Summary: Duncan's transformation is a little… ✨spicier✨

Time was an interesting thing.

For a creature as old as him, who had witnessed civilization rise and fall, humanity as a whole change and twist and flourish and rot in a million different ways, with a million different results, time was subjective. He would venture to say it was nonexistent.

Years, decades, centuries… they all blurred, mixed into a messy concoction with no form that he had learned to leave behind, forgotten, for the sake of his sanity and his will to live. When you live long enough to see all around you change, grow and whither, you learn to let go of attachment and longing. Everything is going to die at some point, everyone is going to die at some point. He had chosen to save himself the heartbreak.

So if it was a day or if it was a decade it didn't phase him. He didn't care that he wasn't getting any younger; youth only meant more time, and that was the last thing he wanted. He was old, which would be considered a blessing between his people, for not many of them managed to survive to see younger generations reach adulthood. He, for some time, had tried to, also, consider himself wise. One doesn't live as long as him without learning a thing or two about life, after all, and considering that the throne —built with the blood and ashes of the ones stupid enough to oppose him— had belonged to him from the moment he was mature enough that his own sire had considered him an adult… he hadn't been given many reasons as to not consider himself a wise man.

Oh, how wrong he was.

She had warned him, many times if he was honest with himself, but he had been so stupid, so blind, that he had had the solution to all his problems hit him point square in the face and he hadn't even felt it. She would sometimes look at him with mischief, that smile that melted him from the inside out brightening his days, and caress his hair while whispering a phrase that, at that moment, he hadn't fully understood.

"You're so pretty"

Then she would laugh, loud and to the point of turning almost as red as his scales, having to lean on him to avoid falling over. He had been intelligent enough to know she was laughing at him —which was pretty obvious—, but hadn't been able to get the meaning behind her words.

"Only young people understand, Becky. It's not your fault that you're a grandpa"

He hadn't given it much thought back then, too worried getting lost in her green eyes, as bright as the trees of his home, and kissing the ground she walked on to notice the danger hidden behind those, in appearance, innocent words.

Now though…

Belloc had always been proud of his age and the message it sended to those around him; "I have survived, and will keep doing so". It made him confident, strong, powerful, and stupid and naive and overconfident, and oh so blind that he hadn't seen the danger until his hands dripped with blood and the agonizing screaming bounced off his hoard chamber's walls, as if wanting to tear the place apart. What had once made him feel big and mighty was now making him feel small and weak. He had been so confident in himself, in his knowledge, in his ability to turn off his feelings and pretend nothing mattered that the only good thing he had ever made, Margaret's gift to him, was agonizing at his feet, being punished for his own incompetence.

He moved as fast and swiftly as he could —yet he felt slow and useless, like a newborn whelp learning to walk—, gathering the small body in his hands once again, feeling little hands cling to his fingers, tiny claws scratching at his scales, and more pained and tormented screeching bounced off the walls of the cave. He turned the body around, careful of the overly sensitive skin —baby scales were so fragile even a misplaced caress could rip them off— and observed with his breath caught in his throat the bulging mass coming out through the back where the tailbone was supposed to go. It resembled a placenta; a veiny sack of liquid, blood and a mass inside that had decided it was developed enough to come out and say hi. It was pulsing like it had a heartbeat of its own, and dripping blood and a semi transparent sticky liquid with every push it gave to come out through that impossibly tiny hole that a mere 24 hours prior hadn't even existed.

More screaming followed the moment he started licking, the taste of blood and amniotic liquid doing nothing to cover the screeching coming from his hands, where he had to hold the oh so tiny thing with his thumbs, stopping the little hands from pushing him away. He tuned out the begging, the cries for mercy and help —the promises to be good, to be better— and kept lapping at the pulsing mass with his tongue until, finally, the sack broke and with another desperate cry a long fleshy limb came out into the world. The tail flapped wildly, bland scales making it slippery and soft to the touch, and Belloc tapped it with his fingers, mindful of the claws, to make sure there were no deformations and it had full mobility.

The screaming turned into soft cries, and he felt a tiny face hide in the rough scales of his palm, where he felt tears dampen his skin. Belloc held back a sight and, by what seemed to be a miracle, two green eyes looked back at him with fear written all over them. Belloc used to think it was ironic how the child had inherited both their eyes, yet hers, a bright forest green, only appeared when the boy's kaiju self was more prominent. He used to think it was a joke from destiny; forced to see her in him for the rest of his days, tortured by his past mistakes and stupidity. This… this confirmed his fears, because every time he looked into those eyes, full of tears and bathed in terror, all he saw was her- their boy suffering for his mistakes. For his lack of forethought.

If he had stopped a moment to think, to consider what being a human and kaiju hybrid entailed, he would have reached the conclusion that mixing both their bloods could be a blessing as much as a punishment. Duncan was living proof of that.

Seeing those beautiful eyes that at some point had made him fall in love with live carrying so much pain made him feel as though a hand was clutching his intestines and twisting. He wouldn't have minded; that wouldn't even be a third of the agony his son was experiencing, and Belloc found himself praying to whatever could hear him to swap their places.

Duncan started squirming again, eyes blindly looking around, not really seeing his surroundings, and again started kicking and flapping his hands, slapping his fingers in an attempt to free himself. Belloc readjusted his grip, making sure the boy stayed on his stomach, and continued his inspection, moving from the newly developed tail to the bloody wings that flapped uselessly from their perch on Duncan's back. They were so thin they looked almost translucent, also covered in amniotic liquid, for they had only come out into the world a few hours earlier. It would take a good few weeks, and an abundant protein based diet, for them to develop correctly, but one could already appreciate the red color the baby scales would be. As deep and dark as his own. Belloc already knew how beautiful they would be.

The boy's tail, still moving around as if trying to map where it was, slapped his chin and Duncan whined, trying still to get away from him. The kid probably couldn't even recognize him, only seeing a big red blurry blob where his father was. Belloc was sure that, even if he spoke, Duncan would be far too deep in pain and fear to recognize his voice, so instead he brought him closer to his chest and settled himself in his nest. He had scrapped the gold apart in one of the large mountains of treasure in his private chamber, filling it with all the pelts and furs he had been accumulating throughout the years. He laid down in it as careful as he could so as to not jostle him too much, and then let the boy climb off his hands into the soft padding underneath them.

Duncan seemed to like how soft they were, because he curled in between his arms and settled down, tiredness outweighing the phantom pain running through his bones. Belloc took this chance to properly study him. He was a beautiful child —because nothing Margaret did could be nothing but majestic—, and although he liked to think he had gotten his looks from his mother, he could see a lot of himself in him; for starters his temper. The kid had the guts to dare him to kill him. Like mother, like son.

The blond hair, on the other hand… it must have been a punishment.

The beast with hunger for treasure inside him could barely contain itself. The need to store the gold someplace safe within its hoard fighting against him at every step, screaming that in order to protect the child from his destiny he had to be kept inside, kept away from the pain. Had it been that simple Belloc would have never let Margaret leave —lies, for he could never tell that woman what to do— and kept them both safe and sound in his nest. He would have never tried to convince himself that he didn't care, that the last sixteen years kept in the dark, not knowing if his family was safe and cared for, hadn't been so long that he felt as though his life was slipping through his fingers.

Belloc lowered his face until his nose came in contact with the bloody skin of his son, and tiny claws, new to the world and dripping red, patted his face in an attempt to identify whatever had dared to interrupt his sleep. He could still taste his whelps blood in his tongue, and pushing the sick feeling it left in his stomach, he continued wiping the red staining his scales.

The worst part was already over; the healing could finally begin.