Work Text:
The Pale King was not a father. The Gendered Child was not his. She was Herrah's child alone, and his part in her life was forfeit long before the bargain that allowed for her conception had been struck. Yet while he was resigned to his station of sire, Herrah was not. And her vocal displeasure at his hesitancy to interact with her daughter (their daughter, she always insisted, despite his right to any such title having been cast into the Abyss alongside so many things he dared not name) was a danger he could not idly ignore.
Threats from a mortal were not something that he truly feared, but Herrah was the exception to that rule— if he didn't have her cooperation, then the Seals of the Dreamers would go incomplete, the vessel plan would fail, and Hallownest would fall. Hence the unsettling vacancy in his plans for the day. Hence the living bargaining chip standing on tiptoes beside him to watch as he worked on a malfunctioning wingmold.
She stared with open fascination as he etched into the wingmold's metallic shell with a small, pointed tool, her eyes going wide as he Focused, filling the grooves with the white glow of Soul as it whirred to life and hovered up from his palm…
… And quickly sputtered, going dim and dropping back into his outstretched claws. He sighed. The wingmold was one of the newest versions he'd constructed, a model with lighter but more durable wings— but unlike the rest of its set, this one simply refused to behave as desired. Perhaps the circuitry was still too thin for it to function? He picked up the etching tool once again.
The child watched him work. He knew there were more interesting things for one so young to observe, but she hadn't voiced any complaints about the silent room and her equally silent father companion. Surprisingly enough, she hadn't strayed from where she peered over the lip of the worktable. The Gendered Child hadn't stayed put from the moment she learned to crawl onward, and her restlessness had only increased with age. The only times she sat in place were when her mother told thrilling tales of her kingdom or when she was hiding from her minders, and even then, she twitched and fidgeted and wriggled all the while. But here she was, looking as though she were carved of stone, eyes following his hands with rapt attention. Such an odd thing for her.
(He wondered if the Hollow Knight would find such engineering interesting, if he hadn't doused the flickering life in its egg with Void. The thought left him desperate to pick through the threads of his Foresight and find a world in which the weapon was a child, one that fussed and laughed and made messes so akin to the ones the Gendered Child made now.)
(He plucked one string idly within his mind— the one he always came back to when tempted to pry into possibilities, the maybes and if onlys. The vision was familiar. He'd memorized every swirling, vague detail he could. He would die alone, in his palace, surrounded by sterile whiteness and shadowy silence, and when a lone child stumbled across his corpse, they'd spit on it. The sobering knowledge reminded him to keep his Foresight to daily dilemmas— which corridor would be unpopulated so he could walk undisturbed by retainers and nobles, what pressing paperwork had the most people waiting for it to be filled— instead of the questions that kept him awake at night.)
(The Hollow Knight was a weapon. The Gendered Child was not.)
He set his claws atop the wingmold's central circuit again, but the child clambering up his side as he Focused cut him off while powering it. He turned to her as best he could, perched on his back as she was.
After a moment where she simply adjusted her footing on the bit of plating that shielded the base of his wings (It made his shell prickle, but at least she wasn't using his wings themselves as a means to yank herself up his back anymore), she asked in awe, "Why's it so shiny?"
"It is made of metal."
"No, I mean it's… um…" The child spread out her fingers on the hand that wasn't clutching a fistful of his collar and shook them. When he didn't grasp what she meant, she shook her hand again, more aggressive in the motion this time. He waited for her to summon words rather than gestures, but the child only sank in on herself, grumbling into his shoulder, frustrated. He waited a while longer. She huffed but did not speak. He turned back to the wingmold. The second he began to power it, though, she scrambled further up his back to point over his shoulder and squeak, "Like that!"
Ah. "The wingmold is infused with Soul. When sufficiently powered by it, the dark portions of its chassis will glow."
The wingmold sputtered once again and fell limp with a clatter.
The child turned to him, eyes wide. "Can I help?"
The offer surprised him, but he quickly recovered from his initial shock. "What would you do?" He asked. "You're not going to use any of the engraving tools. You're far too young to be trusted with any."
"I wanna make it shiny." She paused, face scrunched up as she thought for a moment. "Glow," she corrected, visibly proud of herself for remembering the word he used.
And so he found himself with the child perched on his lap— guiding her hands with one pair of his own, the second holding her steady while she leaned far over the worktable without any thought of balancing herself— as she tried to summon Soul and Focus it.
She was unsuccessful the first few attempts. She began to moan that it was too hard when the first gleam of white flickered under her palm, to which she snapped to look back at him, eyes sparkling. At that point, her efforts plateaued. She could summon small bursts of Soul and charge the wingmold partway by pressing the resulting Silk along the circuits, but infusing the proper amount required to power the wingmold quickly proved difficult.
"Why won't it work?" She asked, crestfallen.
"It is working." He moved his hands over hers, shifting them higher up the wingmold. She wasn't holding it properly, for one thing. But he was more inclined to let her explore and problem-solve for herself than to lecture her on solutions that she could discover on her own— if sufficiently nudged in the right direction, that is. "Try again."
