When the ambulance comes Basil said the same things Mari does and Sunny goes non-verbal from stress and shock. He’s shielding Sunny. 

At the hospital she’s told her ribs and spine took some hits and that she’s going to be wheelchair bound for a while. It’ll take months of phy therapy to regain the ability to walk. She’s not happy about this but at least her family is still together. And since no one but the 3 knew Sunny pushed her the others won’t hate him for this. They all think she fell on her own. 

She just wants everything to stay the same.  

Sunny doesn’t take the news well. He feels and thinks that he’s ruined his sister’s life. He’s convinced she’ll never walk again and that he's taken that away from her. He ends up having a mental breakdown soon after Mari is discharged from the hospital and gouges his right eye out with a spoon. 

Mari is absolutely distraught and terrified over this and won’t leave her brother alone if she can help it after this. 

Has a breakdown while Sunny is sleeping on her lap to Hero. She ends up yelling at him before calming down. Hero brings her away to get her to relax. 

I imagine she has to use a cane after her physical therapy is mostly over and she relearns how to walk. She still has the wheelchair in case she is too tired or her back starts hurting or she pushes herself too much. I think she’d have those low back accessibility wheelchairs. And a foldable metal cane that pairs w/ her wheelchair and a glossy finish wooden one for her normal walking cane.

Above are the notes I initially made at like 2am and below are notes I made days later:

Okay so obv Mari needs her room moved to the first floor since she can’t get up the stairs anymore for a long time so the piano room is now her room (later her old room gets turned into a painting room for Sunny!). Sunny starts sleepwalking after his incident and at first it’s just him walking around in his room or walking to the door of the upstairs bathroom and waking up. One night when Mari was getting a glass of water, she noticed in the dim light that there’s a small figure standing at the top of the stairs. When he doesn’t react to her questions, she realizes he must be sleepwalking again. She starts getting worried and yells for him to wake up which he does alongside their parents who put him back to bed. This unlocks a new anxiety in Mari and one day gets a nightmare that Sunny sleepwalks to the top of the stairs and she’s at the base unable to get up to him and he crumples to the bottom. In the nightmare there’s a horrible sound when this happens and blood pools around him (skull cracked) and she just throws herself out of her wheelchair and screams as she holds him, unable to help. This deeply bothers her for days and she eventually voices this to Hero who suggests she should just ask that Sunny move to room with her like he does w/ Kel. Also the door would have a lock, she can keep an eye on him, and lastly could use the excuse to her parents that it’ll make it easier to have Sunny help her with tasks (she doesn't like how they’ve been making him do so much for her. She hates the infantilizing her parents are putting on her and thinks Sunny shouldn’t be forced to do so many chores rn. He isn’t in the right headspace for that [haha pun]). 

Some small details I must put in are like Sunny having to cope/make up with his new lack of depth perception. At first there were some things he broke or damaged bc he’s having trouble judging the distance between the object he’s putting down and the surface he’s putting it on. So bc of this he kinda gets banned from the kitchen after destroying plates and cups on accident when having to make Mari her meals. 

Also like Mari still trying to do things on her own and constantly trying to reach out to Sunny to like hold his hand or even give him a kiss to the forehead or cheek bc she’s scared for his well being and kinda neglects her own mental health in the process. Which leads that to fall on Hero which does eventually take a toll on him worrying about everyone so much but he pushes his feelings to the back so they can lean on him. He reasons at these tough times he has to be the ‘stable’ one. Like, isn’t that kinda his character? I think most write him like this. 

(The siblings don’t get therapy for their mental health bc their father doesn’t believe in that stuff and would get deeply embarrassed and think it would be shameful if ppl hear they were going to it bc then his kids are ‘crazy’ or ‘smth’s wrong w/ them’. The mother doesn't agree w/ this but dad got the final say on this.) I may or may not be projecting cough cough. Man since I’m in the crowd that headcanons the siblings as Asian-Americans w/ shitty parents (dad is the Asian immigrant parent while mother is white or white-mixed? ) imma project so much baby!

