Chapter Text
In the endless nights on the Ninth, Gideon often had found herself day dreaming of what having a dad would be like. As she’d imagined a select skeleton being her mother, she’d imagined up a father. He’d be someone who was kind to her in a way so foreign, rich enough to provide for her and her mother, someone who’d play catch with her with a round enough rock. Maybe he was from some distant planet and they’d vacation there, somewhere with fish to catch like a long dead father would do with his kids in the comics she read. She didn’t have much reference for what a dad did, but it was almost better that way, of the men she’d met before Canaan house, she’d just assumed none of them could be like the idealized ones in the comics.
With this in mind, the news that not only was her dad alive but an unkillable god rightly threw her for a loop. The Emperor Undying, His Celestial Kindness, the Scourge of Death, her father. Not just father but dad. Fathering a child was easy, some men did it in their sleep, but “dadding” a child was a conscious effort and it seemed that the Emperor All-Giving was ready to make that effort. He’d given her her own chambers first, even before they’d gotten her body locked down, the moment he’d found out he had a daughter he’d gotten things in order for her to live with him in rooms more vast than any she’d ever seen. The more barren of the old lyctorial chambers were given to her but he made sure that she had the best workout equipment he could find, that the bed was outfitted with the softest linens he could get his hands on. Any father doing this on the ninth would be seen as trying almost embarrassingly hard but she couldn’t help but find it all somewhat endearing.
In the first few days after she’d gotten her body back, God seemed to keep his distance, not afraid of her as she was used to but rather treating her like a wounded animal he was trying to get to trust him. He’d said things to her in passing, wishing her a good morning, asking how she was liking her room and her new state of undeath, the like, but it was the better part of a month until he had clumsily knocked on her door with the corner of a tray baring tea and biscuits. She’d been lifting weights, looking out into the cosmos, thinking about Harrow against her better judgment when he knocked and didn’t even bother looking through the peephole, frankly expecting Ianthe. For a brief moment it seemed like her father was worried she’d turn him away, and in a blink of an eye he put back on the more assured affectation he seemed to think nobody could see through. “You’ve been in here the better part of the day, I don’t suppose you’d want to join your old man for afternoon tea,” he said, his voice cautiously hopeful as he looked into his daughter’s eyes, his own eyes reflected back at him. Gideon looked back at her room briefly in a state of mild disarray and stepped back, holding the door open for him. She wasn’t one for afternoon tea, but she felt like in this instance at least the tea was secondary on her father’s list of priorities.
“Yeah, okay, sure,” she said after a moment, watching her father as he entered her chambers, setting down the tray on a small table in front of the window, deftly stepping around strewn clothes and magazines in her room. She closed the door behind him and joined him by the window, tossing a spare coat from one of the chairs to the corner of her bed. She didn’t say anything to him for a bit, favoring watching him pour them each mugs of tea and gesturing to the cups for her to take her pick first. Not caring much about tea or if she got the first or second pour, Gideon just took the cup closer to her and took a swig, instantly regretting it as it burned the absolute hell out of her tongue. “God, that’s fucking scalding,” she exclaimed.
The Kindly King seemed to bite back a laugh at this, “Sorry. If it helps, the burn should heal itself up fast enough.” He was right as the itching burn on the roof of her mouth faded faster than any brainfreeze she’d ever had. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, I suppose I’ve been looking for an opening that wouldn’t come” he began, speaking again with the caution he had previously, the caution of a man who knew that what he was about to ask was going to be uncomfortable for at least one of them.
“I already know where babies come from if that’s what you’re nervous about. I know the stork didn’t make me out of space dust and leave me on a rock,” Gideon said in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. “You don’t need to give me any of those talks, I’m old enough to know all that.”
“Oh, Gideon, god no,” The Emperor of the Nine Houses said, as if he wasn’t God. “It was more about your name than anything. Do you like it?”
“I like it well enough. Kind of confusing for you to have two big players in your life named Gideon but,” she shrugged, reaching for one of the biscuits and gesturing with it, “What can you do, though?”
“There’s a good deal you can do,” God replied, dunking a biscuit into the hot tea in his own cup, watching as it turned darker from saturation before shoving the soggy cookie into his mouth in one swift motion. After he swallowed and spoke again, “Before the resurrection, before I was capital G “God” I always thought if I had a child I’d give them a damn good name. Something meaningful. But now I have a daughter and that daughter already has a name so I’m sort of at a loss,” he admitted.
