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withthewerewolves · 1 year ago

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The "Make-Everything-Worse-and-Not-Let-Them-Talk-About-It-For-Even-Longer" AU

Because of who I am as a person, this AU was inevitable. (Sorry guys, I do only have the one kink and I gotta insert it into everything.) (Though to be fair, it turned out to be a much smaller part of the story than intended.)

So, a Nimona mpreg AU. Don’t worry about the how, it could be omegaverse, Ballister could be trans (probably this one), all the residents of the kingdom could be hermaphrodites and that’s perfectly normal, whatever floats your personal boat.

The important thing is, not long after losing his arm, Ballister realizes he’s pregnant. (As for the arm, I think this would be mostly movie-verse, but with some comic aspects mixed in. The whole thing with the sword and the Queen and Bal’s arm happened like in the movie.) He gets away, gets the bleeding stopped, recovers from the shock, etc, and starts making his prosthetic, maybe thinking about how to prove his innocence. But before he’s done, he starts having Symptoms. Ones that are Distinct enough from arm-chopping symptoms that he has to Think about them.

It doesn’t take him long to figure it out. He’s pretty smart, and has to be fairly familiar with biology to save himself from blood loss and build a robotic prosthetic. At first, he’s thinking mostly ’This is the worst time in my entire life for this to be happening’, but eventually his practical mind takes a break and his emotional mind gets to loudly trumpet a couple of facts.

A) The baby is his and Ambrosius’s. It’s something they’d talked about, sometimes, alone together in the dark of their bedroom, when a future seemed not just possible but assured. He remembers the way Ambrosius’s hand had trembled in his, the way his heart had wanted to burst with love and longing. Ambrosius may think he’s a murderer, may have cut off his arm, but Ballister will still love their child with every beat of his black heart.

And B) The Institute will not let him keep this baby. If he proves his innocence, if he goes back, the Director will send him straight to the medical center to terminate the pregnancy. It’s happened before. Knights are all on birth control as a matter of policy, and have to either retire or ask for a leave of absence before having a baby. It made sense to Ballister, back when it was explained. They were the shield between the kingdom and the darkness. No one could be out of commission unexpectedly. But some years ago, a knight had become pregnant, either on purpose or because of a failure in the birth control, and she had been offered a choice: end the pregnancy or end her career as a knight. If Ballister had thought about it, he would’ve said he’d make the same choice she did, that being a knight was his calling. But when this thought first occurs to him, while digging around the back of the cupboards for the naan bread he knows is in there, he has to sink to the floor and put his head between his knees.

That’s the moment his belief in the Institute suffers its first crack.

The second won’t come for a couple of years, when his beautiful healthy baby turns into a butterfly right before his eyes.

He definitely panics. His whole life for the last few years has been about Nimona and taking care of Nimona and keeping Nimona safe, and now she can shapeshift? That’s going to complicate so many things, upend an already delicate balance.

The Institute would kill her in a second, just for existing. Ambrosius might kill her without even thinking about it. Anyone in the kingdom might kill her, if they decide she’s a monster.

He does a couple of noninvasive tests, trying to figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t find anything conclusive, and the next time he sets Nimona on the worktable and pulls out a needle, she bursts into tears. She won’t let him comfort her until he puts the needle away. What am I even doing? he thinks. What does it matter why she can shift? She’s his daughter. He sets aside his experiments. But he doesn't give up.

He’s broken into the Institute before, for parts for his arm he couldn’t get anywhere else, but he doesn’t get caught until he breaks into the labs. He curses at himself the entire time he’s running away, he should have known the scientists don’t care about normal working hours. He fiddles with his prosthetic in the middle of the night all the time.

He goes back later, after the fuss has died down. He had to leave his apartment and his job, with his face all over the news, dredging up the mess of the knighting ceremony and restarting the hunt for his head. (How did he get an apartment and a job when he was the most notorious killer in the city, you ask? He shaved his facial hair and nobody recognized him. He accidentally ran into Todd in the street once and Todd was an asshole about it. And didn’t recognize him.) He doesn’t watch the interview with Ambrosius.

Ambrosius has grown out his hair.

This time, Ballister brings tranq shots, and leaves all the techs and guards slumped over on the floor while he rifles through their files.

He finds what he’s looking for. He finds a whole lot more than he was expecting. He sits in the darkened lab until the first guard starts to wake, thinking about what he found. He steals all the files, deleting them as he goes. He doesn’t tell anyone. He doesn’t tell you, either.

He never trusts another word the Director or the Institute says.

For a while, he helps Nimona learn to control her shifts. First to shift into what she wants (they break into a zoo after hours and she shifts into every single one of them. (Where does a giant enclosed city get zoo animals, you ask? Don’t worry about it, that’s where.) Bal hasn’t laughed that hard in a long time), then to suppress shifts if there’s anyone else around. Not shifting leaves her drained and sullen. He makes her practice all the time, even when it’s just the two of them in the little abandoned tower near the Wall they move into.

She’s maybe five or six when Ballister gives up on that. She shifts, and he scolds her. She throws a tantrum, and of course that involves more shifting. He checks that the blankets are still over the windows, that there’s no way anyone can see in.

“Nimona, honey, shifting is dangerous,” he pleads. They’ve been lucky so far, but she’s just a kid, and she’s bound to lose control someday, unless he locks her up in the tower all the time.

“But - I - have to!” she screams, little gorilla fists hitting the floor, then talons scrabbling at it.

