"Uh, lucky you!" Edward says to Magnus as he rejects the deal he's made, the sarcasm in his voice dripping with malice,
"You get to particip—you get to be in Wonderland even longer! You get to play the wheel game even more! This is a—
"Alright—" Merle tries to interrupt, impatient for this all to be over with.
"I said penalty. I should have said Super Prize!" Edward amends.
"That is great. Yahoo! Here we go," Merle says with false enthusiasm. "I'm spinning the wheel! And it's stopping on…mind."
Edward grins.
"Merle, mind is a tough one. Um, you've already lost some, uh…important memories to the wheel in this game, and for this third round of the wheel game, we're gonna take some doozies from you if you accept it. So," he pauses to laugh breezily, as if the mere thought of this prize gives him ultimate pleasure, "if you accept this sacrifice, Merle, you will lose the memories…of the birth of your children."
…
Mookie was a surprise.
Sure, Merle and Hecuba had talked about having another kid someday, but it had always been "in a few years" or, "when Mavis is older". Merle was thinking, at the earliest another 3-4 years.
Oops.
Hecuba was not an agreeable woman when pregnant. Well, she wasn't very agreeable when not pregnant either, but during the nearly 12 months she carried the baby, she was especially short-tempered and vile. For once, Merle couldn't blame it entirely on her personality—he wasn't the one whose body was preparing to give birth, so he wasn't about to question how difficult it was. He had more self-preservation than that.
When they found out they were going to be having a boy, Merle's heart fluttered in his chest. Of course, he would have been happy no matter what, as long as the baby was healthy, but a little rough-and-tumble boy that he could teach the ways of the world to? He was over the moon. Pan got extra special prayers of thanks that night.
It was a difficult labor. Merle was restless, constantly moving between holding Hecuba's hand and pacing through the small hospital room anxiously. It was all he could do to not break out into full-blown cleric mode—that was what the doctors were for, after all—but he was pretty sure that he'd never prayed more in his life.
When he heard that baby's cry for the first time, something inside him instantly relaxed. The doctors tended to the boy, cleaning him up, declaring him healthy, and in the whirlwind of it all, at some point he was placed in Merle's arms.
Dwarves were hearty folk, but the bundle he held in his arms was impossibly small. Soft pink skin with a stubby little nose and a shock of curly, dark hair on his head. He was wrapped in a pale blue blanket. As a follower of Pan, Merle had seen all sorts of natural wonders in the world, but this little boy, by far, was more beautiful than all of them.
"Hi there, Mookie," Merle said gently, rocking the baby in his arms, "welcome to the world. I'm your daddy."
He stroked one thumb across the boy's silky soft cheek. Mookie smiled. Merle's heart melted.
Merle was generally good with kids (despite how he would treat a young boy detective years later). He had a laid-back, honest attitude that seemed to really gel with them. He'd been a counselor at a Pan camp or two back during his teenage years, and he'd learned that kids appreciated you a lot more if you were real with them. Some people got nervous and awkward around them, but not Merle.
Mavis was different.
She wasn't just a normal kid. She was his girlfriend's daughter. Her opinion of him mattered, and that made him very, very nervous.
It didn't help that she was a quiet kid. Instead of running around, goofing off, and talking nonstop like the kids Merle had worked with at Pan camp, she liked to draw, and paint, and read books by herself. It didn't help that she seemed highly distrustful of him too, no matter how friendly he tried to be. Any questions he asked got a one, two-word reply at most, and she gave the most damning side-eye looks that he'd ever experienced. It was pretty impressive for a five-year-old—not that
Merle would ever admit that out loud.
"Just give her time, she'll warm up to you," Hecuba told him.
So that was what he did.
He offered to take her out for ice cream. She was lactose intolerant. He tried to take her to the park. She didn't want to get her clothes dirty. In a last-ditch attempt, he even asked if she wanted to go to church with him, and she was most definitely not interested (what kind of five-year-old would be Merle? Think sometimes!)
Months passed. Mavis still hadn't really warmed up to Merle, and Merle still broke out in an uncomfortable sweat every time he had to talk to Mavis. She seemed like a really sweet kid every time he saw her interact with literally anyone who wasn't him, and he desperately wanted her to like him. But nothing was working.
Then he and Hecuba got engaged.
