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Til I find my hero’s welcome waiting in your arms
-”Go The Distance”, Hercules
In her over 1000 years of living, Nimona had learned that life had a funny way of being circular. If something happened once, chances were high that it would happen again. Days or weeks or months or years later.
A suspicious-eyed blonde with Gloreth’s blood running through their veins, pointing a sword at her? Check.
Adults, and worse, their kids, sputtering out “M-Monster?!” Yeah, that never changed, either.
But this time was going to be a good kind of cycle: Nimona would once again knock on the door of Ballister’s lair, poof inside while his gaze remained elsewhere, and greet him with a simple but sturdy “Hey, boss.”
Easy stuff. Tale as old as time, really.
So long as she remembered to hold it together.
There was no telling what Boss was going to do once he came face to face with her inside that lair. Would he cry? (She safely put money down that he would; Ballister had the gentlest heart she had ever known. For a guy with the surname of ‘Boldheart’, he wasn’t doing a very convincing job of selling it.)
Okay, so he was going to cry. That had been established. But what would he do after?
When the inevitable tears dried in those big stupid cat eyes and when the initial shock wore off on that dumb soothing mustached face… what would he do to her?
Would he yell at her?
Strike her for leaving?
Strike her for coming back?
There was also the possibility of him rejecting her entirely. She preferred to not think about that one.
Whichever way this situation was about to play out, there was only one way to find out.
“No time like the present,” she murmured to herself, finding herself now second-guessing this little reunion plan but too curious to pass up the opportunity. It’s not like she had much to lose. It’s not like she had everything to lose.
And so it was done.
With a knock and a poof and a two-word greeting, it was done. Now to brace herself for the inevitable fallout.
His immediate reaction was a spirited two-word greeting of his own.
Then, the waiting.
Although the familiar scents of stale pizza and some muskiness whose direct source she could never detect and… and home hit her nostrils, she forced herself to stay in place. Feet rooted to the floor, eyes wide but fixated on his face, hands not at all trembling as they lay in loose fists at her sides.
She did not move. She did not speak.
For a few harrowing seconds, neither did he.
Then many things happened at once.
Ballister sank to his knees, and his hands were everywhere at once: on his chest, over his eyes, pinching his cheeks, pinching his arms (did this really warrant a ‘pinch me, I must be dreaming’ moment, she wondered), swooping majestically out to the side, and finally… reaching for her.
He started to say her name, and why did he sound scared when he did? His voice broke on the ‘o’ in her name.
Before he could even reach her, he collapsed in a heap of sobs.
“I’m sorry!” he cried once, twice, over and over. “Oh Nimona. I’m so sorry.”
That was new, she noted. This was an unexplored part of the circular events that chronicled her life.
People didn’t usually say sorry.
And they never cried for her.
No one had ever cried over her.
Until this one, it seemed.
But wait. He had said sorry before. On the sword of Gloreth’s statue. That was one of her last memories with him: he pressed his metal hand against her monster heart and kept saying sorry.
Maybe this wasn’t the beginning of a brand new cycle, but rather a continuation of a cycle that Ballister had started for her.
Today marked the second time that this same man cried for her and apologized on her behalf and simply acknowledged his mistakes.
People didn’t usually take accountability for that. Not when it regarded her.
And really, why should she get so worked up over it? As previously established, Ballister Boldheart was only one of the countless people who had drawn their weapons at her as the word ‘monster’ started to fall from their lips.
He was one of many.
He was the only one who mattered.
This current-day Ballister kept sobbing something about relief that she was back, and something about a hope that she had returned for good, and such a very human statement of “You’re free to stay. Please stay.”
When he was able to speak more coherently, he looked at her with those massive wobbling cat eyes of his and confessed, “Don’t ever do that again.”
He did not yell it. He did not strike her before he said it. Or even after he said it.
He just… said it. Like someone with everything to lose.
A continuation of the cycle that he had started for her, indeed.
So his reaction shouldn’t have surprised her.
But her own did.
In another weird circular action, it was only when he began to calm down that she began to lose her grip.
