Author's Note: Okay, this fic was a long time coming. I noticed that while we have fics giving Rai and Omi some gentic backstory wherein they are related/their ancestors were related to various canon characters, there's not much for Kimiko. So I was inspired to kind of flesh out a non Mary Sue mother for Kimiko.

This chapter was meant to be kind of nostalgic, and give you a look at what Kimiko went through regarding her mother. Don't worry, we'll get to the Wu and Wu related drama next chapter. I just wanted a background chapter to kind of set up the situation for Kimiko, since this is mostly her story.

I hope you'll all review and tell what you think, what I can improve upon, and what you liked in this story.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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Yamada Ao.

That was her mother's name.

It was all Kimiko knew of her at first. There were no pictures, no photo albums to give her anything else. As a five year old, she ransacked the house one day, trying in vain to find some hidden treasure that would tell her who her mother was. The attic, her father's room and the bookshelves did not yield any clue to the young girl. Only the birth certificate her father kept hidden in his closet told Kimiko her mother's name, and that they were unmarried when she was born. It was so little, but she clung to it, memorizing the kanji in her mother's name and wishing she could read more.

She tried to picture her. Ao - blue. Her mother must have had the same blue eyes Kimiko did, then. That was very little to go off of, honestly. Yet it was all she had, because the subject of her mother still brought tears to her father's eyes. Even asking small questions could send him into a wordless depression lasting days. Ever since she could remember, she knew not to ask about her mother. The only time her father had ever volunteered information was when it was time to sign medical documents and give Ao's history to the nurses. Each time Kimiko got really hurt, a skinned knee or a badly sprained ankle (or a broken ankle, in one case), he would take her to the doctor. Painkillers, antibiotics and bedrest would follow like clockwork every time, to keep his little girl healthy. The little seven year old girl who, amazingly enough, was never so badly hurt as to make a sound when her father was talking.

"Is there a history of this kind of injury on the mother's side?"

"Yes," Papa would say, if it was a sprained ankle. "No," he'd say, for everything else.

"Is there a history of allergy on the mother's side - to medication or specific foods?"

"Her only allergy is chocolate. Kimi-chan does not have that allergy, however." Papa would grin as the nurse would inevitably say how awful it must be to be allergic to chocolate. "Well, she never cared."

Then, the real kicker, the moment where Kimiko would cringe and moan, trying to block out the words that came next.

"Did the mother ever use drugs or stimulants?"

"Yes."

And Kimiko would try and block out those words, erase them beyond her memory. They stayed there, burned into her throughout her years. That one word answer warped her view of her mother, her mental image of a pristine gaijin who her father had swept off her feet. There was no denying that when Kimiko saw the drug users among her peers parents, she cringed. Bad hair, bad teeth, bad posture, bad manners. Was this her mother? Was this what she was like, what she looked like, how she acted? The girl cringed and learned by the age of eight what streets to take walking home to avoid the druggies. She did not want to see them, and in her mind she tried her hardest not to picture her own mother that way.

But the question arose, what was her mother like? How had she gotten into drugs? The birth certificate said Kimiko was born in Ishinomaka, so one day the incredibly anxious nine year old took the trains to there. All the while she knew that she could be arrested for pre-delinquincy if caught, her knocking knees couldn't keep her from going. The city was vast and not at all as fashion focused as Harajuku was. Kimiko walked around, looking at the filthy alleyways where the Ishinomaka addicts were, and tried to picture her mother here. After a while, she began scanning the streets as she walked through the down town slums, searching out for a pair of blue eyes that weren't there. Her feet ached and she hung her head, thinking it had all been a stupid waste of time. Her mother wasn't here, maybe had never been here. Exhausted, ready to burst into tears, she was reluctantly trudging towards the train station when she saw someone.

It didn't matter that the woman was about fifty, or that she was the most filthy person Kimiko had ever seen in her life. She let out a shriek and took off after her like a shot, not stopping until she'd barreled through the crowds to land in front of the old woman. Kimiko was about to ask 'did you know someone named Yamada Ao', but she never had to.

The blue eyed old woman embraced her, and called her grand daughter right away. For the first time in her life, Kimiko felt hopeful she'd finally find out about her mother. Alas, the name brought up just as many tears from her grandmother as it did from her father, and just as few answers. Her grandmother was clearly old, and rambled on in a foreign language Kimiko didn't understand for long stretches of time. The sun sank as it grew colder, but the woman didn't seem to know where she even was. Once she started talking, she couldn't stop, and the girl couldn't look away because it was horrifying. She couldn't leave because this was family, the only member of her mom's family she had ever met. Kimiko, frustrated, eventually called her father on her cellphone. Every screaming reprimand he had died in his throat when she told him she had found her grandmother in Ishinomaka. Her grandmother Zora - a name that was not very gaijin standing but was still not Japanese. He knew she hadn't stumbled upon someone she just thought was related to her.

Kimiko had really jumped cities to find (what he considered) a distant relative.

The recklessness of the move left him speechless. Goodness knows he wouldn't have been stupid or brave enough to go that kind of distance by himself. In the most stunned silence of his life, he came for her, and they helped the old woman onto the subway. She hugged him, too, and the three stayed in awkward quiet for almost the whole ride home. When they arrived at the house, however, she waited until she thought Kimiko was out of earshot, and gave the girl another piece to the puzzle.

