Dear Diary,

Reminder to self: when you surround yourself with people who are good at what they do and treat them right, you'll be surprised how often they pull you out of the shit when you faceplant in it.

Like, I'm sure I would have fucked up with Menace by now, and I still feel guilty for spending so much time away from her, but Marie was literally made to be a mom. Among other things, and now I'm somewhere between no longer worried about Menace's First Time and D giving me uber squick now that I think about him being raised by the Maenads who, once he's anything like grown, are going to wind up running a train on him if they're allowed to. Shit, now I wanna know how old he has to be before they start. Also if it happened, like, the first time, or only the times since then, since they kinda implied that it's happened multiple times. Also, when he's reborn, I'd like to know if he's a clean slate who's been set up for Ultimate Mommy Issues by his former self, or if he's just, like, an old dude in a baby body, intellectually capable of understanding when he's ready, willing, and able to start servicing his murderfuck cult.

Honestly, as long as the Maenads are cool with it, I think I'm gonna go with the same basic answer I gave him when I set the Maenads loose on him. He did it to himself, and until and unless he asks me for help, I'm gonna assume he's copacetic with the situation as it is. Of course, I still want to sort out Marie's position on Isnomi's future antics, what with my ongoing intention to marry her ass. Also the rest of her, but as the wise woman says, where the hot ass goes, the horny woman will follow. Okay, it's me. I'm the woman, although I totally lied about the 'wise' part. Especially as I'm now remembering that I can, in fact, ask Marie.

Marie, sweetheart?

Her reply came back just the tiniest bit startled. Yes?

I thought about what I wanted to ask her. Just because she didn't have to work words past recalcitrant dentition didn't mean I ought to get sloppy about her time. With the understanding that Saffron and I totally intend to seduce you into saying 'yes' to marrying us, do you look forward to being Isnomi's Mom rather than nanny and Godmother?

Her reply came back as a single word filled with whined need. Yes.

So, is momming for Isnomi the same as raising D?

Her reply came back instantly, filled with scandalized shock. NO!

How's it different?

This time she took her time with her reply. When she finally did, I got the feeling she'd savored the question, choosing her word even more carefully than she usually did. Normal.

Wait, so raising D isn't normal?

Duh.

Even though you do it every time he dies and comes back. I had a sudden burst of brains to the head. How often is that anyway?

Three.

Three times. Over how long?

Again her reply came back slowly, but this time I got no sense of her considering her answer, more trying to figure out something she'd never really thought about before. Ten thousand years?

Holy shit, you're ten thousand years old?

No.

Oh. Um, how old are you?

Again I got that pause. Three, maybe four thousand?

Holy shit. I might have gotten a little light headed. Guess it's no surprise you're so good at all that Maid stuff.

No. Before I could ask she added. Academy.

Oh. Um, what did you do before that?

Funny, I got the same impression of a smile that I sometimes got from Saffron, only this one was more nostalgic, although oddly I got no sense of melancholy. Fight. Feast. Fuck.

I snickered a little. You've got a lot more gears beyond what I pushed you to the other day, don't you?

Yes. She sounded really smug, but fuck it, with three thousand odd years of experience she probably had reason to be. Also, after fighting for that long, even if she didn't do it every day, it really explained how she rolled up Ares' High Priests so fast and decisively. Of course it also made me want to grab all of Calverton by the back of the neck and punch it in the face repeatedly while muttering 'go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep'.

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So... little bit of an age gap, huh?

Two.

I mean, yeah, Saffron's younger than me by about a year, but Franklin's Inspect says she's more mature than me, and for once I think it's right.

Mimic.

That left my gob more than a little smacked. Eventually I replied, how much?

Billions.

I literally had no response to that, and eventually just thought, thanks, Marie. I love you.

Love you, Vlickies.

So, last night after I'd finished my patrols, Marie took me directly back to Lancaster House and threw me in a bath redolent with honey, spice, and soap. She then proceeded to scrub the living shit out of me with a pair of long handled brushes. The horrifying gunk still sticking to me resisted, refusing to scrape completely off, even after Marie swapped out to new brushes. After a moment's consideration, Saffron threw the used ones into the fire in the fireplace. A moment later, as the reek seeped into the room, Marie dropped her brushes, leapt to the fireplace, and disappeared. She returned a moment later dusting off her hands.

