A/N: Thank you for the prompt! This is a dad trio fic, so any reference to Rat or Toad is actually Rat Sr and Toad Sr; they just don't get those titles until later.
(This prompt is the reason I took so long with the rest - I got distracted by this, which grew from a ficlet to a oneshot, despite my best efforts.)
x
Everyone knows badgers are solitary creatures, keeping to their homes and their own.
Everyone knows that. Badger, most of all.
Everyone, it would seem, but the toad and water rat.
He turns the blindingly-bright-green invitation over in his paws and throws a disparaging look at the unfortunate delivery-rabbit. “I’m not going.”
“Mr Toad said you might say that,” the rabbit replies, “and told me to tell you, if you did, that that’s your choice.” She pushes the card, which Badger is attempting to return, back into his paws. “But since it is his choice to invite you to the winter fair, all he requests is that you at least keep the invitation.” She winks. “Just in case.”
x
He doesn’t go.
But neither does the invitation, which stays tucked between the pages of a favourite book.
x
Badger wasn’t aware there were that many celebrations above-ground, and sometimes he wonders if Toad is simply making them up, just to have an excuse to send out another round of invitations.
“I mean, cheese-rolling?” he asks the rabbit. “Really?”
“It’s an, uh, old tradition.”
“We don’t have the hills for cheese-rolling.”
There, the rabbit pauses, while Badger tries to recall from his limited forays beyond the Wild Wood whether there are indeed any decent cheese-rolling hills in the vicinity. “Mr Toad will find a way,” the rabbit decides, and Badger supposes that is true, even if Toad has to build the hill himself.
x
He doesn’t see if he’s right.
But the invitation slips into his pocket, and he forgets to remove it.
x
He doesn’t argue with the delivery rabbit over the open garden invitation. Or the scarecrow competition. Or the hog roast.
“Must be racking up quite the collection, huh?” she asks as she hands over yet another bright-green invitation.
“What’s this one for?”
“Does it really matter?”
He suppose it doesn’t. It’s not like he’s going to go, regardless.
x
The next time the rabbit comes with an invitation, Badger sends her back with a present for Toad’s belated birthday.
She doesn’t comment, but he sees her eyes skitter over the mirror set into the wall behind him. In its frame is tucked the card which he had dismissed so thoroughly on her previous appearance.
To remind him to pass the present along, he had told himself, but he forgets to discard it after.
x
“It won’t work, you know,” Badger overhears Rat warn Toad once.
Badger lingers behind the doorway, a tray of rapidly-cooling tea in his paws.
He doesn’t remember if he actually invited the two animals over, or whether they simply turned up and he took it as read that he had, either intentionally or accidentally, offered for them to visit. Perhaps it’s better that way; if they waited for an invite in as many words, his home would have forgotten how to house guests by now.
“Of course it’ll work,” Toad scoffs.
“Just like all the other times?” Rat asks.
“I have a really good feeling about this one.”
There is a pause, the kind which Badger has come to recognise as Rat mulling over the best way to rein in his friend’s eccentricities. “Toad,” he begins slowly, “not everyone is quite the social butterfly you are.”
“And?”
“And, well, you know what badgers are like. They’re homebodies; they keep to themselves. I know you want him to come, but–”
“So I’m going to keep offering,” Toad says.
“And if he keeps refusing?”
“Look, Rat,” Toad says, and there’s something not quite patronising in his tone, but as if gently revealing a hometruth gone unnoticed, “it’s not about whehter or not he comes to the summer fete, it’s about giving him the choice.”
x
Badger misses the summer fete.
His friends drop by the following day regardless, and he accepts the gifts they bring from the fair (the jam and chutney he can make use of; he’s not so sure about the umbrella Toad won from the tombola) and patiently listens to their recounts of the day.
At the end of the evening, Badger remembers to lend Rat the book he’s been promising to for weeks, but forgets the bookmark within until a seasons-old card slips from its pages.
Rat doesn’t remark on it, but a week later Badger receives another invitation.
This one is not printed on expensive green card, but instead is a simple, handwritten affair. It smells of water and fresh vegetation, and bears Rat’s familiar legible-but-untidy scrawl.
x
Badger doesn’t attend the picnic, but the invite joins the rest, in odd places across his home.
It is the first of its kind, but not the last.
x
“This says Mr Badger’s Sett.” Badger looks over at his two best friends. “I’m not hosting a party.”
“But that’s the beauty of this!” Toad enthuses. “You don’t have to organise anything – I’ll take care of it all.”
“We will,” Rat amends.
“Has it perhaps occurred to you that I don’t want a party here?”
“Not even for your birthday?”
“Calling it a party might be overselling it,” Rat says, overriding whatever spiel Toad was about to embark on. “Seeing as there’ll only be three attendees.”
