Chapter Text
Once she had left the cave, sometime before dawn - as she had gotten accustomed to for a fair amount of years now - she marches forward, looking for a nest from which to draw breakfast.
To keep herself occupied on the long walk, she thought viscerally about some new plan.
The previous one, to begin with, had failed miserably - but come on, it wasn't exactly her fault!
She had build everything based on her expectations on the boy - so, something similar to a rampant paladin, a bit like that doll of his father - but instead she had found him more disoriented and flaccid than a rancid cabbage.
To think that, years before, she had gotten a whole different impression.
It was also true, though, that much time had passed.
As she stumbled on a bunch of branches, she remembered it as if it was yesterday.
She had never been truly able to leave the past behind. To be honest, it's not like she wanted to.
But she knew that a lot of time would have been needed to let those old wounds heal, and make space for that will to come back.
In the meantime, as she left years go by, she didn't spare herself the occasions to peak from the window, disguised as the usual red robin.
They'd even built her a small bird house in the garden.
She liked to believe that her Boss suspected something.
The very first time they had met, he had been alive for something like a week,could only mumble nonsense and their discussion had been interrupted abruptly by that usual old bother of a blondie.
The second time, he was a bit bigger.
He was playing all alone, in the backyard, throwing his ball up in the air and catching it wherever it landed, dressed in his funeral-black overalls, with that bush he had glued on his head blowing in the wind.
She hadn't meant to stay that long, staring, but curiosity had gotten the best of her.
She heard his laughter in the distance, and it reminded her the one she had heard at her time, after a profitable heist, or a perfectly executed evil plan.
His where those lively eyes, as well as certain small gestures, and-
The ball landed right on her head, and she cursed, unlovely souds muffled by the leaves of the bushes.
Right after, she saw him running at full speed towards her, and she started sweating cold.
Crap. Think, Nimona, think.
She could have pretended to be a squirrel and call it a day.
When they inadvertently locked gazes, as he lowered to retrieve said ball, they were both children, about the same age.
Look, award-winning sidekicks get their moments of weakness too, ok?
(Besides - it wasn't a moment of weakness, it was an improvised evil plan).
The hazel eyes of her miniscule companion shone, then, of a small and peculiar light.
"Hello!"
"Hi..."
"What's your name?"
She could have risked it all. What could have it costed her? A triumph of warm hugs and hot chocolate would have probably followed.
But maybe it's not that kind of story, is it?
"Gregor"
"Such a beautiful name, I love it! Wanna play with me?"
She often thought about it - about "playing" all together. As partners in crime, old school villainy.
If this was the closest thing she was going to get...
"Yes. You like 'Guards and Robbers'?"
"Yes! Yes! Who's the Guard? Who's the Robber?"
They both played as robbers, in the end. They placed the infamous ball a the end of the path, in between two flowering branches picked from the ground, and named it "The Great Diamond of the Queen's Treasure"
("No, no, there isn't a King anymore. Now there's the Queen!"
"True, true...")
To be honest, the little rascal had some outlaw potential; even if he was way too mushy, like butter, for it to really develop into a profitable career.
Play parent was still fun, though...
"What's your name?"
She asked, hidden within brushwood, as they avoided imaginary lasers.
"My name? My name's Percival! Well, actually it's Percival Rowan - which was my grandpa's name, by the way, although unfortunately I've never met him. But you can call me Percy! Everyone does that, you know? Because, they say, it's cuter and quicker"
Welp. He surely talked a lot. And he also laughed tons.
Even at her heartbreaking performance, when an invisible laser had gotten through her chest.
Incompatible with stealth missions.
"What's your favourite colour?"
"...Pink..."
"That one's so pretty! I like black a lot, but that's not a real colour, you know? You see, black is actually-"
Nimona had never been particularly good at keeping up with long explanations.
And Percival- Percy apparently wasn't good at doing more than one thing at once, because as he turned to talk to her, he tripped over an emerging root and fell face first to the ground.
"Oh, fu- dge. A-Are you ok?"
He answered with a low grunt, then a whimper.
He sat then, and the scratch was pretty big.
Not terrible, obviously, no one would have needed to amputate anything - which, on second thought, would have made him even more identical to his dad - but it was noticeable.
Red, angry, dirty with mud, and, on top of that, a small pebble had gotten itself stuck somewhat deep in there.
"Aw man, it's pretty bad. Does it hurt much?"
Percy didn't say a thing, rather answered with yet another whimper. He kept his eyes firmly shut, and his small fists clunched on the ground.
"W-we need to go to your parents"
Though she really didn't want to. Well, she wanted to, actually. But not out of the blue like this. It would have been terrible. She couldn't even imagine what would have happened if Goldenloin saw her.
"Are they home? We need-"
"No,no,no it's alright!"
...
What?
"B-But your knee-!"
"It's ok, it doesn't hurt that much. There's a fountain over there, if you can wait a second I can go rinse it real quick..."
Alright, the kid was crazy.
She had witnessed 6-years-old shriek at the top of their lungs for far less.
"But your parents..."
Why are we insisting so much on his parents, Nimona?!
"No,no - it's best if we don't bother them for so little"
He started to play nervously with his hands.
"Besides, Papa..."
Uh...
Was someone mistreating the kiddo?
She bet it was Goldenloin, boy she would have popped his head off, she swore-
"Papa?..."
"Mh... it's just that Papa got hurt, real bad, a long time ago, although I don't know how..."
Oh, the pang that hit her in her stomach.
She knew very well how...
No. It wasn't the moment to be thinking about that.
"...And he still doesn't feel well, from time to time. Because, you see, he has a lot of weird injuries, and sometimes they act up.
For example, he woke up this morning feeling sore all over...A-And I don't want to bother him over a small scratch like this..."
Mh.
"A-And Dad too, for sure, is busy. He's probably taking care of him - they do that, you know? Because they love each other a looot.
Plus, he definitely has got some work to do, and that takes him a looot of time, so..."
Mh.
"I don't think you'll be able to scrap by with just a bunch of water"
"...I know where we keep bandaids, if you could come inside for a moment..."
"No"
That must have came out angrier than she anticipated, because he gave her a pretty concerned look.
"O-Ok..."
It had been a really bad fall. It was the last thing they needed.
No. She didn't feel like reflecting upon the kid's words right now.
...
Well, not more than necessary.
Not more than that pretty garden torn to pieces, the shelfs of that lab ending up all eaten up, covered in holes.
Because what the hell were those two doing-?!
"I think you'd rather patch yourself up. We can play some other time.
I have to go now, anyways..."
Yeah. Some other time.
"Mhhh, ok..."
"Ask your dads for help, though. I don't think you'd be bothering them at all..."
"No, really, don't worry about it, there's no need for that"
Ok, maybe the kitchen too needed some proper destruction.
"Alrigh,uh...see you next time, then!"
She waited to see him disappear behind that door, limpering, and right after that, she took off flying.
...
All of that was to say.
She imagined this knight to be indomitable and full of energy, contemptuous of danger.
Instead he was so... bland.
She had seen enraged peasant way more terrifying than him.
Mh. This demanded some investigation.
She cracked open an egg - her own, she felt generous today - to verify that it was nice and hard-boiled, and she put off the fire.
She cleared her throat.
"Wake up, sleepyhead, I made breakfast!"
"AH! Gloreth, fu-"
"Hey! Knights cannot use such vile language!"