He had not disappeared after that night  quite in the way that he had promised. He had known, even as he spoke the words, that he had no intention of dropping entirely out of her life. It had been guilt that had driven him away after their night together; guilt that he had used his powers to persuade her into being with him. It struck him as something his father would have done, and Varick had no interest in being like Ivar. He had left, not because he had wanted to, but because it had seemed right. Maybe he wasn’t quite as good as he liked to think himself, and he knew the girl with the sharp teeth and even sharper tongue deserved better.

But when he had come back and seen the swell of her barrel, he knew, then, that he could not leave again.

He kept his distance, though, despite how much he did not want to.  He watched her carefully, but he did not bother her. Not even once he could see that her time was growing nearer, and he could feel his own nerves tying themselves into knots.

She disappears, and though he knows he absolutely shouldn’t, he looks for her.

It is purely by chance that he stumbles across her den, and he is thankful that he had been stepping quietly and carefully and he hopefully does not startle them. 

Them.

His eyes are immediately drawn to the colt curled on the ground, still damp and new, and he can feel his chest begin to clench. The colt has his blue – his blue coat, his blue eyes. But he is also his mother, too, and Varick, having never been a father before and never witnessing this beautiful melding of two individuals on this level, is immediately taken.

“Sabbath,” her name feels stuck in his throat, finding her sage-green eyes but not daring to step any closer to the pair. His jaw clenches, looking again at the colt, and the surge of pride again rises in his chest and floods across his face and into his eyes. “May I come closer? Please,” he asks her, his voice unusually quiet and soft, his head lowering to better look at their son. “I just want to meet him.”

He remembers the first time he had met Ivar. He had smiled, kind of, and even at that young of an age, Varick had known there was no kindness there. He was not smiling because he had another son; he was smiling because Varick was a kelpie – the only acceptable offspring, according to his sire. Instead of feeling proud that he had hit the genetic lottery, all this had done was cause Varick to resent his kelpie form.

He did not want to be like them.
He did not want to be ruthless and cold, selfish and cruel.

It’s why when Sabbath suggests that he would hurt their son, there is a flicker of something dark that passes over his eyes, his jaw clenching as he quells the brief anger that tightens his chest. Not anger directed at her, because he had not given her any reason to think he was different than the rest. It was a blameless anger, one that had nothing to grip to and no roots to speak of. And so it passes, and he chases it further away with another crooked, half-hearted smile. “Sounds like you’ve met my father,” he says, not realizing that she has, actually, met Ivar.

His blue eyes move from her as Crowns begins to make his way towards him, tipsy and uneasy on his too-long, brand new legs. There is something else in his chest this time, an all-consuming pride and a whirlwind of emotions when his son touches his nose to the frosted scales on his chest. He lowers his head, pressing his muzzle into his dark mane, and breathes him in.

He looks up when Sabbath speaks, surprised at the panic that trembles in her voice. He frowns, ignoring the pang of hurt when she implies that he would actually harm his own son. “I’m not going to hurt him,” he says quietly, his eyes searching her face in earnest from the distance that he keeps between them. “I promise,” he adds, again looking down and running his nose against the boy’s neck. “What did you name him?”

He wonders if things would have been different between them had he not resorted to using his hypnotism. He wonders if he would have managed to gain just a single ounce of her trust before he had tried touching her if she would be looking at him differently – without that same cold glint in her eye like when he had first arrived. The one that suggested she would still rather see him dead than standing here running a cool muzzle across the warm back of their son.

He had tried so hard to outrun everything that he was, everything that his genetics told him he was meant to be, and somehow it had still caught him

He wants to make her believe him when he says he won’t use his powers again. He wants to start over and never use them at all, but then Crowns is nuzzling against his chest again and he is torn because his own stupid mistake had resulted in something so beautiful and perfect he cannot bring himself to regret it. “I believe you,” he says in response to her threat, and he wants to smile because she’s beautiful when she’s fierce and sharp but he is afraid she won’t take him seriously if he does.

“Crowns,” he repeats, trying to ignore the way something again stirs inside of his chest when Sabbath steps closer. “I like it,” he says with another gentle touch to the boy’s neck, and when he looks up his eyes are locked with the cutting green of hers. His expression grows solemn, and his jaw clenches tightly for a moment as he tries to word what he wants to say. “I’ll give you space, Sabbath,” he begins slowly, watching her carefully, “I won’t bother you at all, but, please don’t keep him from me. I want to be a part of his life. I don’t want him to ever have to wonder where his dad is.”

He presses a final touch to Crowns’ temple when his mother calls him away, watching with a faint smile as the boy reluctantly settles down to sleep. He can hardly remember being that small, but he does remember how desperately he had wanted to see the world, and how Chryseis had been reluctant to let him leave. His mother had been protective, though not quite in the same ferocious way as Sabbath. Varick’s mother had soft, sweet brown eyes that swam with ghosts of worry that she thought he could not see, and more than once he had caught her staring at him like he might hold with him the answers to a secret she didn’t know she was looking for.

Varick’s blue eyes look again to Sabbath when she addresses him, tracing the lines of her face and mouth as she speaks. He wonders if she has any idea how lovely he finds her; wonders if she would even care if he told her. He suspects she would spit venom in his eye if he said it out loud, and decides he will try telling her later.

She is close enough now that he can feel her breath when she speaks, so warm against the perpetual frost of his scales. “I know I have not given you a reason to trust me,” he tells her, his voice low, ignoring the fire that floods his veins when she touches him. Resisting the urge, at first, to touch her back. “But you have my word that I would never do anything to hurt Crowns,” and then he tilts his head just enough to run his mouth against her neck, aware of the way she might lash out but murmuring anyway, “I wouldn’t hurt you either, Sabbath.” He withdraws from her slightly, for once that crooked, boyish smile completely absent from his face when he tells her, “You’ll see that, eventually.”