Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

No ordinary bug would trust their kid's safety to the Embodiment of the Vacuum of Space, or Oil, or the Deep Sea, or whatever people were calling them nowadays. And for ordinary bugs, that was probably wise. But for creatures like these, the Shade Lord was the only being powerful enough to babysit them. And despite the fact that they'd taken this form about a hundred years ago to get away from life as a deity and live life as a normal bug, Shamans and Moss Prophets and Watchers and Seers all somehow managed to end up finding them and dumping newly-formed Higher Beings on them for twenty Geo an hour.

(They probably could have asked for more, except that they couldn't really be heard by anyone except other Higher Beings. Besides, they didn't really need Geo for food or anything, even if it was still useful for acquiring Light and Knowledge.)

There were the "twins" (although they looked nothing alike), Radi and Grimm, typically under the care of the Seer of the Moth tribe. She said they were the embodiment of Dreams and Nightmares, the Gold side and Red side of Essence, whatever that meant. The first time Shade had seen them, they had been in awe at Radi's adorable fluff, and completely unprepared for the chaos the duo could cause. Grimm could fly already, for one, and could breathe fire. And Radi seemed sweet enough at first, but she would break things purely out of spite, and seemed insistent on trying to eat any fabric she could find.

There was Root, the little plant girl who always wanted to play pretend. At least she wasn't as chaotic as some of the others, but after playing "princesses" or "tea party" for the thousandth time, Shade wished she could be a little more creative. And she was stubborn. At least the others showed some understanding that Shade Lord was an authority. Root seemed to simply think of them as a tool for reaching things that she couldn't. And she always thought she was right, even more so than usual for little kids.

The Pale Wyrm, or Wyrm for short, was usually cared for by The Watcher, head of the Church of Knowledge in the Pale City. He claimed the Wyrm was a little beacon of knowledge and invention. To Shade though, the creature looked more like a glowing earthworm with a big mouth- both literally and figuratively. He kept trying to dig holes through any surface he was placed on, and when placed on something as soft as a couch, succeeded. And he asked questions incessantly, often questions that even the Memories From The Depths of The Abyss couldn't answer without making a note to look it up later.

Unn was the most well-behaved of the five. She was quiet, and never threw tantrums. Sure, she tended to put things in her mouth that weren't supposed to be there, and liked to play in the mud, but that was almost ridiculously easy to deal with, compared to the others. And besides, she never minded washing up afterwards, seeming to like the water just as much as the mud.

Shade had babysat all these kids before, on multiple occasions. What they had never done, though, was babysit them all at the same time. That was about to change.

The Moss Prophet arrived first, to drop off Unn. Shade had hoped to have a relaxing day reading, and maybe go to the shops and splurge on some more lumafly lanterns to consume, and was a little disappointed that their time would be otherwise taken up. But it wasn't too much trouble, Unn was a good kid.

Then the Watcher showed up, bringing with him both Wyrm and Root. Apparently, he and the Root's previous caretaker had agreed that the Church, and specifically its gardens, would be the best place for her to live. Greenpath had been considered, but the Moss Prophet had denied that offer, worrying that she wouldn't get along well with Unn. Shade wondered what would happen if the Watcher found out that Unn was already here. It was probably a good thing they couldn't be heard by mortals, otherwise they'd have mentioned it purely out of curiosity. Well, three was... manageable. Unn was fine by herself usually, and Root must have gotten along well enough with Wyrm, and Shade knew all their individual quirks. It would be alright. Definitely.

Then the Seer showed up to drop off the twins. She rambled at Shade in her usual grandmotherly way, but they hardly took in her words, mind racing as they tried to adjust for dealing with five kids, one of whom was a tree and likely very flammable, and another who could breathe fire. On top of that, Shade only knew for sure two combinations that got along, one of which they also knew got along solely to cause trouble.

The Shade Lord did not swear. They were the Void. As far as they were concerned, there was nothing more powerful to swear by. (And there were children present.) If not for these facts, they would have said some truly unpleasant things about the current situation. As it stood, they did nothing but take a breath, and take the kids inside.

Wyrm and Radi both immediately gravitated towards the building blocks, which Shade figured took care of a few problems. For one, they figured it answered the question of whether the two would get along. For another, it meant that Radi and Grimm wouldn't immediately team up to cause trouble as they usually did.

This left Grimm, Unn, and Root. Root was occupied for a couple minutes rambling at Shade about Wyrm and how he was "so shiny!" and how she wanted to be just as shiny someday, and how he never wanted to come to her tea parties, which she thought was unfair. Then she noticed Grimm and Unn, and ran right over to talk their ears off as well. (Metaphorically, at least. Unn didn't have ears.) Shade knew how this would go from personal experience. First she'd ask if they wanted to come to her Princess Tea Party, and then she'd pull them over to the coffee table regardless of their answer. Except Grimm could fly out of Root's reach, and he did, declaring that Princess Tea Party sounded boring.

