Izaya attributed Shizuo's quick acceptance of Shizuko to two things. The first was the animal instinct that resided within all beasts to quickly bond with their young after they have identified the offspring as their own. The second was that it was a matter of course that Shizuko, being his daughter, would be loved by everyone. So it was only natural that father and daughter got on well so fast.

Truthfully, Izaya had never intended for the two to meet. Shortly after his and Shizuo's break, he found out he was pregnant (only by happenstance during his annual checkup with Shinra; he didn't care for hospitals). Izaya was on the verge of slitting Shinra's throat for telling such a humorless joke so seriously until Shinra turned the screen of the ultrasound towards him. It took Izaya another week to accept the doctor's explanation instead of blaming his nausea filled mornings on his increased indulgence in ootoro-which had nothing to do with a certain blonde monster, Shinra.

The primary concern was whether or not to keep the child. Izaya spent another three weeks contemplating his options before deciding to have the child and then give it up for adoption. Anyone who looked at him and his sisters didn't have to be a genius to see the kind of people they were raised by (some silently questioned whether they were raised at all). Having no good example which to look to for child-rearing, Izaya logically concluded that it would be better for all involved if he gave the kid up.

The second concern, that of informing Shizu-Ch-Shizuo, was quickly dispelled. He had nothing to do with Izaya and therefore nothing the information broker did had anything to do with him.

For the rest of the pregnancy, Izaya confined himself to his apartment, shooing away an all too willing to be absent Namie and only admitting Shinra. He lowered his load of accepted jobs to ones that required only his mind and his fingers flying expertly across the keyboard of his computer. When the time came, Izaya brushed off his anxiety with a flippant attitude and an easy smile…until Shinra induced labor and began the C-section. Not for the first time in his life he praised his foresight in sound proofing the apartment.

Izaya tried to grit his teeth to muffle the screams-because Izaya Orihara did NOT give in to pain. But when that only made the agony worse he chose to forego any restrictions set by his pride and yelled whenever it became too much to bear. It wasn't the knife slicing him open that hurt (Shinra had numbed his stomach), it was the feeling of being torn from the inside out by the tiny form that fought to come into being.

Izaya had flopped back on the bed when crying finally met his ears. Shinra was busy at Izaya's mid-section, armed with needle, thread, and a stapler. But Izaya wasn't watching Shinra stitching him back together. His eyes exhaustedly slid toward the source of the crying and he saw Celty, appointed as mid-wife by the overly zealous Shinra, cradling something in her arms.

Izaya blinked hard and fast when he saw little fingers wriggle out of their blanket prison. He considered it only as one of the many unescapable after effects of giving birth. Both Celty and Shinra turned to him in shock (an assumption concerning Celty) when he croaked out in a voice so clearly not his own, "Please. Let me…" Carefully, the bundle was placed in his arms and the crying stopped altogether. Those same little appendages groped until they wrapped around the finger Izaya had extended toward them. And then he actually cried, an action which, given the rare circumstances, Izaya was completely alright with.

He no longer had any attention of letting the child go and when Shinra walked back into the room an hour later, finding Izaya in the same position and asked if Izaya needed anything, Izaya shook his head without looking up.

He smiled down at his daughter, his Shizuko-I don't need anything but her.

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Shizuko had always called him "Mommy." She had known only Izaya her whole life (besides occasional visits from Shinra and Celty) and he was her whole world. Something must have told her-though Izaya suspected someone, namely Shinra-that this all-absorbing connection made Izaya her mother and she happily addressed him accordingly. Izaya never corrected her because she technically wasn't wrong and it was-cute-interesting to have her call him that.

By the age of six, Shizuko had traveled with Izaya to four countries and spoke three languages, working on her fourth, Gaelic, which she wanted to study because she learned that that was Celty Nee-San's native tongue. Shizuko had never minded that Celty didn't have a head because that was the way she had always known her and because the dullahan had always doted on her. Shinra often commented on Shizuko's hyper-intelligence and suggested that she had received this along with her eye color from Izaya. Izaya scoffed deigning not to respond to the obviousness of that statement, though he sometimes saw in his daughter traits of the father she hadn't met. The main resemblance to Shizuo, besides his natural brown hair, was Shizuko's strength which Izaya had discovered upon walking into the living room to see a four year-old Shizuko lifting the sectional to retrieve her toy which had rolled under it. Really, he shouldn't have been surprised, but witnessing a reminder of Shizuo in his daughter unsettled him.