Her lip trembled.
And before she could register what was happening or stop herself or perform any of those learned behaviors that those various cycles had taught her over the years…
… she was launching herself against his chest and wailing like a lost child.
Which, in a twisted way, she supposed she was.
“Oh. Oh dear.” Instantly Ballister drew his arms around her, nestling her closer and tucking his chin over her head. “Oh Nimona. Mona Mona Mona.”
It sounded like a prayer. It sounded like a welcome home.
How do you release 1000+ years of torment into the arms of one man?
You begin again.
She told herself she wasn’t going to cry. She had been prepared to treat this like any other reunion and subsequent parting.
But there she was, sobbing uncontrollably.
And there he was, letting her.
Holding her against his still-shaking chest, running his hands through her short hair, promising all of these things about home and staying right here I’m not going anywhere and how you must have been so frightened and you’re safe and I have you, lovey.
He held her through it all.
Even after the howls subsided into hiccups and sniffles.
At some point, he had carried her over to the couch and rested her against him.
“Deep breaths, kid. That’s it. Just like that,” he encouraged, though it was possible he was also rehearsing those instructions for himself.
She rubbed her eye with her palm. What an embarrassing display of weakness. She wasn’t supposed to be weak! That was a human thing. “Sorry.”
Ballister shook his head. “You haven’t done anything that’s wrong.”
Normally she would point to herself, all of herself, and say Really? Have you met me? All of me is wrong. Everything that I am is wrong.
But today she was too tired. Too hopeful.
Too happy.
So she gave him a small smile, burrowed closer, and replied. “I trust you.”
And she found that she meant it.
The look that Ballister gave her in turn could only be described as love. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Even if you’re not a people.”
That earned him a little giggle, and it felt good to giggle. The adrenaline began to wear off. If he hadn’t kicked her out after her crying fit, perhaps he wasn’t going to kick her out at all.
A tap to her nose pulled her out of those thoughts. “How did you…” he began. “That is, what made you…?”
“Still not a man of smooth words, Boss?” Still want me, Boss?
“Of course. You know me.” And yeah, that almost sounded like an answer to her real question.
She rested a hand on his knee. “You wanna try that again? How did I what?”
He rested his hand atop hers. “How did you… come back?”
Oh this sweet silly man, she chided internally, eyes burning once more. Sweet, silly, naive, well-meaning, a little clumsy. And a man who never stopped apologizing for who and what he held dear.
Another thing that she had learned from decades of immortality is that humans never changed.
She prayed that this one never would. (And she was not the praying type, so that plea had better be answered.)
“I told you the day we met,” she reminded him. “Rise like a phoenix from the ashes to overthrow the government.”
“You were serious.”
“Don’t I look serious?” She doubted that she looked serious, with her messy hair and bloodshot eyes whose current redness stemmed from more than their normal pink hue.
Ballister laughed. It was not a mean laugh. “You look like the world’s best sidekick who I missed terribly and is finally home to stay.”
She tensed up. “Stay?”
“If you want,” he amended, instantly and kindly. “This place could use a shapeshifter’s touch.”
Nimona did not even need to consider her answer. The answer had always been yes.
But she didn’t want to spruce up the place yet. (She would soon. This sorry excuse for an evil lair had been significantly un-evil-ified, and even if he wasn’t a villain anymore, he still wanted his best sidekick so she had to live up to that most grand and sacred of responsibilities.)
“I will,” she promised him, linking her pinky around his thumb in what could be considered a weird variation of pinky promise but in truth was a teenager simply wanting to remind herself that her favorite person was here and just maybe she was back where she belonged. “But I think I earned a few hours of being lazy.”
For right now, she wanted nothing more than to sit on this rickety couch and feel the pulse of his heart and the comforting guide of his hands.
So in one final circular act, she gave the line that she had first given him directly after the phoenix government line: “Can we just… talk?”
If she never got around to talking much that afternoon, and if he draped the green checkered blanket over her, and if the drum of his heart lulled her to sleep… no one else needed to know.