Title: Mother Knows Best
Author: CanaanAlshea
Summary: No One Could Deny How Much Shiori Loved Her Son. Although, A Mother's Intuition Is Rarely Wrong...Genre: Family.
**Shiori POV**
"Suichi, is everything alright?"
I closed my book quietly, listening to the door shut, his unusually unsteady footsteps as he toed of his shoes. I leaned forward to watch him grab the wall to steady himself, comfortable now with the lies he told me every other week. No one comes back this tired or aching from camping.
Few came back with bloodied ace bandages either.
"Yes mother," he replied quietly, "Just a little worn out is all." He walked in with a smile, pressing his lips to my forehead and brushing my arm with his fingertips. I smiled, "Would you like some coffee?" He shook his head, "No thank you. I'm going to do some laundry. Is there any whites you need washed?" I nodded, stifling a sigh and heading to my room to grab my laundry basket. I threw in a few work shirts, some pencil skirts. It was only early afternoon, a tuesday, it had been raining. It should have been such a normal day. But, for some reason, I had given birth to a very strange son.
As I gathered clothes from the floor, I reminisced. I remembered his cold eyes, beautiful though they were, the way he refused help or affection. Even as a baby he squirmed out of my grasp, screaming but never really crying. The moment I put him down, he was fine. He had developed strange habits, scoffing and sarcasm, early as the age of three. He walked early, talked early. I was truly worried for a few years there that my son was a sociopath. He would come home with ancient books, yellow pages and things I'd never seen anyone else read. Botany, spells, ancient history, martial arts. He still had most of them, stacked on two ceiling-length bookshelves in what had been come to be called his office. He had no friends, not until Hiei, and many of his school teachers had told me he never made friends, that he was a cruel child with a twisted sense of humor and too much cynicism for one so young.
A few had implied he had been molested.
I'm not a bad mother. I love my son, more than anything in this world.
But to say I've never been weary of him would be a lie.
I set the laundry basket down next to him, eying his bright red hair, the tangles that I rarely got to see. His eyes were surrounded by dark circles, like he hadn't slept in the week he had been gone. Any other mother would think he'd been doing drugs, what with hanging out with Kuwabarra, that Urameshi boy, Hiei who's last name I did not know and who's voice I had never heard. I found Hiei up in Suichi's room sometimes. Never said a word to me...just stared with those unusual garnet eyes. He frightened me too. But I knew my son was not on drugs...
He was just strange. Very strange.
I love my son.
He looked up at me and smiled, throwing the last of our laundry in and shutting the door with a slam. The room was filled with the scent of soap, fabric softener, roses.
As my sixteen year old son latched our elbows together, I smiled, letting him lead me into the den, asking me how I'd been since he'd been gone. He had a very business-like tone, quiet and smooth with too many words.
I love my son.
But I am afraid of him...