She pouted and slid her hands along the wingmold until her claws finally caught on four shallow indentations on either side. Her fingers fit into them awkwardly, and he worried that she would dismiss them as random divots in the engraved metal and nothing more. But the child pressed her fingers into the indentations insistently and began to Focus, her small frame vibrating with the hum of magic and the effort of spinning Soul into Silk, and the tiny glints of white collecting under her fingertips began traveling up the circuits. She gasped as the wingmold fluttered out of her hands and several inches into the air, and she reached upward to catch it when it inevitably gave out and dropped back down. She stared at the thing in silence.
"Impressive." He lifted the wingmold out of her hands and picked up the etching tool once more. "Focusing Soul is no small task, especially for one so young. You did well."
She furrowed her brow, eyes squinting as he reached around her to etch more into the wingmold's exterior.
"What're you doing?" She asked.
"Widening this wingmold's circuits. It doesn't function properly, as you've surely noticed. It does not retain any substantial form of Soul. It's possible the narrowness of the circuits is the cause of this."
She watched him work.
Silence.
"Daddy?"
He felt ready to cry. Exhaustion kept the tears at bay, however. He hummed to let her know he was listening.
"Does Holly have circuits?"
"No," he said wearily. Hearing the child's name for the Hollow Knight threatened to really make tears brim in his eyes. "It does not."
(He would have to carve into its shell eventually, cut away healthy chitin and expose tender flesh in the pattern of a Seal of Binding to prevent any chance of the Old Light's escape. He should stop putting it off.)
(He had already killed every last one of his children. Why did he only hesitate now, at the thought of mutilating one of their corpses?)
The child's voice dragged him from his thoughts. "Oh. But Lady does, right?"
He shifted the tool in his hand. "No. The White Lady's bark has similar carvings, but they are meant for aesthetics, not to channel Soul."
The child settled against him. He moved to take away the hand that had been keeping her steady as she leaned over the worktable, but she took him by the wrist as he pulled it back and began to play with his fingers. Herrah would often allow her daughter such a distraction when she sat with her during meetings, and so the Pale King wouldn't begrudge her the makeshift toy— though he only had four hands to work with, unlike Herrah's six, and he struggled to spare just the one. How bugs with only two managed, he would never know. He was painfully aware of the points of his claws as the child manipulated his fingers.
"I like Lady," she said.
"As do I."
"She's nice. She plays with me. And she tells me stories."
"That she does."
The child bounced his hand up and down, pressed her miniscule palm against his, curled and uncurled his fingers. "Do you know any stories?"
He paused for a moment before returning his attention to deepening the curve of one circuit in the wingmold. He wasn't familiar with any fables or nursery rhymes, and he struggled to summon any entertaining anecdotes. "None that you would find to be particularly interesting to listen to."
"But I'm a good listener! Mama said so."
"One's ability to pay heed to a given subject does not equate to one finding said subject enjoyable."
She frowned.
Herrah's chastisements on using age-appropriate vocabulary echoed in the back of his mind. "They are boring," he amended.
She gasped, offended. "No they're not!"
"You have no frame of reference to base that opinion off of."
"Lady says you have lots of stories. And she says they're good stories."
"She has too much faith in me," he said. "I don't have any amusing tales to share with you."
The child muttered to herself, releasing his hand to cross her arms and sink back against him huffily. "S'not fair."
He busied himself scraping the circuits clean of any metal shavings, but found himself resting the hand she had been entertaining herself with on the lip of the worktable, within her reach, rather than using the free limb to better steady the wingmold.
The child sulked in noisy silence.
He sighed. "Is there a reason you are so intent on having me regale you with accounts of paperwork being filed several hours past the predetermined deadline?"
She let out a worldweary breath, mimicking his own sigh, albeit much more dramatically. "Mama tells stories about hunts and fights, and Midwife tells stories about babies, and Lady tells stories about mosscreeps and trees and gardens. And Auntie tells stories about the Hive and flying, too. But you don't tell any stories about anything."
"I suppose I don't," he said.
"Please?"
He set down the wingmold and closed his eyes, rubbing at his face. "I could describe the minutiae of managing a kingdom. Beyond that, however, there is no substantial tale I can dredge up—"
"What about Holly?"
His eyes snapped open, brow furrowing. "What of the Vessel?"
"Tell me a Holly story."
That was an issue. The Hollow Knight, being what it was, did not feature in many noteworthy memories. It was ever-present, yes, always there, but always in the background. Never a prominent fixture. Never a notable presence.
(Except for the day he had set it apart as the Pure Vessel. The day when he kept his eyes fixed on it, refusing to look anywhere else, lest his gaze land on the dried-out, unmoving husks of children that covered the Abyss.)
(He had killed all of those grubs before they had ever had a chance to take their first breaths, before they had the chance to so much as stir in their eggs. He had killed the corpse that stood in front of him, too, dark eyes fixed on his with unwavering attention, pale-shelled face a ghostly echo of his own.)
