Caution: this story is not meant to stand alone. The Beyond Happily Ever After stories are vignettes and outtakes showing the O’Kanes & other Sector residents in their daily lives, in between the adventures and often after their happy endings. These stories were written exclusively for readers and fans of the series, and will probably not make very much sense to anyone not familiar with the characters.

What To Expect… etc etc (Published as Uncle Ashwin: 2019 Patreon Reward Story. Ashwin gets some parenting practice (and advice) from Cruz.
Timeline: Set after Ivan

What To Expect…

The baby was so small.

Ashwin stood in Cruz’s sitting room, every muscle locked. Even breathing seemed potentially dangerous. Cruz’s infant son, Isaac, babbled contentedly in the crook of Ashwin’s arm. Isaac had Ace’s silky dark hair, Cruz’s serious brown eyes and Rachel’s sweet, open smile. He was oblivious to the danger Ashwin represented.

Approximately seventeen pounds of fragile, helpless vulnerability rested in Ashwin’s arms, and he was scared to death.

Cruz’s lips twitched.  “He’s not going to bite you.”

Ashwin wasn’t sure about that. The child didn’t appear to have any teeth to speak of, but he seemed perfectly willing to chew on anything he could get near his mouth. But Isaac’s relative threat level wasn’t Ashwin’s most pressing concern.  “Does Ace know you’re letting me hold his son?”

“Yes,” Cruz replied easily, leaning against the wall a few feet away. Ashwin wasn’t fooled by the relaxed pose. Cruz could spring into instantaneous motion if something went wrong. And if the raging protectiveness that had shattered Ashwin’s hard-won equilibrium upon learning Kora was pregnant was any indication, Cruz had never been more dangerous.

Ashwin knew how that felt. Even now, he was tensed against the knowledge that Kora was out of his sight. Deeper in Cruz’s apartment, safe with Rachel and their daughter, and Ashwin between her and any danger that could come from the outside world… but still out of his sight.

Ashwin had never been more dangerous, either.

Isaac made an unintelligible noise and reached for Ashwin’s face. Tiny fingernails scraped futilely against Ashwin’s stubbled jaw, the fragile fingers grasping for purchase. Ashwin glanced at Cruz again and assessed the beard covering the younger man’s face.  It was neatly trimmed, but likely still full enough for little hands to grasp.

As if he could read Ashwin’s mind, Cruz grinned.  “Hurts like a bitch when he gets a good grip.”

“Then why not shave it?”

“Ace and Rachel think it’s hot.”

Ashwin frowned his disapproval at such tactical irrationality, but in the next moment Isaac’s tiny fingers found the edge of Ashwin’s lip and curled tight with a strength that seemed impossible for the baby’s relative size.

And it hurt. Frozen in place, unsure how to engage an infant opponent, Ashwin didn’t know what the hell to do.

Thankfully, Cruz did. “Hey now, Isaac.” Cruz’s voice was warm and soothing as he stepped forward and gently disengaged Isaac’s grip. “Let’s not torment Uncle Ashwin, okay? He doesn’t know how to handle you yet.”

Perfectly content to cling to his father’s finger instead, Isaac babbled happy nonsense sounds and waved his fist triumphantly. And Ashwin had a moment to adjust to the uncomfortable ache in his chest, the alien feeling that was somehow wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Uncle Ashwin.

It felt surreal enough to be trusted to hold someone’s baby. The fact that Cruz had grown up on the Base with Ashwin didn’t make it more understandable. If anything, Cruz was one of the few people in Ashwin’s life who truly understood the depth of the darkness that had lived inside him. Cruz had grown up and trained alongside Makhai soldiers. He knew the pain and violence they lived and breathed, the chilly void where other people had feelings.

Ashwin had known Makhai soldiers who would snuff out the life of an innocent child as casually as they would a violent murderer. That he’d never been one of them didn’t matter to most people. When you were the near-mythical demons that lurked in the night, you took on responsibility for all of your brothers’ crimes.

When Gideon and the Riders treated Ashwin like family, he could tell himself they were naive idealists who still didn’t understand the barely-leashed monster they’d invited into their midst. When Kora stroked his cheeks and told him he was good, he knew that Kora was blinded by love and the pureness of her own heart. Kora could never understand evil. It was the opposite of everything she was.

Cruz understood evil. He had seen Ashwin at his lowest. Stripped of reason, fractured beyond repair. Cruz had put a bullet in his leg, and would have put another in his head if it had been necessary.

Cruz knew exactly what kind of monster Ashwin could be at his worst. And he’d still handed over his precious son.

He’d called Ashwin family.

“I want to be his uncle,” Ashwin said abruptly. “Tell me how.”

Cruz smiled gently as he bounced his finger, delighting Isaac into a burbling laugh.  “I don’t know any better than you do. I’m making it up as I go, Ashwin. Just like you’re going to have to.”

Ashwin did not like making up social rules. His instincts were almost inevitably wrong, as if every skill the Base had passed onto him had been perfectly calibrated to make fitting comfortably into society alongside normal people categorically impossible. Even his training in psy-ops seemed useless. Assessing someone to easier exploit their emotional vulnerabilities was the opposite of forging a genuine bond.

