Chapter Text
The fact that Virgil only gulped and nodded when told he was the only person the mayor could find to house the baby... thing, was probably testament more to his numbed exposure to this new world rather than any good coping skills. Inside he was sort of screeching still, blinking at the thing in the corner of the room that was apparently now his to look after.
It was a baby hydra, the mayor said, though Virgil only counted two heads. It looked more like what he imagined a small dragon to be, with rounded snouts and scales, two tiny pairs of wings one under the other on its back. The two heads were similar but distinct, one with a white crest and one with a red, although the rest of the scales were a glittering deep silver that looked almost black in the dark and nearly white in the sunlight.
And admittedly it was pretty cute. Virgil needed to stop thinking of the hydra as it, actually, because according to the mayor this was a little male. They’d called it Caesar, for whatever reason, but it hadn’t responded once to the name.
When they arrived back at Virgil’s way-too-small apartment the kid ran off, sniffing through every room at great speed while Virgil tried to set up the spare room as a bedroom with all the stuff he’d been given. D.C. was asleep in his tank as Virgil murmured to him. “What on earth have I got myself into, huh pal,” he wondered.
And then he noticed the silence.
Whipping around he came face to face with two little human toddlers. They stared at him, and he stared back, all three frozen perfectly still. Could this be... but how?!
“Don’t be nervous, you can come closer,” he managed to murmur after a moment, slowly kneeling down on the floor and giving them both a smile.
When the first boy grinned back with sharp teeth and the other one’s fuzzy ears twitched under his hair Virgil realised that they weren’t actually human. And also that this was somehow Caesar, both heads separate and stood right in front of him, real as anything.
It didn’t take long to get used to Remus and Roman, in all honesty. They were just kids, and Virgil was surprised as anyone to find he had a knack for childcare. Rambunctious as they were, he adored them, and they seemed all too grateful (no really, there was clearly some trauma in their past there) to be in a happy, safe living situation. He was frequently attacked for cuddles, either by the both of them in their shared hydra form or in whatever supernatural being they’d decided to split into that day.
They were the first additions to his crazy family, but they certainly weren’t the last.