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Her Pa was grieving.
She didn’t know what gave it way to her. In the beginning, when she first met her father, he was a down right anxious mess, the embodiment of a human puddle on the ground. Stuttering through his sentences as he tried to explain all the complexities around his machines. Granted, she wasn’t exactly paying attention, until he showed her all the diamonds he had accumulated over the past few months, but his intelligence was something that astounded her.
The way his green-blue eyes would light up like a Christmas tree, when a machine he built actually worked; His caring, loving smile that would coon at her ever growing demand for more wealth; laughter that would fill the air with happiness. The energy was magnetic to those around him. When Sunny was around her Pa, she felt like she could take over the world with him, feeling an everlasting blanket of comfort surrounding her.
She didn’t know people like that could feel pain or misery. It never struck her as a thing people who were joyful, especially her Pa, could experience that kind of agony.
It was barely dawn when she saw him like that, the sun was barely peeking over the horizons that surrounded their home. It had been the clashing of thunder that had woken her from her beauty sleep. Usually Sunny was a terribly deep sleeper, insisting that it was because her body knew the exact amount of time to look gorgeous every morning, but something was different that day.
It didn’t occur to her until Tubbo was standing outside in the pouring rain, his clothes smeared with oil and dirt. His once joyous persona turned into rubble as the bags under his eyes became more apparent than ever -his eyes bloodshot- looking up to the sky as if he was having a conversation with the storm above. But the most strange thing about his appearance to Sunny, was the yellow daffodil he clung onto in his left hand, as if it personally had caused him to feel all this pain and suffering.
Of course, her Pa would never allow Sunny to see him like this, but thankfully, the dusk mist had filled the station that day. Even then, a realisation occurred to her, this was the person that people never saw. A young, grief stricken man who has truly never been able to process all the trauma and pain that he has endured for ender knows how long. The same person who had taken her in and loved her all the same. The same person people mocked for being too loud, too young, too naive. They believed her Pa to be a little brat like they believed him to be.
Like father, like daughter right?
Her stomach churned at the thought. If no one else was going to be there for her Pa, then she would just make up for the lack of people by shining brighter than the sun and stars combined. Just for her Pa.