Work Text:
Once upon a time, Juste Belmont was a justice-oriented, magic-wielding, vampire-slaying badass who possessed well founded delusions of grandeur. He had a loyal friend, a beautiful wife, and a really cool whip.
Nowadays, he’s an old fuck who lives alone in the woods, pisses in the lake, and is under no illusion about his god-awful place in this forsaken world.
Funny, how that happens.
Juste would blame the Belmont family name, but honestly, that could only go so far.
He had given the whip to his daughter when she left for America, so set on fighting the eternal war and leaving him behind. Juste almost thought to follow her, but his magic has gotten so weak since Lydia and Maxim were killed. Or maybe that was just an excuse to distance himself further from a daughter who already hated him.
He hates all this introspection bullshit, but it’s not like he has anything else to do with his time. Well, besides fending off the occasional vampire attack because he’s still a danger-attracting Belmont. True retirement is a joke to their lineage; all of them fight until death finally steals them back.
He didn’t even know Julia died until a little boy knocked on his door, claiming to be his grandson.
He didn’t even know she had a son.
What a joke.
The boy is a little slip of a thing, trembling and weary. Juste knows it’s not a trick because of the Vampire Killer wrapped tightly in the boy’s hand, looking just as it did when Juste last wielded it.
He also looks exactly like Julia, from the brown hair to the blue eyes to the soft face. Juste knew what happened to Julia before the boy stuttered his explanation.
Juste leans against the doorframe. It’s cruel to leave the boy outside in the rain, but his daughter has been dead for weeks and he just found out now. Was she even buried?
“Mom told me to find you,” the boy sniffles. The sopping wet kitten look should be pulling at Juste’s heartstrings, but he can’t feel anything but all-encompassing misery. “You’re supposed to help me.”
Juste sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Fuck. “You can stay here for the night. I’ll figure out what to do with you in the morning.”
The kid scuttles in without another word, already sneezing from the rain. Juste throws his only blanket around him, and the boy settles into a corner near the fire. Juste imagines he would hide out of sight if he could, but the one-room cabin doesn’t exactly allow a lot of space to move.
Juste strokes his beard, then gets out paper and ink. Tera would be a better choice for the kid. He was never meant to be a father, time has proven that.
…
The boy is sick.
Juste tuts under his breath as he checks his temperature for the fifth time that morning. The sniffles from the night before have turned into rasping coughs, and the heat radiating from his forehead is worryingly high. Juste only left the shack to give his letter to the carrier before rushing back in.
Juste hasn’t slept a wink all night, his memories circling around Julia and Lydia and Maxim and Julia in a never-ending dizzying amalgamation, but he’d be damned if the boy dies on his watch.
He bundles him in all the sheets he has, places a cool wet cloth on his head, and heats up the meager amount of medicinal herbs he has. He’s forgotten how delicate children are. He despises the reminder.
The kid is barely conscious for the next three days, and when he is, he’s calling out for Julia, even when it’s Juste leaning over him and soaking the cloth. Tera should have received the letter by now, so soon he will be out of his hands.
His hand cards through the boy’s sweat-soaked hair anyway whenever he whimpers in pain. No one’s around to see it, which is his only saving grace.
A knock. About time.
Juste clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. Tera will rip him a new one for doing this, but it’s what’s best for Julia’s boy.
He opens the door.
…and looks down.
A young girl is standing at his doorstep, pink dress and blonde hair and not even coming up to his waist. She smiles up at him like a blooming flower. “Hi!”
No. Juste immediately shuts the door on her, but she sticks her arm through the gap, and Juste isn’t so much a bastard that he’d slam it on her. He reluctantly opens the door again and pretends it never happened with grace and dignity.
The girl puts her hands on her hips, and Juste gets the distinct feeling that he’s getting judged. Horribly, it reminds him of Julia.
“You better not do that again, Mr. Be-lu-mont,” she says, carefully (and wrongly) pronouncing his name. “I’ll tell my mama you were mean to me.”
“What,” says Juste. Then he takes a closer look at her. “Wait—Maria?”
And it’s definitely Maria; she’s always been a little clone of her mother, even if he hasn’t seen her since she was a mere baby.
“Where’s your mother?” Juste asks, already fearing the answer.
Maria takes a deep breath, then says, “Well, mama left to go fight some evil vampire lady and she said she will be gone for a very long time and that I have to go live with my papa now. But it turned out my papa is a bad church man and mean and also he smells bad so I ran away. And then I saw the letter from you and I followed the address here so you are now my papa.”
She leans closer to smell him, then nods like she made the right decision. What a deceptively angelic smile.
Juste considers his options: slam the door shut; drag her back to her father; hunt down Tera; scream into the void; get drunk; or, man the fuck up.
He drags a hand down his face. “God hates me.”
…
If Juste’s cabin was crowded before, the addition of Maria makes the place a veritable zoo to reside in.
“Stop bothering him,” Juste scolds her, feeling all the more closer to chucking the remnants of his sanity to the wind.
Maria pouts, sliding off the cot his grandson is still confined in. Of course, she could only get a few steps away, considering the abysmally small size of the cabin. The boy coughs weakly in his sleep. Maria had collected as many flowers as she could and arranged them around his body, in order to “make him better.”
Maria’s gotten attached to the boy fairly quickly, even though he’s still too sick to speak to her. It’s all Juste can do to keep the children separated, lest she catch his illness as well.
Juste had made an attempt at communicating with the so-called mean church man (an Abbot, apparently), but the letter was snatched out of his hand by a nightmarishly-bright squawking bird. It scratched him ferociously when he tried to grab it back.
And that’s how he learned Maria had magic. Of quite a different nature than regular Speaker magic, to boot.
It took three more magic animal attacks before Juste gave up on writing any more letters to anyone forever (his hands hurt).
He certainly can’t leave them alone to go find Tera, either. So he’s stuck with them for the foreseeable future. While Tera gets to run off and fight vampires, he’s trapped with babysitting duty. How karmic.
“What’s his name,” Maria asks, eating the last of his bread like the hungry little shit she is. She’s what, six? Where is all that food going?
“I don’t know,” Juste admits.
“You’re a bad papa.” She’s already migrated back towards the boy’s side. His grandson curls into her, and she clumsily pats his head.
This is going to be a mess and a half.