Summary: They say parents raise their children they way they themselves were raised, since that was the only model they knew. Everybody has memories that they would rather forget. How hard can it be to break the chain and be a better parent than your own? Akalara fic, oneshot based on AmazonTurk's "Operation: Assassination."
Disclaimer: Ak and Az, and Ak's parents, belong to me. Other mentioned OCs belong either to me or to their respective creators. Canon characters are the property of Square Enix.
Queen's Quornor: More angst with the Green Bitch! I've been rolling this idea around in my head for a few weeks now, and finally decided to write it as a way of rousting out Amazon, who seriously needs to update the fic this oneshot is based on. (stares at Amazon with creepy eyes, tapping foot impatiently) Sorry, my friend. I know I'm not the only one who wants an update, and I do know you're busy, but I am a creature of little patience when it comes to excellent stories. Speaking of which... (steps back to include a few choice others in the creepy stare) Anyway, I've mentioned before that Akalara didn't have a very nice childhood. In fact, it was downright awful. This fic is meant to elaborate on that, and how she doesn't want to put her son through the same thing.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
The little girl covered her ears and curled up tighter in her corner behind the ratty, smelly armchair, trying to will the shouts and crashes away. Daddy had come home late again. Whenever he did, he always yelled at her and Mommy and threw things. He would hit both of them before falling asleep somewhere. So she was hiding, pretending she was somewhere far away, with friends and a nice house and parents who loved her and would never, ever hurt her.
"Where is she, Rae? Where're you hiding that little piece of shit?"
"How the fuck should I know?" her mommy screeched. "She ran off the moment you came back!"
"She's gotta be somewhere around here." The little girl scrunched further and squeezed her eyes shut, supressing the urge to whimper in fright as the crashing noises got closer, and a wave of sickly-sweet fumes invaded her nostrils. "Red-eyed bitch's too stupid to run outside."
"She's at least smart enough to stay outta your way, Cel." There was a scathing sarcasm in her mommy's voice.
The little girl flinched, hearing the all-too-familiar crackle of cartilage and a scream of pain. Daddy must have broken Mommy's nose again. "Don't you sass me, bitch! That girl's stupid, and you know it! Just a fucking little retard!"
She pressed harder into the corner, wishing somebody would come save her. But nobody ever did. Not the scary old lady upstairs, not the dopey brothers next door, and definitely not her mommy. Unless Daddy fell asleep soon, he was going to find her and hit her, like he always did when he came home smelling like this.
The armchair was ripped to the side, exposing her hiding place. The little girl stared up at the huge, dirty man she called 'Daddy', then scrambled on her hands and knees along the wall, trying to get away before it was too late.
She cried out as he pulled her back by her hair, begging for him to stop, sobbing that she loved him and to please don't hit me, Daddy. Daddy didn't listen. He never did. The little girl had a brief glimpse of bloodshot brown eyes and matted blond hair before a hand slapped against her face, whipping her head to the side painfully.
"Retarded little freak!" he hissed. "Gods-forsaken cunt-faced bitch! I outta wear you out, you little cock-sucking whore!"
She didn't know what most of those words meant, or why he called her that. But if her Daddy said it, they must be true. He said the some of those things to Mommy a lot. She sobbed in pain as he continued to hit her, again and again and again.
At last the little girl fell to the floor, whimpering and crying and wishing she was dead so Daddy couldn't hurt her anymore. "Pussy!" her daddy spat. "Just a weak little bitch. C'mon, freak! Take it like a man!" His booted foot crashed into her stomach, blasting the air from her lungs. Unable to breathe for a few seconds, the little girl curled in on herself to dull the pain as her daddy let out a cruel laugh. "Just a weak little pussy. I could stomp her flat and she wouldn't be able to do a godsdamned thing!" She closed her eyes, feeling a few more tears squeezing out to run into her dark green hair, and prayed that it would be quick.
"Don't stomp her, Cel. Too messy." Her mommy's voice sounded funny again. "I don't want her dead ass stinkin' up the place."
Daddy must have listened to her, because after one more brutal kick against her legs he walked away. "Yeah. Forgot. Where's my beer, woman? Disciplining her always makes me thirsty."
"In the cooler, Cel." The little girl flinched as hands touched her, smoothing the snotty, greasy hair away from her swollen face not unkindly. At least Mommy never hit her. "Why didn't you run?" she demanded softly. "Why don't you ever run away?"
She couldn't answer with anything more than a weak, bloody cough. Daddy had knocked out two more teeth, and her stomach hurt. All she could taste was blood.
Mommy sighed and the the little girl opened her eyes. Her mommy's long black hair swung forward as the woman rocked backwards, and a moment later she let out a gasping cry as Mommy lifted her head off the floor and eased a threadbare cushion beneath it. Her mommy's eyes, red like her own, were tired. "You sleep there. If you don't get up in the morning, Cel will beat you again."
"Rae!" her daddy roared. "Gimme some ass with my beer!"
"Sure thing, Cel!" Mommy quickly pried up one of the filthy tiles on the floor and removed a plastic bag, filled with little pills in many different colors. She fished one out at random and forced open the little girl's mouth, flicked it in, then rubbed her throat until she swallowed it down. "That'll kill the pain, understand? You just stay there and sleep." To Daddy she called "Coming!"
