WCU
sometime after 5PM
Kurby Bagnold's desk

Sophie had lasted all of one night and half a day in #12 Saint Mary's. Actually, that wasn't even really true, she hadn't slept at all. She had been up all night making fudge, and cookies, and her mother's famous Dulce de Ajonjoli. One might be wondering why exactly this had occurred (or marvel at the fact she managed to not burn the whole place down). The answer was depressingly simple, everything was too quiet. She could hear every noise the old house made, it was vacant of Christmas cheer, of laughter, of drunk relatives, and Mrs. O'Leary down the lane had needed tending to so the sixteen year old could not even lose herself in a conversation about tea with Nana Flickwick. The loneliness of it all started a chain reaction in Sophie. First she found herself wandering into her mother's study, then she found herself sitting behind the desk, then flipping through a date book that had remained untouched since the morning of March 11th.

If there was one thing Ramona was better at than her youngest daughter it was planning. All the big dates of the year had notes in the margnes with plenty of room for more information to be added the closer each holiday came. It amazed Sophie how much of her mother was in the little jotted down details, days Ramona never saw come to pass. The heavy pain in Sophie's chest was almost too much to bear. She felt the need to scream, to run around, to do something to shake off all the memories that were threatening to take over her very tired brain. It was then that she noticed the notes for December, and like a flood the memories came rushing back. Every year, without fail, her mother would start baking in November and keep on going right through to New Years. The tiny Gryffindor was very sure that at some point or another a Flickwick treat crossed every single desk in the Ministry. Obviously she couldn't do that, she didn't have the time or the skill, but there was one name on the list she noted was underlined several times.

Kurby Bagnold. She knew it instantly because he was the one who had been an utter prat at the SAWS dance the previous winter, he'd also been the one to haul Fauna in when she was accused of being a werewolf... actually he seemed to pick at Fauna a lot the previous year. From what Sophie knew of the man he had a terrible temperament and in general was a grouchy git. Why had he been so important to her mother? In the months after her mother's death she had spoken to her godfather Griffon Manley at length and he had shed some light on the idea of Ramona Flickwick as a person verses a wife & mother. She wondered (rather queasily) if perhaps they had been having an affair, but found (upon visiting the previous years Christmas notes) her mother had extended an invitation to Bagnold to join the whole hodgepodge clan of Merry Makers that gathered at #12. There was something in her mother's wording that made the girl suspect he was a lonely sourpuss and Ramona couldn't help dotting on him.

There was something terribly tragic about the idea of this sad surly man not receiving his yearly treat from her mother. It spoke to the implications of death beyond just the loss of a mother. There were so many lives Mrs. Flickwick had touched, had tried to make better. Sophie found it easier not to think about things like that most of the time, but in this instance it felt wrong to ignore a long standing tradition. Which was how she found herself, a scarce twenty-six hours later (slightly punchy) standing in the WCU HQ trying to find a pen to write a quick quirky note to the sourest of sour faces. The main floor was mostly dark (Sophie had gotten much better at sneaking in the last year), which made it rather impossible to find a bloody quill. She stubbed her toe and bit her cheek to keep from howling in pain, just as the lights came up. Frozen, half bent over holding her foot, basket of wrapped goodies in front of her Sophie closed her eyes tightly as if it would make her less visible.

Ten days.  There were only ten days until the next full moon, and the team had barely started to recover from the last one.  Ferris still not back to full duty; their morale shattered; too many members down and he still hadn't the time to think about replacing them.

Add to that that it was the holidays.  Crying wolf didn't work on his grandmother; she'd heard his excuses about an overwhelming workload so many times that even the real thing didn't excuse him an absence.  No, there were family gatherings to attend, explanations to give (it didn't help that Amherst was still an occasional topic of inquiry), unpleasant exchanges with his cousin Alberic to suffer through, and a general revolting sense of seasonal cheer that, while obviously endearing to every single person around him, made him feel as if his heart had suddenly shrunk two sizes too small.

