When Aile woke up the air was damp. The stale atmosphere rasped against her abused throat and crept throughout her body, chill and cruel. She shuffled under a scratchy fabric sheet that had been placed on top of her. It was some gaudy thing that looked a lot like a towel she'd seen in the amusement park's gift shop, but the overlarge scrap consisted of way too many colours, half of it seemed crisp and stiff, and there were square patches covered in grime from where soot had fallen onto it while folded. It smelled like smoke. She growled in complaint at the tacky thing and tossed it away.

"You're up," Omega stated. A container of water was placed at her side. She looked at him and the take-out container he shoved at her next, "Here. Breakfast."

Aile ate. It was actually an awesome breakfast, she thought, even if it was cold, because it was some of the really expensive fair food that mommy hadn't wanted to buy for them until later. Fries and gravy and bits of cheese that had made Vent scrunch up his face when he heard someone call it a 'poo-teen'. It also looked a little bit like poo, but tasted very yummy. She giggled, "This is a poo-teen, right? Do they call it that 'cause it looks like a dookie?"

Omega coughed, looked away, and then looked back with an oddly strained face, "I have no idea why they call it a poutine. You might be right, however."

"That's a dumb name. I like it."

"Mm."

She finished eating, messily wiping the globby gravy that was stuck all over her face onto her hands in a half-hearted attempt to clean up. It wasn't really all that much better. Omega leaned over, grabbed the towel to wipe the gunk off, then tossed the ash-stained thing into a raggedy corner. Aile tossed the leftover container into the corner too, and giggled mischievously when Omega didn't admonish her for it. The two looked at each other for a while, unsure of how to proceed. After that the silence of the ruins came back tenfold, weighing heavily down on her despite the occasional drip, drip, drip of water that Aile didn't like one bit. She climbed into Omega's lap to drown it out. He stiffened, then opened up his posture a bit to let her clamber wherever she wanted. His tone was patronising when he finally spoke up, "What are you doing?"

And wasn't that a question. "...I dunno. What do you do when your... When my mommy…" It was too hard to say the words. She leaned back into Omega instead.

His chest rumbled a bit before he spoke. It was a simple question, "How old are you?"

She held up the appropriate amount of fingers proudly, happy for the distraction, "Four! A whole four! I'm a lot of years old!"

He barely reacted. "Four?"

"Yeah!"

"Hmm." He slowly stood up, bringing her with him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, careful to avoid the pokey tusk-thingies on the helmet he wore, "Four. Well. That clinches it. We need to find you a caretaker."

"Isn't that a person who takes away dead bodies!?" she shrieked, suddenly worried about her position.

"That would be an undertaker. No. A caretaker is like a babysitter, but permanent," he explained swiftly, setting her fears to rest. She was still rather unsettled however, thoroughly rattled from yesterday, so she clung onto him harder.

"Why can't you do it? You're strong enough to fight mavericks," she pointed out.

He paused, then huffed, "I'm not particularly qualified for the job."

"Kwa-lah-fied?"

"I don't know how to take care of kids."

"Well you could have just said that," she scolded. Honestly, adults could be so dumb sometimes. "Maybe you should talk to Miss Trissy! She works at the daycare I go to!"

He seemed to mull it over, "Hmm. Where could I find Miss Trissy'?"

"Uhm… she was at the park…" Aile admitted.

Omega stared. Then he sighed, a long and low sound a lot like the times mommy's friends at work wouldn't stop calling her, "I don't think Miss Trissy will be able to help us anymore."

"You don't know that. J-just because we didn't find her-"

"Aile. It was a maverick attack. Do you not know what happens in an attack?"

"Mommy says that bad mavericks show up and hurt people, and a lot of people don't ever get to see their loved ones again. I… mommy… do you think she's hurting? Do dead people get hurt?"

Omega gave her a look. His response was flat and callous, "No. Of course not. They're dead."

Tears formed in her eyes again, "Did mommy go somewhere nice, like the Heaven place that the weirdo man-on-the-corner always talks about? What if Vent and mommy are worried about me up in Heaven, because I'm not there with them?"

Omega was clearly fed up with this train of thought, or at the very least he was not particularly interested in explaining it to her. "I have no idea, kid. And if they went anywhere it was probably Cyberspace."

"What… what if they went to… to Hell…?" It didn't bear thinking about.

Omega grunted, rolled his eyes, and glared, "Then I'd have seen them. Now shut up. I have to get you to someone who knows a lot more than me about how to deal with you."