“Sometimes there are things you can’t do,” he says, carefully not thinking about himself, “No matter how much you want to.”

“But - it - hurtsssss!” she shrieks out of the beak of some sort of large bird.

Ballister frowns. “It hurts?” he asks, “The shifting?”

Nimona must sense the change in his tone, because she’s a human again, her big eyes blurred with tears, her face still red with anger. “Not shifting,” she says on a sob.

A horrible little ball starts to grow in Ballister’s throat. “It hurts when you don’t shift?” he rasps out.

Nimona screws up her face, calmer now that he’s listening to her, but her breath still hitching. “It doesn’t hurt hurt,” she says. “It feels - bad. Not like scraping my knee, or the dreams. Not like eating pineapple. But bad.” (She has absolutely horrid nightmares. She screams until his desperate efforts finally wake her, and then she sobs herself back to sleep in his arms. He has his suspicions about where the dreams come from, and he’s working on a sleep drug that’s safe for her. She’s also allergic to pineapple, it makes her sick to her stomach. He doesn’t think about where he learned how to monitor allergies.)

Ballister sits on the ground next to her and opens his arms. She crawls into them and rests her head on his chest. He presses his face into her long red hair. The color had baffled him when she was born, nothing like any of the portraits at Ambrosius’s house or his memories of his parents. She turns into a snake and coils herself around his shoulders.

“Ok,” he says.

She hisses an inquisitive sound into his ear.

“Ok,” he says again. “Shift all you want inside the tower. If you need to shift somewhere else, tell me and I’ll help you get somewhere safe.”

The snake turns into a dog, wriggling in his arms and licking his face frantically.

“Alright, alright,” he laughs. “The rules about keeping our mouths to ourselves still apply.” To punctuate this point, he grabs her and presses loud kisses wherever he can reach. She turns into a squirrel and scampers out of his reach, laughing along.

He thinks, I’ll keep her safe, even if I have to tear down the whole kingdom to do it.

~O~

Ambrosius doesn’t know any of this. From his perspective, Bal killed the Queen and ran off after Ambrosius chopped off his arm. No one knows anything about him. Ambrosius tries to remind himself that no one had found a body either, but that comfort is colder and colder as the years wear on. He doesn’t know what to do, what to think. He’s basically a robot for weeks after the knighting ceremony. They don’t let him help with the search, and he doesn’t argue. He isn’t sure if he wants them to find Ballister or not, but they never do.

Then, years later, Ballister breaks into the Institute labs. The security cameras have a good picture of him, when Ambrosius manages to hack into them (he doesn’t want to see the look on the Director’s face if he asks to see the tape). Ballister looks older, more than just a few years should account for. He’s dressed in all black, with a cape swirling around him as he flees the scene of his crime. His hair is longer. His beard is gone. His face is set in furious concentration.

He’s alive.

And his right arm is made of wires and cables rather than flesh.

A reporter asks him about it, while he’s out on Institute business. He gets out something about how Ballister should come in so he can face justice, but he’s heard what the other knights are saying. Would there be justice, or a quiet murder after an ‘escape attempt’? He tries to tell himself that he and the Director could ensure a fair trial. All he really wants is to know why Bal did it. Was killing the Queen his plan all along? Was any of their friendship or courtship real?

Then Ballister breaks in again. This time he leaves a trail of unconscious scientists and knights in his wake. The Director confirms that he’s stolen some data, but no one knows how much, or to what purpose.

There are more break-ins, at Institute labs and storehouses across the kingdom. Sometimes Ballister takes data, sometimes medical supplies, sometimes lab supplies. There’s always destruction. People die. The Director tells him that the death of one of the scientists will set their defense research back ten years.

At first, the Director tries to keep him out of it, either out of respect for his prior relationship with Ballister, or not trusting him to do the right thing. Then Ballister robs a bank, and the people clamor for the descendant of Gloreth to protect them.

The first time he sees Ballister face to face, they’re locking swords while another lab burns behind them. Ballister wins. Ambrosius doesn’t know if he held back, but Ballister sure didn’t. Ambrosius has never seen Ballister that angry. Was this the face hiding behind Ballister’s earnest smile all along?

The next time they meet, Ballister is like stone, unstoppable, impenetrable, and cold. He barely speaks. He takes down every single knight the Institute sends, and only Ambrosius even slows him down.

Rinse, repeat.

Before Ambrosius knows it, it’s been fifteen years since he was knighted. It isn’t anything like he thought it would be. Everyone acts like his whole job is to be Ballister’s nemesis. He hardly ever gets to help people directly, like he used to. None of the other knights talk to him. The Director only calls him to her office to lecture him on his duties and how he’s failing at them. His skin care routine now involves covering the bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, and he keeps his hair long even though it’s against regulation because washing it is the only pleasant sensation in his life sometimes. All his happy memories are tainted by Ballister’s betrayal.

Then Ambrosius meets Ballister’s new sidekick.

The first time she shows up, Ballister clearly didn’t invite her. Ambrosius nearly catches them because Ballister is distracted by yelling at a pink-haired teenager in some sort of chainmail tunic.

It hurts, a little, because he’s clearly worried about her. He used to worry about Ambrosius like that, when Ambrosius fought the other trainees who were cruel to Ballister.

Then the kid turns into a dragon.

Is this who Ballister would rather care about? Rather spend his time with? This is the life he chose over Ambrosius?

