Chapter Text
Niki expects the entire thing to be over quickly. After all, she has years of experience hunting fledglings that aren’t her own. She should be able to separate the two leeches from Ranboo and have them out of the perimeter within minutes.
She doesn’t take one thing into account. That Ranboo might have bonded with them more than she was willing to notice.
Before she can take a single step into the room, the youngling is already barreling at her, at a speed high enough she has trouble dodging and ends up getting hit, with surprising strength too, as she gets flung into the wall behind her hard, feeling her breath knocked out of her chest, and the knife slips from her grip. She’s too stunned to react as he grabs her and throws her across the corridor, away from the fledglings, and, most importantly, away from the nest.
Niki barely has time to react as she’s hit the ground, hard, and she can see the youngling flying at her again, his mouth open in a wordless scream, and his eyes… his eyes are black, completely black, as if all the light has been sucked out of them. Her breath hitches, all instincts screaming to get away, get away— She knows she’s in trouble. This is not a youngling she can take on her own, not anymore.
She scrambles to her feet and takes off running in the opposite direction, towards the staircase. She can hear him close behind her, his footsteps pounding on the ground, and she knows she won’t be able to outrun him.
There’s been a change. A change she didn’t notice, too busy in her self-loathing and hate.
Her opponent is no longer a youngling, that’s a grown-ass adult vampire she’s facing.
And she’s completely screwed.
The moment he sees Niki, with a knife no less, something in him just snaps.
There isn’t a single thought regarding his clan anymore. There are just his fledglings. And the need, not want, need, to protect them. And the vampire in the doorway has a silver knife, one meant for hurting fledglings.
A growl slips past his lips and he runs at her, knocking her into the wall on her left when she attempts to dodge. He growls with satisfaction as the knife slips from her grasp, and grabs her, throws her to the end of the corridor.
Something in him begs to kill her. Something else in him just wants her gone from the building. Something else wants to force her to come back and watch as he claims the fledglings for himself.
Choices, choices. For now he has to make sure that she isn’t any more trouble than she is already.
He runs after her, easily catching up to her, somehow. He doesn’t remember being that fast, that strong, but he doesn’t dwell on it, simply acknowledges it as he catches up again, and holds her in such a way that doesn’t allow her to break out of his grip.
“You will leave my fledglings alone,” he hisses and doesn’t recognize his voice. It nearly makes him let go, the startling realisation that he sounds drained, like he’s in bloodlust. But he’s still in control, still conscious and aware of his actions, so he tries not to be too surprised and files it away as an information to deal with later. “You will leave them alone, and you will let me claim them, and you will tolerate them in my nest, do you understand?” Quick, ragged breathing answers him. A stress reaction, vampires don’t need to breathe. “Do you understand?” He shakes her a little, and she finally replies:
“Yes, yes, I understand, please don’t kill me.” Kill her? It’s those words that finally snap him out of whatever state he was in. He feels weaker, immediately, more sluggish. Tired. But somehow he’s still strong enough to be effortlessly holding up Niki. Right, Niki.
“Niki, I don’t want to kill you, I just need you to stop being a threat to my fledglings.”
“They'll ruin you,” she breathes out. “They'll drain you, they'll make you wish you're not alive anymore to see them grow up, they'll make the next decade a living hell for you.”
“Niki, they'll stay,” he tells her with conviction. For a moment it's silent, and then he hears a sob, followed by another. Niki shakes in his hold, and he turns it from constricting to caring.
“What if they won't?” she asks, her voice breaking with tears.
“They're not gonna be sent to war, that's for sure,” he says, internally cringing when she flinches. “I'm still gonna have the bond with them, they'll come back.”
Niki slumps in his hold, and knocks her head against his chest. He bends down to nuzzle into her hair. A silent, but recognized, apology on both sides. They only separate when the woman’s breathing gets under control.
“We have… a lot to talk about, huh?” she says, fiddling with her sleeve.
Ranboo nods, putting an arm around her shoulders, “Yeah… How about we do it in our proper nest?”
Niki knocks back her head again, bumping him, and nods. He smiles. They’re on a good path.