“Hey.”  Cruz’s hand closed around Ashwin’s shoulder, his fingers squeezing encouragingly. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You can’t,” Ashwin muttered.

“I do.”  Cruz let his hand fall away to trace his fingers over his son’s dark hair.  “They didn’t fuck me up in all the same ways they did you, that’s true. They never told me I didn’t have feelings. But that just let them twist my emotions. Weaponize them.”

Ashwin stilled. “How?”

“Too many ways.”  Cruz leaned back against the wall again, crossing his arms across his chest.  “Rachel and Ace are still dealing with the scars. Sometimes I hurt them without meaning to. But I need to make a safe place for them. A family. So I take everything the Base ever taught us, everything they ever did to us as kids…and I do the opposite. They wanted us scared and sure no one would ever help us. They wanted us convinced we could only depend on ourselves.”

It was nothing but the truth. Ashwin knew it better than most. After all, it was how he’d met Cruz in the first place. He’d been so small then, a silent, awkward child with limbs growing faster than he could compensate for and his regulation uniform loose on his skinny body.

Even if he hadn’t seen the promise of Cruz’s current height and build in those long limbs and rangy frame, he’d seen the unshakable courage in the way the boy kept climbing to his unsteady feet even though he was surrounded by cruel older boys bent on pounding him into nothingness.

Ashwin had intervened that day, sending the younger bullies running with a frown. Such was the power of a Makhai soldier, even one barely out of his teens. The difference in their ages that seemed negligible now had loomed so large on that day. Ashwin had felt ancient and numb. He’d rationalized his interference as strategic preservation of resources, and it made sense. Allowing Cruz to grow into his potential had clearly paid off.

If the Base had been wise, they would have curtailed the more serious abuses, the children breaking other children before they were big enough to protect themselves. But they hadn’t, because Cruz was right. They’d wanted them scared. They’d wanted them to believe no help was available. That they were alone.

Even at his darkest, Ashwin had never followed that rule.

“I can do that,” he said quietly, offering his finger to Isaac. The baby grabbed it with that shockingly tight grip and grinned a toothless baby grin at him.  “I can be the opposite of what they were.”

“You always were,” Cruz agreed, as if he’d followed the path of Ashwin’s thoughts.  “You just couldn’t admit it to yourself. You’re a protector, Ashwin. It’s been inside you from the beginning. No matter how hard they tried to beat it out of you, or torture it out of you. They couldn’t change you.”

“I still don’t know how to be a father.”

Cruz laughs.  “Here’s the big secret. Neither do I.”

Ashwin froze. Tilted his head.  “You don’t?”

“No. Not even a little.” Cruz grinned.  “And you know what? Ace has read all the books that you’re no doubt reading, because you were always good at recon. And it doesn’t hurt. Sometimes he knows something that keeps us from freaking out. But that doesn’t mean he knows how to be a parent, either. We’re all making it up, because half the stuff that works for Isaac doesn’t work for Rosalía. And vice versa.”

That provoked a spike of nerves. The exhaustive research file he’d compiled on pregnancy and early childhood development had been the only thing keeping him from spinning into outright panic. “So what do I do?”

“Love them, Ashwin. That’s the big thing.” Cruz reached out to tickle his son’s cheek, prompting a gleeful giggle. Not that Isaac released Ashwin’s finger. Ashwin was fairly certain Isaac was going to hold on with a tenacity and determination he’d inherited from his father.

Ashwin was new to love. Kora was still teaching him the shades of it, the way it could express itself when it wasn’t just about survival. But he knew he loved Kora. And the feelings he already had for the life growing inside her were fierce and unmanageable, so large he didn’t know how to contain them sometimes. He already loved the child they’d made together.

He thought he loved Cruz. Not in an easy way. Too much history lay between them, and the friendship they were forging now was tentative. Slow. Always guarded, always aware that they were both used to being the most dangerous person in any room and could be fatal to each other. But Cruz brushed the same parts of his heart that the Riders had cracked open. Brotherhood. Belonging.

Family.

Maybe that was all it was, in the end. The people you’d fight for. The people who would fight for you.

It wouldn’t be hard to fight for this child. He belonged to Cruz. He stirred gentle protectiveness in Ashwin’s chest. But in the end he was an innocent, someone who deserved a chance to grow into the strongest person he could be before he had to face the harshest battles of the world.

Maybe Ashwin could be an uncle, after all.

He bounced his finger, trying to dislodge Isaac’s grip. The baby only clung tighter, laughing. A smile curved Ashwin’s lips in spite of himself.  “He’s a strong one.”

“He is,” Cruz replied. Then he laughed.  “He’s the easy one, though. Rosalía’s the one you’ve got to watch out for. She already thinks too much. She waits and executes sneak attacks.”

Ashwin shook his head and gave Isaac a serious look. “We need to work on your strategy, little one.”

Isaac laughed at him and kicked him in the elbow.

“Don’t kick your uncle,” Ashwin chided, just to see how the word felt.

Uncle.

Family.

It felt really, really good.

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