Chapter Text
Connie met her daemon's eyes and thought, he's almost taller than me. With his antlers he definitely was. "I think I've figured out what you are," she told Bodhi.
Her daemon pawed the ground with an uncertain hoof-- even-toed, according to Wikipedia-- and said, "Something obscure? I don't feel like just a deer."
"Nobody's just anything," Rebecca piped up from the couch. Steven was half-dozing, covered in potato crumbs and crashing hard after his psychic communion with the Diamonds. His daemon, still unsettled, was copying the form of Garnet's kitten and sitting loaf-shaped on his chest. She looked half-asleep already. "Even if you were just a deer, you'd still be a mule deer or something, right? So you'd still be special." She stood and arched her back in a luxurious stretch. "Plus you'd still be Bodhi."
"Thanks," Connie said sincerely. Bodhi stepped up closer to her and nudged her face with his nose, narrowly avoiding her eyes with his antlers. One of the Gems-- she thought it might have been Amethyst, using a twig or something so she wouldn't touch directly-- had managed to hang a Christmas ornament on his antler. It glimmered.
Gems didn't have daemons, so they didn't feel like people when they touched other peoples' souls, but it was still weird having them be so cavalier with them. Rebecca climbed Garnet's shoulders and roughhoused with Amethyst, rubbed along Pearl's legs and took a monkey shape to hand Peridot tools. She made herself a bird to fly with Lapis and a dragonfly to poke at Lars's ruffled gray parrot. She touched the Gems like it was nothing, since to her and Steven it wasn't. Steven had told Connie once that they'd had to be trained out of letting strange humans get too close when they were little.
"So what am I?" Bodhi asked. Rebecca shook herself all over and became a hummingbird, moving over and landing prim and proper on one of Bodhi's antlers.
"You're a sambar deer," Connie told him, and a faint thrill went through her at the words. Herself, she was talking about herself--"They live in India, and it says even the females will fight to protect their young even though that's unusual in deer species."
"It means you're brave," Rebecca said softly, pecking at the ornament.
"He's a prey animal, though," Connie said with a faint frown. "Not that this isn't an awesome form, but--"
She'd been hoping, somewhere in the back of her mind, for something like a tiger or a lion, something strong and brave and true. Something legendary, to mark her out among all the heroes she fought alongside. She hadn't ever thought she'd get a deer. Her mother had a great big hawk, and her father had a dog, and those fit them so perfectly that Connie didn't even have to question how her parents' daemons had chosen their forms. But she had a lot of questions about hers.
Connie's hand was resting at the edge of the couch, right beside Steven's foot; before she could move, Rebecca was next to it, a hair's breadth away from touching. Connie's breath stilled in her throat. When they'd been Stevonnie, she'd touched her then, but that had been Steven, really, and it hadn't been the same--
"Predators act like cats and stuff, right?" Rebecca asked. "Like Gem monsters, sometimes. They go after things weaker than themselves. They want the easy prey, so they don't risk getting hurt."
"Rebecca..." Connie couldn't touch her. That was intimate, that was trusting, and Steven was her friend but she wasn't-- she couldn't have that responsibility--
"You said it yourself that even the females fight for their young, every time," the daemon continued, beady eyes staring into Connie's own. "They fight for their family, because they have to, even when they're probably gonna lose. Especially then. Of course you're brave."
Oh.
Connie didn't know what to say. Bodhi snuffled, leaning his head down to sniff at Rebecca's feathers, then said for her: "You're much more eloquent than Steven usually is," low and warm like he was sharing a secret. Rebecca turned back into a cat and nudged him, and Connie shivered as the warm touch transmuted itself through their bond. Rebecca moved away from her, and she stifled a burst of disappointment.
"I know what he knows," the daemon said, then yawned with a mouth full of pinprick teeth. "And right now I think I gotta sleep, too." Something in her body language seemed almost shy when she turned back to look at Connie. "Will you stay until morning?"
Connie glanced at Steven, asleep and trusting, always trusting, that she'd have his back-- at her daemon, hulking and antlered and a fighter when it counted, apparently-- and said, "I'm not going anywhere."
Rebecca made a pleased sound and settled back onto Steven's chest, then closed her eyes and started to purr. Bodhi moved closer to them both and settled his legs under him, leaning his head on Connie's shoulder. One of his antlers brushed against Connie's ear.
The house was destroyed. They were staying at Connie's, waiting for the evacuated citizens to come back, and soon her parents would come back through the door and see them both. See the four of them, and Bodhi tucking his long legs close beside her. "I'm glad you're this form," Connie said, because it had to be said. "I think it's really cool."
"Like Lisa and her daemon," Bodhi murmured. "Except he was a bird in the end, wasn't he?"
Connie shook her head. "Like Archimicarus and his," she corrected. Steven's chest rose and fell. "She might have been landlocked in the end, but-- she knew it was worth it. She always knew what they were fighting for."
"I can handle that." Bodhi leaned in close, and Connie scratched behind his ears, just next to the base of his antlers. They were long and wicked, smooth and naturally sharp, and they gleamed in the dim moonlight from the house's windows. They could cut her if she weren't careful.
Good. They'd never have to worry about being weaponless in the middle of a battle again. Connie gave a tired smile, and Bodhi rested beside her.
She didn't sleep.