It was rare to find anyone staying late in the Capture Office these days, so he wasn't surprised to see the lights off as he finally approached it.  Most of the kids bolted for home as soon as one of the clocks showed five o'clock.  Kurby sighed, rubbing tiredly at his neck as he approached the open door that one of them had obviously forgotten to shut.  In what was certainly a minor Christmas miracle, the Level Four managerial staff meeting had only run twenty minutes late today, so at least tonight, he wouldn't be hours and hours behind them.

But what he wasn't expecting was to see movement in the darkness.  Kurby froze, going very still as he squinted in through the open door.  Someone was there.  Moving around.  Letting out a hushed squeak, as if they'd just hit something painful.  The werewolf hunter's expression immediately went sour.  If it was one of Grimm's bleeding shadow demons, he was going to take his wand and cram it somewhere that not even the necromancer could resurrect it out from.

He freed his wand and silently jabbed it at the air, casting the spell that would turn the lights on.

And on they came -- only not to reveal the shadowy henchmen of his longtime archnemesis, but a tiny figure that might well have been a present-bearing elf save for the fact that the consequences of bothering Kurby Bagnold on a bad day had quickly spread through the house elf community back while he had still been a student at Hogwarts.

"What the bleedin' hell?"   The werewolf hunter's face had instantly gone red.  He jabbed his wand in the small figure's direction, leveling it at her as if he were about to send her shooting back up Level Four's nonexistant chimney.  "What the hell are you doin' here?!" he roared.  "Get out!"

"Bugger," Sophie's not-so-muffled voice sounded pained as she put pressure on the foot she'd just stubbed and stood to the full of her whole 5'1" of height. He sounded mad. Of course, why wouldn't he sound mad? He had a terrible disposition in general and he'd just stumbled onto a sixteen year old sneaking around the WCU. Of course his demands that she get the hell out were met with a huff as she turned to finally look at him, dark hair bouncing with the movement, "Oh quit your squalling. I was just about to go. I was trying to find a stupid quill to leave you a note". Sophie was, notoriously, stupidly, brazenly "brave". She was the genius who had called Ignan Storm a bully after he'd so traumatized to other students they'd left the room running. Her uncles had muttered more than once she wasn't smart enough to know when to be afraid, thinking Werewolves and dark creatures were cuddly pets that could be tamed.

She was sure Kurby would agree with them, but he would be wrong. She had absolutely no desire to cuddle him and he  was a terrible creature as far as she was mostly concerned. She didn't know if he'd recognize her. She tired to see pieces of her mother in her face every single day but never really did. Lots of people told her she looked like Ramona but Sophie was hard pressed to believe it. Chewing on her bottom lip she thrust the basket out at him, "Mum always did the bows. I'm terrible at them," and she was, it was lopsided and a little smooshed from being tucked under her heavy jacket while sneaking through the ministry. "I just... I tried, cause for whatever reason she liked you, and it made me sad to think you wouldn't get anything from her this year. I dunno why I cared cause you're a big scowly asshat and you made Fauna's life miserable and you think SAWS is stupid, and you have the manners of spitting cobra, but you mattered".

And then it happened, the not sleeping and the thinking about her mother and the being alone for Christmas all seemed to catch up with the tiny Gryffindor at once as her brown eyes welled up with frustrated tears and she stomped her foot because Kurby Bloody Bagnold was the last person she wanted to let see her get emotional. He wouldn't even understand, he probably hadn't cared about her mother at all. It had been an entirely stupid idea. What could her mother have possibly seen in him worth liking, worth trying to draw out? Sophie thought she saw the best in most people but she just didn't in him. "Will you stop pointing your stupid wand at me. I'm sixteen and half your size. I am very sure if you needed to subdue me your butt would suffice," she wasn't exactly blubbering but her voice was strained, as she shook the basket at him, "Merry Christmas, she wrote down that you really seemed to like the Ajonjoli, mine probably isn't as good but whatever. My good deed for the season is done". Now she was rambling. Perfect.

"Oh quit your squalling. I was just about to go."

"YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!" Kurby bellowed.  He didn't care who this was -- the half-sized squeak could be Persepolis Zephyr's personal assistant sent on a mission from Merlin and it wouldn't have made a difference -- because all that mattered was the fact that she was here.  In his space.  Presumably without permission, and certainly without him wanting her there.  And the only thing that she had to say to that was 'Bugger'?!

It had been a long month for the Werewolf Capture Unit.  They were devastated and down a considerable amount of manpower, and while he was still trying to recover from the last full moon, he was already desperately preparing for the next.  Even in the best of times, Kurby Bagnold knew he wasn't about to win any Miss Congeniality awards; his temperament disqualified him long before gender even came into consideration.  But now, all he wanted to do was rip someone's head off, and it if happened to belong to this conspiring little pipsqueak elf, then so be it.

She shoved some sort of basket at him -- he swatted it away solely out of instinct -- and now she was babbling on at him, in what was more of an angry scolding than a panic, not that he would have listened either way.  Something about Mums and bows and asshats, and then Fauna, which if possible made Kurby's scowl even more furious.  If Auror Trainee Blake had put one of her school friends up to this -- harassing him with baskets and shoddily tied bows when he had work to do -- then he was going to march down up to Level Two and make her wish she could apparate.  Of course this one would be Blake's friend.  Her hair looked just as flouncy.

Something about the girl nagged at his memory, but he was fuming far too much to try and place her.  All he knew was that she was here, she looked to be on the verge of either bursting into tears or flouncing away, and had now not only said something about his butt, but was prattling on as if breaking into his office had been some magnanimous gesture of faith

"Your good deed?" He sputtered, somewhere between fury and disbelief.  "This isn't some charity office!  I ought to have you thrown in a bleedin' holdin' cell for trespassing!" he roared.  "Who the hell do you think you are, you pint-sized little sneak!?"

He just kept yelling, Sophie hated that. No one liked being yelled at of course but Sophie just sort of wanted to fall apart under the pressure, with the lack of sleep, and the lonely feeling that had been ratting around in her bones while she had been pretending everything was completely fine. It wasn't as if she had anyone she could really talk to about this sort of thing. She huffed and shoved the basket at him again, wishing he would just take the stupid thing, "I know I'm not supposed to be here! Why d'you think I was skulking around in the dark ya daft tit"! Kurby had obviously never dealt with many teenage girls, he was probably one of those people that wasn't really born and grew up so much as he had congealed in a gutter somewhere, comprised of all things hateful and dank.

Sophie just scowled at his threat, because in all honesty at this point she  could have cared less about where she ended up. Her house was a prison all its own, of memories and emptiness; a monument to how everything and nothing could change all at the same time. "Yes, because obviously throwing a sixteen year old girl into a holding cell for bringing you cookies because she felt sorry for you is the appropriate response to this situation. That is exactly what you should do. I am sure that Kia and everyone who within the Ministry loved my mother will sing your glorious praises for catching the Christmas Tidings Elf trying to carry on a bloody twenty odd year tradition so she didn't have to be in her fecking house alone, being reminded that her mother was devoured by a werewolf nine months ago".

And there they were, the angry tears, in a fair world she never ever would have blamed her mother's death on Kurby or Fauna. It wasn't like they had escaped the night without injury. But there was an anger in Sophie about the loss of Ramona that had been building since the morning of March 12th with Kia showed up in the boat house wanting to talk. There was no one to blame, no one to point the finger at. She couldn't blame her mother because she was dead, and it was unwise to speak ill of the dead. She couldn't blame Norvel Prismall (the werewolf who had killed her), it wasn't his fault he'd been given bad wolfsbane. She couldn't blame Kurby but in that moment she really wanted to give it a try, for just a second anyway. Wiping at her damp cheeks she hissed through clenched teeth, "I think I'm Ramona Flickwick's daughter".

"IF YOU KNEW YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO, THEN WHY THE HELL WERE YOU DOIN' IT?"