“Did you have something specific in mind for a name for a daughter,” she asked, not sure exactly how else to respond to this, but it was one of the first times she’d had an adult man be anywhere near emotionally available to her and she was trying her hardest not to royally fuck it up.
“I had a handful, but then I met you and they were all out the window. None of them really suit you, not like Gideon does at least. I do have a suggestion though. Back when I was your age, a myriad and some change ago, my friends and I would jokingly give more English names versions in our own language. Margaret became Mākarena, Thomas became Tāmati, John became Hōne, just for jokes,” he stopped for a moment, pondering soggy crumbs that sunk to the bottom of his cup, a somewhat distant look in his eyes. “Part of me feels like renaming you would be stripping away all that came before our meeting in your life and I wouldn’t want to do that. In that language your name, Gideon, would be Kiriona.” Gideon repeated the name as if testing it out for herself. “What do you think of it? We could even change your last name if you’d like.”
“Oh god, the last name for sure, never liked that one. Would I be a Gaius then? John and Name-Pending Gaius,” she asked, braving another drink of tea now more comforted in the fact that the burns wouldn’t last hours like they would have before her untimely death.
“Depending on what you’d think of it. You should have the final say in your name.”
This was a sentiment that had never been afforded to her, she always just assumed a name was forced upon you and there was little you could do to change it. “I don’t love it, it feels too matchy-matchy, like I’m wearing a shirt that says “God’s favorite little princess” or something.”
“Maybe Gaia then? Gaius came from the masculine form of Gaia so maybe we could cut the middle man and call you Name-Pending Gaia,” he suggested, his face scrunching a little bit at the mention of the word princess in reference to his daughter. “That’s another thing I meant to ask you, Ianthe’s expressed discontent in being called a Princess, too. Maybe we can call the two of you Princes instead? I think it suits you both much better.”
“If I have to have a royal title, which I guess is a given seeing as I’m the daughter of God, I like Prince a lot better than Princess,” the newly appointed Prince of the Nine Houses agreed. “I like Prince Kiriona Gaia, feels a lot more important.”
“Prince Kiriona Gaia then. If you don’t tell Ianthe before dinner, I will. I’m sure she’ll want a rebrand of her own to go with whatever she’s decided she wants to be the saint of,” The God King said, sounding more like a father trying to make sure the children in his care both had everything fair than a God King at all. Kiriona could imagine it perfectly, telling Ianthe her new name to which Ianthe would insist she get a new name, too, insisting that it was only fair.
“Watch her call herself the Saint of Pizzazz or Dramatic Flair,” Kiriona said, her words coming out slightly more bitterly than she’d intended but making her father choke on tea as he laughed.
“It would be just like her. She does really have a knack for that sort of thing,” he agreed. Kiriona looked across the table at her father who was rubbing the tea from his chin with a cloth napkin he’d had the foresight to put on the tray with the tea and biscuits, struck by just how ordinary the Emperor of the Nine Houses was. Yeah, he was the most powerful man in the cosmos, but he still dribbled tea on himself after something had made him laugh. “If you ever want to join the ranks as a saint, all you have to do is let me know, by the way,” he added casually, watching as his daughter took a page from his book and dunked one of her biscuits in her tea in silent amusement.
Kiriona had no idea what it felt like to be a parent but she could imagine he was getting some sort of a kick out of watching her copy him like that. She hadn’t done it purposely; she just fully hadn’t known that was an option until this point. At the idea of sainthood though, she openly scoffed. “Nah, probably never. Not my thing. Prince I can handle, but Saint? Hard pass, old man.”
Being called Old Man seemed to amuse God, at least it didn’t offend him like it had other people Kiriona had called it. She’d never thought she’d have the chance to amuse God over tea and biscuits, never truly thought she’d even see him in the undying flesh, much less sit with him among her own personal mess. It was only after this conversation died down that Kiriona realized she didn’t know the first thing about building a relationship with her father, in the comics the relationships were already built so they didn’t need to work on any of that at all. “Sooo,” she ventured after too much silence for her comfort, “Did you want to be God when you were a kid?”
This time it was God’s turn to scoff, as if he found the idea of anyone wanting to be God ridiculous beyond measure, but still he dignified her question with an answer. “God no. Nobody in their right mind would want to be a god, much less God God,” he said with a laugh before adding a softer, “I wanted to be a firefighter. I wanted to help people.”