Aile shut up. He was a scary maverick after all, and he was also an adult so she had to listen to him. Some adults could be very strict about such things, just like the man-on-the-corner had been. So she shut up, and stayed shut up as they went through some weird not-buildings that he said were the remains of an ancient lab of Weil's, then into the caves connected to them. She lasted until they were halfway through the caves, but then she really had to go to the little girl's room and Omega's grip had started to get uncomfortable. Aile began to writhe and whine. The blonde man gave her a disgruntled look, but she explained herself before he could ask, "I gotta pee!"

He got to the surface a little faster.

"Bathroom?" she asked.

"Pick a bush."

Maybe it was like camping, she thought. Just like camping. She could do this. Once she was done she wandered back, looking around for a sink, "Where do I wash my hands?"

"We'll find a stream. Come along."

He leaned over to grab her but she was absolutely done with being held. She was a big girl! Not a stuffed animal! She dodged his hands and ran to a break in the trees, looking back at him with her nose squished up, "This way! I know the way!"

"I doubt you do," he replied, but followed her regardless. He was absolutely right and she hadn't a clue which way to go, but he didn't know that and she wasn't going to tell him, because she was going to prove that she knew the way anyway. She was very clever like that. So the pair meandered through the forest and investigated things along the way, like a fallen branch or a funny plant or a flower, because Aile had never gotten to run around a forest wherever she liked before, and this was an adventure she would capitalize on no matter what. She stayed close to Omega though, because she wasn't stupid. Staying close to adults was important when she wasn't playing with friends! They even found a stream when Omega mentioned that he'd heard some water over that-way, and she led him to it because she was smart and brave. "See!" she exclaimed proudly, "I knew the way!"

"Hm," he muttered. What a dull response, she thought! Omega was super boring. She washed off her hands as he seemed to contemplate something, "I don't suppose you know the way back, now?"

"Erm…" Uh. Uh oh. "Of course I do! It's that way," she pointed through a break in the woods.

Omega's eyes narrowed. He looked down at her. "It is not."

"It is!"

"It's not. Don't argue."

She didn't argue.

That's when she heard them drifting faintly through the air. Voices. Omega heard them too, stiffening as his head swivelled wildly to hone in on the noise. Foliage rustled in the wind, the stream burbled eagerly, and the girl stood absolutely still as Omega said softly, "Aile. Shush. I hear someone. We're going to follow them."

Aile shushed.

They followed the sound to a path, though it took them a little while. The trail was winding and overgrown, yet despite all that there were clear signs that it was in use. Broken twigs, a candy wrapper, the smear of a boot from where the trail had gotten muddy in the rain. Omega ducked down to watch for their quarry. Aile spotted some people in bright hiking gear not long after they'd settled down. Happy to see someone who wasn't dead or a maverick, she darted out of the bushes. "Hi!" she said with a grin, one she knew from experience was very cute and made adults coo at her sometimes (even though it was a little annoying).

The adults stopped. They didn't coo, "Oh. Hello?"

In a rush of wind and red, Omega was suddenly in front of her, voice stern and deep and she knew that tone, oh no he was mad, "Aile, get back!"

"Maverick!"

The hikers ran.

Aile's lower lip trembled at being left behind. The adults fled without a second thought to her safety, and their reaction wasn't something she'd expected. Weren't adults supposed to take care of kids? Had she done something wrong? "But... but…!"

"Aile," Omega stared at her, "I will deal with this. Don't do anything unless I tell you to do it. Are we clear?"

"...Okay…"

"Good. Now stay still."

And so they followed the hikers, Omega picking her up like a sack of potatoes as he stalked warily down the trail. It didn't take too long to find the hikers again. When they closed in for a second time, hiding behind a large stump to eavesdrop, Aile and Omega were able to see that a new person had joined the group. This newcomer had a uniform. "There's a maverick!" they overheard one person tell the newbie, "a maverick in the park! They've kidnapped a girl and are using her to lure people in!"

The other spoke up soon after, "Or maybe the tiny thing is just another maverick! A ruse! It obeyed the bigger one easily enough. Do you really think a red-eyed monster like that would have let a little girl live once it caught her?"

"So, two possible Mavericks? Humanoid ones, you said?" The uniformed person started to do something with a communicator.

Omega picked her up after those hurtful words were spoken, ran away to somewhere far away and safe and quiet, and turned to Aile. "I'll be right back," he said, then dashed off. He wasn't lying. Moments later he returned, covered in splatters of blood.