"Smack that kid again, Rae. Let'er know you mean business!"
The little girl turned pleading eyes upon her mommy, who gazed down at her apologetically while raising her fist.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Shocked awake by the feeling of something actually hitting her, Akalara's eyes flew open and she started to jerk upwards before she realized what was going on. She was in her own bed, in her own apartment. Not the filthy two-room flat her parents had owned in Sector 5. Her mother and father were nowhere near her, nor was anybody hitting her. Revan had just rolled over in his sleep and accidentally kicked her leg. She was a full-grown woman, not a terrified little four year-old girl.
It was the same old nightmare, again.
Akalara sat up and propped her elbows on her knees, scrubbing her face with her hands before shoving them into her hair. This nightmare had plagued her since the day her mother led her into Sector 6 and left her, backhanding her when she tried to follow after her. Rae Hatchett had abandoned her on the streets and hit her hard enough that by the time Akalara regained her senses, she was long gone. After finding her way back to Sector 5 but unable to recall the way home, she had taken shelter in an alley and gone to sleep, only to wake up screaming from this memory.
It had been twenty-four years since that first night on the streets, and she still found herself waking up from memories of her father, Cel Tearsong, beating the crap out of her while he was drunk.
At least she had stopped screaming when she woke up. Sephiroth had been the last man to witness that, and he had helped her learn to control the response; neither Reno nor Revan had ever seen her like this. They didn't know about the nightmare.
And she intended to keep it that way. Her past was something she would rather forget, especially the years before she and another girl, Clerissa, had gotten into the largest gang in the southern half of the slums, the Shade Wolves. Meeting Clerissa and a redhaired boy she had called 'Red' (whom Akalara strongly suspected might have been Reno) was the earliest good memory she had; the two older kids had taken care of her until Red got into the Vipers, another gang in the slums, leaving her and Clerissa to fend for themselves.
Glancing over at Revan, Akalara slipped out of bed and pulled on her robe, careful not to make any noise that would awaken her sleeping lover. She opened the door slowly and stepped over Zexion before making her way down the hall, to Azrael's room. The green-haired Turk nudged his door open, just enough that for her to see her son, resting peacefully in his bed.
She still couldn't understand why her father called her names and beat her so often, but in a twisted sort of way, she could guess why her mother abandoned her. Rae had been powerless to protect her daughter from her boyfriend, but she also couldn't leave him; from what Akalara remembered, she had needed his paycheck in order to procure more illegal narcotics to get even more gil, with the eventual aim of moving out of the slums and up onto the Plate, or at least into a better sector. Cel hadn't made much each month, and what didn't go into his drinking problem or the rent went into Rae's 'business'. So she had done the only thing she could to make sure he never hurt her daughter again: left her to the streets.
Maybe it was love. Maybe it was spite. Maybe she had just gotten sick of having a helpless little girl around the house. But as far as Akalara could tell, Rae's decision to ditch her in Sector 6 may just have saved her life.
Cranberry eyes raked over her son's body, lingering on the serene face framed between silver hair and blue pillowcase. When she was little, Akalara had promised herself that if she ever had kids, she would never treat them the way her parents had treated her. That she would never hit them or cuss them out or anything. But in a way, she had done the same thing her mother had, repeated the pattern.
To protect her child from those who would do him harm, she had left him with another woman and pretended that she never had a son in the first place.
But unlike Rae, the green-haired woman had kept in touch with her son. Now that it was safe (or at least relatively so), she had brought him to live with her. She had actually made something of herself; to her knowledge, her mother had remained in the slums for the rest of her life.
Unless she was still alive.
Akalara considered that thought, still watching her son sleep. Her parents had lived in Sector 5, not Sector 7, so there was really no reason to believe that the falling plate had killed them. But then again, she had never seen them after Rae walked away from her, and as a member of the Shade Wolves she had been all over that section of the slums. Surely she would have seen them, wouldn't she?
The rookie Turk could definitely live without ever seeing her father again. In all likelihood, if she ever did lay eyes on him again, he would be dead a minute later. He had four years' worth of pain to answer for. But her mother...
A part of her dreaded that encounter. But another part, a large part, wanted to bring Rae into Edge and show her everything. To tell her "this is my life now. And I did it all on my own." To introduce Azrael to another member of his biological family, beyond her and Sephiroth.
Was Rae Hatchett still alive? Would she want to meet her daughter, see what she had become? Did Akalara even want her to?
Yes, she realized. She did want to know if her mother actually cared about her, why she had left her on the streets all those years ago. She wanted her son to meet his grandmother, the one that wasn't trapped in a crystal behind a waterfall.
She wanted to rebuild her own family, and try to resolve her past before she worried about the future.
But only if Rae, her mother, was still alive.
Smiling at Azrael, she silently closed the door and padded back to her own bedroom, careful not to trod on the dog's tail. After shutting the door, the green-haired woman shucked her robe and slid back into bed, stealing the covers back from Revan and snuggling into his warmth. The blond man shifted around so he faced her and stretched his back out with a muted growl. "Where'd you get to?" he mumbled sleepily, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her closer.
"Just checking on Az," she replied, breathing in the scent of his shower-gel.
Lips pressed against her scalp briefly. "You're a good mother, Ak," Revan told her before dozing back off. Akalara smiled and pressed a kiss to her lover's heart.
"I think I get it from my mother."