Bellow for bellow, Kurby Bagnold could match anyone at the Ministry.  And he went on bellowing -- shouting at the top of his lungs as if he could drive the tiny trespasser away simply by droning out her protests with a roaring monologue of his own.  Anyone passing by the WCU office would have been treated to a wash of sound, as the werewolf hunter continued to rage at a very loud volume, roaring over things like cookies and mother and twenty year odd tradition, all of which might have held some meaning for him if only he'd been able to both shout and listen.

It was really only by chance that he'd stopped to take a breath just as Sophie got her last sentence out.  "I think I'm Ramona Flickwick's daughter."  It took a split second for the words to sink in.  And then, with a gasp, he realized he wasn't shouting anymore, but was instead on the verge of choking, which necessitated a rather loud coughing fit.

"You're -- you're --"  Still gaping, he took a closer look at the intruder.  Yes, she looked the part.  He'd met the Flickwick family once or twice over the years, though he deliberately tried to stay away from anything that even slightly resembled bonding with his coworkers, but there was no mistaking this girl for anyone but Ramona Flickwick's daughter.  And now the memory of some of the things she had said, which he'd mostly shouted over, came flooding back in a rush.

"Mum always did the bows. I'm terrible at them."

"I just... I tried, cause for whatever reason she liked you."

"Well, you're still not supposed to be in here," he insisted weakly.  Kurby's face normally got heated after he spent a good deal of time shouting, but now it felt as if it were burning for other reasons.  Wordlessly, the wizard groped for a chair.  He felt as if he would really like to be sitting down right now.  "How the bleedin' hell did you even get past the Welcome desk?"

Sophie finally just threw the basket at his feet, tired of shaking it at him and trying to get an unwilling man to accept a little Christmas cheer. With her hands empty she wrapped her arms around her middle and wished she had been faster about the whole thing. It was just supposed to be a nice surprise there in the morning, as though a little wisp of her mother remained in the Ministry after nearly a year. She wanted someone to be able to feel the presence that she couldn't. She wanted there to be someone in the world who could remember exactly how Ramona sounded, how she smelled, how she lit up a room because it was all fading for Sophie. Even when she could remember her mother's words, she couldn't get the accent right, the tone, the flavor, the heart.

She couldn't share that with Kurby though, no he was the last person on the planet she wanted to actually be seeing right now, especially as she furiously rubbed her eyes. At least he had stopped yelling for the most part, the wind seemed to have gone out of his righteous sails. She ignored his continued insistence she wasn't even supposed to be there. As she had already explained she was well aware of this fact, that's why they called it sneaking. She hadn't meant any harm - in fact her intention had been exactly the opposite. It was like most things in her life now, though, she seemed to just flub it all up. She was, at heart, a constellation of flaws stitched together with the best of intentions, but then the road to hell was paved with those wasn't it?

Inspecting the cuff of her jumper she gave a one shouldered shrug, "People don't tend to think sixteen year old girls with big eyes and a tragic back story are out to destroy the Ministry when they walk through the doors. Plus, you know, everyone knows Kia and I are really close. I assume they just assumed I was here to see her and I didn't see any reason to correct them because, as previously stated, I did not intend to get caught giving the least grateful Wizard in all of Wizardom, with the worst reputation, homemade Christmas goodies. I just thought..." she trailed off chewing her bottom lip. What had she thought, or was it a matter of not thinking? "I guess I thought if I missed making these stupid baskets maybe you missed getting one. It was stupid, and if you're done yelling I can just go. Merry Christmas".

The shock of this all had him enough out of sorts that he barely jerked back out of the way of the basket.  Baked goods scattered across his feet, but Kurby could only stare flabbergasted at the teenaged witch.  She was certainly -- well, overdramatic, with her prattling along about her tragic backstory as if dead mothers were supposed to excuse breaking and entering.

"I'm notyelling," he began, more than a bit defensively.  He did not really want to be looking at her right now; scowling, he bent down and grabbed for the basket.  In the effort of being flung at his shoes, it had gotten rather squished.  Rolling his eyes, Kurby began to shove the fallen cookies back into it.

