Seven long years.

It had been seven long years to the day since Wakko Warner had said goodbye to his then five year old son and his brother, and disappeared behind a steel door. It had been seven years since he'd eaten a decent meal, had a meaningful conversation, or even laid eyes on a beautiful woman. It had been seven years since he'd seen his son.

Incarceration hadn't been meaningful or even interesting to Wakko, who usually passed his days doing the menial labor assigned to him by the prison guards who felt no motivation to act with kindness to any toon there. Wakko had been transferred from Alballa Prison to a prison specifically for toons built in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico shortly after his arrest. It was an ingenious place for a prison – any prisoner who tried to escape faced thirty three miles of open desert before he even got anywhere that had water. Often times if a prisoner escaped, the guards didn't pursue – the toon usually came crawling back to the bright white building in the middle of the desert after a few days, exhausted and dehydrated to the point of collapse. Some didn't come back at all, but no one had ever actually made it to the outside world. Faced with desperation, prisoners gave up hope and accepted their fate. Wakko included.

Accepting fate wasn't all a bad thing in Wakko's eyes. He knew that each day of good behavior on his part brought him one day closer to being with his son again, whom he'd left in the care of his older brother Yakko. He'd been carefully counting the days and months for years, and tomorrow was his day.

Tomorrow, he would get to go home.

Where exactly "home" was by this point wasn't altogether clear, but Wakko knew that as long as he was with his son, it wouldn't matter where he was. Communication with the outside world was strictly forbidden in all toon prisons, for no real reason except that humans liked it that way. Wakko couldn't do much to argue his case since it seemed every other toon in the toon prison system was facing the same problem as he. Still, he lied awake at night trying to imagine what his now 12 year old Harpo might look like…

Wakko had been dozing in his cell when he heard a guard rap gruffly on the bars to his cell. Wakko immediately shot up out of his daze. "Incoming," the guard grunted, opening up the cell and allowing another guard to throw a hunched over figure to the floor of Wakko's cell. "He's a newbie. Show him how we do things around here, eh? He ain't quite broken in yet, if you know what I mean," the guard sneered. Inwardly Wakko scowled; he knew what that meant – it meant that even after a round of beatings, this newbie's spirit still hadn't been broken.

As if having an unbreakable will was some sort of fucking crime.

"Here buddy, let me help you up," Wakko said softly, gently easing the newbie to his feet in the near darkness. "Let me give you a little advice. Most of the guards here are assholes. It's better to just keep your head down and not argue if you don't want to get your teeth knocked out."

"I'd rather have my teeth knocked out than take their shit," the new guy said, plopping himself down heavily onto the little cot in the corner. "This beating was worth the trouble I gave them. Just let them try again. I'llshow them what criminally insane really means."

That voice rang a bell somewhere in Wakko's head. He was silent for a moment, thinking hard, until the light caught the prisoner's face and Wakko gasped. "Buster? Buster Bunny? Christ, is that you?"

Buster looked up sharply at his cell mate and his expression changed to shock upon recognition. "Wakko Warner? What the hell are you doing in here?"

"I could ask the same of you, man. What the hell happened? What'd you do to get landed in here?"

The Buster Bunny sitting in front of Wakko was not the Buster Bunny that he'd last seen almost fifteen years ago. The Buster Bunny of fifteen years ago had been bright and plucky looking, never short a smile or a funny joke. Wakko and he had been friends during and right after their respective shows but had slowly lost track of one another. The Buster of today sat in front of Wakko in a torn prison uniform with a deep scar running along his left cheek and dead eyes. Bandages appeared here and there all over his body and blood had been slowly seeping through the cloth on some of them. One eye was swollen nearly shut from the guards' beating. But more than anything, Wakko noticed that Buster just looked tired. Very, very tired. It was obvious life had not been kind to Mr. Buster Bunny in the past decade, and his body had borne the brunt of it.

Buster wheezed a weak cough and tried to sit up straight but found he was too weak. Wakko caught him before he pitched over the side of the cot and helped him lean his tired body against the cell wall. "Just take it easy, man. Just rest. We'll talk later."

