Forty Years of This [Monster Hunter World]

Chapter 18

"Commander, we have a problem." The Argosy had barely docked before a sailor pulled the Commander to the Captain's quarters. The Captain, a seasoned woman with an easy going personality similar to the Commander's, was sitting at a table with... a child.

"Is that the problem?" The Commander pointed to the child.

"Ayup. Your problem now."

"What?" He whipped his head towards the Captain.

"She's your little stow-away now."

The girl looked fearfully towards the Commander, but in her fear there was a defiance that challenged him. He chewed on the inside of his lip as he tried to figure out what to do with her.

"Well..." He started then paused. "You got a name, kid?"

"██." She practically chirped.

"That's it? Just ██?"

"Mm!" She nodded with her whole body.

"Alright. Come with me." He gestured, a spinning wave near his waist, as he turned to leave the Captain's cabin. "I'm the Commander of this operation, and you are to call me as such."

She scrambled to catch up with him, but once she reached him she had no trouble. He was slow with his limp, and she was young and vibrating with nervous energy.

"Listen very carefully to me, ██." He looked down at her but only really saw her wild mop of dark brown hair and thin shoulders. "This is Astera, and everyone here has a job. No one can go without pulling their weight because just outside of these walls are monsters with no fear of man. Rathians and the like haunt the skies, but alongside them are other venomous flying monsters that wouldn't hesitate to swallow a grown man whole. I nearly died out there, and I consider myself to be an extremely skilled hunter. Or... I was."

The girl looked nervously at his leg, then towards the log wall surrounding the fort. She hugged her arms to her chest, but she still stood stiff and tall.

"I don't know what you ran from. I don't know why you snuck aboard that ship. The man I love says we all ran from something or towards something when we came to the new world, but now that you're here you can't go back for a very long time." He stopped walking to glare downward at her. "I hope for your sake you didn't sneak on that ship on a whim."

She was silent and clearly frightened, but she met his glare with that same stoney, unbreakable fierceness she had before. The Commander sighed, then continued on his way towards the first person he thought might know how to handle a child.

"Ha!" The Tracker slapped her knee, half bent over, when the Commander asked her if she'd watch the girl. "Really, Commander?" He began to feel shame well in his cheeks. "Is it because I'm the only girl you know? Because that's not true."

"Look--"

"Nope!" Her smile faded when she met the kid's eyes. "Look, kiddo... Commander here has a good heart, but he doesn't always think things through." A wink before he could protest. "You can't live with me cuz I don't even live here. I drop in once a month to take a shower, then I'm off on the road again. Don't take it personally, but I just can't help you. But Commander..." The good humor in her voice disappeared.

"I know." He crossed his arms and shifted his stance to make him seem a little bigger and a little more sturdy. "I'm not at all opposed to it."

"But the Quartermaster?"

"We've never talked about it. It's only been two years, and I never thought..." He glanced at the kid.

"I'm sure there are others who can take care of her. And hey," she winked at the kid. "It takes a village."

He left the kid with the Tracker before hunting down the Quartermaster. Regardless of the outcome, both quartermasters were going to need to know about the unexpected arrival. Hell, the whole fort was going to need to know. The Commission back in the old world... they didn't necessarily need to know. Not until they figured out why the kid had stowed away in the first place.

When the Quartermaster, his quartermaster, saw him, the man's face lit up. He was still stoney and frozen, but he softened like a river rock.

"How do you feel about kids?" The Commander intended to break through to the point as quickly as he could like an ice pick against glass.

"Uh..." The Quartermaster stopped. His expression froze between confusion and a smile. "Why?"

"A young girl stowed away on the Argosy, and the ship isn't sailing back for at least another year. I've... I came from a large family, and I want a family, and I feel that taking her in now would be the same as adopting her." Met with silence, he continued. "How would you feel about adopting her with me?"

"No." The Quartermaster's smile turned to a baffled frown. "You can adopt her, but I cannot adopt her with you. I cannot take into my family, something which is very intimate to me, someone I do not know. It confuses me how you could consider adopting a person as your own when you do not even know who she is."

"She's a child."

"Very good. Make her your child. Put her in your nest and stuff worms in her mouth all you like. I cannot suddenly forge familial bonds like that. I cannot take someone into my own on an impulse."

The Commander blinked. The Quartermaster's harsh denial stuck him like a slap across the face. He knew the man was likely to be hesitant, but he didn't expect him to so intensely shut down the idea entirely.

"████, my love..." The Quartermaster stepped towards him and reached for his hands. "I am not saying do not adopt this child. I am not saying I will not, someday, love this child as my family. I merely cannot flip a switch and accept this role. Take this child into your home, and I will support you in your endeavor to support her."

The Commander melted in his hands. He wanted a family, yes, but he didn't want it thrown upon him so suddenly. He didn't want it as a single father, but there was no one else he could ask to foster her, and in his heart he truly wanted a daughter.

"Her name is ██," he murmured. "And I think I already have a job for you."

"Ever looking forward." The Quartermaster leaned down to press a kiss to the Commander's forehead before resting their heads together. "I look forward to meeting your daughter."