Tyrant wife Robin gets hit with a de-aging ray and is temporarily made into a child. Mark handles this with so much grace and is totally in control of the situation. Mhmm yep. He's just got to keep her alive until it wears off. He ends up taking little Robin with him everywhere. Can't risk someone coming in and stealing her after all. He doesn't put her in chains because she's just a little girl and he's not a monster. At some point he might end up getting a child leash though. Little Robin is a runner. Little Robin asks him what it's like being married and he goes on a whole rant about how he defeated her and so now he gets to keep her. Little Robin responds looking up at him with her big eyes and says she doesn't think thats what wifes are for. He asks what they're for then and she says wifes are for cuddling with obviously 🙄. Then she climbs up into the throne next to him grabs his arm like a teddy bear and falls asleep.
When Robin returns to her true age she looks over and sees half the bed is covered in toys. It's Mark's half. Little Robin loved collecting them but she also wanted space to sprawl out at night so they all ended up on Mark's side of the bed. Mark slept on the floor.
Thought about this and remembered how weird of a kid Robin was lmao. So now Tyrant gets a glimpse of that, too
“Did y’know scurvy makes old injuries come back?”
Mark stares. Why the fuck is his wife such a weird kid? “…Does it?”
“Yeah. Like a haunting.” Robin’s feet swing as she moves the apple slices from one side of the plate to the other.
Her stomach was growling and it annoyed Mark, so he went to the kitchen and cut up an apple like Debbie used to do for him. He could’ve ordered food made for them, but he doesn’t trust anyone else to prepare it.
Robin is in a delicate state. She’s useless and weak, no powers at all, and the de-aging is supposed to wear off on its own. Mark isn’t incompetent; he won’t let her get assassinated while she’s like this. How would it look if the Emperor can’t protect his own wife?
Even if it means having to restrict his movements to their private rooms, unless he’s absolutely needed in the throne room. No one except his most loyal can see Robin as she is, and like hell is he leaving a defenceless kid on her own. She already proved to be worse than most kids when she didn’t run or fight after waking up-
She didn’t even try. Just…stared at him, with Robin’s eyes, and only the flecks of gold in them convinced him she was still his wife. A reduced version of her, all memories of him fucking gone, but it’s temporary. She’ll be back to her usual awful self soon, not this creepy, quiet kid.
…She’s started to talk a bit more, lately. At the beginning she didn’t speak to him at all, unless she was answering a direct question. He had to set reminders because she’s human now, and needs to eat more often, and she’s too stupid to come to him and tell him she’s hungry.
She still won’t now, but she’ll sit next to him on the couch while he’s flicking through reports, instead of going straight back to the bedroom unless he tells her to stay out in the living space. He’s explained how the TV works at least a dozen times now, and she’s finally started to just fucking take the damn remote and put whatever she wants on.
“It’s one of the stages,” she says, face turned away from him but she glances over, like she’s checking if he’s listening. “Scars open up. D’you have any?”
“Scars?” Mark scoffs, and she doesn’t flinch this time. Finally. He hasn’t hurt her, he won’t hurt her, and it was pissing him off that she kept acting like he would. “I’m not weak. Viltrumites can’t get scurvy, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Why- Because Viltrumites are superior to humans.”
That should be the end of it, as she picks up one of the slices and chews on it. But a minute later she pipes up again. “But you can die, right? Do Viltrumites rot?”
He regrets ever telling her what Viltrumites are. He’s not pleased at her getting over this annoying shyness to actually talk to him, when Mark’s been wasting so much of his day here, on standby, like he doesn’t have a million other demands for his attention.
“Only the weak die. Who gives a shit if they rot or don’t rot?”
Robin blinks at him. “Bacteria.”
Mark scowls. “You’re like, seven. You don’t know what bacteria are.”
“Bacteria eat dead people, so they rot, unless they’re frozen. Then they stay forever on mountains and stuff, and really deep under water, ’cause…no bacteria. I think.”
That might be the most words he’s heard her say at once this entire time. What the fuck.
“Oh.” Her eyes widen, and when she smiles he could almost call her a cute kid, if she wasn’t such an obvious freak. “Space bacteria. For Viltrumites, ’cause you’re special.”
Then with a nod, she turns back to the TV - currently showing a Seance Dog episode, not anything that could’ve brought this on - and picks up another apple slice.
You’re special.
Well, obviously. But it’s good that even this diminished version of Robin acknowledges it.
