A/N: Like Rowen had once said, sometimes parents just don't do a good job of loving their kids like they're supposed to. Cye had never had to face that before. This comes about 16 months after Unfinished Education.

(Shachi is the Japanese word for orca, Cye's chosen nickname for Alexa).

Trigger warnings: Distorted eating, victim blame, parental abuse

(Un)Conditional Love

Cye awoke at a time befitting Sage. Jet lag was still playing havoc on his senses, and his hostess was sound asleep after working herself up over the testimony she felt she was constantly giving. While he couldn't tell her what he was saying on the stand, she knew he was there to give his medical opinion on the extent of her injuries and their probable cause. Having played part EMT, part doctor, and part therapist in the events of two years ago, he hoped she trusted him enough to bolster her side. He was, after all, the prosecution's key medical expert— one of many, by now.

Peeking into her room revealed the blankets twisted in a knot and her curled up too tightly from the cold. He slipped inside and adjusted the covers over her, Suiko taking a leaf from Sage's book and ensuring she'd stay asleep. He watched as she settled and relaxed under their warmth, cuddling against her newly-acquired stuffed White Blaze toy that was as big as her torso.

Even though she kept the apartment particularly warm in winter, she had admitted within hours of him landing that she hadn't been eating very well. Anxiety had sent her body into a mix of fever sweats and clammy skin, and the lack of food most certainly had not helped.

An early start to Saturday could make it she would have plenty of food, even days she was alone while he waited for his turn to give pre-testimony in court.

She had dragged him out grocery shopping just a few days before, and even though he had kept it primarily to what he would eat, both of them knew he was slipping ingredients for her meals. The three dozen eggs he bought were evidence enough of that. Frittatas were among the easiest things for her to eat on bad days, and making a few of them would tide her over.

He thanked the gods when he only heard noises from the bathroom at ten in the morning, and that they weren't retching. Once her teeth were brushed, she came into the kitchen. To his surprise, she didn't simply grab the plate he had portioned for her.

"You should let me make my own breakfast, sometimes," she said, almost bitterly. "I get spoiled when you're here."

He smiled over his shoulder at her, trying to smooth down the resentment he guessed was already forming. "It's no problem, really. I enjoy it."

She dug into the fridge and pulled out her ever-present carton of orange juice. "Yeah well it still spoils me."

For the first time since he had started cooking for her, she seemed almost angry with the arrangement for reasons he couldn't understand. The confusion showed on his face, and he was glad her back was towards him as she downed a glass. He had worked with her on her need to control her meals, slowly easing her into feeling comfortable being provided food. This felt different, and he wasn't sure how to respond.

He slid the third frittata out of the pan while he spoke. "Isn't that what friends are for? I know how much you like to spoil us."

She froze. "That's different."

Cye put the still-hot pan on an empty burner before turning towards her, repeating the same logic he had used at the start of working with her. "There's no shame in taking food from others, shachi."

She swallowed. "There is when it just enables you to be a selfish, head-in-the-clouds, absent-minded professor…"

This was very new. He wasn't completely surprised something else had come up, with the time elapsed and the trial, but it meant starting from ground zero again with her comfort level. He stood in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders to evaluate her. She had lost weight, bones once again under his firm grip.

"Would you rather I not cook for you?" he said gently. He knew when to step back, especially after so long of automatically helping her he had stopped asking.

She gave a one shouldered shrug, voice and Dusk referencing times she thought she had no choice. "It's the only way I ever eat enough, so no sense in stopping you."

He frowned in concern. She only ever got this defensive when she was hiding something. "Give a person a fish and they'll eat for a day; teach a person to fish, and they'll eat for life. If simply making the food for you isn't helping, we can adjust."

She scrunched her eyes shut, pointing towards him at least getting close. "It helps. Like I said, it's the only way I ever eat enough."

He squeezed her shoulders, head shaking in sadness. "Alexa...shachi… It doesn't have to be that way."

