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Published:
2019-05-30
Updated:
2021-02-16
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37,523
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21/?
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Children of Thanos

Summary:

So the good guys get to be a family. Why not the bad guys too? Seemed interesting, so here's Dad!Thanos trying to deal with a more fearsome problem than superheroes: Teenagers. And teenage supervillains trying to deal with... being supervillains. And also being teenagers.

Notes:

Screw canon. Dad!Thanos sees all his Children as his actual kids. Therefore he’s a little less blatantly terrible to them than he is in canon.

This does not, however, mean that he’s a decent parent, or that I’m saying this is what good parents look like. It very much isn’t.

Please let me know if I need to add any tags. I’m new to this fandom (yes, really) and I don’t yet know how y’all do things.

Chapter Text

“The blue one is sulking again.”

Gamora paces, all restless energy. Anger, as always, just waiting to be unleashed. It’s beautiful, even now. Even when Thanos suspects his daughter is merely being petty. He fights down a smile.

“The blue one? Your sister. Nebula.”

Gamora whirls around, her hair spinning behind her, and spits the words. “I cannot stand it.”

Thanos nods, though it baffles him. “She ought to use her time more wisely.”

“She’s a fool.”

“She ought to study her new modification. Learn its use. Study and practice.”

“Or spar, once her modifications heal. She loses to me, but not to the others.”

“True.” His lip curls, and he doesn’t know whether he means to smile or frown. Of all the Children he has plucked from all the worlds he’s cleansed, two have proven themselves the deadliest. The one stomping back and forth in front of him, and the one brooding in her quarters. If Gamora is to be believed. But he has never had reason to doubt her.

And Gamora is clearly the better fighter. Faster, more clever, more skilled. And it seems that no matter what Thanos does, no matter how he lectures Nebula or torments her or modifies her flesh, she will not rise to the challenge.

“Have you told her that?” he asks. It is, perhaps, too kind. But if Nebula improves as a result…

“Of course I told her that!”

“And?”

Gamora sighs. Too heavily. He’d known his children would be difficult, even if he raised them for his work from the beginning. Even if he trained and nurtured them from the time they were small. But these tantrums, he did not expect. He rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to soothe away a headache that will just come anyway.

Gamora doesn’t look at him. She shakes a small green fist at someone who isn’t here. “I told her to go beat up on Big, Dumb, and Ugly. She’d learn from it, maybe.”

This time, Thanos does smile. His Gamora has always been perceptive.

And ruthless. “She might kill him.”

“But she’d win!”

“Yes. And we would lose one of our number.” And I would lose a son.

“But she would feel better. And maybe she’d stop glaring at me.”

Thanos strokes his chin. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his children had killed another. He encourages the rivalry between Gamora and Nebula most, but every one of them learned to fight by battling one another. And sometimes children can be unruly.

Might it not be worth one life if Nebula grows stronger?

But Gamora isn’t interested in such questions. She’s pacing again, “Instead she sulks. Every time. And stares at me like she wants to tear me apart.”

Thanos laughs. “Then perhaps she is learning.”

But Gamora doesn’t stop her pacing. “The others—if they stare at me I fight them. But Nebula would never agree to fight me. Unless I let her win or something.”

She stops pacing and looks out a window. Beyond, the stars stretch, glimmers of light against black. She stares out at them and says nothing, and he wonders, not for the first time, what she thinks when she looks out. The Order will not return to her planet for years at least.

They will realize, eventually, what he has done to them and why. They will thank him, then. Will thank her too if she comes with him. He has always planned to take her there, someday after his great deed is done.

But for now, they grieve. And he cannot let her see their pain. Seeing it might break her resolve.

And then he would have to harm her. Lose her, even. Tears prick at the backs of his eyelids. He cannot let them fall in front of her. He cannot let her see.

When he speaks, his voice is soft. “Is that what you want, daughter? To lose?”

That gets Gamora’s attention. She turns to glare at him, and the fury in her eyes and downturned mouth fills him with pride. He did well, choosing this one.

“To lose? To that blue creep? Never, Father.” She crosses her arms in front of her and flings them outward as though practicing with her swords. “Never.”

“Then it seems you have a problem, little one.”

She shakes her head, as if he were one of her more foolish brothers. He should reprimand her, but something in him softens.

“I don’t have a problem,” Gamora snaps. “Nebula has a problem.”

“Then why come to me?”

“You think she’s going to listen to me? I sparred her and won and now her leg is half metal.”

Thanos pinches his nose again. He wants nothing more than to soothe her. To wrap his hand around her head and calm her, as he once did. To tell her Nebula will heal, and grow, and become more fierce and more brave. More like her.

But he cannot promise. Nebula continues to struggle, and he isn’t certain why. “And you think Nebula will listen to me? I punished her once already. If I replace another of her body parts, she will be in too much pain to listen.”

Gamora’s lip curls. That at least he understands. But then her expression softens. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“Then what?”

“Talk to her.”

He blinks. “Her loyalty to our cause is not the issue.”

“About what is bothering her, Father.”

“Coddling her will not help.”

“That isn’t what I meant either.”

“Then what is there to do but leave her to think on her failure? Which we both have done before.”

Gamora steps closer. She hangs her head like she’s ashamed of whatever she’s about to say. It unsettles him. Such displays are for the timid, and Thanos chose her because she was never timid. Not even in the face of death.

He leans down and reaches a hand down toward her. She tilts her head to look up at him. “That’s what I mean. That right there.”

He stops, his fingers hovering just above her head and back. “My… hand?”

She stares back at him. “Do you remember, Father? In the beginning? When you… when you found me…”

“On Zen-Whoberi.” He winces and closes his eyes. He did what was required, but that doesn’t mean he enjoyed it.

“No. After. You took me back to the ship, gave me a room… with a bed too big for me. But I…”

“You did not sleep.”

“No. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw…”

“Shh.” He reaches down to cup her head, and part of her back. When she was a child, his hand could close around almost all of her tiny body. And under his hand that night, she finally stilled.

It wasn’t sleep. Not the kind a warrior would need to gather strength. But it was rest, and that was something. And his Gamora needed it more than once after the fall of her home.

Zen-Whoberi is beautiful again already, so his scouts report. But he cannot take her back. Not yet.

He nuzzles her hair. “I remember.”

“Then you understand.”

His lip curls. “If I coddle Nebula, she will stay weak.”

“Yes. But this, with me—does it make me weak, Father?”

“No. Of course not.” It makes me weak. Not you.

“Nebula is my sister. You said it yourself. She’s your daughter, just like me.”

His frown deepens. He says nothing.

“We’re all your children, Father.”

“Yes.”

“Which means every one of us came from somewhere. From… someplace else.”

He nods. In a just universe, his children would hail from Titan. Not from some far-off world he only visited to save. In a just universe, he would have raised them there, in the meadows and fields of their true home. He would not have taken them from anywhere. Would not have ripped them from the lives they knew.

But Titan died long ago. There is no justice in this universe, except what the brave wring from it with their bare hands. His Children are all stolen, but they are all he has.

Gamora blinks, but doesn’t look away. “Every one of us has… pain.”

His throat is dry, so dry he can barely say it. “Yes.”

“I don’t like my sister much. I’m tired of her brooding. But you have us fight, and then you leave her with her pain.”

He does not reply.

“You never did that to me. No matter how you punished me, no matter what I did, you never… left me with the pain.”

He lifts his hand from her head and back. He tilts it toward himself and stares at it as though he’s never seen it. “Never, little one.”

“Then talk to her, Father. It has to be you.”

He groans, a low rumble from somewhere deep in his chest. “Thank you, little one.”