#dofus simone

You've had plenty of other jobs in the past, worked for plenty of other families of all different sizes and quirks, but yet this job is different in a way that's hard for you to describe.

You've always tried to never get too attached to one place, even before you made housekeeping your chosen career. Most places keep you around for a month or two, then dismiss you once the place looks spotless enough and they get a good look at your monthly rates. But the old man and his little boy seemed to accept you into their small but strange family almost immediately; given the state of their home when you first arrived, you assumed they were just really desperate for a woman's touch. You still haven't been fully convinced otherwise, but you're beginning to accept they've kept you around for other reasons besides that.

Having an on-call nanny seemed to be one of them.

It's late at night. Mr. Crepin left hours ago, mumbled something about "urgent Ecaflip buisness" which you already knew was just his code word for "Meeting up with some Pandawa friends at the tavern, don't wait up for me". You've been through this routine plenty of times by now, you know what to do. Precocious as he is, you don't exactly have a difficult kid on your hands, as long as you manage to keep him in your line of sight.

You both cooked and ate dinner already, you know bedtime is supposed to be at 8, at least on paper, but that rule is pretty lax from what you've noticed. You've interrpreted it to mean you should start getting the kid ready for bed by 8, but he could stay up for an hour or three past that depending on what kind of night it was. You thought after dinner you'd have a little time to do some cleaning around the shop area before hypothetical-bedtime, so imagine your shock when you glance at the clock and see that it's past 11, and you haven't heard so much as a peep from the lounge since cleaning up dinner.

"Joris! Where are you? It's past your bedtime!"

You speedwalk your way into the living room, not sure exactly what you'll find given the long stretch of silence. Last time you checked on him, he was trying to show his pet flea how to play 21 card pickup. Sure enough, scattered around the room is the remains of a deck of playing cards that were in the hands of a child that took the name "21 card pickup" too literally. There's also crayons, pencils, slightly crumbled pieces of paper with childish doodles scribbled all over them, and in the center of the room: a sleepy little boy passed out on top of a huge open picture book.

"Oh..."

You can't help but smile fondly. You step your way over the various trinkets littering the floor, not even caring that you'll have to pick them all up later, and crouch down next to the slumbering child. You gently pat the top of his head, he stirs and shifts onto his other side. It seems like he's well and truly knocked out. You place your hands under his arms and lift him off the ground, he's so small he weighs practically nothing to you. His head and arms hang limply towards the ground before you tuck him securely against your chest. You hear him sigh and squirm slightly in your arms, and you freeze completely solid out of fear of disturbing his delicate sleep. A second later however he settles back against you, his head tucked protectively under your chin.

As you start making your way to the bedroom, you find yourself rubbing circles into the center of his shoulders, it occuring to you that you never really held him so close like this before despite the amount of time you've been working here. There was just never any need for it, and Jojo was such a hyperactive kid he rarely ever sat still enough anyway. Feeling his warmth against you, the gentle thump of his heartbeat, the way his tiny fingers clutched onto your blouse like you were the only thing keeping him safe in an uncertain world, you could start to understand why some people dedicated their lives to nurturing this love that only a child could bring.

Eventually you reach the bedroom, and you're hit with the realization you're going to have to find a way to carry him up to the top loft to tuck him in without also waking him up. Oh well; you've lugged sacks of cawwots up tall ladders to impractically designed pantries, this is a cakewalk by comparison.

Upon reaching the top loft, you narrowly avoid tripping over a toy sword left out in the open, or any of the other toys and stuffed animals left scattered around the small bed (well, calling it a bed was misleading. It was a laundry basket lined with pillows and blankets, but you've already had several annoying conversations with Mr. Crepin about it by this point so you're just used to calling it a bed). You kneal down and lay him down on the mattress, observing his peaceful face for a moment before you begin pulling the blankets over him. Then, at that exact moment, you notice his eyelids flutter.

You pause, watching his eyes slowly open and turn their gaze up to you, the slight gold color of his sclara almost seem like they have an unnatural glow to them in the darkness of the bedroom. You wonder what to say, worried he may be upset or worse, suddenly be too awake to go back to sleep.

"Hey, Simone...?" he yawns.

"Hey, Jojo." You smile down at him, tucking the blankets up to his neck.

"Simone, I've never had a real mama before..."

Your heart wenches a little hearing him say that. The fact Joris was adopted was not exactly a secret by any means. Mr. Crepin was always strangely tight-lipped about the details of how exactly the boy came to be under his care whenever the subject came up in conversation; whether it was out of ignorance or an attempt to conceal some kind of truth was anyone's guess. But despite how much he loved his Papycha, the absence of a mother figure had to have a hard impact on any child.

"Do you think... you could be my mama...?"

In an instant your heart twists and you narrowly avoid letting tears poke through your eyes, disguising them with a chuckle.

"You -- you want me to be your mama...?"

Jojo shrugs. "You're pretty, you're really nice, you take good care of us, and Papycha likes you..."

Apparantly those were the best and only qualifiers to be a mom in the eyes of a 7-year-old. You can't help but laugh, the simple question leaving you so caught off guard you aren't sure what the right thing to say is.

"Jojo, I..." you struggle to come up with an answer, but when you look into those big innocent eyes, you realize there's only one answer you can give. "...I would love to be your mom."

You bend down and place a soft kiss on his forehead, watching as his eyes begin to flutter closed again, exhuastion beginning to pull him back under.