"She's as brave as her mother is, though not nearly as tall."

"Most women aren't as tall as Ao-san," her father laughed, a sad sort of laugh, and then led the elderly woman to the guest room. "But she's just as headstrong."

"I told you that if you mocked her, you'd get a child just like her."

They chuckled until they were out of Kimiko's sight, hidden as she was upon the stairs. She heard them talking in murmurs for the rest of the night, but decided not to risk giving away her hiding spot by following. A sense of accomplishment settled upon her shoulders. Finally, she wasn't missing half a family, and she could rest in peace that night.

Tall. Brave. Headstrong. Blue eyes, and from a rough town. The girl shut her eyes tight, picturing her mother in her mind. The images of what could have been haunted her in her dreams. Images of the streets of Ishinomaka raced through her dreams, blurry as a watercolor, punctuated by a woman with bright blue eyes. Each time, Kimiko would reachout to her, only to wake up with a start. Laying there, thinking, she'd ponder over her mother while she waited to drift back to sleep. Her mother must have been a little bit reckless and a bit smart, just like her. Did she ever run away as a child? Did she ever go so far? How tall was she? Did she have an accent? What languages did she speak?

Thousands of questions swirled through her mind, all of which she planned to ask her grandmother the next morning, except her grandmother, Yamada Zora, died of a heart attack in her sleep.

And thus Kimiko was left back at square one, albiet with a bit more information. As she sat, crying through her grandmother's funeral, she realized something. Papa had always said 'she is' rather than 'she was'. Grandma Zora had said 'brave as she is'. Then - Kimiko stopped crying on the spot - that meant her mother wasn't dead. Even though she'd been told that by Papa, she couldn't be if everyone talked about her like she wasn't. She wasn't in Ishinomaka, but...

She was alive.

The only question was where, and even though she knew her chances of finding her mother were slim, she hadn't gone this far to give up. Surely she could find her mother, somewhere out there. Japan was not so big, she huffed to herself the next week as she leafed through a phonebook. There couldn't be all that many women named Yamada Ao out there. Even as she found long lists of them, Kimiko couldn't find it in herself to waver from this path, as she dialed every number she found. Determined, her will of iron carried her far, and though time trickled away and she burned clear through her cell minutes, she couldn't stop. She was so close, she had to be. She could feel it.

Six hours later, the words 'wrong number' were drilled into her mind. For the first time in her childhood, she felt utterly helpless, and turned to her father with the last remnants of her self esteem.

"Please, Papa, you have to tell me - is my mother dead?" her eyes were so defeated, looking up into his, that he finally found himself unable to lie.

"No, she's alive."

"Where is she?" Kimiko begged, "Please, tell me?"

"It's not important, Kimi-chan. Just let it drop," and he turned, expecting her to give up like she always had before.

"NO!" she snapped, eyes flashing, "You have to tell me! Where is she? What was she like? Is she okay? What does she do? Why did she leave? Tell me, tell me, tell me! I know you know!"

"I do NOT know why the hell she left!" he shot back, tears brewing behind his glasses, "She just left one day and never came back!"

"But you know where she is!"

"I won't have you charging off to foreign lands to find her, Tohomiko Kimiko," she knew she was in dangerous territory when he used her full name, "You're better off without her. Please, let it go."

She didn't know men could cry before now, but she didn't back down. "WHERE IS SHE?!" she screamed, and at that moment every lightbulb in the house burst into flame as a fire roared into the fireplace. "Where is she, and... why didn't she want me?" Every fire went out as Kimiko stared up at her father's face, empty and questioning. "Where is she?"

"She's in China, Kimiko. She, and some crime lord she never should have gotten involved with." Mr. Tohomiko heaved a sigh. "She loved you, Kimiko. That's WHY she left. Please, try to understand."

"How can I understand if no one will tell me anything?" she asked, not realizing she was crying, too.

"You don't want to understand this, Kimiko. Sometimes, it's better if you don't know some things about people. Sometimes it's better to just remember someone as who they were, not what they did." He kneeled down beside her, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Your mother was a very caring woman. She loved you, and she loved me. She still does. But there's no way to find her, or bring her home, and I - we need to accept that. She's gone, Kimiko. She's gone."

And she cried uncontrollably that night, and all through school the next day, unable to stop the flow of tears. It was like being told her best friend died. She had failed. She had tried and tried and her mommy was never coming home. Her mom was thousands of miles away. She wasn't coming back. She wasn't going to pop in one day, swoop Kimiko up in her arms and laugh away all the bad things. She wasn't going to somehow appear and justify the drug use. She was gone. Kimiko cried until she hiccuped. She was so sure she could've found her mother and made them a family. But somehow, her father's words broke her willpower that day.

When her classmates next teased Kimiko about her mother, the girl solemnly asked, "What mother? My mother is dead," and so the other parents hushed their children and apologized to her. Kimiko simply nodded, accepting it all in her own way. Her mother, for all intents and purposes, was dead in her mind. She had grieved for her, mourned her, and given up on her.

Yamada Ao.

The name was now hollow.