"What about Epic Princess Battle?" He asked, swooping around the ceiling. "With vampires!"

"No! That's not a good game!" Root declared. "It doesn't make sense!"

"It does too!" Grimm insisted. "Princesses live in castles. Vampires live in castles." It sounded like he was going to say something more, but he stopped there and gave a surprisingly sassy mid-air shrug that clearly meant "Duh!"

"But it's a tea party!" Root was nearly shouting now. "In a garden! You're on my side, right Unn? Back me up here!" She wrapped her roots around the slug and pulled her forward. Unn said nothing, but her eyestalks shrunk in in a motion that undeniably meant she was scared.

Stop.

Shade stepped forwards and stood in-between Grimm and Root, just in case any fireballs went flying.

Set Unn down. She is scared.

"Unn's fine. She likes me. See?"

Shade sighed internally. They'd have to try a different tactic.

You have slime all over your roots.

"Eww!" Root instantly released Unn and ran to the kitchen to rinse the slime off her roots. Well, that was one problem solved. Now to make sure Unn was alright, and...

"THAT'S MINE!"

"No it isn't! Mine's better, anyways!"

Well, she looked alright. No physical damage, anyway. Shade figured they'd better deal with this argument quickly before it got worse. They gently set Unn on the couch before going over to deal with whatever Radi and Wyrm were fighting about.

Fighting why?

"HE STOLE MY BLOCKS!"

"I need them! For my castle!"

"I HAD A CASTLE FIRST!"

"Yeah? Well my castle's better! It's got loads of secret traps in! Yours couldn't do that!"

"YEAH? WELL YOURS CAN'T- YOURS CAN'T... NOT FALL!" Radi shouted, knocking over a tower of Wyrm's castle. Shade rushed into place just as Wyrm attempted to tackle Radi, picking them both up and holding them as far from each other as safely possible.

Do not fight. Do not yell. Share blocks.

"She was yelling more than me!" Wyrm insisted. "Put her in time-out!"

"HE STARTED IT! HIS FAULT!" Radi yelled, too close to Shade's ear. Time-out would be a fair punishment for Radi, they thought. But Wyrm was at fault here, too.

Time-out for both.

"What? Whyyyyyyyyyyy?"

"IT'S NOT FAIR!"

It is fair. Both fought. Both were mean. Both wait five minutes. Shade sent the two to opposite corners of the room to cool down. Maybe they should find a nice, calm group activity to do next. Story time, perhaps? That sounded like a good idea.

Perhaps they didn't even have to wait the full five minutes to start. It wasn't like the kids had any real concept of time, and the sooner they started, the better. Grimm looked like he was starting to get bored. And with Radi and Wyrm in time-out, they'd be easy targets should he decide to start up his favorite fireball game. Root, too. Although she was free to move around, she was a tree and therefore flammable. And Unn-

Where was Unn?

Shade looked towards the couch. Only a slightly damp spot on the cushion showed that Unn had ever been there. They glanced quickly around the room, hoping to see that she was right there and they'd overlooked her the first time. No such luck.

Wait. They didn't have to look by themself.

Hide-and-seek game. Unn hides. Find her. Do not scare her. Tell me where she is.

Right, there was another part that had to be said, wasn't there?

Ready. Set. Go.

The room burst into a flurry of motion, as Radi, Root, Wyrm and Grimm scrambled to search everywhere they could think of: under the couch, behind the couch, behind the island in the kitchen, behind the curtains, in the toybox. Meanwhile, Shade searched the areas the others could not, or weren't allowed into: their bedroom, the back hallway, the elevator. It was unlikely that Unn would be over there, but they had to check.

The farther rooms searched and deemed empty, Shade returned to the living room/kitchen area to continue the search the children had started. They were beginning to get really worried. What if she ended up outside somewhere? Sure, they'd let her play in the yard before, but that was with supervision! She moved slowly, but they weren't quite sure how slowly. Who knew where she could have gone?

"Found her!!" Grimm shouted.

Where? Shade asked urgently.

"There!" Grimm declared, circling around Shade's head. A moment later there was a strange sort of sucking sound, and Unn flopped onto Shade's head.

"She was on the ceiling!" Grimm explained. Shade just carefully removed the slug from their head and nodded. They were too relieved to register how strange it was that Unn could stick herself to the ceiling.

Researchers of Fog Canyon would tell anyone willing to listen that the Void was a potentially inexhaustible source of energy. The Void itself would attest to this theory being false. In fact, they could become completely exhausted in less than an hour, if left with five kids.

Sit down. All. Story time.