Tears spilled past her lashes, a sure sign of her stress. "Why not?"

"I've seen you cook and love it. I've seen you get excited about a recipe." His voice softened farther, hoping this was what she needed to hear. "You can change your relationship with food. You don't have to fear it."

"With what extra time?" she spat. "I take longer than other people to do things. I take more time to get going and to finish. Where in all of this do I have time to cook?"

He metaphorically stepped back, unsure how to continue in the face this was a problem with her autism. Rowen was the one with firsthand experience, and Sage worked magic in understanding her. But Cye, as far as everyone knew, was relatively close to neurotypical. He had only barely helped Rowen set up some routines to help him, but it was a starting place, and right now, that was good enough.

He dropped his arms and looked back towards her kitchen. "There are...mechanisms for getting around that. Different ways to organize things, different recipes that aren't so time-intensive, methods for not having to cook in-depth as often…"

She shook her head and stalked away from him, a human Black Blaze. "I forget to eat unless reminded, anyway. Unless… she reminded me. How I could never take care of myself without help."

His fist clenched in anger at the realization this was more of her mother's abuse. "There's always a way. You can set up a system that works for you." He opened his hand again, voice turning pleading. "You can kill her voice. She doesn't control you anymore, shachi."

Her tone morphed— heating with anger at him for touching this nerve, and herself for even having it. "How can I when I can't do anything on my own?"

He stayed calm, familiar with her expressions of pain. "How did you learn to walk?"

She snorted. "Probably gripping her hands, let's be honest, here."

"So you started with help," he said, continuing on the same track. "What about a couple months later?"

She shook her head. "No idea. Next memory is not being able to play tag without one of my friends letting themselves be it after I was cause I ran out of energy to chase the other kids. Even when I was running I couldn't do it on my own…"

He exhaled softly, realizing this track was too worn for her to change off it. It was hard to remember how sick she had been, and for how long. "What about dance?"

She paused, Dusk following his thought but hesitating along it, almost not wanting to believe it was true. "Once the teacher shows me how to do it and I practice enough, I'm fine…"

Cye smiled, feeling the first notes of relief he'd found something. He gave a small nod to confirm what he had seen. "I'd bet swimming was similar…?"

She chuckled oh so softly, something that warmed his heart even more. "Past jumping into the deep end when I was not even two— before I could swim— and Dad had to jump in to rescue me. I loved it… Dad nearly had a heart attack. Needless to say he wasn't surprised at all I still love swimming."

That story brought his own laughter to the surface, sound slightly louder than hers. "Sounds just like me," he teased. Dusk was still following along his line of thought, but he hadn't seen realization on her face, yet. He continued. "So, the only different factor between walking and dance was…?"

She filled in the blank he'd left for her to realize on her own. "She wasn't there…"

He nodded again, more sure of himself. "And she isn't here now. You can get better at this."

Alexa was silent, for awhile. He could feel the war unusually transparently in Dusk, old hurts coming to the front. "She never learned, what I liked. Why I liked it. She'd cook for me to save me time, my tastes… too picky to ever learn well enough to satisfy me… the only reason she did it is because I was too slow…"

Another flash of anger erupted like a geiser, jaw clenching this time. "You are not too picky. It might have taken me a few tries with you watching to learn your tastes, but I like to think I've learned what you like, by now. You're my friend, and you are worth learning how to help."

She held her elbows, small smile tugging at her lips he knew betrayed how much she was trying not to fall apart. "It's… everything you make is perfect…"

"I had to learn," he said, trying to be gentle. "I didn't know it immediately, but I trusted the feedback you gave and adapted. You are not unreasonable. She was, and made you think it was yourself. If we work together, I'm sure we can come up with ways you can cook for yourself and not spend all your time in the kitchen."

