Chapter Text
~ Snapshots of Gideon's Happy Childhood ~
Upon arriving home after her first day of kindergarten, Gideon turned to John and said, "Dad! Dad! I need a new butt!"
"Huh?"
"This one has a crack in it!"
The child grinned, proud of having told her very first joke.
It was really a terrible pun and John could not bring himself to even fake a laugh, so instead he put on a very serious expression and replied, "Then we need to go to the butt store."
"The butt store?" Gideon repeated, nonplussed, having never heard of such a thing.
"To buy you a new butt."
The child, predicatably, cracked up laughing at that.
And from then on going to the butt store became an often-repeated family joke.
Normally John was the one who picked little Gideon up from kindergarten, although sometimes it would be Pyrrha or big Gideon or, on very rare occasions, Augustine. Most days, Mercymorn didn't get home from work until dinner time, so little Gideon was understandably excited to see her stepmother waiting for her in front of the school.
"MERCY!" the child yelled, running toward her at full speed.
Mercymorn, who was used to being greeted in such a way by the child, dropped to her knees and opened out her arms to catch little Gideon.
At school the next day, Gideon was cornered and interrogated by Harrowhark (the tiniest and meanest of her classmates, who was almost a full year younger than Gideon. Unbeknownst to Harrow, who considered her interactions with Gideon to be bullying, Gideon thought of Harrow as one of her friends. Maybe even her best friend.)
"Who was the woman that picked you up yesterday?" Harrow asked.
"One of my moms," Gideon replied. She figured Harrow had never seen Mercymorn before, and might not even know that Pyrrha wasn't Gideon's only mother.
Harrow was not satisfied with that answer, however, and proceeded with a follow-up question: "Why do you call her 'Mercy'?"
"That's her name."
Apparently Harrow found this upsetting, for her little face scrunched into a peeved expression as she said, "Why would you call her by her name? You should call her 'Mom' or 'Mama' or 'Mother', not by her name."
"But that's what I've always called her since I was a baby," Gideon protested. Not to mention that she basically had seventeen parents, and the titles of Mom, Mama, and Mother were already allotted to people other than Mercy.
So Gideon had to think of something else to call her. Several months passed before Gideon had the opportunity to show off the results of her critical thinking skills in front of Harrow.
"Evil Stepmother!" Gideon yelled as she threw herself into Mercymorn's arms.
"You're a horrible child," Mercy said as she picked her up.
Little Gideon snuggled closer to her and said, "You love me."
"Dad, help! There's a monster under my bed!"
Upon hearing this, John thought that was an odd thing for his teenage child to be upset about in the middle of the afternoon, but he went to her room to look for the monster anyway, as one does when one's beloved offspring yells for help.
As he knelt to look under the bed, Gideon told him, "It rolled all the way to the back, like right up against the wall."
John sighed as he annihilated an entire civilization of dust bunnies with his arm in order to retrieve his daughter's lost can of energy drink.
From the moment her sixteenth birthday passed, Gideon started pestering her father to take her to get her learner's permit so she could learn to drive. John made sad faces and whined about how annoying it was to stand in long lines at the DMV until Mercy finally snapped, "I'll take her, you big baby!!"
She had to take a day off of work to do it, which Gideon felt kind of guilty about, since their household was supported solely by Mercy's income.
Once they were at the DMV, Gideon discovered that her dad had not been exaggerating about how boring it was. After she filled out the form she was given (with Mercy's help, because that shit was confusing), there wasn't really anything to do except wait impatiently for her turn.
Gideon was so bored that she ended up reading the information off her birth certificate just for something to do.
"Hey, wait," Gideon said, upon noticing a certain detail. "This says that you're my mom."
"Your birth certificate was re-issued after I adopted you," Mercy told her. "Your biological mother didn't want anything to do with you after finding out your father wasn't who she thought he was." (Gideon wasn't shocked by this part of the story, which she'd heard before. Her bio mom had thought big Gideon was her child's father, which was why she'd been named after him.) "She wanted to terminate her parental rights so she wouldn't have to pay child support, which meant your father had to marry someone and have the step-parent adopt you."
Which made sense, except...
"I thought you guys didn't get married until I was like four? I'm definitely way older than an infant in the wedding pictures."
Mercy sighed.
"We didn't have a wedding the first time. We just filed the paperwork. I know you don't remember this, but we actually got divorced when you were two. I moved out, everyone was miserable, and we ended up getting back together pretty quickly after that, but we didn't get married again until right before you started pre-school."
Gideon wanted to ask for more details, but they were at the front of the line now and at that moment a DMV employee called out "Next!" and Gideon had to go up to the counter and tell them she was here to get her learner's permit.
After taking the written test and being issued with her temporary license, the weird details of her family history were relegated to the back of Gideon's mind. Her main thought at the moment was Yay, now I can drive cars.
Of course, she immediately asked, "Can I drive on the way home?"
"Absolutely not," Mercy replied. "Your father is charge of driving lessons, not me. And if he tries to weasel out of it, Cyrus and Ulysses have both volunteered to teach you."
~oOo~