What the hell was he supposed to say to this kid? He hadn't asked her to come sneak into his office and play Cookie Deliverer.  He'd never asked Ramona Flickwick to get involved in his life either, but the former Registry witch had never given him much of a choice.  And as much as he didn't want to admit it -- as much time as Kurby spent deliberately not thinking about it -- her death that night back in March, here on Level Four, still stung.

He'd saved Blake.  He hadn't saved Ramona Flickwick.

And now here was Ramona's daughter, a near-image of her mother and looking ready to burst into tears or shout at him again.  Or maybe both.  Merlin, who the hell had let her onto this floor?  If Ferris was involved, he was going to have to consider ripping off her other arm.

"Thanks," he muttered at her, before he straightened up.  The words were painful, but he somehow forced them out anyway, though he couldn't really force himself to look her in the eye.  "Your mum was always good at baking.  Merry Christmas to you, too."

Sophie just huffed and tensed her arms as he got defensive about yelling. Of course he wasn't bellowing now, but he had been. It was pointless to argue with him of course because she had feeling they were both equally stubborn and would just stand there yelling about not yelling all night because neither one of them would give an inch. She did not want to spend her night yelling at Kurby Bagnold about what a wanker he was. She suddenly felt just how tired she was, her eyes burning with exhaustion and tears she refused to cry in front of a total stranger who also happened to be a giant jerk-face.

Still, when he stooped over to pick up the scattered cookies and candy she felt a little bit of forgiveness for his terrible attitude. A stack of neatly wrapped cookies had tumbled out and landed near her boot in the midst of her temper tantrum (she was blaming lack of sleep for the basket flinging). Picking it up she nodded a little, lips pressed together as she offered it to the Werewolf hunter, "Yea. She loved being in the kitchen. Constantly trying to feed people, it was like she thought her life's mission was to make sure people were fat and happy". The irony of the fact that Sophie was neither, and by the look of him neither was Kurby was not lost on Sophie; she just kept it to herself.

Setting the cookies on his desk she inched toward the door, walking backwards as though she didn't trust him not to hex her and throw her in a cell if she wasn't looking at him. He was a grumpy old man... but the guilt of her own misguided intentions was already getting the best of her. He hadn't asked for a wayward teenager to insert herself into his night. It wasn't his fault everything was a mess and she was lonely and trying to hide from the fact nothing could stay the same. The problem with Sophie-plans was that they were not often fully formed before she started acting on them. If she had been thinking she'd have just left the basket with the Welcome Witch instead of sneaking around the Ministry...

"I'm sorry," the words felt funny in her mouth, as though she hadn't really planned on saying them before they just presented themselves. She bit her lip for a moment before going on, "I mean, you're still terrible but, you may have had a point about sneaking onto the floor. It was reckless and childish," there was a half bitter laugh tacked onto the phrase. Childish, yes, well some things never changed. How ever much she might have liked to think she'd grown in the last year... she was still too impulsive, too emotional. "I just...didn't want to be alone, I guess. I didn't really think, I just sort of did it and then I was here, and as long as I keep moving and explaining and being stubborn I don't have to miss...her," she finished lamely with a shrug. Now she was babbling and she wished the floor would just swallow her up already.

Kurby regarded the girl with something between and resignation.  His jaw hurt, but he wasn't sure if it was from intentionally grinding his teeth or just the pain of having to deal with this whole ridiculous mess.

This was not his problem.  Surely the kid had family somewhere; just because her mother had gotten eaten by a werewolf, nominally on his watch, did not mean that her father or grandparents or -- hadn't Flickwick had other kids?  He remembered a whole gaggle of them in the framed photographs that had covered her desk.  But whatever, surely the girl had somewhere else she could be -- someone else who cared, someone else who could deal with this, someone to show her how to get through it.

These days, he very rarely thought about when his own father had died.  He'd been younger than the girl was now, not even close to Hogwarts age, but it had still left a very vivid impression.  Not the death -- but everything that had come before, but the temper and the anger and the monthly anguish of being kept awake by the horrible, heart-wrenching howling.  After all of that, the quietness of death had been a sort of release, an escape from the misery that had been forced into their childhood.  He'd surely cried, but not because he'd missed his father.