Her head bowed down, her silently processing his words. Cye felt anger drain out of his body as he followed along the flow of his emotions, especially watching her. Walls blocking her from remembering, from realizing, were practically visible in her body language. He could tell when one went down, her spine straightening with caught breath and eyes scrunching shut in tandem, tears once again spilling out. "I don't trust myself."

Suiko ached at the words, Cye struggling slightly to understand the concept for how he had built his whole relationship with his armour, practically, based on that singular virtue. He stepped towards her and offered a hug, one she was more than willing to take. He held her tightly, easing the burden of her having to hold herself together. "You can relearn that. And in the meantime I'm willing to have enough trust for both of us."

Her voice hurt to hear, small and breaking. "She never trusted me…"

Dusk spoke to his armour in ways Alexa couldn't, the imagery of drowning in expectations, in burden of proof on her constantly to prove that she was worthy of time, of care, of her needs being taken at face value. The gaslighting that had filled her lungs and nearly choked her, all of it saying she changed her mind too much to be taken seriously.

Cye rubbed her back. "I trust you, shachi."

She kept crying, gripping him like an anchor. "I don't know how you can."

"Because you haven't done anything worth losing my trust," he replied softly.

Her voice continued to reflect the pain threatening to overwhelm her. "I haven't done anything to gain it either."

"You had it the moment we found you at that ranch." He paused to gather his thoughts, trying to keep the concepts simple enough she could absorb them. He knew how anything too cerebral often simply bounced off her emotions, her unable to grasp things that felt unreal. "Trust is not earned, but given."

"Misgiven."

He kept his tone conversational, careful not to challenge her. "If we haven't been proven wrong about giving you our trust, is it really misplaced?"

She paused, thinking, Dusk trying to absorb but failing. "How have I not proved you wrong, though?"

He drew back, slightly, wanting to continue the conversation she apparently needed. "By not doing something to break our trust."

Frustration bled into her voice, now, revealing the hurdle she was facing. "But what does that mean? I've hurt you and boldface lied and lied by omission and gone behind your back and sent you off on wild goose chases and blamed you when all I had was myself to blame."

Cye held her upper arms, looking at her seriously and he hoped not in a way that could be interpreted as anger. Especially with what he was about to say. "You've never done anything to deliberately hurt us. All those things—you did them in self-defense, or because of your traumatic history. And we are here to help you—not retraumatize you or blame you for what you can't necessarily control."

He couldn't tell if he'd dropped an anvil on a box or flicked a quick release pin on a dam with his words, but she began crying. He gently guided her out of the kitchen to the couch, sitting them both down and letting her cry against him. He knew how hard this was to hear, from her perspective. How it was so against everything she had grown up to believe, even years later what felt like second nature to him was enough to send her sobbing.

"But I know better," she practically shrieked. "I know I shouldn't do this. I can control it if I want to and some days I don't want to and that's my fault."

He shook his head and smoothed a hand over her hair to calm her. "You may 'know better', and you may even know exactly how to control it. But emotion is a powerful thing that cannot be discounted—doubly so when they're traumatized emotions." He thought for a moment, wondering if he should say what her boyfriend experienced before meeting her. "Has Sage ever...told you about after the War?"

She had to think about it, which wasn't the best sign for how open Sage had been. "He mentioned hating himself… once, on a particularly bad night."

Not wanting to give details Sage could consider private, Cye gave the shortened version— the bare minimum he needed to compare the two. "Long story short, his nightmares caught up to him. At one point six months after the end of the War, he was hardly sleeping, and it was seriously messing with his emotions. You know how much he relies on his own control, many times; I'm sure you can imagine how awful that was for him. It got to the point where Ryo and I—all of us, really—had to sit him down and have a talk about what exactly was going on because he was so unlike the Sage we knew at the time. And he felt so awful that that meant he wasn't behaving as he was 'supposed' to, that he was struggling so much with the trauma and his natural reactions to anything remotely related that we had to ask." Cye looked down at his feet. "I don't think I've ever seen him cry so much… He had been so worried we would hate him for it. 'How can you still be friends with me when I've been so awful to you?' he said. Or at least, something along those lines."