Aile stared him down. "You hurt them. Didn't you."

"If they came looking for us they would have killed us first."

"You don't know that! You didn't have to do that! Why couldn't you just… drop me off? Leave me for someone else to find? Stay away from me so no one thinks I'm a nasty, murderer maverick like you!?" she wailed.

"Because I'm not trusting your care to the first blasted idiot lucky enough to find you!" He snarled back.

"You didn't have to!"

"Yes I did! I did," he scowled, and the tone of his voice made her shudder with fear, "because you could be important. You could be important to Weil, who is important to me. Because you're my responsibility and until I know what Weil thinks of you, I'll have to check up on you whether we both like it or not. Because you're my charge. A maverick charge, according to them. They'd have shot you and discarded your corpse in a heartbeat. That's what happens when you're labelled a maverick."

Aile teared up. She wasn't a maverick! She didn't want to be a maverick! "You don't know that," she echoed hollowly as tears fell down her cheeks, "you don't know that."

He turned away. "Smarten up, brat. How many people do you think would tolerate me being anywhere near them?" He grunted, frustrated, "How many would leave their kid around a nasty, murderer maverick? We're in a stalemate. I need to find someone who would tolerate my presence. But any good parent wouldn't let someone like me within ten kilometres of their kid's location."

She understood his logic. She hated it. She hated him. "I want my mommy," Aile answered.

He scoffed, "Sure thing kid. Let's go grab her. She's barely started to rot."

"I hate you!" Aile cried as she descended into despair. Her sobs echoed throughout the empty woods.

He took her back to the cave without another word.

—-—-

"We're going to have some ground rules," Omega stated about two weeks after the incident, "and you are going to obey them without question."

"Why?" she asked, and with the groan of misery he let out, she knew she was in for some fun times.

Two weeks had passed, two weeks of lean meals and long silences and random scraps of things recovered for her use. Two weeks of her guardian wondering who was going to care for her and coming to a very obvious conclusion that neither of them liked.

Thinking back on it, the answer had been obvious for a while.

There were three boxes of coloured chalk beside her, a bunch of stuffed animals, a giant pillow that looked like a mettaur, multiple piles of random figures and puzzles, a toy miner's hat that she'd started to wear semi-permanently (because it was her miner safety hat and safety was important!), and many other such things. There was also a bucket big enough for her to sit in it and wash, five separate sleeping bags that Aile didn't want to think too deeply about, dozens of fabrics and towels because she didn't like any of the so-called blankets he'd gotten until the ten-and-fourteenth one, and a thin foam mattress that barely covered the uneven floor she slept on. The mattress, despite its flaws, had been entirely worth it to get, if only to watch Omega struggle to drag the thing behind him through the caverns. She laughed at the memory for days. Then she demanded that he stop wearing his hair stuffed into his helmet all the time, because it was pretty and she liked to tug on it when she wanted his attention. He obeyed.

Several rooms had been set aside for Aile. One that was far from the others and was used as an outhouse because of the deep crack in the floor, another that held aforementioned piles of toys, her bedroom, and one other room that Omega had called the safehouse. Its door locked from the inside, and only Omega could open it from the outside if he chose to do so. She didn't know how, but she knew he could, and that was enough for her.

He'd only had to explain what a safehouse was once. If only there'd been one at the amusement park...

There was also one other room right next to her, currently empty. One that Omega had begrudgingly flopped himself into after day three of her waking up from nightmares and screaming for her mother or for him. Her cries were apparently shrill enough that you could hear them across the entire ruins, and she was a little proud of this fact. On day five he'd moved into her room, because she always picked herself up and dragged her tired little frame into his quarters to sleep anyway. It was her nightmares' fault that she couldn't sleep alone. It was Vent's fault for not being there with her for cuddles every time she remembered she was alone, and her mommy's fault for dying like she did and for not being there to tell her bedtime stories so that Aile could rest. She always cried after these thoughts, though. Mommy had always given her hugs when she was sad and scared, so as Aile wisely reasoned, Omega had to as well.

He'd argued. She'd won.

She looked up at Omega from the sleeping bag she was sat on, which was currently spread out as a playmat for her and her toys. He tried to stare her down, but by now Aile had started to figure out that he was more bark than bite. At least for her, anyways. "So?" she began, "ground rules? What are those? Are those like cave rules because we're in a cave?" There was a lot of room in this underground, as it turned out. The ruins were really, really big, even without accounting for the caverns above or the weird, bright green rock-fields with spikes that Omega always steered her away from. She wondered why there was so much space underground. Oh well! Thoughts for another time.

