A/N: I'm sorry it's so short you guys. Christmas and other winter holidays have had me pretty busy. Longer chapters will be forthcoming though!
"We'll tell people she took after you." That was the first thing that Masami said when her husband brought home their daughter, and she was their daughter, despite being born to other parents. Masami had so rarely seen this side to Touichirou but she liked it. He seemed, from the outside, like a cold man but he could be so loving, the most loving, if given the chance.
She was so glad that she had given him the chance.
They had met by chance at a train station. She had been soliciting donations for the animal shelter she worked at and he had been coming back from one of his business trips. At first she had just thought that he was just another exhausted train passenger trying to make his way home so she gave him her usual, but shortened spiel, about how everyone had a responsibility to the animals and so on and so forth.
"So you work at an animal prison because you think that the weak have a responsibility to the strong?" he had said when she stopped him on his way out of the station. The tall red haired stranger….with an 'interesting' world view. At first she thought that he was being funny, calling it an animal prison, but later on she would realize that he saw everything as a prison, even the human body.
"We're just vessels, these bodies, that's all. We could accomplish so much more if we weren't trapped in these fragile, imperfect, machines." Touichirou loved to talk philosophy. They talked of nothing else on their first two dates. It had been an impulse, leaving her number with that red haired stranger coming back from parts unknown, but it had paid off…even if he could be kind of cold sometimes. He had a big heart, it was just underneath all of that coldness. He was like those pints of ice cream they sold with the chocolate core center. You just had to dig and dig and dig until you got to him, the sweetest part of him.
The part that brought home poor little orphan girls with nowhere else to go.
"Why? I don't care if people know she's adopted and besides, she doesn't look a thing like me." Said Suzuki. Masami liked that girl, that was good. Sho was taking his nap. He wondered how his son would react to their being another child in the house. Masami had informed the boy of the change in their family structure but the boy was only a year old. Who knew how much he understood. He hoped that the two of them would get on, Boy and Girl, because otherwise it would be a long…however many years it took for the children to become independent. Suzuki hadn't needed his parents since he was in middle school but Masami was still so dependent on hers.
She cared for people.
She cared for everything and everyone. Her worldview was fascinating. That was what had drawn him to her. He had been trying to get Claw off the ground, then, well trying more than he had been trying now, and it was such a slough. He needed money and that money came partially from dummy companies but mostly from cults…and those cultists were the most tedious and annoying people that he had ever encountered. He had been at his wits end with the constant kowtowing and just needed someone who challenged him.
And she did.
She took the view that the strong needed to protect the weak. That was why she had devoted her life to caring for animals even though it was such a waste of time. She did not view it that way. They got to talking. She gave him her phone number. He called it. They talked. They dated. They had sex. She got pregnant. They got married. Sho was born.
It had all happened so fast, but fast was good, better than drawing the whole thing out for years and years.
He was not immune to the same things that all men wanted. Finding a mate hadn't been at the forefront of his mind but he was glad to have found the one he found. Her presence was usually enjoyable, she was a devoted mother to their son, and she would be a devoted mother to their daughter as well.
So in the grand scheme of things he had done well.
"Really Touichirou? She doesn't look a thing like you?" asked Masami. She pointed over to the girl. She had discovered Sho's toy animals and was lining them up on the living room floor. She wasn't smiling, she wasn't frowning, she wasn't anything. She was just staring down at the little bits if plastic shaped like animals in her hands. Just staring.
"No. I don't see it." Said Suzuki. She was certainly less boisterous than Sho, that was a good thing, Sho, when he woke up, would most likely throw his toys around, run, scream, climb, jump and whatever else he could do. Maybe that was just the difference between boys and girls. He had no idea, he was an only child.
"That's your resting face." Said Masami motioning to the girl as if they hadn't been staring at her since he brought her home from Seasoning City.
"What do you mean?" asked Suzuki. He didn't see his face in her. He saw his aura in her, two colors, but that was it. There was no point in speculating as to whether or not the child looked like him. Aside from a period in his teenage years he had been keeping almost complete control over the desire for sex. He had broken it for Masami but she had done a lot of persuading.
And it had paid off. That was how they had gotten Sho.
"That's your resting face, Touichirou. That's how you look all the time, like you're bored of everything. She looks just like you." Said Masami as she watched the girl, no, her daughter playing with some of Sho's toys. She could talk, sort of, though she hadn't done much of it. She had been asking for her biological family until Touichirou poured her a glass of milk. Which Masami then transferred into a sippy cup because one did not serve a two year old a full drinking glass of milk. The milk had been the thing to calm her down. The room had started shaking but Touichirou had managed to get her calm…
Another way that their daughter took after him.
