The Impure Prince
AU crossover inspired by the animated first season of Dreamwork's Trollhunters by the brilliant Guillermo del Toro.
. . .
He'd gone four years believing the child he was raising wasn't his.
What else was he expected to believe? Impure, more commonly known as changelings, were born through performing painful, unpredictable alchemy on a newborn troll. The infant trolls were then forced to grow and learn strictly on a mental level, never to age until their human familiar was born in the above world. Often times, hundreds of years would pass before one's familiar came into creation. Snape himself had been very lucky. He'd only had to wait sixty-six years before Tobias Snape the human had been born.
His cousin Stricklander, on the other hand, had been alive since before Gunmar's fall over two decade ago. The last he'd heard from him had been before Snape had run away from his host parents as he fled from a shidokh, and even then Stricklander had still been the size of an infant troll waiting for his fleshbag familiar to be born.
Many changelings wound up staying in the Darklands, unless ordered otherwise by Gunmar, preferring the company of fellow trolls and the comfort of their own rougher bodies, despite the constant degradation of being called Impure. Others, like him, craved for the sun and so struck bargains with the goblins to be switched with their human familiar under the guise of doing Gunmar's bidding. He'd never before heard of changelings being born naturally.
The very idea of a pure Impure was laughable.
After the nurses had taken Severus away and left Eileen to rest, Snape finally felt he'd truly left the Darklands behind. He was Tobias Snape, through and through, and he had a son. A human son.
Then a nurse returned, gently placing a quiet Severus into his awkward arms, and Tobias finally allowed himself to embrace the euphoria of fatherhood. Elation and pride and warmth filled his chest as he gazed down at the little being he'd played a hand in creating.
He had ten little fingers, and ten little toes. When he sleepily blinked before falling back into a doze, he'd revealed eyes so black, Tobias wondered if they'd eventually lighten to Eileen's unique grey, or if light would one day shine in them to reflect his own chocolate brown shade.
He was soft and fragile and radiated heat. He was a small, pathetic little fleshbag that Tobias wanted to protect from the world. He was human, destined to feel the warmth of the sun, and Tobias couldn't be happier for his child.
Then he'd said hello to his little baby boy, ever so softly.
And in the span of a blink, Severus' eyes had opened and glowed with silver irises set in heart-stopping black sclera before turning to a natural black on white.
Tobias nigh dropped the child.
Frantically with a quiet sort of desperation, he undid the towel wrapped around the babe enough so as to see its nethers.
He stared in confusion.
Then he tightened the towel back up.
"Couldn't be switched late enough to avoid that procedure like me, eh?" He chuckled humorlessly, as dread settled in his gut and he began to feel a pang of want in his chest. Had his arms turned to stone or was the child suddenly heavier?
By all the colors of hell he missed his boy, the child he'd barely even met before it was taken from him.
He almost asked the babe if it was Stricklander, his unfortunate older cousin of a troll who had a nigh unhealthy love of history, of all possible subjects. What irony it would have been, to have a child, only for it to be the familiar of his fellow Impure relation. But he held his tongue, knowing the possibility was impossible. For all changelings, (those who survived their painful transformation that is,) were also all orphans, be it by unfortunate circumstances or by Gunmar's will, and thus named after the name of their familiar, the only hint any of them had to who they could one day replace.
Not to mention, Stricklander had eyes of ruby and yellow, like Tobias' own.
Nothing happened after that, no matter the minutes that passed in silence as Tobias sat there, frozen as he stared at the fidgetting babe.
If not for the image burned into his retina, Tobias might've thought he'd simply imagined it.
What he wanted to do, really, truly wanted to do, was grasp the child about the neck, and shake him, demanding what had been done with his boy. He wanted to shout and growl, threaten the child into morphing into their changeling persona and tell them they had no choice but to live out the rest of their days in the Darklands if they wanted to continue living.
He wanted to know how the bloody fuck a goblin had managed to sneak into the birthing ward and kidnap his baby within the span of minutes that it took for nurses to clean him up.
He wanted to transform into his own troll visage, a form he had not donned since he had run away from home to avoid marrying the girl his fleshbag parents had arranged for him to be with, and raze the building to the ground.
What he ended up doing, however, was stare in a numb state of shock, vaguely trying to remember if he'd ever met a troll with eyes of silver and black, as Eileen awoke to the sound of (what she believed to be) her newborn son fussing as his father uselessly held him.
"Tobias?" Eileen inquired, reaching out to the fussing infant.
"You should be impossible," Tobias murmured, as he stared blankly at the baby even as Eileen maneuvered him to her breast. She cooed in motherly wonder over the child's already open eyes.
The child he'd created was his, not the real human Tobias Snape's. He couldn't fathom the possibility of his baby being a familiar match for another changeling. It should have been impossible!
Eileen, mistaking his murmured horror for awe, smiled as she looked at the nursing babe.
"But he's real, Toby. And he's ours."
Notes: Darklands = Darklanders? This chapter may have been a bit confusing, but know that I wrote this from Severus' dad's perspective. Severus' own point of view will only eventually be shown if I end up continuing this story.
What got me thinking about this crossover is the fact that to activate his magical armor, Jim has to say, "For the glory of Merlin, daylight is mine to command." And I just thought, "Merlin?" And so here we are.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine. Absolutely nothing.