Yesterday I mentioned coming up with a fic idea where Robert and Flambae end up with a kid.
Essentially the story starts with Flambae getting kidnapped by this group obsessed with studying fire metas, because fire powers tend to be some of the strongest and most dangerous meta abilities out there. They're specifically interested in him because he's one of the strongest fire metas they have ever documented, though he apparently hasn't even fully unlocked his full potential yet. So they take him, study him, harvest samples from him, and treat him less like a person and more like a walking furnace with excellent genetics.
The Z-team does manage to get him back, but they don't fully take the group down at first. The group escapes and goes on the run, leaving Flambae with the kind of trauma he would rather insult, dramatize, and set on fire than actually talk about. Things seem mostly over for a while, or at least pushed to the side, until SDN eventually tracks the group down again a few months later. This time, prepared, they send the Z-team in to take them out properly.
That is where they find the lab.
And the lab is so much worse than anyone expected. It isn't just researchers studying fire powers in a creepy basement somewhere. It's a full facility full of trapped fire metas of all kinds. Adults, children, babies, even animals. Some kidnapped, some altered, some outright created. The team gets the researchers, scientists, and enforcers arrested, and the rescued people are all moved into care, placement, foster situations, medical programs, or whatever kind of specialized help they need.
In the middle of all of this, Flambae finds a little fire meta bengal cat and instantly falls in love with her. She's not just a normal cat with warm paws, either, she can fully turn on fire, which is why she can't just go to anyone. Flambae, being a fire meta himself and already used to managing all the safety issues that come with flames, is allowed to take her home. He gives her some beautiful, elegant, probably extremely meaningful and dramatic name. Then Robert ruins it.
Because whenever the cat curls up with Beef, who she weirdly gets along with despite being a cat and Beef being a dog, Robert starts calling her Beans. Flambae is deeply offended by this. Robert keeps doing it. The cat starts responding to it. Then when another certain someone eventually starts talking, she also calls the cat Beans, and at that point the elegant name is dead in a ditch. The cat only responds to Beans now. Her name is Beans. Flambae has to live with this forever.
But then comes the real emotional bomb.
Some time after the raid, Blazer calls Flambae and Robert into her office in the middle of a shift. The rescued children and babies have mostly been placed or are being placed, but some cases are complicated enough that SDN had to move into DNA testing to figure out possible relatives or suitable homes. And one of the babies, a little girl, came back as a direct genetic match to both Flambae and Robert. Not distantly. Not partially. At the level of being their biological child.
What had happened was that the lab had taken Flambae’s DNA while he was captive. During the rescue, they also managed to get some of Robert’s blood. Since the group had a habit of testing every sample they could get their hands on as a potential genetic partner for their experiments, they tested Robert’s DNA with Flambae’s and found that the compatibility was off the charts. So they used both of them to genetically engineer a baby, trying to create the most powerful fire meta they possibly could.
And it is awful at first. Not the baby herself, obviously, she's a baby, she's innocent. But the revelation is awful because this child exists because both of them were violated. Flambae was kidnapped, studied, and harvested. Robert had his blood taken during the rescue without even knowing it, and then his body was used too. So suddenly these two men who have been sleeping together while very loudly pretending it's casual are standing there being told that there is a baby girl who is biologically theirs, created by the same people who hurt Flambae.
Robert and Flambae’s dynamic is already complicated before this. They've been hooking up, but both of them keep insisting it is not serious, even though it is very obviously getting more serious by the day. They bicker constantly, know too much about each other, keep showing up for each other, and are both deeply committed to pretending none of that means anything. Then this baby happens, and suddenly the lie is much harder to keep up. A child does not magically make them a couple, but she does make their denial look extremely stupid.
At first, they don't know what to do. They are not required to take her, Blazer makes that clear. The baby is not property, and biology does not automatically create obligation, especially when that biology was forced on all three of them. But placement is complicated, because she is a powerful fire meta infant with a strange origin and very specific care needs. A fire meta guardian would be ideal. Flambae is uniquely suited to understanding her powers, Robert is one of her biological parents too, and neither of them can stop thinking about the fact that if they don't take her, she is still out there somewhere, this tiny baby made from them by people who saw her as an experiment.
They eventually meet her, and that is what really cracks everything open. Not because of some dramatic destiny moment. Just because she is tiny. She is a baby. She fusses and runs too warm and calms when Flambae comes close because his heat is familiar and safe to her body. Robert is terrified to hold her, but then she grabs onto him and falls asleep, and there is no way to make that casual. There is no way to stand there with the baby made from both of them asleep in Robert’s arms and pretend the only thing between them is sex and bad decisions. They decide to take her in and name her Suraya.
Raising Suraya makes Flambae understand his own parents much more because, as a kid, he thought they were harder on him because they trusted him less or loved him less. But now that he's raising a fire meta child, he finally gets that they couldn't treat him exactly like a normal kid. They had to teach him more control and more restraint because his anger could literally hurt people. That does not mean they handled everything perfectly, and it does not erase the hurt, but it gives him a new appreciation for what they were trying to do. Now he is the parent kneeling in front of his own little fire child, telling her she is allowed to be angry, but she is not allowed to throw fire because she did not get the pink shoes.
Everyone expects Robert to be the stern parent and Flambae to be the indulgent one, but it actually ends up flipped. Robert struggles with discipline because of his history with Robbie. Saying no to Suraya, making her cry, or holding a boundary can trigger every fear he has about becoming his father. He is terrified of going too far, of making her feel controlled or unloved, of turning her childhood into another legacy shaped cage. So he over explains, backtracks, softens too quickly, and sometimes cannot hold the line.