Her breath hitched before she began sobbing again, burrowing into his side and holding on for what felt like dear life. "Tessa's answered that question for me…"

He tilted his head as a silent prompt for her to continue, wanting her to say it for herself. There was also a hint of curiosity in his emotions, wondering what was spoken between the sisters.

She struggled beginning, Dusk saying she wished he would guess but eventually, she got out, "That I give so much and always try to be a good person and the deviations from that are because I'm hurt and she believes that the 'real' me is helpful and kind and compassionate and the defenses are to cover old wounds, and she wants to… help heal them…"

He rubbed her arm, half-smiling. "That's essentially what we said to Sage, and have helped him with ever since. And then Ryo, and more recently Rowen." He thought back on all of their late nights and daytime get togethers, recalling how there had been clouds threatening all of them but they vanished among friends. "Well, maybe all of us helping each other—but those three, especially."

That seemed to calm her, but in the wrong direction. The resignation and bitterness in her tone were impossible to miss. "And now you've got another traumatized person to drag around…"

"Shachi," he said sharply, Suiko prompting her to look towards him. He only continued when her head moved a fraction of an inch, her eyes on his knees. "You are not a thing or possession or animal to be dragged around and disciplined. You are a human being—a hurt one—and we are your human being friends. And one kitty friend. And that is what we are here for. To help you figure your way around this trauma, and continue to live as happily as you are able with this...condition. It speaks no less of you to carry this burden, just as it speaks no less of Sage or Ryo or Rowen. To be honest, I'm not even sure Kento and I didn't pass through the War without any of our own mental scars. We all lean on each other at some point or another; just for some, that happens to be more often or more strongly so."

Her whole body tensed, eyes scrunching shut. "That's what she said. That she was there to help. And look where it's landed me. Us. Everyone around me."

Cye thought for a moment before posing a question. "...Do you trust me?"

It took her a moment to think, a moment that she relaxed into but Dusk trembled like a person doused in ice water. "Not completely…"

"You don't trust your mom," he said firmly. "You at least don't distrust us. We're already different from her in that regard—correct me if I'm wrong." Before she could answer, an idea occurred to him. "Perhaps...it's not so much a matter of you needing to gain our trust, but us gaining yours. Yours is a history of broken trust, and you've never really rediscovered that feeling. So it's difficult for you to truly believe it when it stands in front of you. Meanwhile, we've had practice learning what little breaks in trust don't hurt, but that the accumulation of larger issues is something we should guard against."

Continuing before she had processed had potentially been a mistake. He hoped the rest of his words stuck despite her only responding to his first statement. "But I do trust her. I wouldn't have all these voices in my head if I didn't. I still trust what she said about me had truth to it, and I have to guard not to be like she said I could be at my worst."

"If a known swindler and cheat told you if you jumped off a bridge, you would die, would you trust him?" Knowing that concept was unlikely to stick, he continued, "Someone may say one true thing, but it doesn't change all the lies of their history. One truth doesn't build trust. And you can only give someone so many chances to prove they're not a liar or that they have your best interests at heart before you have to give them an untrustworthy characterization. So just because your mother may have said some truth about you at some point or another doesn't mean she's trustworthy." He brushed some of her hair back, letting his hand rest against her head. "What she said doesn't necessarily take into consideration that you're trying to work on yourself. But she doesn't get to dictate that. You get to choose what fits you and what doesn't—what she's wrong about, and what may have some truth. And even for the things she says which may be somewhat correct, you don't have to go about working on it how she says. Something that I would do to work on an...issue I have is going to be far different than if Sage or Kento had a similar problem.

"It's okay to be different."

She collapsed in either grief or relief, almost slipping off the couch. He held her tightly and lowered her to the floor, maneuvering himself so he was against the side and she was pillowed against his chest. After a few moments, she choked out, "If I wasn't following her methods I was doing it wrong."