He leaned back in his chair and pinched between his eyes. The child was relentless, continuing, "Midwife tells stories about Mama when she was little. And Holly was little once too, right?"
"Yes," he weakly replied. (It had once been small, so small— tiny enough that when he took its hand to lead it through dense crowds that risked trampling the vessel underfoot, its outstretched fingers barely reached the edges of his palm.)
(It was practically double his height now. He smothered the misplaced wistfulness that surfaced at the memory.)
At his reluctance to continue, she prompted him further. "Did she have a favorite story?"
His wings twitched as he reminded himself not to venture into timelines that would never come to be. "No. It did not and does not have the capacity to favor anything, let alone a particular narrative."
"Oh." She turned back to the wingmold, stretching to pull it closer so she could tuck her fingers into the circuits and power it again. "Do you have a favorite story?"
For some odd reason, that gave him pause. He hadn't read fiction, never touched books meant merely to entertain; nor had he ever found plays to be something he could enjoy; nor did he find bugs recounting their misadventures over a banquet table any sort of engaging. Even so, he considered her question.
(An old memory came to him. He was a young wyrm tossing and turning in his mother's enormous coils, unable to sleep thanks to the cold. The nest itself was warm, but the air seemed unbearably frigid as wind filtered through the tunnels of the burrow. It was his first frost, wasn't it? It had been so long, he couldn't recall his age at the time, whether he was one winter old or one hundred— only the disquieting chill was clear in the mists of his recollection.)
(His mother scooped loose soil and vegetation over him, rumbling wearily. The two of them were tired, their bellies full with the spoils of her hunt, but sleep was proving difficult when he was unfamiliar with the slightest change of temperature in the burrow and his mother had a hatchling squirming restlessly against her. He couldn't remember her voice, the familiar depth and cadence lost to the years, but the words of the legend she had told him that winter were preserved flawlessly in his mind.)
He glanced down at the child. She was turning the wingmold over in her hands, unwieldy with its size compared to hers. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes squinted in concentration, like she was determined to be the one to figure out why it refused to hold its charge when he struggled to understand it himself.
He sighed. "It is a long story—"
She dropped the wingmold immediately and whipped around to face him, eyes wide with excitement.
"—And I doubt you would remain awake for the majority of it, but if you are so adamant, I suppose I can attempt to tell it."
"I won't fall asleep," she solemnly whispered. "Promise. I won't."
"You will." He took the wingmold from her hands and resumed his work as he began, "Long ago, before there was earth to dig, water to drink, or air to breathe, there was darkness, and in the darkness was an egg…"
—
One hour, thirty-eight minutes, and countless interruptions to question him later, the child stopped jerking herself awake as she tried to stay upright and listen to him, and her head nodded one last time as she finally relaxed where she had leaned into the crook of his arm.
Now what?
The wingmold failed to stay powered yet again. He tucked the etching tool back into its place on his desk and stared at the wall. Now what, indeed. The child's breathing evened out and she weighed heavier against him, truly asleep now instead of staying in the shallow, half-aware slumber that spiders were so prone to lingering within. She hadn't woken during that, not when he shifted to reach a better tool, not when the wingmold clattered back down into his claws, not when a retainer loudly rapped on the door to his workshop and announced the presence of some overly-persistent noble asking for the nth time if he had a moment to spare for a meeting today.
She hadn't stirred then, and she was much more deeply asleep now.
Yet he still found himself strangely terrified of waking her.
(If this were one of his and the White Lady's children, his and his wife's instead of his and the Beast Queen's, she would be dead, and he would have been the one to kill her.)
(She would hate him, one day. She'd grow old enough to read into what was whispered and what went unsaid in the White Palace. She'd learn that she was not his firstborn, but instead the only survivor out of all his children. She'd learn what he had done, what he had yet to do. She'd learn to regret having him as a sire. She should hate him. She would hate him.)
She was sleeping cozily in his arms.
There was a long span of time where he blearily marveled at how lively she was, even when asleep. Nothing like the Hollow Knight, which would lay motionless when told to retire, looking every part the corpse that it was. The child, meanwhile, twitched and murmured nonsensically, making faces and flexing her claws. He had hoped that she was dreaming of something pleasant. Her whimpering soon told him otherwise.
Dreams weren't his domain. Neither were nightmares. Far from it, in fact. He could not interrupt the Nightmare King's work, just as the god could not interrupt his, but in that moment he wished desperately that he could reach into her mind and uproot whatever tangled mass of nightmare essence was upsetting her. But he couldn't.
He couldn't, and so he shifted her to rest more securely against him, cradling her closer. She hid her face in his robes and took a fistful of the fabric there. He set his cheek against the side of her horn. He rubbed circles between her shoulders. The nightmare passed, eventually, and her whimpering gave way to silence.
She would hate him, one day.
But not yet, he thought as she started purring sleepily. The sound was barely audible, more of a rumble to her exhales than anything else, but it was there, and it made tears prick at his eyes.
She would hate him.
Tears slipped down his face.
But not yet.