The destruction is worse than usual. Civilians are too close. A little kid nearly gets crushed, but she picks up a sword and fends the dragon off all by herself. Ambrosius feels another stab of fury for Ballister. The Queen wanted to accept more common children into the Institute, but because of his actions, that little girl will never have the chance to become a knight.

The Director calls Ambrosius to her office, and for the first time in years, she doesn’t yell at him. She takes him down into the Institute archives, where the really old scrolls are. She shows him a picture of the dragon, the same dragon, fighting Gloreth. While he’s wrestling with the idea of a thousand year old monster, she sends the rest of the guards away, and tells him something else.

“The files about it must have been among the first he destroyed,” the Director says, her voice hard. “He didn’t want us to know what he had taken. If I hadn’t been read into the project, we might have no idea what we’re up against.”

“Ballister took the monster…from the Institute?” Ambrosius asks. His mind has gone fuzzy.

“It doesn’t die,” the Director says, taking him by the shoulders and shaking lightly. He can’t remember the last time someone touched him. “When she realized she couldn’t kill it, Gloreth sealed it away. We’ve been trying to destroy it for a thousand years, and Blackheart has Let. It. Out.”

If Ambrosius could remember feeling warm, he might go cold. “But…if he’s had it all these years, why hasn’t he used it against us before now?” Maybe Ballister doesn’t know what it is. Maybe it had pretended to be that teenaged girl it had first appeared to be. You saw it shapeshift, he thinks, You saw Ballister see it shapeshift. Did he look surprised to you?

The Director shakes her head. “We couldn’t destroy it, but we could keep it small. He’s probably been biding his time all these years, waiting for it to grow up enough to be really dangerous.”

Something about that sentence seems off to Ambrosius, but before he can think about it too much, the Director catches his eyes and holds them. “It is imperative for the safety of the kingdom that we contain the monster. It cannot be allowed to hurt anyone else.”

Ambrosius has never tried to talk to Ballister directly before. He’s played that first fight over and over again in his mind. Ballister had frozen, at first. So had Ambrosius, if he’s honest with himself. He’d wanted to beg Ballister to come back, to promise that they could fix it. He must not have phrased it well. Ballister had been so angry, and eventually Ambrosius had given up on words. But this time is different, he tells himself. Ballister must see that this is bigger than petty theft and vandalism. He didn't want the monster there. Maybe he knows it's dangerous. Maybe he regrets taking it. Maybe he needs help getting rid of it.

He's still skulking around the outer ring looking for black capes (being a full time nemesis leaves a lot of time for skulking), when the call comes in. He's only too glad to abandon his original idea for the more elegant plan of waiting until all the other knights are moaning on the floor or evacuating the burning manufactory and he and Ballister have locked swords to lean in and hiss "Nachos?"

Ballister looks at him like he's lost his mind. Then his monster crashes through the manufactory roof with a hunk of machinery in her claws, Ballister disarms (Ambrosius mentally winces, but he's used to it by now) him in three easy moves. There's a cascading crash as the monster (presumably) drops her prize. When the debris settles, both of them are gone.

Ambrosius goes to the Antlered Serpent as soon as he's done debriefing with the Director. She's furious. The scientists have been working around the clock to produce something to stop the monster, and yet the knights, especially Ambrosius, failed to so much as slow it down. She tells Ambrosius that if he can’t recapture it cleanly he’ll have to start the containment process in the field. She describes enough of the process that he promises to catch it next time just so he can get out of her office before he vomits. He knows it’s a monster, but what if it tries to look like a person again? Can he do that to someone? (Can he even do it to a monster?)

He has to talk to Ballister.

He sits in the Antlered Serpent all night, trying desperately to stay awake. He drinks coffee until he’s shaking. He doesn’t order any nachos. Thousands of possible conversations swim through his thoughts, but none of the opening words are right. The sun starts to rise. He thinks maybe he would wait forever rather than go back to the Institute, but the owner kicks him out when they close.

What’s he supposed to do now?

Only his knight training stops him from falling over when an arm snakes out of an alley and drags him in as he passes. He twists, slamming the assailant against the alley wall, but they dart out of his hold. His sword is drawn before he recognizes the facial hair peeking out of the shadow of the cloak’s hood.

“Ballister?”

Ballister’s expression doesn’t change, but he nods to a set of shabby folding chairs set next to a dumpster. There’s a take out container on one of them. “I didn’t want this conversation to be overheard,” he says, voice hard.

Ambrosius hesitates for a moment, but it’s too late to back out. It’s been too late for a very long time. The sound of his sword sliding back into its scabbard scares a flock of birds off a nearby roof. He sits in the empty chair, his armor sounding like destruction in the silence of the early morning. Ballister huffs, just like he used to do when Todd said something annoying, and hands Ambrosius the take out container. While Ballister is settling into the other chair (no less noisily, Ambrosius thinks smugly), he opens it.

“Nachos?” he asks, a little incredulous.

“Don’t worry, there’s no olives,” Ballister sneers, “It’s not poisoned either.”

Ambrosius is pretty sure that if Ballister was going to kill him, he’d have done it years ago. His stomach chooses that moment to remember that he’s had nothing but coffee all day. He eats a nacho. It tastes like better times. He flips the lid closed again.

“It’s about your sidekick,” he says.

“My daughter. I thought it might be,” Ballister says. His jaw is clenched tight.

“Your what?” Ambrosius asks, thrown.

“My daughter,” Ballister says. His eyes narrow. Ambrosius has a flash of how Ballister’s eyes used to look, wide and gentle and kind. He wonders if the warmth in them was only ever in his head. “If you can’t call her that, we have nothing to talk about.”