Techno expects the worst when he hears Niki whimper out a scared ‘Please don’t kill me’. He closes his eyes and hopes that the entire thing won’t traumatise the fledglings too much.
But he doesn’t hear any sickening crunches he’d come to expect from killing vampires, and instead listens as Ranboo reassures her softly.
He breathes out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding, and relaxes a little. Leave it to Ranboo to want to talk things out even after getting threatened with a knife.
The rest of the conversation is a little lost on him, said as quietly as only vampires really can, quiet enough that even his supernatural hearing has trouble picking up more than a few words. Thankfully after a moment he hears approaching footsteps and Ranboo appears in tow with Niki, both unharmed and relatively at peace. The fledglings are immediately alarmed, hissing and writhing away, but Ranboo calms them down with a purr and dives down to hug both of them, satisfying his instincts that demand he knows what’s going on with them.
Techno suspects he’s only left the nest because his clanmate (Techno) was left to protect the fledglings. One of the reasons why he didn’t even try to follow them.
Another was that vampires are fucking scary when dealing with in-clan fights.
He didn’t want to mess with this, no thank you.
Techno gets out of his head and meets Niki’s eyes. His sister looks at him with an appropriate amount of regret and an inappropriate amount of annoyance. Well excuse him, he had an excuse to not be a part of her and Ranboo’s squabble, and he had an even better excuse for not being on her side. The better excuse being: She was fucking wrong. Sucks to be her.
“Ready to talk?” he asks her instead of voicing all that. She nods, but her eyes speak ‘not yet’. He totally understands. Emotional talks? Brrrrr. Horrible.
“Kids, we’re going to have a change of surroundings,” Ranboo informs the fledglings, earning two angered hisses.
Techno pays them no mind as he gets up and walks towards Niki, keeping his posture forcefully relaxed. She’s standing in the doorway, the knife still glistens on the floor behind her. Techno’s tense, he’d like to say she’s not going to attack again, especially after a chat with Ranboo, but…
Well, their bond is still closed.
Closed-bond Niki is a dangerous Niki.
(He loves her to bits, but it would be disrespectful to not acknowledge her sharp edges.)
To be honest, Techno is horrible when it comes to vampire magic. Duh. He’s a werewolf. But he tries to nudge Niki’s end of the bond open. He probably looks hilarious, brows scrunched together, eyes closed, but he doesn’t care about that as he hears Niki snort out a laugh. Good.
“Okay, okay you mutt, I’ll open it, just… just give me a moment.”
He smiles, even as he feels the floodgates open, and days worth of emotions assault his subconscious. He clenches his fists at the amount of fear he senses. And so he throws himself at Niki and hugs her, ensuring she knows she has him, no matter what.
From the pleased hum he receives, he thinks the message got through.
Moving nests ends up easier than expected. The fledglings put up minimal fight, and the moment Ranboo purrs at them they relent completely.
Niki watches with bewilderment as the group sets out into the night, and swiftly arrives at the new location. And then comes Ranboo’s favourite part, introducing the fledglings to a proper nest.
“OH MY GOD IT’S SO FLUFFY!” Tubbo immediately starts rolling around on the duvet, squishing many various pillows as he goes.
Tommy is a little more cautious, but soon enough he too melts into a content puddle of a purring fledgling, content to half-nap at peace.
Niki settles on a beanbag, away from the fledglings, but not trying to put too much distance between herself and them. She immediately pulls out her phone and headphones, and starts playing a rhythm game, a clear sign she wants some time to put together her thoughts.
Techno decides to flop down on the pillowy hill next to her, closing his eyes with a content expression. As a wolf of course. The fledgling watch his switch with awe, before going back to their respective activities. Niki stares at them a little too long to hide it properly. Heh.
Ranboo elects to flop down between his, soon to be officially his, changelings. Soon. He’ll ask them shortly, and he knows for a fact that they’ll say yes.
There are things unsaid that need to be said, and some tension in the atmosphere, but his clan is alright, and that’s what matters.
He allows his consciousness to drift with that in mind.