Work Text:
A woman and a baby crashed into Drearbruh. A woman died. A baby lived. A woman’s spirit was summoned back, a woman cried ‘Gideon, Gideon, Gideon,” and nothing else and so “Gideon” was what the baby was named. There were two hundred children in the Ninth House’s nursery. Gideon Nav was two hundred and first.
A lyctor pushed a woman out of an airlock but knowing her, understanding that woman, knew not to leave any loose ends. A lyctor arrived at Drearbruh with questions and left with more answers than he’d bargained for. The two hundred and first child of the Ninth House slept in her cot next to the air vents.
Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity had worried God and his Hands for a while now. And as the years went on, even his Hands worried him. He no longer held their loyalty like he once had. They still loved him, they’d love him for another myriad and a half, at least, but there was hatred too. But in this universe and timeline, he kept a closer eye on them than he had in other universes and timelines.
When Gideon the First killed Wake, God noticed as he went down to the Ninth House, down to the Locked Tomb. And he did something he had not done for years. Not for a myriad and then some, not since before the Resurrection. Not since two days before the apocalypse.
He composed an email.
Then he remembered how he had not resurrected emails (a wise and noble decision) and transferred it into letter form. And sent it to the Ninth House. He enquired about the dead woman and asked all usual and boring pleasantries about the house and so on and so forth.
And since he was the Kindly Prince of Death, Necrolord Prime, Emperor, et cetera, he received a beautifully composed reply a week later with answers to all his questions and a very particular report of a dead woman whose last words (post mortem) was the name of his oldest lyctor and a ‘unnaturally red-haired infant’ that ‘cried too much’.
John Gaius did not go to the Nine Houses. John Gaius had not been back to the Nine Houses in nearly ten thousand years. John Gaius sent Augustine the First to the Ninth House in his stead and hoped it would be enough. In a way it was, in another way it was too little and too late.
Augustine the First returned from the Ninth House with a slumbering infant and horror in his eyes that he wouldn’t speak about. John hoped he hadn’t gone to see the body but that was impossible anyway. The Ninth House had given up ‘Gideon Nav’ very easily and were reportedly preparing for the birth of the Reverend Child, now seven months away from being born. John hoped they would have a happy life but Drearbruh literally had ‘drear’ in the fucking name. He loved Pluto like anyone who’d been pissed off that it had been declassified as a planet but it was not particularly a happy place to be or to grow up.
The child that his saint had handed him looked up at him with eyes that he had once seen in his own reflection, and then in Alecto’s face later, and immediately started bawling her lungs out.
Mercymorn had heard the crying and immediately stormed off into the other direction, screaming about not wanting to deal with infants and instantly denying any kind of ‘babysitting’. She seemed tense these days.
Cytherea stared at her, smiling in her usual pained way. “Does she have a name?”
“They named her Gideon Nav,” John said. “But we already have a Gideon. It might get confusing.” He wasn’t sure why this child was important but she was. And she had his eyes. Somehow. Commander Wake had a child with his eyes and he could put two and two together but right now he was hoping for a number nine.
He needed to have a serious think about it.
Blood wards were breakable with a family member. This child looked like him - and like Wake - and Wake had taken her to the Ninth House. To where he had a very important blood ward set up.
His daughter grabbed his finger and began to suck on it, looking up accusingly when no milk came out. Hungry, then? He hadn’t been around children since he’d been one and that had been a long time ago. Long enough not to count for anything. Kids got hungry though right? That was an absolute basic but what did he know? He was only god.
Someone had wanted to kill his child to break into the tomb and… presumably kill him? Someone had gone to the effort of conceiving a child with his genetic code to do so as well. Wake had given birth to a human bomb, and meant to.
Gideon - he really had to rename her - gurgled in his arms. Poor baby. She had Wake’s hair, didn’t she? Well, it had to be because no-one in his family was ginger. Not up until now. It was just fluffy patches. His mum always had a word for baby hair… downy . Cute.
Back to the attempted theocidal plot. He hated this. Who knew? Who had known? His lyctors knew some of the security measures included but he’d been quite tight-lipped to all his saints, Anastasia excepted, regarding the exact parts of the matter. Wake knew. Who was she in contact with? Who did she know?
And how had they gotten his DNA? Which was a much classier way of saying who performed a jizz heist on him?
Time stretched out differently the older a person got. A month to a small child felt like forever. Two years wasn’t very long to someone in their eighties. Eighteen months was a weekend to a guy who’d been around for a myriad and then some.
Eighteen months ago he’d slept with Augustine and Mercymorn. And he’d been… less than careful.
Oh. Oh dear.
He’d forgive them. He always forgave. He was God and God was forgiveness, even if there was none for him and what he’d done.
They’d plotted to kill him by killing his child and unlocking the Tomb? They’d worked - presumably diligently - to conceive a child only to kill it because of its DNA.
That was… fucking evil, actually.
He was going to have to have a conversation with the pair of them. A very stern conversation about all this.
The baby gurgled. He was going to have to pick a name for her soon enough. Not a House name, she was his daughter, she would be associated with the First House of which there hadn’t been a new member in nearly a myriad. And no-one else had been born into it either.
She had his eyes. Apart from the hair, she looked more like him than she did Commander Wake, honestly. There was that soft jawline he remembered from his embarrassing baby photos with bananas mashed vaguely near his mouth or in the bath or all dressed up for a party with a bow tie. He wrinkled his nose at the memory. He still fucking despised bow ties.
He could go down his old route and pick a name from the Bible or Greek mythology or something. He could even name her after one of his Saints - although that might become confusing after a while. And besides, he was changing her name from Gideon already, it wouldn’t fit to name her Mercymorn Junior or something.
[Everyone hated that]
But he wanted to give her a te reo Māori name. She was his daughter; she should share his culture in some way.
Even if he had technically wiped out that culture.
He banished the thought. It was not productive to the subject at hand. The guilt could be rehashed later.
A name popped into his head. Kiriona. Like his stoic Saint of Duty. Like his culture. And also like his Biblical naming culture.
She squirmed, absolutely adorable, but also possibly needing a nappy change? He knew fuckall about children, still.
“Hi, Kiriona.” He murmured, trying to be as gentle as possible, “I’m your dad.”