Before Ballister can get up, Ambrosius says, “Your daughter then. Ballister.” He has to stop. The single nacho feels like worms in his stomach. Ballister’s daughter. Gloreth. That thing made Ballister see it as his daughter?

Ballister doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t leave either.

Once Ambrosius has pulled himself together, he manages, “They want me to kill her.”

“You tried to kill her today,” Ballister says, voice cold. “Is killing children what heroes do these days?”

Maybe if he’d slept sometime in the last 36 hours he could have stopped himself. Maybe if he hadn’t just sat through the Director explaining in exquisite detail what heroes are expected to do to monsters, he could have stayed silent. Maybe if Ballister wasn’t sitting here looking both like a stranger and like the man he’d once thought he’d see across the breakfast table every morning, he could have kept his words in the back of his throat where they belong.

But all those things are true. So he says, “How would you know? You never even tried to be a hero.”

He half expects Ballister to fly off the handle, but instead Ballister pins him with that icy stare, mouth tight. There are wrinkles around it that weren’t there 15 years ago. He wonders if they’re smile lines or frown lines.

“The Institute was never going to let me be a hero,” he says, as if it’s a fact of life. As if it was carved into the stone of the Wall. As if he’s raged about it, cried about it, examined it from every angle, and finally accepted it. Fire is hot, water is wet, there are monsters at the gates, and Ballister was never going to be allowed to be a hero.

It makes Ambrosius want to punch him. Who had accepted him into the Institute in the first place? Who had spent hours lecturing him on noble social etiquette even when he continued to make mistakes? Who had excitedly selected his second favorite sword to gift to the new trainee? “You can’t blame the Institute for how your life turned out! You made the choice to kill the Queen!”

Ballister is on his feet so quickly the chair falls backward with a crash. “You really believe that? After everything, after all this time, you really think I killed the Queen?”

Ambrosius stands too, the nachos scattering at his feet. His exhausted brain is sharpening with adrenaline, but everything seems to be moving a little too fast, as if his eyes are on a half second delay and his mind is trying to compensate. “I was standing right next to you Bal, I saw you kill her.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ballister snarls. “And if I recall correctly, you weren’t standing right next to me. I very distinctly remember a sword’s length of distance, specifically, between your hand and my arm.”

Ballister has never said anything about his arm. In all this time, all those meetings over flashing blades, he’s never thrown this at Ambrosius. Maybe he knew it would land true. Maybe all those fights were Ballister playing with his food.

Ambrosius can’t stop himself. He looks at Ballister’s metal arm. He can’t look away from it. It’s oddly beautiful, with the pre-dawn light glinting off of it. Each finger is individually articulated, all the joints perfect and sanded smooth, at odds with the scuffed and scratched metal of the forearm. He wants to examine every inch of it. He wants to smash it to pieces. He wants to have never touched anything sharper than a butter knife.

“I’m so…sorry.” He doesn’t mean to say that either. His mouth and his eyes have both betrayed him. Well, they’re in good company. “For your arm.”

He doesn’t realize Ballister is moving until his back hits the other side of the alley. Dimly, he registers that he should be afraid. Ballister was always the better fighter, but Ambrosius was no slouch, he could defend himself. But with his current state of distraction and sleep deprivation, he doesn’t stand a chance. The fear never comes.

Ballister is pressed against him, closer than he’s been in more than a decade. Their armor clinks softly where it rubs together. His face is so close that Ambrosius can make out every wrinkle, every gray hair. It hurts like a kick to the gut that he didn’t get to see them grow in. Time stops for just a second, just long enough for something in Ambrosius, something he’d thought long since starved to death, to wake up and roar its desperation. It’s all he can do not to reach out and pull Ballister closer.

Ballister wouldn’t be receptive. He’s lost his icy calm, the way he hasn’t since that first fight. With his face twisted in fury, he somehow looks younger, just the way Ambrosius remembers him.

“I don’t care about the arm!” he yells. It seems to echo between them, no place for the sound to escape to. “After all this time, that’s all you have to say? That you’re sorry about my arm?”

“I am sorry!” Ambrosius yells back. He doesn’t mean to be yelling, they’re close enough that he could whisper, but the words come out at a yell anyway. “I hurt you, and I did it without even thinking! You! It shouldn’t matter what you’d done! I thought I’d killed you!” He’s going to cry. He hasn’t cried in years, and he’s going to break that streak in front of this man. Well. Better Ballister than anyone else, he supposes.

Ballister makes a sound, like a roar of rage stifled by a sob. “You should have known me,” he says, quieter but raw, like it hurts his throat on the way out. “You should have known I wouldn’t do something like that.”

Ambrosius barely processes the words, because Bal (and it is Bal now) slumps forward and buries his face in Ambroius’s shoulder, and Ambrosius’s arms come up on instinct (oh how he wishes he didn’t have instincts) to wrap around him, draw him as close as he can get.

His lungs are too tight. It’s been so long since anyone touched him, and it’s Bal, his best friend, the man he loves (still, he has never been able to deny in the privacy of his own mind that he loves him still), the person he has missed like a limb. Maybe they both left a part of themselves on that arena floor.

Bal’s hair is as soft as ever when Ambrosius curls into him. The gray glints in the weak sunlight like silver threads. Bal’s breath puffs warm, wet, and ragged against his throat. Somehow the flesh hand ended up wrapped tight around his upper arm, the metal one tangled in his hair. He thinks he might explode. All this time he’s been a keg of blasting powder, and he hadn’t even known Bal is a match.