Ohh rebel Robin and tyrant Mark sounds delightful. Poor boy post marriage is trying to keep in control of the situation so he puts Robin in chains. He still sits her right on the throne of course she is still his wife. He's not in control at all though shes domming him while officially being his captive.
They have an odd dynamic lol
Mark has never hated anyone as much as his wife.
The chains clink together when she shifts on his thigh, but when he glares at her, she isn’t even looking at him.
No, she’s watching Kregg as he gives his report, hazel eyes set in a loose focus that always makes her look bored - despite Mark knowing full well that she is taking in all information that passes through his throne room. Storing it in her delicate skull with the intention of sharing it with the traitors she loves so much.
He wishes he could peel back her scalp and rip it all out. The information, sure, but he’d rather erase all her memories of them. The pathetic cowards who call themselves rebels, as if they ever stood a chance against him. As if they deserved to have someone like Robin in their ranks.
Years ago, she was his villain. A pest he could never be rid of, but…reliable in that fact. It isn’t weakness to admit she made him stronger than he might’ve otherwise been.
(Sometimes, he thought she knew him better than anyone. He was lying every single fucking day, and he hated it, but she’d say- nothing too obvious. Just enough to catch him off guard, and she’d get away, and he…
He used to think about her, a lot. Deep under the ocean until pressure pounded at his eardrums and he felt nauseous from the force. Laying in bed, suit peeled off and dumped on the floor, tracing the injuries she left him with - she was getting stronger too, every time they fought, and it sent a thrill through him whenever she did something new.)
More recently, but still years past, she defied him. She stood with heroes and refused his generous offers, and it disgusted him how deeply it stung. How his words failed him when she smiled, and said, “Isn’t it more fun this way?”
Look at her now. Chained like an animal, the collar repressing most of her powers. Like this, she’s barely more than human; just durable enough for the tight clamp of the shackles on her wrists and ankles.
Mark isn’t cruel. She can walk and move freely within the generous reach of the chain wrapped around his arm, his thumb rubbing at the link he can attach to the throne if he needs to leave. It took a lot of work to make restraints suited to her, gold to match the violent flare of her irises. It went way beyond a plain, easy to remove ring.
His teeth grind together as she keep staring at Kregg, as if Mark isn’t right here. She’s on his fucking lap. He lets her come along here with him every day, instead of leaving her bound up and bored out of her mind in their rooms, and this is how she shows her gratitude?
She’s such a selfish bitch. Obviously, she’s forgotten who won, and he’ll have to remind her-
Robin leans back against his arm, and his nails dig into the smooth marble of the throne as her head rests on his shoulder.
He’s wearing the regalia of an emperor, and she’s said- before, she said the cloak is…comfortable. She’s often cold - a weakness of hers, even if he never knew about it before they married, and his breath caught as she pressed into him and whispered it like a secret against his throat - and the outfit he ordered her to wear doesn’t cover much.
Her legs and arms are mostly bare. When her knees draw in to rest against his chest, he swallows as the thin, white skirt slips up her thighs.
She’s teasing him on purpose. Being a fucking slut, trying to distract him from his duties. How dumb does she think he is?
Like he’d fall for an obvious act; none of her manipulations work on him. He’s too smart for her. She’s never had any idea who she’s dealing with when it comes to him, and that just got more obvious once it was time for Mark to take Earth and demonstrate why he was the heir to the Viltrum Empire. Why he’s now Emperor, and claimed his greatest enemy as his wife.
Kregg continues to speak. Some bullshit about disease in a few slave camps - like Mark gives a shit. They have medical technology beyond Earth’s wildest dreams; the ones they want alive will stay alive, and the rest can die for all he cares. There’ll always be more of them to do the work, since Mark was so generous and didn’t slaughter all of them.
Except the ones who dare hide the traitors from him. But they’ll all be gone soon, now Robin is his.
Even she said so. He was forcing her to bathe with him, wiping the blood from her skin and his after a fight between them. It…calmed him down, seeing her naked and vulnerable, hearing the soft hums and sighs as he touched her. She was still here. He made her stay.
He told her she had nowhere to go, no one at all except him.
“You’re probably right,” she said, like it was nothing to admit, like it didn’t make his heart race. She turned toward him in the bath, straddled his thigh. When she looped the chain around his neck in slow, contemplative coils, he didn’t stop her.
“I have no one…except my husband.”
Mark lets go of the chain, and tugs the edge of his cloak over to cover Robin. It’d reflect badly on him if his subordinates are allowed to see too much of her.