He rested his chin on her head. "There's more than one way to scale a fish."

She gave a watery laugh. "But there was only one efficient way and the most efficient was the best and if you weren't going along the most efficient path you were wasting your time and if you stubbornly stuck to the path you know instead of becoming more efficient you weren't being the best you could be and that wasn't good."

"If a fisherman learns to do something a certain way, and he is as good or better at his trade than all the other fishermen, but someone complains that it's not the most efficient method, is he wrong?"

She paused, Dusk struggling but eventually grasping his meaning. "No…"

"So is your mom right?" he asked, still gentle.

To his surprise, she yelped out, "Yes!"

He didn't let an ounce of irritation towards that monster of a woman show. "But does that immediately mean you can trust her?"

Again, she revealed the truth of her emotions despite them running counter to what he'd been trying to achieve. "Yes! Because her methods were better than mine and she was better at her job than I was and she was better at controlling herself than I was and I just slacked off and exploded and never achieve anything meanwhile she was one of the best at her job in the whole city and nobody ever deviated from her methods."

"But you are not her," he replied in the same tone. He drew back to look at her, slightly. "Can a fisherman with one hand do what one with two hands can? Yes. Can they use the exact same method? The one with one hand has to change the method to adapt to his capabilities. That doesn't make him any less of a fisherman than the two-handed fisherman. Not all methods work for every person, and every person is different. One grain of truth does not a truthful statement make. If I say "the clouds are blue in a blue sky"—yes, the sky is blue, but no, clouds are not blue."

Her grief hadn't let up. "She trained people. She would tell them they had to use her method for three months, and if they could find a better one after that, they could change it. Nobody ever changed it."

"Were you ever one of those people? Yes, in a manner of speaking. Did it work for you?" He swallowed and dropped his gaze away from her, risking an equally bared soul. "From where I sit...I don't think so. All the things she did broke you rather than shored you up. She saw something fractured that needed remodeling, when in reality she put cracks in something that didn't need fixing." Anger once again pulled all his emotions back like a tsunami, and he wanted nothing more than to get on the stand to let that woman feel the full strength of a tidal wave. He knew mothers, he knew the potential for their love, and that woman had done the opposite, warping Alexa's logic almost beyond recognition. He tensed, lump forming in his throat and eyes screwing shut to try and stop tears of rage. "She abused your trust…"

Dusk's immediate reaction was terror, Alexa physically shrinking back and dissolving the wave with it. His tears turned from anger to upset in an instant, mind racing on how to mitigate the damage he'd done by bringing her face to face with anger— the one emotion that often sent her into a panic attack simply being around, let alone in a situation so easily interpreted she was the target. He found her knee and squeezed it, a tear slipping. "I'm not mad at you," he murmured. "My heart aches for the pain she put you through, and that you are still in. I am only furious that someone like her could exist—someone who blatantly disregards the hurt they're inflicting on other people for long periods of time, and still thinks they're in the right to act that way. Abusing someone's trust is the top of that list of hurts." He shifted a hand to her forearm, searching Dusk and her body language to gauge if she wanted a hug. The smallest nod had him gathering her against his chest, switching to telepathy where she couldn't hear the anger still in his voice. "I'm sorry for upsetting you…"

Her tears were of passed danger, this time, of the breakdowns she never let herself have when she could be hurt. He pulled her deeper into his arms, Suiko trying to radiate his desire to protect instead of hurt. "I would never hurt you, shachi."

She shuddered in his arms, throat still too closed to speak and energy dropping like it always did after she had too many intense emotions in a short span of time. "It… might take me awhile to believe you… I'm sorry…"

He rubbed her back, oh so slightly relieved she was being honest and that she seemed to trust the emotions he was radiating now. "You take all the time you need. None of it is your fault."