Then the words trickle in. “Ballister,” he says, slowly enough to let the thought finish forming. “Are you saying you didn’t kill the Queen?”

Bal goes completely still. Then he slowly withdraws his hand from Ambrosius’s hair, so careful not to snag any of the strands. He pulls back. His eyes are red but the fury has drained out of him. He looks as tired as Ambrosius feels, worn down to the bones.

“No, Ambrosius. I didn’t.”

It’s been so long since anyone has used his first name, he’d nearly forgotten what it sounded like. Ballister was always the only one who did. He used to love the way it sounded on Bal’s tongue, the way his accent hugged the last syllable. It doesn’t sound like it used to, but it hurts all the same. Not as much as everything else, though.

Early on, he’d doubted. It hadn’t made any sense. Ballister loved the Queen, maybe not quite like a mother or quite like a goddess, but something like the two combined. Or he’d seemed to. He’d seemed excited to be a knight, open and affectionate to Ambrosius, kind to the street kids who sometimes came up to him on patrol. A years-long plot of deceit and infiltration culminating in assassination didn’t seem his style. And yet, the Queen was dead. His image of Ballister could never fit what he’d done, but he’d seen him do it. Therefore, it was his image that was incorrect.

Wasn’t it?

But he’d never managed to come up with a motive.

Ballister holds his gaze, but his eyes are full of resignation. He doesn’t expect Ambrosius to believe him.

Does Ambrosius believe him?

It would be insane to take the word of a man who has spent the last fifteen years terrorizing the populace, defying the Institute, and trampling the peace and order and safety that the Institute provides. It would be insane to take the word of a man he hasn’t spoken to in a decade and a half. It would be insane to take the word of a villain.

But Gloreth help him, Ambrosius does believe him.

His legs abruptly decide not to hold his weight, and he slides down the wall to sit on the ground. “But - why?” It’s not the question he wants to ask. He doesn’t know what question he wants to ask. Gloreth, if he accepts this as true, what does it push out of alignment? What parts of his worldview does he have to sacrifice to make room for Ballister being innocent? (If he’s innocent then Ambrosius cut off his arm for nothing.)

“I don’t know why,” Ballister says. He hasn’t moved, and probably Ambrosius should feel vulnerable crouching at his feet. If it were anyone else, probably he would.

“You don’t know why?” Ambrosius snaps. “It’s been fifteen years, and you didn’t investigate?”

He doesn’t look away from the patch of concrete between Ballister’s boots, but he can hear the frown in his voice. “Of course I investigated. I know who, and I know how. But she didn’t exactly leave records of her thought process.”

That snaps him out of it. The back of his head bounces off the wall, but the pain is nothing to the need to see Ballister’s face. “You have records? Proof? You could clear your name?”

He’s seen Ballister frown plenty in the last fifteen years. Some were furious, some were intent, some spoke to a kind of focus that Ambrosius had to forget about until after Ballsiter had inevitably won the duel and Ambrosius was alone in his dorm. This frown isn’t what he’s used to seeing. It looks confused, unsure, lost like Ballister had been when he’d first started training.

“What use would that be?”

“Bal,” he coughs, the name sticking in his throat. He’s been saying it a lot, enjoying how it feels in his mouth, even if it hurts on the way up his throat. “Ballister. If we can prove your innocence, you can come back. Be a knight again, a hero.” Be with me, he doesn’t say.

Ballister takes a long, slow breath. It whistles through his nose. He always did get sinus problems in the spring, Ambrosius thinks wildly. Ballister blows the breath out through his mouth, just as slow. Then he says, “I should have known this conversation was a mistake.”

Ambrosius flinches like he’s been slapped. “What?” His legs are a little steadier now, so he pushes himself to his feet. Ballister steps back, putting distance between them.

“I will never go back to the Institute,” he says.

Ambrosius waits a minute for him to go on, but he doesn’t. “Why not?” It seems like a reasonable question. Bal had been happy training to be a knight, hadn’t he? He’d been the best of all of them. The last fifteen years have certainly proven that.

Ballister scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t know if I have the energy to take you through it all,” he says, and his voice sounds like he honestly is just tired, rather than trying to keep secrets.

“Can you…give me the quick version?” Gloreth, anything. This has made no sense since the moment that sword turned green, and Ambrosius hadn’t even known how much he needed to understand until it had his chest in a vice.

Ballister’s laugh sounds strangled, not at all like the restrained chuckle he used to have. Ambrosius thinks he might like it, under other circumstances. “I’m not sure there is a quick version.” But he rights his folding chair and sits down, motioning to the other one. Ambrosius takes it. “Might as well start with the proof,” he says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. Ambrosius’s armor doesn’t let him access his pockets. He’s a little jealous.

When Ballister passes over the device with a video queued, he has to stop himself from grabbing it like a starving person might grab bread. Instead he takes it carefully and presses play.

“Where did you get this?” he asks quietly when it’s over. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. He’s feeling a lot of things, or nothing. All the emotions are crowding together and preventing any from getting through, like commuters boarding the subway.

“From the squire,” Ballister says, taking the phone back. “I needed to know what had happened, even if I already knew it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Why wouldn’t it change anything?” It’s hard to get the words out. He’s feeling things now. He’s feeling that Ballister could have come back to him right at the start and he’d chosen not to.

