with a man who had feet of clay and a boatload of dying people who believed him.

She had done things her own parents couldn't be proud of, yet had learned things about them that kept her awake at night.

Most of all, she had failed to remain a child inside her desperate mind, so how could she raise one?

They said it takes a village to raise a child, but she believed otherwise. It takes the world to ruin a child, but it only takes a child to create that kind of world.

What if she raised that sort of person? What if she was that person herself?

But still she could hope, because of the one thing that set her apart from every villain she had yet encountered.

Sunny had her siblings, and that put her at ease.

Even with all of their failures, she still trusted them more than she could ever trust herself, and that respect she had for them increased her own self-control. Her hopes for Beatrice did so as well.

They were in the middle of nowhere; the perfect place to discover that they, despite their best efforts, had still been touched by the things of man. But they couldn't dwell on that now.

Now they had the responsibility of doing what no one else was willing to.

To take a dark world and make in there a small, quiet place for a fellow orphan. To be guardians.

But if it was her siblings, Sunny was reassured that between the three of them they must still have some goodness left to do so.

And if that was all they could do, even if they were never again to achieve their former innocence, she hoped they were still noble enough to keep this haven safe.

(A/N; Twelve Shots of Summer, week five. Prompt: Symbiosis.

I was always really impressed with how the Baudelaires pulled together through everything. Though I liked them all, Sunny may be my favorite simply because she's so sensible. I'm afraid I did not have much time for this, nor do I really know what it's about. But sometimes I just have to get that meandering narrative out of my system. I still like this, too. It at least vaguely addressed the prompt, but it's more of a personal story following my own fears about my potential as a (maybe-hopefully-sometime-in-the-future)parent. I think that this is something that Sunny would definitely worry about, and it was nice to explore. I'd like to go back and tidy up the ending sometime, but until then, I hope you like it anyway.

And in that way, the story matches its subject matter well.)