And here was Ramona Flickwick's daughter, going through much the same thing.  Not the same -- he'd never tell her that she had been lucky that her mother had met her end that night, because the life of a werewolf was different now -- but the same sense of loss, of being unable to help, of knowing that there wasn't an end to loss.  And in the midst of all of that, she had come here.  His head ached just thinking about it.

"Well, I..."  He gave Sophie a pained look, and then turned his head to regard the rest of the WCU office with an anguished expression.  The kids under his employ -- most of them teenagers or twenty-somethings just barely out of Hogwarts -- were not having an easy time of it either lately.   They had lost too many in too short a span, and it was showing heavily.  The Werewolf Capture Unit had never been the golden standard of Ministry morale, but right now, they were at the bottom.

What the hell was he supposed to do?  Kurby didn't have an answer to that, but he had a vague idea of what Ramona Flickwick would have done.  The answer was right in front of him, in the form of this pint-sized Christmas intruder who now looked close to tears.  He heaved a sigh, dragging his fingers heavily through his hair.

"Who'd you tell you were comin' here?" he asked abruptly, his voice gruff.  "They're expectin' you to just drop off the cookies and then rush back home?"

The silence between them was heavy, and for a time Sophie found it hard to breathe. Her throat felt tight, like it was closing up on her, it burned. She didn't want to cry and she wasn't sure what kept her feet so firmly rooted into the ground. Every other muscle in her body tensed with the desire to just leave but she couldn't. She had come here because she needed something; she had realized it at the time but now that she was standing here... the gesture felt empty. She had thought she was doing it for Kurby, to bring a little light into his life, now she knew she was just as selfish as she had ever been and it was really for herself. Something had brought her to this place and something was keeping her from leaving.

Who'd you tell you were comin' here? ... They're expectin' you to just drop off the cookies and then rush back home?

His voice was rough and his words startled her. It took her a moment to realize exactly what he was asking - at first she thought he was going to go on about how she shouldn't have come but, no, he wanted to know if someone was waiting for her. It would have been so easy to lie, so easy for both of them if she just said that her Nan was waiting for her down stairs even. For a moment the words hung on the tip of her tongue before she let out a long breath and for some reason she did not fully understand, told him the truth, "There's no one at home.  I mean there's my Great-Nan, but she's looking after a little old lady down the lane. Da and Johnny are in...Barcelona, maybe? That was the last postcard I got anyway. They keep selling out shows so they won't be home".

She had to stop herself, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears from just spilling over. She did not want to cry, not about this, not in front of him. Of course her body gave little thought to what she wanted and she found herself rubbing her eyes in an attempt to mask the fact they were watering so heavily, "I dunno about Ruby. I haven't heard from her since I went back to school and Emmy...Greece is much warmer than London this time of year so I don't think she'll be coming home," she gave a small shrug and a sad little half smile. She knew she sounded pathetic, probably even needy and attention seeking but the fact was without her mother the devolution of the Flickwicks had been painfully rapid.

The thing that was most perplexing to her out of the whole sorry mes was not that she needed to talk about it; she fully realized that not talking about it was what had landed her in this spot...it was the person she was choosing to share it with. She couldn't tell Figaro; even before the whole La Toussaint-why-were-you-sneaking-around disagreement she had felt weird talking to her boyfriend about how things were now. He thought she had this charmed life; no one to boss her around, no one to make her keep to curfew, Daddy was a Wrock Star, she could get into Spellpunk and skip the queue. He didn't understand, or maybe she'd just never given him enough credit. Whatever the case, she couldn't tell the people she loved how alone she felt but it just spilled out to a grumpy stranger. Her life made no sense.

The raw honesty of the girl's answer did not make him feel any better about this.  He had only wanted to know if she needed to leave now, if he could make some sort of peace offering -- he was not interested in how things were going at home, or how her father was doing, or how well any of Ramona Flickwick's family might be coping with her death.  Except for the fact, Kurby realized with an extremely uncomfortable cringe, that he sort of was.