Which leads into the fact I have a cooking scene planned! Mari, Sunny, and Hero try their hand in cooking rendang since Mari has this southeast-asian cookbook she got as a gift (yes im ref-ing the one I have irl. Also shut up, im projecting and it’s like my fav food DON'T TOUCH ME!) and wants to try smth. She picks at random. She gives Sunny very easy tasks to help them. And she notices how slow and controlled Sunny is when put things to the counter and it makes her heart clench that he’s so focused on it and scared to mess things up. She’s more eye level with the counter so she’s doing all the measuring. Just needs to tilt her head to read the numbers ez. Anytime she backs up she makes sure to look behind her so she doesn’t run over the boys. Maybe make a funny and that the end result dish is meh bc they used a bad cheap brand of coconut milk. (idk I never cooked my mother did all that)

Also in this AU, Basil is always hanging at their place bc Sunny only talks verbally by whispering in Basil’s or Mari’s ear. He’s only signs nowadays which makes Mari sad bc he made so much progress over the years with talking verbally to his friends and now it’s back to square one like when they first moved to Faraway Town (w/ the expectation of Basil since he knows). 

Some small things of note are like Basil getting real close w/ Sunny now and Kel kinda feeling left out (they are 12).

Earlier on Sunny has a point where he tries to avoid touching Mari as much as possible which she def notices and shakes Basil down for details bc she knows they’ve been stuck together like pb&j recently. Eventually he conceits that Sunny is scared of hurting her anymore/again and this breaks her heart. She straightens things out by sitting her brother down and talking to him. I want this to be a heart to heart scene. If I'm not sobbing when writing then what’s the point? 

For later chapters I want Sunny to start coping by painting. But hehe, he’s not painting cute things. Spooky things, creepy, scary, gorey, whatever you get the point. It’s like how he gets his emotions and worries and frustrations out. His way of venting (more healthily!). Ofc there are some more ‘normal’ things he takes to painting. Like landscapes and ppl on hills, or ballerinas, just flowy fabric stuff. It’s calming for him. And what he can show to others/family. (Basil gets to see all his art and is kinda off put by it at first but kinda shakes it off for Sunny’s sake. When Mari finds out, Sunny gets upset bc he thinks she’ll react badly bc he knows their parents would but she just kinda brushes it off bc if it makes her brother happy or is therapeutic then she has no qualms. As long as it’s not physically harming him.)

Below are snippets from a discord convo I had w/ a friend after I showed her my notes and she helped me bounce some ideas! (Friend-Red) (Me-Orange)

I think Mari’s lack of going out and about should start to slowly ruin Mari and Aubrey’s friendship. Aubrey wants to play with the two but because Sunny is basically mute and Mari is wheelchair bound, they can’t really. And this leads to Aubrey becoming the bad bitch she is when she gets older?

Omg true. Mari can’t go out to play anymore/it’s hard to bc it’s difficult to push her wheelchair in non-concrete areas especially since her arms aren’t used to it yet.

Sunny shuts down for awhile and when he starts to feel better he doesn’t speak to her anymore and maybe bc he still whispers to basil and mari she takes it personally?

Hero and Basil are often at the siblings house, Kel really the only ones that’s sticking around her in her pov

I think maybe Kim should befriend her during these times too and it’ll be a trio of her, Kim, and Kel until the others start joining them again

You planning to keep the Aubrey/Sunny crush thing around or you gonna shift it to her crushing on Kel? 👀 I know Aubrey and kel are fairly popular ship. Enemies to lovers type beat

I didn’t think about that. I was gonna be tagging this fic with Mari/Hero bc I am basic and proud and minor sunflower (basil/Sunny) but it won’t be much besides like implying that basil has a crush on him and Sunny is like kinda codependent? They are 12 so nothing serious XD as for Aubrey,,, maybe