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Nimona doesn’t belong here.
It’s that simple, really.
She’s been gone for a long time. Like… a long time. Long enough that…
…she came back to a whole new world.
Apparently, it’s been five years. Five whole years. And somehow, everything’s different.
Her boss is married to Nemesis. Ambrosius. They have a kid now that they named Naomi, and she’s, like, three. They have an apartment and jobs and a whole life, and the world is better-
-and now Nimona is here.
And she doesn’t belong here.
When she came back, she thought it had been, like, a week. And so she didn’t question it as Ballister dragged her away from their hideout that she thought had been broken down because of the beam laser thingie, but then bam, there’s a toddler that keeps clinging to Nimona’s leg and a house and it’s been so, so much longer than she thought.
And they’re trying. Maybe that’s what makes it worse. They’re trying so hard.
Nimona has her own room in this place. It’s… clean. Pink. There are beanbag chairs and duck-shaped lamps and sheets that haven’t been slept in and even stuffed animals on the bed, and there are stacks of books and games. They made space for her, cleared room for her, like she fits into it.
She doesn’t.
Nimona knows she’s not alone. There are other shapeshifters, or at least there were - at some point, there were enough to write a book on them. Nimona knows that, in shapeshifter terms, she won’t be fully-grown until she’s roughly two thousand years old, nearly twice her current age. That she’s still an adolescent. That, in a happier universe, she’d have people she lived with that loved her until she was grown, the same way people get to.
But she doesn’t belong here. She knows she doesn’t. And she shouldn’t stay here.
She sits on the edge of the bed, swinging her feet above the floor like she’s three instead of a millenia.
Nimona doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong with them, she doesn’t belong in this room, she doesn’t belong in the same house as their kid. Their whole entire kid that they had while she was away.
Nimona doesn’t belong here.
She slowly gets up from the bed, goes over to the window, unlocks and opens it, and turns into a pigeon and flies away.
-
Ballister feels like he’s floating, honestly.
The thing is, he tends to love very hard. It’s why, way back when, he agonized over ending up on the opposite side of Ambrosius. It’s why he’s probably too overprotective of Naomi. It’s why he even named her Naomi - he missed Nimona so much that, when the adoption agency offered him a baby girl with pink hair and pale skin, he immediately begged Ambrosius to accept, and while he felt awful naming her after Nimona because it felt like replacement, he named her a similar name.
But Nimona isn’t dead. He thought she was, thought she has been for years, but she’s here. She’s here in his house, and suddenly everything is weightless again, because that funky sidekick he loves so much is back. The grief is gone. The room in his home is no longer empty. And Ballister has no idea what he’s going to do with her, because there’s not really a book that tells you how to look after a thousand-year-old shapeshifter who ages at a completely different rate than you, but that’s alright, because he’ll figure it out just to have her here.
She fits. It’s bone-deep, instinctive, for all of them. On top of the room that’s entirely hers, that’s been hers since Ballister and Ambrosius first got this place, Naomi’s already decided that this random pink-haired girl is hers, toddling after her and babbling and offering toys in that two-year-old way, tugging on her pant legs and beaming at her, and Ballister’s going to get a picture the second that they hold still for long enough-
That doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s here. After the world moved on, she came back to the people who didn’t. And Ballister is over the moon.
Maybe that’s why it takes a second to process when he knocks on the door and goes into Nimona’s room, only to find it empty.
“Nimona?” he says, sounding more confused than he’d like to admit as he stares into the empty room.
She’s clearly not here. Nothing’s been disturbed, almost like she’s never been here at all. There’s no strange animals, no strange furniture, nothing Ballister didn’t put in himself - it’s empty. Painfully, obviously empty.
Ballister still doesn’t process for a moment, hopes and heart still too high. “Nimona?”
Nothing.
He slowly steps back out and closes the door again, mind buffering as he tries to think it through.
Nimona should be there. She is not there. Where is she?
“Ambrosius?” Ballister calls, already going to the door to grab his coat. “I think Nimona ran for it.”
Probably a poor choice of words, but it’s extremely effective, as Ambrosius curses from the other room, half-running out with Naomi balanced on his hip. “Where would she go?!”
“Got a few ideas.” Ballister says, feeling far too calm - he’s honestly in that space of being so freaked-out that he’s peaceful again. “We’ve got to get moving. Get Naomi’s coat.”
-
Nimona doesn’t know how the boss finds her. She really doesn’t.
If he were going to look for her, it makes more sense that he would look in the hideout, or the memorial he was telling her about, or… anywhere but here.
Still, what must be hours after Nimona ran, there’s the crunching of leaves and long-ashen planks under his feet as he silently comes into the recreation of Gloreth’s village.
Nimona curls tighter, the stray dog body she picked too fitting for her current situation, but a gentle metal hand comes on the fur of her back anyway.
“Why’d you run?” Ballister asks quietly, softly. “You okay?”
Nimona tucks her face further into her own tail, using it to hide her face. She doesn’t want to explain that she doesn’t belong in the one place she thought maybe, maybe-
“Gloreth.” Ballister says suddenly. “The real scroll was released not long before you came back. You were friends, right?”
Nimona doesn’t want to talk about Gloreth. She squeezes her eyes shut.
“I… I can’t imagine.” Ballister says gently, and Nimona tenses as she hears Nemesis’s footsteps too, but Ballister pets her a few times, long and gentle, and she relaxes against her will. “Losing someone like that. Being… being told you don’t belong and then being cast out for so long.”
Nimona curls even tighter with a small rustle of fur, and Ballister sighs.
“I don’t know everything.” he says quietly. “Gloreth, what happened after, where you were, but- you belong here, Nimona. I don’t know what… I don’t know anything, actually, but if I know something, it’s that you belong with us. With me. I missed you.”
Nimona doesn’t believe him, but apparently he’s become a telepath while she was away.
“Even if you don’t believe me, at least just… stay with me so I don’t have to miss you while I convince you. Alright?”
Nimona’s throat lumps up, and she tells herself she won’t cry, but after a minute, she shapeshifts into a girl again and hugs him and cries, and he doesn’t push her away, just hugging her and rocking her like he means it.
(Maybe he does.)
(Maybe she just has to find out.)
(...Maybe she will.)