prompt: "I don't care if you're 4 or 40, you don't hit people." , for keepswingin
pairing: Zed/Addison
words: 447
original publication: September 17, 2018
rating: T
~violence is never the answer~
Five minutes.
Addison stepped away for five minutes to take her seven year-old daughter to the bathroom. In those five minutes, her husband and her four year-old son had managed to get into an altercation with another family in the park.
"Again, I am so sorry," she apologized for the fourth time, eyeing the little boy who was crying and his father with a blackening bruise on his nose.
She took the few steps to where her family was waiting, putting on her 'stern-mom' face to scold them. "I leave for a few minutes!" she exclaimed in frustration. "Unbelievable!"
"He deserved it," her son, Zion grumbled.
"I don't care if you're four, or forty," she said, giving both of them pointed looks. "You don't hit people."
"But that's not fair," Zion whined. "He-he was calling me names and pushing me and-and Daddy said I'm a'pposed to stand up for myself!"
Addison looked at her husband, silently asking for an explanation. "Little kid pushed Zion off the jungle gym. If he weren't part Zombie he'd be seriously hurt. And when I told his parents, they started saying all these things and excusing the zombaphobic behavior. Plus, I didn't hit him that hard."
"You're supposed to set an example for Zion," she told him. "Let's use our words when we have a problem with others. Now both of you need to go apologize."
"But—"
"No 'but's," she interrupted. "You're both better than violence."
The Necrodopolus males sighed and begrudgingly made their way to the family a few feet away. Addison took her daughter's hand and walked up next to them. She noticed the way the shifted at the sight of a full Zombie and two half-Zombies, and tried her best to ignore the twist in her gut.
"I'm sorry," Zion muttered.
"I'm not sorry," Zed stated. "You both were being incredibly disrespectful to me, my son, my daughter, and my wife. I'm glad I broke your nose so that you learn now that when you say zombaphobic slurs you will get your ass kicked."
Zed bent down and picked up his son and walked away. He turned to his wife and told her, "I'm not apologizing and I hope they remember this."
"I told you Zombies are classless animals," the man with the broken nose said to his son.
Addison tilted her head at him. "I kindly ask you to shut up before I break more than your nose," she said to him. "I can't believe I felt sorry for you and tried to use this as a lesson, asshole."
She turned and guided her daughter away. "C'mon Zia, we have better things to do then entertain these jackasses."