"No. Ground rules are rules that you must obey," Omega stated. Oh. So this was going to be one of those boring conversations then. "First off-"

"Rules I gotta obey? So, like, wash your hands after you go to the bathroom or before you eat, and stuff?" she interrupted.

"Yes." He took off his helmet and fidgeted with his hair, but otherwise remained still, "So. Rules."

"Rules."

"You stay in these ruins. If you need anything, tell me. If I tell you to do something, you do it. You DO NOT touch my weapons. And definitely don't go into the big caverns with the green rocks and mavericks. If I think of any more rules, I'll tell you. Got it?"

"Got it!"

She broke the first rule a day later. Bored out of her mind with the same old toys and dark corridors of her new home, she wandered up into the tunnels to explore. She was very responsible though, because she brought a flashlight to see and a bunch of toys so that she could find her way like Hansel and Gretal did in the fables mommy used to tell her. Omega was not impressed when he found her, "What. Were. The rules!?"

"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! But I was super bored and there was a friendly cave bear! He wanted hugs so I had to!" she fibbed.

Omega took a long, deep breath. "Was there actually a bear?"

"Yeah! He was blue!"

Omega snarled as his forehead gem glowed fiercely, "Right. We have another rule. No lying. DO YOU UNDERSTAND!" His voice boomed as he leaned down, eyes blazing as he fixated on her and snatched at the front of her shirt. His teeth were bared in a predatorial snarl. Aile curled up immediately, terrified of him, and locked her gaze onto a pebble on the floor. He growled, "So. Tell me truthfully. Was there a bear?"

She didn't look at him. "No…"

"Good." He shuffled around, letting go of her shirt, but she didn't see what he was doing because she was very pointedly Not Looking At Him. She felt bad for being naughty. She heard him sigh again as the moment dragged on and she stayed far too still. There was a gentle clunk as he kneeled down to meet her face to face, "Anyways. I have new clothes for you." Aile didn't move. She didn't respond to the offer either, even though she'd told him that she wanted a super fluffy sweater and she had no doubt that he'd gotten her exactly what she wanted. He always did. Omega took note of her behaviour and groaned, "I'm not here to coddle you."

"Okay."

"You might be the youngest rookie I've had the misfortune of training, but you won't be the worst."

"Okay..."

"You're not looking at me."

"No. You're mean and scary."

"...Fair enough. Try this on."

Sadly for him, children were the worst kind of rookies you could possibly get. Two days later she broke rule number one yet again. She got all the way up to the surface, played with a tree branch for a while (only it wasn't a tree branch, it was an awesome hero's sword!), and then went back to her room while following her toy trail. The sun had almost gone down, so obviously bedtime was due! She was tired anyways. Omega didn't even get mad this time. He was in the middle of the caverns when she found him, glaring at the hippo doll she'd dropped there, and the moment his gaze settled on her his shoulders dropped with defeat. "You got bored again, didn't you."

"Yep! Look at this cool sword I got!"

"That's not a sword."

"Yes it is! It's an awesome sword!" She proclaimed proudly, brandishing her weapon, "it's the best sword ever! Even better than yours!"

He bristled. Apparently she'd hit a sore spot. "That. Is not. A sword," he growled. Omega's ego, as she would eventually come to learn, was not something to prod lightly.

That lesson would not come today. "It's definitely a sword. A hero's sword!"

At her look of sheer determination, he gave up arguing. "Fine," he allowed, "it's a sword. But it's not a good one."

And that's how the God of Destruction, in all his world-ending glory, was saddled with caring for one very cute, very small, very stubborn human child. To say that the adjustment period was going to be rocky was an understatement.

Okay, first things first, holy fucking shit you need to go look at these pics on Tumblr,

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THEY ARE ADORABLE. Click on the images on desktop for some captions! Thank you so much Delightful-69!

*Edit* Even more art!

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From Gods-of-Destruction on Tumblr!

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And a little of my own work! Hope y'all enjoy!

Er, ahem, now for the business bit…

A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for enjoying the fic so far! For now I'm only uploading these two chapters as a stand-alone fic, since I feel like the concept alone can carry it (and that here is a decent enough place to end it without it being a cliffhanger or an 'incomplete' fic). However, I may or may not be continuing work on things in the background. I don't want to post anything else until the rest is finished and I have no idea how long that will take, if I can even finish it at all, but keep your eyes and ears peeled just in case! Thanks so much for reading!