Shizuko, for her part, had also caught on to and emulated her mother's observational skills. After coming back from an outing with Izaya, during which more families were out and about than usual, Shizuko, with a tone of open curiosity, asked Izaya, "Do I have a daddy?"

Izaya attempted to give her a vague answer and change the subject but, like her father, Shizuko could be stubborn. Giving in, Izaya told her that she did have a father but that he and Izaya were not on speaking terms. She would have asked why, Izaya could see, but with an insight peculiar for her age, she realized that this would have caused her mother pain and instead asked if she could at least know her father's name. Izaya was not stupid. He knew Shizuko would only want to meet Shizuo if she was given that bit of information. But he felt that he owed her this and told her anyway.

Still, he was surprised when Shizuko ran into the house one afternoon clutching her kitten Kanra (she had discovered Izaya's online handle while peering at his phone over his shoulder and taken a liking to it) to her chest. To Izaya's concerned inquiries as to where she had been and why she came in so out of breath, she only managed a gasped, "I saw him, Mommy!" before clinging onto Izaya's leg and collapsing into giggles.

After he had put Shizuko to bed for the night, Izaya had sat in the kitchen of the house he had bought to accommodate Shizuko and keep her comfortable, and painfully came to the conclusion that he could no longer deny his daughter her father.

On the day that Shizuo was questioning his sisters about his whereabouts, Izaya dropped Shizuko off at Shinra's dragging from him a promise to refuse any visitors, even patients, while his daughter was there. He left, walking the streets of Ikebukuro-the city he had, for the past six years, only seen in quick glances during meetings with clients, a shame really-searching for a sight of the blonde in a bartender uniform. His plan was to simply offer the monster dinner and meet with him later in the day with Shizuko in tow. He would explain everything and leave how things would proceed up to Shizuo's reaction. Izaya's only worry was how Shizuko would take it if Shizuo did not accept her and chose to repeat what he had said to Izaya that silent winter morning-. Izaya grit his teeth and swore that if the monster caused his Shizuko tears he would gut him like the pig he was.

A sudden text from Shinra explaining how Shizuo had barged in had Izaya running back to the doctor's apartment, anger and fear pumping in his veins, constricting his lungs-Stupid, unpredictable, protozoal amoeba-!

Upon setting eyes on the form he had tried for years to erase from his memory despite the constant reminder he was raising, Izaya's blood turned to ice. When Shizuo turned around, following Izaya's daughter's eyes to the frozen man, and actually locked his gaze with Izaya's, a fresh wave of hur-anger-arose within the information broker and with a practiced ease he arranged his features into cold disinterest and asked-demanded-for the monster to get away from his daughter.

He thought he had prepared himself for this. Thought he wouldn't be winded just by the sight of this reminder of his own past stupidity. But he was wrong. He was wrong though he was calm on the outside as he read Celty's message composed in the theme of a child needing to know her father. His hand was steady wrapped around Shizuko's though he swore that stupid muscle doubling as an organ was making a serious attempt to escape from its prison of sinews and bone. Izaya couldn't stop the flinch when the beast wrapped its paw around his free wrist. He didn't want to look at him, didn't want him to touch him or talk to him. Wanted to be far away from this place but tiny fingers tightening their hold on his hand reminded him why he had taken himself and his daughter out of their sphere of domestic comfort to parley with a monster in the first place.

So when Shizuo squeezed his arm too tight-he hadn't noticed at first, sloppy-and Shizuko had jumped to his defense, Izaya decided that introducing the two was the right thing to do. And so father met daughter.

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Izaya being maternal is really cute, ne. He had a kid and now he's all grown up apparently. This odd but endearing story is once again dedicated to Novoux who continues to feed my addiction to this fandom. Ne, so irresponsible.

Thank you for reading~