"What did you do with them?"

"Vesuvius."

Saffron thought about that for a second, then said, "Heracles won't like that."

"Sorry."

Saffron shook her head as she pulled another pair of brushes out of an armoire. "Don't be. Fuck that guy."

Marie never stopped scrubbing me, but she turned and raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Saffron's jaw dropped a little. "I... I guess, if you want to." Of course, she couldn't see Marie's face, so she didn't see the impish grin crawl across Marie's face. Of course, our big catgirl couldn't keep it up forever; she snickered, only to have Saffron bat her butt with a brush. "You!"

Of course, that's when Marie looked at her brushes and made an awful face, then disappeared again. When she returned she had a whole assed cauldron in her hands. It steamed slightly. She frowned and said, "Sorry." then dumped a whole fuckin' steaming cauldron of spaghetti sauce over my head. Then she scrubbed more with the new brushes. Like ten minutes later the brushes looked like she'd murdered somebody with them, but the stink still clung. She disappeared again.

A moment later Loki asked, Daughter, does your Maid truly need...

Yes, whatever she wants, fucking yes, please.

Okay then.

A few minutes later she returned, arms loaded with peaches the size of Saffron's fuckin' head. Handing most of them over to my Kitten to hold, she proceeded to squash them over my head one at a time, the juice smoking when it hit the gunk on me. She scrubbed and scrubbed until the next set of brushes lit themselves on fire, the stink filling the room again. She disappeared again.

Five minutes later, I thought, Marie, please come back.

Soon, love. The way she savored that second word would have filled me with giddy glee at any other time, but right now I felt like a big lump of shit in a tub. Hell, shit would have smelled better.

Okay, I whimpered.

Like half an hour later she reappeared with a big assed glass bottle full of something gray. Stepping carefully, she approached the tub and sprinkled gray powder generously over my head, then across the rest of the stinking gunk in the tub with me. All of it steamed, bubbled, and blackened. The worst rotten egg smell I'd ever smelled washed through the room as Marie went to town with a new set of brushes. She started with my hair, then worked her way down, scouring away everything including what felt like a few layers of skin from every bit of me from crown to crotch to the soles of my feet. Eventually, after like half an hour of concentrated scrubbing, she reached out with one of her brushes, which had blackened completely, and flipped open the drain.

With the rotten egg stinking water draining, she dropped the brushes into the tub, stepped over to the fireplace, and lifted a huge steaming cauldron of water. She stepped up to the edge of the tub in order to dump it right over my head, and as it scalded my skin pink I cried. Not because the outer layers of my skin were sloughing off from mild scalding, but because as the water rinsed the sulfurous smell away, nothing else replaced it. The Hole Spawn stench had finally gone.

Still dripping wet, I stood as she brought a second cauldron over and dumped it over me. I stepped out of the tub and glomped onto her. "Thank you, Marie."

"Welcome." she murmured into my hair.

Saffron joined us a moment later, her arms going around my waist from behind, laying her head against my back. "I worried about you, love."

"Worried the stink would never come off?"

She laughed as Marie growled, vibrating every bit of me. "No, love. Worried that you wouldn't understand that my desire to touch you remained unquenchable. I simply did not wish to make Marie's job harder."

"What would you guys have done if she hadn't found a way to de-stink me?"

"This." With that word, Marie's arms wrapped around us, one forearm under each of our butts, and lifted us up eye to eye with her. At least I think we were all eye to eye, because mine slipped closed as she kissed me.

"Never fear, love. We will never give up on you. Ever. And should your final destination be Tartarus or Niflhel, that too will be ours."

When Marie let me up for air I asked, "won't D have something to say about that?"

As Saffron claimed my mouth, my magnificent Murder Mittens declaimed. "Fuck Him."

Saffron's mental voice held more than a little bit of giggling. I'm sure you will, beloved Maenad.

Marie snickered, and right before she erased all thought from my head by nibbling on my earlobe with her mouth full of fangs, said, "Am."

With that she carried us both to bed. Beds, really, what with her carrying one set to the suite bedroom, where Menace, her posse, and the horde hoard all sat around doing little kid ready for bed things, another set to our suite bedroom, and another to the Love Shack. The Saffron with us there pulled away from me just far enough to say, "Isn't this just a bit redundant, beloved Maenad?"

"No."

Four thousand years of experience For The Win.