"All right, all right," he grumbled, rubbing unhappily at the back of his neck.  He diverted his eyes from the girl, scowling at the Capture Unit office as if it was personally responsible for his current situation.  "That's all grand.  I don't need your whole bleedin' life story," he added snippishly.

For a moment, he felt as if he were teetering on the verge of indecision.  It would be so easy to leave it at that -- to snap at the girl, to abandon her on the verge of tears, to go back to his business and not pay this mess any more mind.  It wasn't his fault that Ramona Flickwick had died.  Just like it wasn't his fault that the Capture Unit had been ambushed at the last full moon, that so many of their young recruits were having such a hard time coping. 

Tragedy happened.  He'd learned that years and years ago, back when he was even younger than Flickwick's kid.  It happened and there was nothing that any one wizard could do to prevent it entirely.  If this teenaged witch cottoned on to that now, at least it would save her the pain and suffering of not realizing it until later.

Except...

Kurby felt slightly ill, but he made the decision in the same second.

"Since you went through all the trouble of breakin' in here, then you might as well help me with somethin'," he said sourly, turning away from her as he strode further into the office.  "This year's been busy enough that I haven't gotten around to decorating the office for the holidays yet.  For the kids," he added, his voice defensive as he turned to face her.  Flickwick's kid or not, he wasn't about to let her think that he was the one who would want the entire WCU Headquarters decked out in twinkling red and green fairy lights.  "You got any practice puttin' them up?"

Sophie's cheeks flushed crimson, her brown eyes cast down as Kurby snipped at her. A part of her wanted to snap back but she just didn't have the energy anymore. Her head felt heavy and her chest ached. Some far off piece of her mind wondered if it was possible to just up and die from sadness. She wasn't good with emotions, Chance had always teased her about being so small she could only feel one thing at time. The fact of the matter was it happened to be sort of true. Despite her best efforts emotions ran from one extreme to another with her; if she was happy she was ecstatic, if she was angry she exploded, and when sad she seemed to dry up and collapse in on herself no matter how desperately she tried not to. It was exhausting to feel ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME; but she hadn't learned another way to be yet. There wasn't some switch in her that could be flipped on and off whenever life got sad, or scary, or hard.

As he moved away from her, further into the office she found her curiosity piqued. He wanted a favor. She suspected he didn't really (five minutes ago he'd been bellowing at her to leave). It was a strange thing, having a grumpy louse take pity on you. If she had had any pride left at all she'd have stomped out and told him exactly where he could stick his decorations out of sheer spite. It was awful hard to be spiteful in her current state though. She was lonely, she didn't fancy just going home and sitting in her room trying not to think about every little noise and how the old place groaned with the weight of being abandoned. It was easier, really, to take a timid step forward and then another, hands shoved in her back pocket as she looked around the WCU. "I do alright, I reckon," her voice was a little hoarse and she coughed a bit to cover it up before giving a genuine nod of her head, lips twitching with a minuscule smile,  "Lights are the best part you know".

"Yeah.  Well."  The werewolf hunter grimaced, looking uneasily about the room.  It wasn't the suggestion of lights, or the fact that he was nominally doing a good deed, or even that the mere gesture admitted to having a heart in a way that he wasn't really prepared to let on to.  Or maybe it was all of that, all tumbled together -- emotion and frustration and concern was a lot easier to deal with when he could just shout.

This wasn't a charity office, any more than it had been a few minutes before when he'd caught the Flickwick girl trespassing.  But perhaps doing something nice for a change didn't have to be charity.  Sometimes a gesture was all it took.  The Flickwick kid had tried to make one by bringing him her rendition of her mother's cookies, and even though he would never, ever, ever admit it to another living being, maybe this was his way of returning the effort.

"You want to start with the lights, I know a good stickin' charm."  Kurby let out a resigned sigh, his expression slightly strained -- and then for once, did his best to set his emotions away.  "Come on.  Let's get this started."