"No, let's talk now," Buster said in a determined voice. "I'm not going to let what those bastards did to me stop me from enjoying a conversation with an old friend like you, buddy."

"It won't be very enjoyable with you passing out in the middle of it. Just rest a bit, Buster. Please?"

Buster glared at him and said, "I've had worse than this, Wakko. I'm fine. Just tell me how you've been, ok? I've missed you. Talk slow." Buster's voice was weak and hollow. Wakko had to swallow a lump in his throat before speaking again.

"I robbed a liquor store."

"That's all?"

"No. Of course not. They know I've done more than that, but that's all they've got me on."

Buster laughed weakly. "You always were good at getting away with more shit than most people. I'd never seen anything like it. God, the stunts you could pull, and no one would be the wiser! You could run circles 'round any cop in Toontown. Surprised it was something as incidental as a liquor store heist that landed you in here."

Wakko popped one of his three-a-day rationed cigarettes into his mouth and lit it. He gave one to Buster, who took it gratefully. "I guess it was just my time. This place ain't so bad when you can just keep your mind focused on what you've got waiting for you out there," Wakko said, nodding towards the window.

"And what if you ain't got nothing waiting for you out there?" Buster said softly.

Wakko was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry, Buster," he whispered finally. "I wish life had been better to you."

Buster made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh but instead came out as more of a hoarse bark. "Life of a toon, eh?" He sighed. "I can blame it on being a toon, but that isn't it. I know it isn't. Some toons are doing fine. Others? Well…" He motioned to he and Wakko's prison garb. "Maybe we're just the ones getting caught, huh?"

Wakko turned his gaze to the floor. "Yakko and Babs are doing fine."

Buster's form stiffened slightly at the mention of his old co-star. "Yeah?" he said, trying to sound uninterested.

"Yeah. Big shot toon lawyers." Wakko took a deep drag of his cigarette. Unbeknownst to Babs, who had never liked Buster as more than just a casual friend, Wakko knew (because he'd been Buster's best friend during this time) that Buster was head over heels in love with his leading lady but had never had the courage to speak up about it before Yakko entered the scene and had, in Buster's mind, stolen Babs away. Wakko had watched his best friend's heart break at the same time he saw his older brother fall in love for the first time, and naturally he had had mixed emotions about the whole thing. While Wakko was indeed happy that Yakko had found his better half, he hated to see the change in Buster's behavior that ensued. Wakko sighed irritably. "What the fuck happened to us, Buster?" Buster looked lazily over at him but said nothing. "I mean, we used to be it in Toontown. I used to have money, and talent, and people who cared about me. You and I – we had some of the highest ratings on TV, man! Now look at us – the three o'clock spot, and the four o'clock slot, right here next to each other in a prison in the middle of a fucking desert."

Buster shrugged. "You said it, man. You gotta look forward to what's outside these walls. I wish I did. I wish I had Babs."

Wakko put his head in his hands. "You and I can blame my brother all we like. It isn't his fault."

Buster scoffed. "The fuck it isn't…" he muttered beneath his breath. Before he knew it, he had been hauled to his feet by an irate Wakko, who was holding him up by his collar alone.

"What did you say!" he shouted at Buster.

"You heard me!" Buster shoved away from Wakko, barely able to keep his balance. "If he hadn't stolen Babs away from me, I wouldn't have ever been in this position! If she had been there to care about me, I wouldn't have gone and done the kinds of things that land guys like us in jail!"

"What, you expected her to save you, the same way I expected my brother to save me? Why? What role did they play in what happened to us, huh?"

"If he hadn't stepped in, you know she and I would – "

"No, I don't know, and neither do you!" Wakko laughed mirthlessly. "I made that mistake way too long, Buster, and look where it got me! Babs and Yakko cared about us! Hell, they put up with our antics longer than anyone else in our circle of friends!"

"Oh, so now they're a pair of fucking saints, and we're the ones who are the scum of the earth? God, man, you and me pulled off a lot when we were the wild boys of Toontown, and why? Why did we do it?" Buster pointed to his chest. "Because we hurt. In here. I for Babs, and you for your brother and sister."

