Title: The One Thousand Crane Dance
Media: Fanfic
Rating: PG
Summary: Mike has a secret heritage. Shifter!Mike
AN: Written for a prompt on LJ's Gleeanimalism comm, before we met his canon parents. I took the liberty of making Mike (at least half) Japanese, even though Chang is pretty much a Chinese surname.
Mike loves his mother.
She's four foot nine, has salt and pepper hair, and a penchant for shirts with built in shoulder pads.
She's a stickler for tradition. She still calls him Mikio-kun, despite the fact that everyone else (including his father) has been calling him Mike for as long as he can remember. His mother packs him bento boxes, which he usually winds up sharing with Tina before Glee. It's amazing, really, how much food she packs into him. He can't simply walk into their kitchen looking for a cup of water; he always winds up leaving with his mouth stuffed with rice balls and a plate piled high with food. And no matter how mad or tired she is, she always comes into his room to tell him a folk tale and kiss him goodnight. It's kind of embarrassing that she still does it, even now, but he can't help but let her have this one thing.
Her voice is like magic, the excitement and wonder and poise coming out in careful english.
His mother is not his real Mother.
Mike had only met his Mother once as a child. He had to be three or four, when they still lived in a sprawling property out in the farmland surrounding Lima. His father still spoke Japanese to him then, when mother was still 'Onba-chan' and slept on a cot in his room.
It was a rainy, gloomy day, and Mike was home from daycare, going through his first molting. He was itchy and tired and so bored, enough that when Onba-chan put him down for his nap, he got out of bed and snuck out of his room. He could hear Onba-chan puttering around in the kitchen, as he walked past his playroom and down towards his father's room. It's clean, spartan, a simple futon pushed against a wall. Mike walks over to the bed, curious. He bounces a couple times, scratching his chest absentmindedly as he displaces the covers. A silky kimono peeks out from underneath. He pulls it out fully, admiring the whiteness of it. It weighs next to nothing, made from the finest strands of silk. He can feel it in the weave, the importance of it, so he puts it down gently on the bed, careful to step on it as he climbed off.
Mike was wanders out of the room, when he hears a noise. It comes from across the hall, from the door that always stays shut. Curious, he waddles over, tugging at the door handle. It's unlocked, and it opens with a creaking noise that makes Mike's stomach fill with squirming anticipation.
The room is barren, with windows that stretch across the farthest wall. There are no curtains or window treatments blocking the view of the sloping, muddy farmland and the grey afternoon sky. The dim light cast a gloomy disposition on the room and Mike shivered, anxious to return back to the warmth of the hallway. A shifting movement in one of the darker corners of the room caught his eye, making him jump.
It's Mother.
She is silent, completely naked, pale as the wall behind her, her hair an inky black that blended easily into the shadows. Mike is frightened to shyness, a sense of foreboding coiling in his stomach as his throats closes up, leaving him no way to cry out.
They watch each other, and Mike is hypnotized by her stare.
Come here, Her black eyes call.
Mike obeys, his head heavy and swimming, his feet moving on their own volition.
She stays in the corner, knees bent and arms tightly wrapped around them as he approaches. She watches him with clinical detachment. He fidgets under the scrutiny and tries to keep her gaze.
Her face was beautiful, but cold, her lips an unmoving thin line. It broke Mike's heart in a way he didn't understand. He reached out in a comforting gesture, a hesitant touch to her forearm.
His pudgy, baby soft fingers barely grazed the cool, slick skin, when She reacted.
It was an instantaneous blow, backhanding Mike across the face, and She pulled Herself onto Her haunches in an aggressive stance.
Mike fell backwards, shocked and in pain, the tears stinging where he was hit. He scrambled backwards with a strangled cry, flinging the door open and running down the hall terrified.
He ran into his father's room, the first room he saw, and hid in the closet, watching through the slatted door. He could hear the feather soft footsteps of barefeet on the floorboards, the hateful expression still on Her face as She entered. He could see Her fully now, a gaunt face with limp hair, a protruding ribcage and too thin wrists. Mike shivered trying edge farther back into the closet.
Mother walked in, but stopped at the edge of the futon. She paused, and Mike could not see Her face, but Her reaction was just as lightning fast as when She lashed out at him moments ago. She lunged at the half hidden kimono with unnecessary haste, just as Mike heard Onba-chan coming up the steps.
"Onba!," he screamed, bursting out of the closet, "Onba-chan!"
He went to call for her again, but his voice got caught in his throat.
Mother had put on the kimono and began a series of complex movements, hypnotic and looping, complex and effortless. Mike went slack watching what seemed to go on for hours in mere seconds, watching as the kimono and the woman transform into denser, thinner curvatures of whiteness, until She became a Crane.
Onba-chan rushed into the room too late. Once Mother completed Her transformation, She gave one last look at Mike, before stretching Her wings and taking flight out one of the open windows.
Onba-chan scoops Mike into her arms, tears rolling down her face silently. Mike clings to her, burying his face into her shoulder until the trembles subside. She watches from that window for a long time, the both of them silent.
Father is in a silent rage for weeks after that. He goes on too many business trips, leaving Mike alone with a puffy eyed Onba-chan, who won't answer any of his questions. They move out of the big house and into a smaller place near the center of Lima. Onba-chan stops being Onba-chan and starts being called mother. She moves out of Mike's room and into his father's. Father also starts speaking English around the house, bringing home things like footballs and talking about American things. Eventually, Mike gives up on trying to understand what had happened.
But he doesn't forget the dance.
Those movements haunt his dreams, every movement burned into his brain. When he's alone, he practices, everyday from the week after it happened to now, as the shy kid in his high school glee club. He's done those movements hundreds of times, trying to will his body to transform. It's hard work, make each movement effortless and complete. He's almost finished, almost ready to take his kimono off. It's come a long way from when he was younger and it was barely a threadbare obi. And once it's complete, once he dances the one thousandth time, it will be complete, a gift to give to the one he loves the most, the one who deserves it, will treasure it and not abuse the power it has over him. The one who knows he will always come back.
His mother.