Chapter Text

Shade had lots of books in their house. Back when they were just the Void, the only thing they knew how to do was consume. Life, Soul, light, knowledge. Anything that made its way that far down. But consuming knowledge means learning, which means change. So they changed, and they got bored of being a sea that was worshipped in the dark. They wanted to see what Life was like firsthand.

As (something approximating) a normal bug, they continued learning. And they learned that bugs had invented a way to store knowledge that was almost as good as their own. And as a member of society (even if they didn't get out that much) they couldn't just consume other bugs to take their knowledge, which made books the next best option. Over the past hundred years, Shade had learned to love reading.

Fortunately, the children they were babysitting also liked being read to. Their tastes in stories differed, and sometimes Shade had to remind them not to interrupt, but over all it went better than the day had gone so far.

Shade knew all the kids' favorite stories from their time babysitting them individually, and had now picked out one book or part of a book to read for each of them. Root liked anything with magic and princesses, but especially if it was illustrated, so she could see the cursed red rose that caused all the trouble, or the Delicate Flower that saved the kingdom, or the assorted flowers and plants of the Forest that inevitably featured in the story. Wyrm would listen to anything as long as he had something to play with while listening, but strangely enough seemed to gravitate towards nonfiction and informational books, which the other children found boring. He kept interrupting Root's stories to explain that "that's not how magic works," even though his own understanding of magic was very limited as well.

Radi also seemed happy to listen to the fairy tales, curled up on Shade's lap, but they couldn't be sure if she was listening or just taking a nap. Generally, she seemed more inclined to just look at the pictures and make up her own story about what was happening, rather than actually listen. Grimm, likewise, preferred to make up his own stories, although they all tended towards the "spooky campfire story" genre. He always reached for books like "Murder at the Soul Sanctum" and "The Ghost of Crystal Peak," which Shade always gently but hurriedly removed from his claws. At least Grimm showed some interest in the more exciting parts of the stories the other kids chose, though.

Unn was the only one who didn't really seem to care about books. In fact, during story time, she was ironically the most troublesome of the five, as she kept trying to eat the pages.

The next time they had to babysit all five, Shade was prepared. The blocks were split into two groups, half painted white and half painted a golden yellow color, so that Wyrm and Radi (hopefully) wouldn't get into fights about which blocks belonged to who. (Of course, the blocks all technically belonged to Shade, but they figured it wouldn't help to point that out.) They had gone out to a grocery store for the first time in a while to buy some big salad leaves to keep Unn occupied during story time. They had checked out a couple new books from the library- historical books, so Wyrm wouldn't be able to complain about inaccuracy, but full of royalty and drama and adventure, so the others wouldn't get bored either. (Alright, maybe the text was small and dense, but if Shade ignored all the dates and details irrelevant to the main story, it should be fast-paced enough for them.)

They'd have to remember outdoor time, too. They usually let the kids have some outdoor time, but they hadn't gotten around to it last time, with all the chaos. That might've been part of the problem, actually, not giving them time to run around outside.

One last touch was added: a bottle of water on a nearby shelf, ready in case Grimm started throwing fireballs too close to Root. Shade was prepared this time.

(Mostly.)

The blocks trick worked, until Radi reasoned that if the gold blocks were hers, she could turn Wyrm's blocks into hers by coloring them gold. Fortunately, Shade managed to distract from this by announcing outdoor time, and sent them out to the backyard while they tried to clean the orange crayon off.

The crayon wouldn't come off. Maybe it was something about the paint Shade had used. They decided to just hide the defaced blocks for now, and went outside to make sure the kids weren't getting into trouble. As it turned out, for the most part, the kids were having a great time. Unn was quite content just sitting in a puddle, and Root was having a great time running around in the fresh air, as usual. The damp ground was soft enough for Wyrm to tunnel through, and there was plenty of room for Grimm to swoop around.

The only one that wasn't enjoying outdoor time was Radi. Understandable, really. She was the fluffiest creature Shade had ever seen, and fluff + mud was not a good combination. She didn't even have wings yet, which meant there was no avoiding the mud by flying over it. On other days, Shade would have carried her outside and placed her on a low tree branch or some shrubbery to climb around in, but they'd been too preoccupied with trying to clean the blocks so that Wyrm wouldn't notice and get mad. Now Radi was sitting in the lower branches of a bush at the side of the yard, with mud all over, getting splashed by even more mud whenever Wyrm came back up out of the ground, and on the verge of tears.

Hello. Shade peered at Radi through the branches.

"Hi." She sulked.

Want to be clean? No mud?

"No mud! I HATE mud."

I can get rid of the mud.

They reached around the branches and lifted Radi out of the shrubbery, carrying her into the house and to the kitchen sink. Oh, boy. They'd have to do this part carefully.

