BUNNYMUND
WHITE: Hollow, blank, void.
-o-
He wasn't sure when he'd become so unattached to his job. It was just a thing that happened over time.
The children still loved looking for his eggs, and quite a few adults enjoyed it as well, but for him it started to feel so...bland.
Sanderson said that he might be a little depressed, after he'd explained himself to the man. He didn't deny it, but he also couldn't see himself that way; it was more or less like his motivation just flew right out the window.
He asked the little man to keep it to himself - just until Bunnymund could find a solution, or get over it, anyway. Or, if in an emergency, like if he suddenly stopped working altogether, the man could then tell everyone he wanted to. (But that was just as a last resort, really. Bunny could never not continue Easter; it was one of the few important holidays.)
He made sure no one else could find out about this, but he was sure that somehow, someway, Jack must have gotten word of it. Maybe it was just some weird inner-spirit thing, or a sixth sense the boy had, but he's been finding the child coming and going to his burrow unannounced for too many times to count. By this point, he just told his stone guardians to let the boy enter and exit as he pleased.
It was strange; Jack would come whenever he started to feel...bored? Tired? He wasn't sure what to make of it, but Jack seemed to just know about it, and would always - always - show up causing some mischief, or just sitting around until the elder found him, like some tiny game of hide-n-seek Jack and he would play unknowingly.
It made him wonder sometimes. Why was it that he couldn't just sit and think about bland things or why he was feeling this way without Jack Frost one step behind him? Why was this boy even here, after all Bunny had said to him? All the crud, all the banter?
He didn't think last time the boy entered his burrow, only concentrating on the little egg he'd been trying to paint - trying and failing, if you had asked him at the time, 'piss off' he'd said gruffly, ignoring the hurt expression the other held at that. 'I don't need you.'
He was sure that Jack hated him. He was so, so sure that Jack would fly as far, far away as he could and stay away.
Guilt ate at him that night, and he found that sleeping felt pointless.
He stayed up all throughout the night, wondering if Easter was even worth it this year. The once-colorful eggs looked bland, the colorful burrow of his seemed to turn a gray color, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to look at it in the morning. The off-color was slowly getting to him.
He wasn't sure when he fell asleep.
But when he woke up it was to cold fingers threading through his fur.
He wasn't sure when he'd turned to hug the child close to his chest, and he also wasn't entirely sure when he'd started crying, muttering apologies over and over, but Jack took it all in stride.
'We all go through this.' the boy says when he later asks. 'The empty feeling.'
Bunny had no idea what to call the feeling, but the way Jack had put it seemed to ring in his ears.
He found that, even with such a feeling, it seemed to get better with the boy around.
He just hadn't realized that it might have been because he was lonely. Jack would know lonely, wouldn't he?
It didn't get better on his own, and he liked to pretend that Jack dragging over the other guardians to the burrow was entirely unwanted, but...
It made him feel better.