Masami knew what her husband was. It had been a shock, an amazing shock, to realize that the world was so much…bigger….than she had ever imagined. Psychic powers were real and he had them. She wondered if he had passed them down to Sho. Sho did look almost exactly like his father after all. Touichirou had said that it was too early to tell with Sho, most espers didn't present their powers until later on in childhood, but Masami knew that powers or no powers they would both still love Sho.
And Shigeko.
Shigeko who could shake the house. Shigeko who, according to what Touichirou had told her, had been abandoned by her family because they just could not care for her anymore. Shigeko who had been about to have been sent away even from her orphanage because she was a 'danger' to the other children with her 'condition'.
This was a two year old girl. All she needed was love.
"I suppose she does. Nobody would ever believe that this was our child, though, she's so obviously fully Japanese. I suppose that we could color her hair if this really means so much to you." Said Suzuki. Masami seemed to think that he had said that in jest and laughed.
"You're ridiculous. Isn't daddy ridiculous, Shigeko?" laughed Masami. Shigeko looked up from what she was doing. She stared at these two people in front of her. Suzuki wondered what the girl could have possibly been thinking and made a mental note to look for telepaths. The girl, to the untrained eye, didn't seem to be thinking anything at all. She just stared at the two strangers in front of her.
Her aura told another story.
This was a tentative sort of calm. Needs existed in a hierarchy and at the bottom was food, shelter, and safety. A pity that this hadn't been an infant. She remembered her biological family, though being only two years old those memories would soon fade, but he needed the girl to attach to his family now. She needed to see them as her ingroup. She needed to see him as her father.
He'd much rather have her grow up to work towards his goals rather than opposed them.
"Daddy?" asked Shigeko quizzically. She looked around the room.
"Yes. There's daddy and here's mommy! And Mommy is so happy to meet you! Yes she is! Yes she is!" said Masami getting down in Shigeko's level. She took her sippy cup of milk and put it behind her back. She stared at the woman in front of her and the man sitting across the room. She looked around at the house, at these toys she had never seen before, and at this woman who called herself mommy.
And at the man.
The man who called himself daddy. The man who was red, red and yellow. She knew her colors. She was pink and blue. The woman had no color at all, like the people she had been with in the bad place. Now she wasn't at the bad place anymore. This was….this was a good place.
There was milk here.
"Do you hear that? Your little brother is waking up. Come on, let's go meet little brother." Said Masami. She reached her hand out to the girl, to Shigeko, to her new daughter, and it took the child a moment to take it. Her eyes met Masami's and she held her hand tightly.
"Want little brother…" muttered Shigeko as she was led down the hall. Mommy, daddy, little brother….she knew…these were those people….and this was her…house? She didn't know. All she knew was that the people here were nice and there was milk.
"Yes, let's go see little brother! Oh, Sho's going to be so happy to meet you." Said Masami as she led Shigeko down to Sho's bedroom, their bedroom. The books all said that rooming together would be good for them, it would help them grow as siblings. Those books had been about older children, Masami had been assured by many that being as young as they were they would never think of each other as anything else, but Masami was not going to take a chance on her family's happiness.
"House. Big house." Said Shigeko as the lady walked her down a hallway she had never seen before. This place was knew. This was place was new but….good. Better than the bad place. Lots of milk, which was good, and the people were nice. So nice. So she allowed herself to be led. The floor was nice under her feet and the lady's hand was nice in hers. Her voice was nice, too, she said nice things.
"…and I know that you're just going to be the best of friends. See? I've made a bed for you right next to your little brother's." said Masami. She led Shigeko over to Sho's crib. He was standing and rattling the bars as he tended to do. She felt the shift in the energy around her. Her husband was near, very near, and she was glad that he was there to share in this moment.
"Little brother?" asked Shigeko. That was not little brother…right? She knew little brother…but….she reached over through the bars. The other person reached back.
She saw red, a different red than the man had, and it touched her colors.
"Touichirou, take a picture!" whispered Masami. Sho was usually so upset after getting up from his nap. This was great! He had never taken to anyone, not even the other children at the playground, so quickly.
"Of course." Said Suzuki as he pulled out his phone. He'd indulge Masami even though what needed to be seen wouldn't show up in a photograph. Sho had something of an aura though it was barely anything. Nothing compared to the girl. She shone so brightly. That was what mattered and it would not show up on camera.
Still, though, he indulged Masami.
He indulged her when she insisted on painting half of Sho's room pink for the girl even though they had more than enough rooms for the girl to have picked one and made it her own. He didn't understand why they had to share a room, the children, but it did make Masami happy and he did supposed that it was in his best interests that the children got along.
They would one day inherit the world after all.