Mavis seemed strangely…unaffected by it. She still acted largely indifferent towards Merle, but at least she didn't storm off in a fit of rage like he'd half expected her to after hearing the news. Later on, when they were alone together, he tried asking Hecuba what Mavis thought of their engagement.
"She said, 'okay', and went back to reading her book."
"Okay? That's it?"
Hecuba went back to flipping through the magazine she was reading before bed. "Don't worry about it Merle, she likes you."
"It would be nice if she could show it sometimes, then," Merle grumbled.
Then one day, Hecuba had her bachelorette party. She was going to be staying at a friend's house for the night (it was a closer walk home from all of the pubs her friends were taking her to), and she left Merle to babysit Mavis. The day started out much the same as the other times Merle and Mavis had been alone together. He made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, she barely said a handful of words to him when he tried to engage her in conversation, and then she went back to her drawing on the floor of the living room. Merle sat in an easy chair and sighed. He was getting married to Hecuba in a week. Would this be what his life was going to be like forever?
He looked at Mavis's drawings from across the room. She tended to go through phases with her art, creating different versions of the same subject for a week or more before moving on to the next big thing. He'd been there through it all, from ponies, to fruit bowls, to an alarming phase of drawing ghasts (which Hecuba assured him was quite normal). This time, the dozens of pages surrounding her were filled with butterflies of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A field guide was open next to her, the source of her inspiration.
Merle suddenly had an idea.
He stood up and made his way over to her, taking a closer look at the art, "Hey, you like butterflies?"
The pink crayon stilled in her hand. She looked up at him and nodded.
"Me too. Those orange and black ones are my favorite."
"Monarchs," she corrected.
"Yeah, them. Hey listen, why don't you go put your shoes on? We're gonna take a little trip."
She gave him a quizzical look, then slid the few crayons she had out back in their box and stood up to go get her shoes. Thank Pan she wasn't a combative child. She came back a few minutes later, shoes velcroed to her feet.
"Okay, let's go!"
He took her hand and led her out into the woods surrounding their home. They set out down a path, Merle starting to whistle a tune. The place he had in mind was only about a twenty-minute walk away, and they arrived soon enough to a large glass building fronted with a stone welcome center. Merle saw Mavis staring intently at the building, trying to figure out what it was. He led her through the front doors of the welcome center, paid the elf at the front desk for their admission, and then pushed through a second set of double doors into the glass building.
The air was warm, almost tropical feeling compared to the chill of early spring outside. Sunlight poured in through the glass walls and ceiling. A rock formation with a waterfall and small pool of water stood in one corner, and a few footpaths cut different directions through the thousands of flowers, trees, and plants growing throughout the room. Best of all, resting on these plants and flying through the air were hundreds of butterflies. It was as if Mavis's field guide had come to life.
Merle looked down at Mavis. Her eyes were wide with shock, her mouth agape.
"Pretty cool, huh?"
She broke out into a grin, "Yeah!"
Mavis tugged Merle's hand forward as she charged into the butterfly sanctuary, seemingly determined to see every inch of the place. She chattered incessantly about all of the different butterflies she knew the names of, and Merle (for the first time ever!) made her laugh by calling the ones she didn't know names like, "Ryan" and "Yolanda". It was the most he'd ever heard her talk. At one point, he convinced her to stand super still and quiet. Within a minute, three different butterflies landed on her, and her face lit up like it was Candlenights.
They spent hours watching the butterflies. The wonder of it had worn off for Merle after the first hour, but watching Mavis giggle and gasp at it all was worth it. He practically had to drag her out of there when it grew time for dinner, but on their way out he bought her a new book from the gift shop, full of even more pictures and facts about butterflies than even the field guide contained. He had to convince her not to read it on the way back, worried that she would trip and hurt herself.
When they got back home, he made chicken sandwiches for dinner (what could he say, he wasn't really a cook), and after eating they sat together on the couch, Merle reading their new book out loud to Mavis, taking care in pronouncing all of the scientific names.
Soon, he felt a pressure against his arm, and looked down to find Mavis leaning against him, eyes drooping with exhaustion—she had had an exciting day, after all. He lowered his voice, keeping up a soothing cadence, and almost didn't hear Mavis murmur one last thing before she fell asleep.
"Thank you, daddy."
And in that moment, his heart belonged to her. His little girl.
...
The memories flash through Merle's mind in the span of a second as Edward leers down at him. He answers immediately. It isn't even a decision.
"I take the penalty."