Ballister looks at him for a long time, or at least it feels like it. A thousand years, maybe. Or fifteen. Then he seems to come to a decision, breathes deep again, and says, “Because I already knew I was pregnant.”

The words don’t make sense, like a bad translation from another language, and then they slot into place. “You were - you -” It’s hard to get his head between his knees with the armor on, but he manages. The roaring in his ears doesn’t stop, but the edges of his vision start to fade back in.

“Yeah,” Ballister says, “That’s how I took it, too.”

“What happened?” he chokes out. He wishes he could take the words back. He really doesn’t want to know. He can’t bear not knowing.

Ballister shrugs. “You tried to kill her.”

A wave of horror swamps him, like a thunderstorm rolling over the Wall. He gags on the single nacho, on having hurt his family again. Why does he keep doing that? He shouldn’t be allowed to have family. If he keeps this up, he won’t.

"She’s our daughter?" Oh, this is going to come back to haunt him. If he has nightmares about killing their kid before he even met her, will they replace some of the old nightmares about cutting off Ballister’s arm? Or will it be cumulative?

Ballister makes a noise, but Ambrosius can't look up to see what his face is doing. The nachos are spread out beneath his feet like disposable toy soldiers. There aren't any olives.

“She’s my daughter,” he says, firmly. “Genetics be damned.”

Is that worse? To discover he has a child, fifteen years too late to be of any use to anyone, and then be immediately denied any claim on her? By the man he still loves, the man he had wanted to raise children with back when he saw the world with rose-tinted glasses rather than bleak fluorescent clarity?

He knows this isn’t really a defense, but he says it anyway. “If I contributed half her DNA-” Oh Gloreth, if he contributed half her DNA then she’s a descendant of Gloreth too. Is that why Bal never told anyone about her? He could almost forgive that.

But no, Ballister immediately shakes his head. “You didn’t.”

Ambrosius shoots him an incredulous glance over one arm. “Come on, I know you didn’t cheat on me.”

Ballister makes a noise again, this one more like a strangled laugh. There was a time when Ambrosius had known all Bal's noises, when they were as familiar and comforting as birdsong outside his window. He wants to hoard them, catalog every single one, compare them to the old sounds. He keeps his head between his knees. “You can believe regicide but not that I’d cheat on you?”

“Well, did you?” Ambrosius hasn’t. Not for all these years, even though their relationship was clearly over and his parents have given up on him contributing to the bloodline the usual way and started talking about surrogates. Probably they’ll want to raise their hypothetical grandchild, since he’ll be too busy losing sword fights with Ballister.

There’s a pause. “No,” Ballister says, sullen. Then, “She doesn’t have any of my DNA either. That doesn’t make me any less her father.”

Ambrosius isn’t going to argue that, but he does say, “Where did she come from, then?” Parts of his conversation with the Director creep back into his thoughts. She’d said the Institute had her. Oh no, what if some action of Ambrosius’s (the searches? He could have pretended to search the city and led the knights in the wrong direction but he hadn’t. But how was he to know which direction was wrong?) had caused Ballister to lose the baby and then he’d snuck back into the Institute for something (to talk to Ambrosius?) and found baby Nimona there and in his grief, decided to raise her as his own?

No, that’s a soap opera. Also, why would the Institute have a baby sitting around?

Ballister sighs, long and noisy. “I thought she was ours, biologically I mean. She didn’t look like either of us, but what do I care about the chances of someone who looks like me and someone who looks like you producing a red haired, light skinned baby? She’s my daughter, and I was too busy trying not to get caught while keeping her fed and dry to worry much about her looks.” He pulls in another long, noisy breath. Ambrosius thinks he could sit up, but maybe this conversation is better had without eye contact.

“Then, she started shifting.” There’s a rough sound, like Ballister is rubbing his flesh hand through his facial hair. “I knew what the Institute, what you, would think about her, the life she’d have to lead to stay safe, to keep her secret. I’d have done anything to spare her that. But she is who she is, and I wouldn’t change her.” His voice is laced with fondness. It’s as familiar as the ache in his muscles after a hard day training, and the pain of it feels good in the same way. He’s glad Ballister hasn’t been alone. “I don’t know why I was so sure the Institute would have information on people like her. I’d never been allowed in the labs. But if they did know anything, that’s where it would be. So I broke in-”

“I saw the security tape,” Ambrosius blurts out.

Silence. Then, “Oh?”

“From the first break in,” Ambrosius clarifies. “You looked-” his voice cracks. He coughs. “I didn’t know, before that, that you had survived.” He used to have the most vivid waking nightmares, about Ballister’s corpse rotting in some back alley or forgotten basement, unidentifiable except for the missing right arm bones. He’d been afraid both that his love did give them some psychic connection and those visions were because Ballister was dead, and that they didn’t and he’d grow old and die without ever knowing. His mother taught him some grounding exercises, and he’d stopped letting the visions take over. Ballister was alive. He had to be. And then he saw the security tape. Ballister was alive! But he was as lost to Ambrosius as he ever had been.

He wants to demand to know why Bal never tried to talk to him back then, but he knows the answer. Would he have believed him? He’d never stopped believing, deep down in the very bottom of his heart, that Bal wouldn’t do something like that, but that was exactly why he could never give it any weight. It had been made very clear to him that he couldn’t trust his own judgment. If he was asked to choose between the love of his life, who he may have never known at all, and the life that was still shiny around the edges, what would he have done? He doesn’t know, so he stays quiet.