Radi didn't like baths. Or, rather, she didn't like being told when to have a bath. They couldn't make her get into the water, not without making things worse. So usually they just set her on the counter, filled the sink with warm, soapy water, and waited.

But this time, they didn't have time to wait. They had four others that they needed to watch. So, after thinking for a moment, they "accidentally" knocked a small crystal ornament into the sink. As they had hoped, Radi jumped into the water to grab the Shiny. The mud was soon washed off, and Shade could return to keeping an eye on all of them.

In Shade's absence, Unn had made her own little play-town by her mud-puddle, using stones as buildings, and sticks and leaves as people. Grimm was watching from above, hanging upside-down from a tree branch, as Root and Wyrm approached Unn's play area. Strange, Shade thought. Grimm didn't usually like games like that. He usually only paid attention if he thought it was going to be exciting, or-

Shade remembered how the last interaction between Root and Unn went.

Right.

Root. Wyrm. Shade pulled the two little invaders aside. Be careful with Unn's toys. You want to be friends. Right?

"Yes."
"No."

Shade gave Wyrm a look. You make castles. She makes people for castles. You could work together. Then they addressed Root and Wyrm together. Do not scare her. Show her that you can be friends.

The lecture over, Wyrm and Root both rushed over to the make-believe town by the mud puddle to offer their input, Wyrm asking questions about all the little characters almost too quickly to answer, and Root, surprisingly, waiting her turn to speak. Although, Shade noticed, Root had sneakily grabbed a few of the leafy dolls and repositioned them as if they were dancing. Unn hadn't noticed, being too occupied trying to answer Wyrm's questions. She didn't seem scared of him, either. Root, on the other hand, she still shied away from. Understandable.

Grimm spread his wings and flew from his perch in the tree to curl up on top of Shade's head. Shade took it as a sign that the drama they had feared would not be happening, and for now things would be alright.

Radi scribbled what was probably supposed to be a sunset onto the paper, with the sun peeking up from a wobbly black landscape into a yellow-orange-pink sky. Orange... circles with dots in them(?) floated in the top of the sky, and the sun had a little smug face.

Will you give that picture to Seer?  Shade asked.

"No."

Why not?

"Is for you."

Shade tried to wrap their mind around that for a moment. Nobody had made something for them, for free, before. Unless you counted the Void-worshippers, who they'd tried to get away from. Besides, those guys had made things about Shade Lord more than for them. A gift was something new. They thought they understood the concept, but it wasn't something they'd ever expected to receive.

Radi, having received no response, continued talking about her drawing. "This is you," she said, pointing to the black floor. "I stand on your head to reach COOKIES!"

Now that she'd explained it, Shade could see what she meant. The way the horizon curved up at the sides must be what their horns looked like from that close-up perspective. The half-circle sun was now clearly a self-portrait, and the circles in the sky were probably cookies.

It was adorable.

There were books on the floor, and the kids had made up a "Saying The Longest Word Contest". Shade was so proud, they'd come up with a mostly quiet, educational, and non-dangerous activity all by themselves! Not that they probably knew what half of the words meant. But Shade couldn't deny that they were adorable while saying them.

"Infrara- infra- Infa-structure!" Wyrm proudly declared, having picked up one of many miscellaneous textbooks Shade had collected.

"Semi-aquatic," Unn read, a hint of pride in her soft voice.

"Be-GO-nee-a," Root read from a list of flowers. "Wister- wis-terry-a? Azure Blue-et?" She stopped here, realizing something. "But it's not blue!"

"Exuberance,"  Radi whispered dramatically. She wasn't even trying to read any of the books, so she must have picked it up somewhere else.

"Why isn't it blue? It's got blue in the name!" Root continued. Fortunately for Shade, who didn't know the answer and wasn't quite sure what to do, this train of conversation was derailed by Grimm, pointing out that "Look! That one's called a Bleeding Heart!"

"Effervescent," Radi said in the background. She was definitely showing off. Wyrm had picked up on this too, and was scanning the books for another good word to use.

"Atmosphere!" he declared, and then looked disappointed when he realized it didn't have as many syllables as it looked like. (What was it about those two that made anything they did turn into a competition?)

"DEFENESTRATION!" Grimm shouted swooping over the heads of the other two.

What.

Where did you learn "defenestration"?

Grimm tapped on the book he had been reading, with a smug look that rivaled that of his sister. The Tower of Love?  Shade glanced to the top shelf, then back to the book on the floor. In hindsight, the top shelf was not the best place to hide a dark romance/murder mystery/thriller when the curious child that kept trying to read it could fly.

No. Not the book for you.

Shade took the book and put it back in its place on the top shelf. They'd have to rearrange before next time.

...They realized they were sort of looking forward to next time.