The interaction had opened another trapdoor, one that was a little safer but still holding danger like an unexplored underwater cave system. "She… always said anger was the most dangerous thing to show. She kept saying one of the reasons Dad was such a bad person was he punched a wall when he was angry. Once. When I read over the court cases, she… used that to say he was abusive…"

He snorted, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of such a statement. "Wonder what she would have thought about Ryo's little tantrums…"

She swallowed, hiding against him. "I can be scared of them because she would've hated them…"

He adjusted his grip for her to be more comfortable. "I can think of some creative words to tell her in response to that…" he said dryly, trying to lighten the darkness. At no response past the smallest hint of the desired, he returned to contemplation. "Having met your father, I can say with certainty she was lying through her teeth with that abuse thing. Threatening to leave over something like punching a wall in a moment of heated emotion isn't love. If she truly loved your father she would have worked it out with him and gotten to the root of why he reacted how he did. Now if one's underlying reasons were entirely selfish and abusive, and directed at her, that would be a different story. But I think we both know who the real abuser was, there."

She sniffed and nodded, finding her voice no matter how creaky it was. "She never loved anyone… not the way she said, anyway…"

He shook his head slightly in disbelief. "It's so hard for me to imagine… That must be why I got so. Upset. My mother is the sweetest person in the world. To know what awful things your mother did to you…"

He made a mental note not to bring up any more parallels between his mother and hers, at least at the end of a catharsis; she teared up again at his words. "To the point how many people need to give testimony against her…"

Cye ran his hand over her hair. "We're all more than happy to do so, to bring her to justice."

The firm protectiveness helped. She went deeper into his arms, murmuring, "I keep waiting for the footnotes."

This time, it took him a moment to realize what she meant. That she was discussing their friendship. "There should never be any footnotes. We certainly don't need any. Your mother only gave you conditional love, but we love you the way we love our elements. The sea is not worth any less love during a storm."

Turnabout was fair play, as she liked to tell them. She paused to think about his meaning. "Most love poems to the sea are about it during a storm…"

He smiled. "Must be some truth to it, then?"

She snorted self-deprecatingly. "I'm not beautiful when I'm angry like a sea is during a storm."

"I think Sage would disagree," he said, thinking of how his friend talked about the woman now in his arms. "Might even compare you to a lightning storm."

She thought about it, knowing the romantic and poetic side of Sage better than everyone except maybe Rowen. Dusk compared two feelings for her— how much she adored lightning, but loathed herself with every drop of her soul. Her only words were a simple, flat, "I can't see how."

"Lightning may split the sky, but it less often splits a tree. The lightning can be deadly, yes, but it is also awe-inspiring and rarely directed at any one thing in particular. It doesn't intentionally go after a certain target." He paused to study her reaction, seeing confusion and prompting, "If that makes sense?"

Her confusion hid frustration. "But I'm not any of that."

He picked up on subtle emphasis on 'not' and 'any', the former reinforcing the word and the latter revealing how all-encompassing she felt. He shook his head. "Your anger might rage, and it may end up wounded some people's feelings or pride, but it's not so often so as to be a consistent thing. And it may be in response to something someone says or does, but it's not without reason—just like lightning only strikes because it's electricity, which looks for an object to ground it."

Dusk almost completely disconnected, a feeling familiar to him as 'clicking out'. He knew he had pushed her far into open water, away from any shore she could see. He pulled her closer and rubbed her shoulder blade. "It's okay. You don't have to make sense of it right now. I'll be here as long as it takes."

"You're going back to Japan once your testimony's done…" she murmured, in a tone he knew was fishing for a response that would remind her she wasn't alone.

Cye gave her what she wanted, feeling Dusk relax and rejoin Suiko with his words. "You can always come find us, either by the armor link or Dusk. Even if we're not physically here, we all want to help as much as we can."

She deflated, energy once again calm and even— enough underwater caves had been illuminated that she could find a place to resurface. "Arigato…"

He squeezed her and smiled. "I'm glad I could help, shachi."

After a few moments, she got to get her breakfast, smallest smile on her lips.

Fin