Ballister is quiet for long enough that he thinks about raising his head to look, then says, “You didn’t kill me,” in the quiet, low, rumbling voice that he always thought no one ever heard but him. Maybe he uses it with Nimona.

With a cough, Ballister says, “We’re getting off topic.”

“I see what you mean about there not being a quick version,” Ambrosius says. His neck hurts, so he sits up. The roaring in his ears doesn’t come back, but one look at Ballister is too much for his heart. He looks resolutely at the wall across the alley.

“This is the important part, probably,” Ballister says.

“You did find her in the Institute, didn’t you?” He remembers the Director telling him just the day before that Ballister had stolen the shapeshi - Nimona - from the Institute. That doesn’t fit what Ballister is telling him. Who does he believe? He forces himself to be skeptical. This whole mess happened because he’d blindly believed too many people, and gone into a tailspin when they conflicted.

“Yeah,” Ballister says, biting off the words like he could crush them between his molars. He sighs. “It turns out they had a lot of information on her.”

Did the files talk about what you had to do (what they did) to contain someone like Nimona? Was Ballister forced to read about the uncaring, impersonal torture of his infant daughter? Ambrosius doesn’t let himself think about it. He sort of understands why Ballister might blow up a lab or two after that.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ambrosius sees Ballister working his jaw to contain his anger, just like he had when Todd and the others went after him and he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. His voice is low and defeated when he says, “I don’t know why the Director did it. This can’t have been her plan. Maybe she hadn’t come up with the sword idea yet. Maybe they needed an expendable test subject. Maybe she thought the pregnancy would kill me. They’d done it before with that result. Maybe she intended to use Nimona for some purpose and she switched my sword so I’d be in a convenient dungeon. Maybe the scientists acted alone. Probably I’ll never know. It isn’t important in the long run.”

Isn’t important? How could Ballister look at the event that changed his life, stripped his hopes and dreams away, left him alone and injured and pregnant and on the run, that took him from Ambrosius, and say it isn’t important?

Ballister huffs a little laugh, just like he used to, nearly silent so no one but Ambrosius could hear. “I guess I can confirm one of my suspicions. That medical exam a few weeks before the knighting ceremony. It wasn’t…weirdly invasive for the rest of you, was it?”

Ambrosius curls his hands, wishing the gloves weren’t there so he could dig his nails into the meat of his palms. He wants to hurt something, even if it’s only himself. “No.”

Ballister nods grimly. “That’s when they did it, then.”

Why? Why would anyone do that? He never liked that he couldn’t come up with a motive for Ballister. Is there a motive for the Director in this turn of events?

“She’s been leaning pretty hard on you being a commoner and reaching above your station and putting us all in danger,” he says, slowly. Is that a motive? It’s absurd. She saw how hard Bal worked just like the rest of them. She knew how good he was. Would she really do any of this? Would Ballister do what she said he’d done? Ballister had proof for the sword being switched. Did he have proof for this too? “You deleted all the files about Nimona.”

“I stole them,” Ballister corrects. “And then I tracked down every scientist who had ever been a part of her project, and I killed them. I destroyed the labs, anywhere there might be evidence, anywhere they might try to hold her. I’ll keep doing it.”

So Ballister really had killed those scientists. Some of the deaths attributed to him couldn’t have been part of the original project, they were barely out of the Academy. Had they been collateral? Did they know something? Did Ballister care?

“Why are you telling me this?” It scrapes in his throat, catching on every day that Ballister hadn’t told him this. “What do you want me to do?”

For the first time in his retelling, Ballister catches his eyes and holds them. “Because you tried to kill her today.” His eyes slip away, never letting anything tether him to Ambrosius for long. “And I thought that if you knew, knew that she was just a kid, you might not kill her next time.” He looks up at the slowly lightening sky. Has this whole conversation fit in the space it takes the sun to clear the walls? It feels like this conversation has stretched forever, back to the beginning of time. Like this conversation has been happening in the background for their entire lives, just waiting for this alley, these rusted chairs, this dawn. “Stupid of me, I suppose.”

“Of course I’m not going to kill her!” Ambrosius bursts out. “I’ve been clinging to hope all night that you might have some way for me to not have to kill her!” He has, hasn’t he. That’s what this whole thing with the nachos was about. He knew he couldn’t do it and he wanted an excuse. But there isn’t an excuse, not really. It’s the same question he’s been asking for fifteen fucking years.

What will he choose; Ballister, with all the moral uncertainty and broken trust that comes with him? Or his duty, and all the moral uncertainty and broken trust that comes with the Institute? He’d thought, once, that he could have both. Now he knows for sure that he can’t, that they’re opposing chess players and he can only wear one color. A knight can only have one king.

If he chooses his duty, this legacy that will crush him under its weight, he’ll have to admit that he’s a coward.

If he chooses Ballister, the man he loves, the teenager he never got to raise, he’ll have to admit that he made the wrong choice fifteen years ago.

Ambrosius Goldenloin is a lot of things, but he isn’t a coward, and he isn’t afraid to admit to his mistakes.

He asks, again, “What do you want me to do?”

#nimona #nimona fic #goldenheart #cw mpreg #cw discussion of abortion #it started out as just rambling and then turned into a proper fic halfway through #my writing

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wishing-stones · 2 years ago

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Oh I saw a question about the boys handling kids of some sort of relatives of Ren or a stranger, but what are their thoughts on having kids? Or it Ren ever gets pregnant? (Assuming both parties are alright with it and Ren can produce a child?)