“Three?”
“Rat convinced me to scale down the celebration,” Toad says, with a good-natured eye-roll. “Something about you preferring a more low-key event.”
Badger looks over the beautifully-embossed card, as lovingly crafted as any of Toad’s other invitations, and begrudgingly grumbles. “Alright. But I’m ruling out charades.”
x
Somehow, after a good meal, possibly too many drinks, and a lot of laughter, charades happens anyway. He doesn’t even mind Toad’s disastrous attempt to convey War and Peace through plot alone, nor Rat’s hapless go at Sense and Sensibility, and as the evening draws in, something akin to coming home settles in him.
x
The invitation finds its way onto the mantelpiece and somehow never leaves.
x
A month passes, and Badger finds a familiar invitation being thrust into his paws. He reads the immaculate script, and turns the blindingly-green card between his claws.
“The winter fair again?” he asks.
The rabbit shrugs. “It turns out that winter’s kinda of an annual thing. I can take it back, if you want – I mean, I get it if you don’t want a duplicate–”
“I’m good, thanks.”
She smiles and tips her hat. “Always good to see you, Mr Badger.”
x
He isn’t sure what he’s doing until he’s out of his sett, coat and scarf wrapped tight, and moving through the Wild Wood. The invite hasn’t moved from his pocket, but that’s purely coincidental.
“You know what badgers are like,” Rat’s voice echoes in his mind, words from what feels like a lifetime ago.
He breaches the edge of the wood, where the weak winter sun is casting the river in pale light. There’s a crispness to the air along the bank he had forgotten.
“They're homebodies.”
There’s no need to ask for directions, for all he need do is follow the sound of people to bring him to Toad Hall. He stands in the shadow of the mansion, and abruptly feels the scale of the celebration, of the grounds, and of the guests.
“They keep to themselves.”
He tries to ignore the curious looks, but there is a sinking sensation in his gut that he has made a mistake. A craving for earthen tunnels and heavy underground air and home hits him and –
And then two very familiar animals find him – a toad and a water rat – that same feeling of returning settles him.
“What happened?” Rat asks later, once they have drawn Badger into the celebrations, and that instinct to flee has quietened. “I thought you told us you’d never leave home for something like this.”
“Never attend one of Toad’s blasted, overdone, overflowing parties when I can just as easily – easier, in fact – have just as good a time at home,” Toad quotes with a grin. “If I remember correctly.”
“And I stand by that,” Badger says. “But I realised one very important thing: you feel like home to me.”
x
Everyone knows badgers are solitary creatures, keeping to their homes and their own.
So apparently I have Quite A Few Thoughts on the previous generation of WitW (Toad Senior, Rat Senior, and Badger) (or the Dad Trio) so here’s some headcanons:
Toad Sr
The annoyingly charismatic one of the group, but such a genuinely nice animal that it was difficult to hold a grudge against him for that
He could spill soup in your lap and ten minutes later you’d be exchanging stories over a pint
Similarly annoyingly talented at almost everything, which meant his confidence in himself was often proven correct
“I decided to try my hand at water colour for the first time” *produces something that would appear in an art museum*
More alike to his son than either cared to admit, although Toad Sr was better at listening to his friends, and was aware that Rat Sr’s calmness and Badger’s practicality evened out his own hasty boldness.
(Did seeing his father continuously succeed with apparently no effort have an impact on Toad? I’m just saying, if the boot fits--)
Rat Sr
Toad Sr & Rat Sr were friends before Badger came onto the scene
In contrast to Rat, Rat Sr was much more laid back (typical Type B personality) which helped him go with the flow of Toad Sr’s antics
Less of a go-getter than Toad Sr, which was fine because Toad Sr initiated most things anyway, and Rat Sr mostly gently nudged the situation in less chaotic waters. Usually.
(And perhaps growing up watching the dynamic between his father and Toad’s impacted Rat’s assumption that he was expected to follow the same pattern with Toad, even though their personalities differed enough from their fathers to make the relationship untenable without outside assistance)
Badger
During Badger’s childhood, badgers were considered this weird mix of underground animal and Wild Wooder (living both beneath ground and in the wood) but neither society really associated with badgers and everyone was fine with that
Cue Toad Sr, in all his confidence, seeing this huge mammal and just being, ah yes this is friend-shaped, and basically kidnapping this introvert into his friendship group
Rat Sr wasn’t so sure, but he trusted Toad Sr’s judgement and came to appreciate having another level-headed animal in their group. (And another animal to side-eye when Toad Sr was being himself.)
So when both Rat Sr and Toad Sr passed away – when he lost the two friends who had been the first to welcome him – Badger naturally retreated back into his home