Wakko frowned. "Yes we hurt. Of course we did. But that's not an excuse to go wrecking our lives and the lives of those that love us. I'm in here because of what I did, not because of anything my brother did. Same as you're in here for whatever you did, not anything that Babs did! My brother was right all those years ago, that you and I never took responsibility for our actions and always expected to have someone else take the blame! What blame was there to be laid at either of their feet, hm? For the fact that they cared about each other and yet they could still care about us?"

Buster's gaze never shifted from Wakko's for a long moment before he finally sank to the ground and buried his face in his hands. "You're right," he said softly. "I just didn't want to believe this was all my fault. This isn't me. This isn't who I am. I'm a good person, Wakko."

"I know buddy," Wakko said in a soft tone, also sitting down. "It took me a long time to realize that I couldn't blame others for the things I didn't like about myself. But it isn't fair to those we love. It just pushes them farther away."

"You're right," Buster whispered. "I was going to hell long before Yakko and Babs were an item. What life could I give her?" He looked at Wakko in the eyes. "Your brother is a good toon, Wakko. He always knows the right thing to do. He always does it."

"It's strange that his strongest virtue can also be his weakness. He believed me all those years when I told him my behavior was his fault. God, look how much pain I caused him! For what? Because I knew I could do it. I knew I could say things like that to him and he would believe it. And I thought that maybe someday I'd be able to believe it too, and it would take some of the pain away." Wakko shook his head. "That isn't me. Wakko Warner doesn't make his siblings hurt just because he does."

"So why did we do it?" Buster asked in a tone that bordered on sounding frightened.

"Life got in the way." Wakko looked out the window wistfully. "We were all changing, all going our separate ways…maybe it scared us. Maybe we thought that the people who cared about us wouldn't care about us anymore. So we made them hurt. A person always remembers emotional pain, even if they don't always remember good friends. Causing pain is like creating a bridge between two people that can never really be severed. As long as pain, regret and guilt are there, our friends and family would keep coming back to us, to try and make it up to us. We made them believe it was their fault for that reason, and that reason alone." He sighed. "But it can't all be that. Hell Buster, we had a lot of money and a lot of free time. Toontown can be a toon's dream and worst nightmare all at the same time. Limitless places to drink, gamble, pick up girls…and no one to tell us to stop. We were too famous. We could do whatever we want, because we were Wakko and Buster. That just became our world."

"You've been thinking about this a lot."

"Seven years," Wakko said with a small smile. "And at the cost of seeing my son grow up."

"You got a son?"

"Yes," Wakko said proudly. "He's the reason I've striven in here to understand myself and what I did to end up here. I have to make it up to him, somehow."

Buster smiled. "That old emotional bridge of pain again, hm?"

Wakko shrugged slightly. "It was my fault, Buster. I can't forgive myself for the childhood I gave him."

"Where is he now?"

"Yakko and Babs have been taking care of him." Wakko laughed a little. "I know they're giving him a great childhood now. He's got enough to eat and a safe place to sleep, and he's surrounded by people who love him. But it's strange. I lie awake at night and worry about little things that parents worry about. I worry that he's going to fall down and break a bone. I worry if he's going to think with his own mind or if he's just going to follow the crowd. I worry about the things I can't control. And I miss him. God, I miss him." Wakko leaned back against the wall and looked at his hands in his lap. "I spend so much of my time thinking about what he looks like now, what he sounds like. I wonder what his hobbies are. I wonder what his favorite food is, what his favorite sport is, I wonder if he's ever seen my old cartoons. I wonder if he's more like me or more like Yakko and Dot. The true hell of prison life isn't the confined space or the isolation – it's not being able to see the people you love."

"Jesus Wakko, you sure have changed since the days you and I were terrorizing Toontown," Buster said with a smile. "Your biggest worry back then was how much to bet on red, or whether or not the cute blonde in the corner would agree to go home with you." He shook his head. "You grew up, man."

"Yeah, I did." Wakko smiled as he thought, And tomorrow I'll find out if it'll make any difference at all to my son after everything his childhood was like…