This is a great hypothetical, and I get to talk about human x monster (and monster x monster) reproduction here too!

Popping this under a readmore for potentially sensitive content, PLEASE read the tags before reading more.

So, generally, in order to make a new life, monsters have to make a new soul, which takes expenditure of soul magic. This oftentimes has to be done consciously, but may be more subconscious if they're in heat or caught up in their feelings.

Still, it takes two, so accidental pregnancies are incredibly rare, and indicate that both parties were thinking about it enough to want it to happen anyway.

This applies to human partners as well-- a human partner must also want that to happen, and with human souls and the magic surrounding them, it's a little more difficult and requires a bit more of a conscious effort.

Since monsters are born from magic, either parent can carry them. Monsters are born from soul magic, so they are carried in the soul until their body begins to form, at which point they are born. Soul gestation takes roughly the same time as human gestation takes, but it does vary from species to species.

With a human involved, a physical body must form. It's easiest for a partner with female reproductive parts to be able to carry the baby, but it can be that their monster partner could also carry the new life. The process is largely the same-- the soul is gestated within the carrying parent's own soul, but it matures a little faster, eventually migrating to where the body is forming, and merging with it. From that point, the pregnancy carries on as a fairly normal one. There are still risks and complications that can happen to the carrying parent, but most pregnancies and births are aided by magic and go fairly smoothly.

Human x monster unions create mages every single time. Mages are generally human in appearance but may bear some monstrous traits-- ears, a tail, scales, different eyes or teeth-- or even none at all. Mages are born with an innate ability to use magic, but the kinds of magic they can use largely depend on the monster parent, and the mage offspring's soul type. A soul of patience might find magic revolving around cold and ice more readily available, while a soul of justice might find ease in commanding electricity. They also might find utilizing the type of magic their monster parent has at their beck and call fairly easy-- so most of the boys' offspring would be able to use blue magic, and potentially have access to bone bullets, or blasters when they are much, much older.

Having covered all of that, let's get into the boys' thoughts on the matter.

Since we've covered that Ren is AFAB, they could carry if they wanted to. If they didn't, one of the boys could, and I'll cover those opinions as well.

Killer would like to have a kid of his own eventually. He doesn't think he's in a place right now to be able to have one, or that he'd make a very good father, anyway. It's kind of a pipe dream for him-- he wants one, but... he's not really fit to be a parent. He's more than happy to be "Uncle Killer," though. Killer would rather not carry, but could be convinced. He'd ham it the fuck up, though, so that's a bit of a double-edged sword. Dust similarly thinks he'd be an unfit parent. He's really unstable, dangerous, and unpredictable, even to those close to him. He'd love a kid someday, but he doesn't feel like that day will ever come. He doesn't much care for kids, but he's great with babies. Especially newborns. But despite that, Dust would not carry under any circumstance. He's too dangerous and unstable to bear that responsibility. Axe wants a big family. Several kids, and if Paps ever finds someone to settle with, several nieces and nephews. Since he's a little more stable nowadays and isn't struggling so hard, he'd probably be the one to entertain the thought the most. He's a lot anxious that he'd accidentally hurt such a fragile life, but he's unbelievably gentle with babies. Also the most prone to baby naps. He'd be worried about his magic getting wonky, but he'd absolutely carry if he needed to. Cross is hesitant to have a kid right now, but he does want to be a father, if for no other reason than to be better than his. He also wants to be a dad because he wants to, but... those feelings are a little harder for him to wrestle with. More than one kid, eventually, but not right now. He's... got a lot to contend with at the moment. Cross would rather not carry, but he'd step up if he had to. Baggs is difficult to answer this for. He's not in a spot where he'd be comfortable with a child right now. Too much going on, too many other responsibilities he'd have to bear. Perhaps one day, he'd make a fantastic father. Right now... he can't. And he won't. He also won't carry. He'd be too worried about stress effecting the soul, and that would stress him out even more. Plus, he isn't sure his magical system and body could handle the diversion of energy it would take-- he runs on fumes as it is. Nightmare would love children. More than two, if he could swing it. He wants to be able to raise a child better than he and his brother were raised. It's almost a form of redemption for him, but despite his tendency to project, he'd be amazing as a dad. Still... at the moment, he's not prepared for them. He'd like a little more secure stability, and to make sure any and all threats to his get would be eliminated before they're even conceived. Ren feels... conflicted. A pregnancy would slow them down for a while, and we all know how they feel about being benched or not useful by this point. Maybe later. They might get a little anxious about carrying the child, but would more than likely tough it out like they always do when faced with a challenge. They aren't too sure about being a parent, either, but... with the boys, it would be raising the kid as a unit, so it isn't just on them and whoever the other parent is.

Additionally, since the boys would carry the baby in an ecto body, when it's time for them to be born, the ecto would just... vanish, and poof! Baby. Carrying might have various unpleasant effects, but the birth, at least, is a complete non-issue.

(This might not be something that's popular with a lot of people, but I've sat on this headcanon for a long while. The entire mpreg aspect is completely not there for the sake of being there, it's part of the relationship and responsibility of bringing a new life into the multiverse. It's just something that's there and an option.)

#k answers #k headcanons #feat. r&r crew #feat. renata/reader #cw spicy content?#cw mentions of mpreg?#like it's really not the crux of the discussion it's just part of the answer #cw pregnancy #readmore for ridiculous length #I got entirely too carried away but hey #It was good for a headcanon dump #kind of falls into dead dove territory I think #click readmore at your own disgression

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