Flambae, somehow, becomes the stern parent. Not because he's naturally calm or patient, because he absolutely is not. He's still dramatic, insulting, flamboyant, and very much himself. But he understands fire. He understands how dangerous it is to let big feelings and flames become the same language. Suraya is not a brat, but she has huge, intense emotions, and she has tantrums like any little kid does. The difference is that when she gets worked up, she can heat the room, spark, or burn her own clothes. Flambae loves her enough to be firm with her. Robert teaches her that love does not have to be earned. Flambae teaches her that being loved does not mean she gets to rule the house like a tiny pink furnace dictator.
There is also a lot of learning involved, because only one of her parents has fire powers and flame resistant skin. Suraya has fire resistant skin like Flambae, but Robert very much does not. When she is about three months old, there's a really bad incident where her temperature suddenly spikes while Robert is holding her. His body reacts to the burning pain before his brain can override it, and he drops her. Flambae catches her in time, but it nearly gives Robert a complex about holding his own daughter. They have to work through it with special sleeves, warning signs, safety routines, and a lot of painful trust building. Robert does eventually get past it, but he never forgets that moment.
When Suraya is about five months old, Robert and Flambae have been dealing with endless legal and bureaucratic nonsense because of her unnatural birth and their unmarried status. Custody, guardianship, medical authority, emergency contacts, insurance, forms that do not know how to categorize her, all of it is a nightmare. One evening, exhausted and probably surrounded by paperwork, Robert casually suggests that maybe they should just get married. At first he means it in the most practical, Robert way possible, like marriage is a paperwork crowbar. Then both of them actually hear what he said, stop, think about it, and realize it's become a real proposal.
They decide to wait until Suraya can walk steadily so she can be their flower girl. The wedding is small and intimate, held in the backyard of Flambae's parents’ house, with close family and friends present. Robert ends up taking Flambae's surname, Rahimi, becoming Robert Rahimi instead of Robert Robertson III. It is not just a name change. It is Robert stepping away from the Robertson legacy and the Mecha Man line his father forced onto him. He gets to be Robert Rahimi the first, building a family of his own instead of being the third version of someone else’s plan.
By the time Suraya is four or five, the lab stuff is not gone, exactly, but it has become background history. She has grown into an actual little person. She has Robert’s borderline auburn hair, fire-resistant skin like Flambae, and a strange little skin tail from the process used to create her, though she's embarrassed by it.
And Suraya is very much a girly girl. She loves pink, unicorns, dresses, ballet, singing, and big chunky child jewelry. This creates a very specific problem because, while there are flameproof clothes in the world, a lot of them are ugly, utilitarian, or made for combat and adult fire metas. There sadly are not enough cute flameproof little girl styles, which is absurd considering how many fire metas exist. So it's not uncommon for Suraya to get worked up and burn her own clothes. She's fine cause her skin is fire resistant, but her dress is not, and for a little girl who loved that dress, this is still devastating.
Suraya also really likes singing, which gives her an outlet that is not just fire. Prism immediately becomes dramatic about this because of course she does. Chase tries to compete by teaching her songs too, because Chase dotes on Suraya the exact same way he dotes on Beef. This is Robert’s baby, his little brother’s daughter, so obviously Chase considers himself her number one uncle. Unfortunately for him, Prism considers herself her number one aunt, and the two are constantly competing for favorite status after her actual parents. Prism has the sparkle and performance advantage. Chase has seniority and pure stubborn old man devotion. Suraya, naturally, uses this for personal gain.
She is also a little parrot, specifically with bad words. She knows she is not supposed to say them, and she thinks it is hilarious how stressed the adults get when she does. This is a problem because she is being raised around Robert, Flambae, Chase, Prism, Punch Up, Invisigal, Sonar, and the rest of the Z-team, who are not exactly a preschool vocabulary enrichment program. Someone mutters one bad word under their breath and Suraya repeats it with perfect timing, then laughs because every adult in the room suddenly looks like they just watched a bomb roll under the couch.
The Z-team as a whole becomes her huge extended family. Prism/Alice spoils her with clothes, accessories, sparkle, and performance advice. Chase spoils her because she is Robert’s daughter and he is emotionally helpless about it. Malevola is good for helping her feel less strange about her tail because she does not make a big production out of visible difference. Golem lets her decorate him with stickers and jewelry. Punch Up tosses her in the air once and Robert nearly dies on the spot. Coupé pretends not to care and then buys her the most practical, expensive, well made things imaginable. Sonar is already putting together portfolios and investing for her future. Waterboy is very easy for her to talk into giving her treats. Invisigal encourages and teachers her how to get away with mischief.
So Suraya is a little spoiled, but not in a bratty way. More in the sense that she has a whole army of superpowered aunts and uncles, plus Flambae’s actual family, who all know where she came from and would give her the world if allowed. Which is exactly why Flambae has to be the stern parent. He is not just parenting Suraya. He is also constantly parenting every adult around her who folds the second she looks at them with big sad eyes and says please.
The real later conflict comes years after the lab raid, once Suraya is about four or five. The group doesn't regroup immediately. It takes them years to crawl back out and start trying to reclaim their old experiments. By then, Suraya is not a baby in a file. She is not an abstract genetic result. She is Robert and Flambae’s daughter. She has a name, a family, a dog, a flaming cat named Beans, ballet clothes, favorite songs, a godmother and godfather fighting over her affection, and a whole life.
She also has a whole family of supers who are going to tear that lab to the ground when they kidnap her.
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