"How long with you be gone for this time?" asked Masami as she packed up her husband's suitcase. He could have done this himself in a fraction of a second with his powers but she wanted to do this for him. She wanted to draw out the time, what little time they had left, for as long as possible. The children were playing in their room, the creaking of bedsprings and the banging of bedframes against the wall told her that they were jumping from bed to bed again, but she wouldn't chastise them. Not now.

Not when she had so little time left with her husband.

"I have no idea. No more than a month, I'd imagine, maybe more. It's hard to judge the time when I don't even know what it is that I'm dealing with." Said Suzuki. Goodbyes weren't difficult for him. This wasn't even a proper goodbye. He would come home, he always came home, and his family would still be here for him when he got back. Masami always got so emotional when he left. So did the children, which was why he wasn't going to tell them until they saw him off. The plane would be ready by tomorrow. He could have flown under his own power but why do something on his own when he could have someone else do it for him?

"You said that it was another esper." Said Masami

"I said that intelligence told me that he was an esper. Apparently he's been building up his own organization of espers but his powers are still unknown. That's why I can't possibly judge how long I'll be away for this time." Said Suzuki as he watched Masami work. He could have done this himself, and in a fraction of the time, but he liked watching her work. She had such beautiful hands, his Masami, and he liked watching her work. He liked watching her.

He'd see her again shortly.

This feeling, the one blooming within his chest and setting somewhere in his ribcage, was irrational. He would see her again. He would come home and she'd be there waiting for him. He knew that he had nothing to fear, there wasn't a being on their Earth who could even begin to pose a threat to him, and there wasn't a being on this Earth stupid enough to harm a single hair on his wife's head. She would be fine. The children would keep her company until he came back. The children would be here as well. They would age, they aged so rapidly at this stage of development, but they would be here.

They would be right where he left them.

"Touichirou…please. I know you have to leave but does it have to be for so long? I miss you, the children miss you, so please just…cut this trip short. As short as you possibly can." Said Masami. She was on dangerous ground and she knew it. Touichirou could have a temper but he would never do anything to hurt her. He would never do anything to truly harm anyone. He just…he could have a temper…but he never set out to hurt anyone.

Even though he could sometimes let that temper get away from him when he was disciplining Sho. Always Sho, never Shigeko, she was such a daddy's girl.

"I'll be gone for as long as I need to be gone for." Said Suzuki flatly stating the flat facts of the situation. He was going to go and come back as usual. He couldn't understand her sometimes…but that was why he had chosen her in the first place. It would have been boring to have had someone he understood completely. Masami was Masami and even now after almost half a decade of marriage he was still putting together the pieces of her puzzle.

"Not so loud! They'll hear you…" said Masami as she heard the worst sound that a mother could hear. The sound of silence. The children had stopped doing whatever it was that they were doing in there. They were too quiet. Their television wasn't on, either, and she didn't hear in beeping of their tablets. She didn't even hear Sho…and he was always so boisterous…

The children could not hear this. They always went to pieces when their father left them. They were young, so young, and they needed their father around. Masami was half Japanese, she knew how things worked here. Fathers went off to earn the money and mothers stayed home to raise the children. That was how it had been for her mother and her mother's mother and so on and so forth all the way down the line. Touichirou may not have been providing for the family in the traditional sense but he was out there providing…

Maybe her expectations were just different because her own father had been unusually involved. He had not been Japanese, that had been it, and he had been able to get away with more. Leaving the office before the boss, turning down offers to go out after work, taking days off to take her to the park and the zoo or even just to hang around the house and play with her. That was the difference between her and Suzuki. She hadn't met his parents but she had seen pictures. His father was Japanese but his mother was not.

He was just playing out the role that had been modeled for him.

Just like Sho would, one day, play out the role that his father had been modeling for him. Masami didn't know if she wanted that. Touichirou had said, many times, that the children would inherit all that he was building. He spoke so grandly in the stories he told the children. He was going to build a new world for them, a better world, one where they could be free with their abilities. Shigeko. Sho took after her. Not that Shigeko took after either of them, they had adopted her after all, but Touichirou had only opened up their home and their family to her because of her abilities.

Shigeko, regardless of her abilities, was looking to Masami for instructions on how to one day fill the roles of grown woman, wife, and mother. What was Masami modeling for her daughter, and Shigeko may have been adopted but she was her daughter, and was it…right? Would Shigeko be in this position one day? Would she be packing up her husband's suitcase while he just oh so casually told her that he would be gone for a month or maybe more?

Did Masami even have the right to question her husband? She didn't have the gift of esp. She had no idea what it was like to be him, to grow up as he did, and to face the world in the way the children, Shigeko would have to. She knew that the work he did was important, and it had provided for her and the children well, and that the work he was doing would benefit people like him everywhere. She didn't know what that work was, exactly, but she knew that it seemed rather selfish to put herself ahead of the entire world.

"That would be unfortunate. They always get so emotional when they know I'm going to be leaving. I don't understand it. They have object permanence, they know that I'll return, and they know that even if I'm not here, personally, to protect them no one could ever harm them." Said Suzuki. Masami put down the shirt that she was folding and took in a long breath.

"Touichirou, it's not about object permanence or them fearing for their safety. They're small children and they love and miss their father." Said Masami. She wondered, sometimes, if there was something wrong with her husband. He had always had an odd way about him but it had only become more pronounced since they had married…or maybe it had always been there and she just hadn't noticed because their courtship had been so fast. He had always been just a little bit off, out of step with the rest of the world, and at first she had found it charming….and sometimes she still did, like when he called her job an 'animals prison' or he called the children's preschool the 'children's prison' or when he called the orphanage Shigeko came from the 'orphan prison'….prison came up a lot and Masami didn't really feel like unpacking that little idiosyncrasy of his right then and there, because as charming as he could be sometimes there were also times that he just…wasn't.

Like now.

Like when he sounded like an alien trying to blend in and failing. She wondered if something was wrong with him, nothing serious of course, but some sort of social disorder. When they had been children nobody had even heard of social disorders and even now, despite the increased awareness, people were still very touchy about it. She had no idea how to bring it up to him, she couldn't think of a nice way to tell her husband that he sounded like a pod person, so she didn't. He didn't seem it but he could be very sensitive.

Besides, it might have been an esper thing.

Shigeko displayed some of the very same characteristics that Touichirou did, so much so that she wondered if they were indeed related somehow, though she knew that Suzuki had never been unfaithful and even if he had been he wouldn't have cooked up fake adoption papers just so that his bastard child could live with him. No, those were crazy thoughts to have. Shigeko shared his odder idiosyncrasies because they were both espers. Nothing more.

"They know that I'm coming back, and with gifts for them, too." Said Suzuki. Small children were so illogical sometimes…or all the time. He could not wait until they reached the age of reason. He always came back to them even though it was not easy coming back to people who cried when they couldn't eat off of this favorite plates and were afraid of the closet under the stairs but somehow also found the courage to scale the wall that divided their house from the rest of the neighborhood.

"The gifts are nice but…and you know that they're very grateful to you for them….but they miss you. They love you and they want to spend quality time with you. They won't be this young forever. We're going to wake up one day and they'll be all grown up and out of the house." Said Masami

"I don't see why they'd leave, there's plenty of room for them and their families here." Said Touichirou. He had built his family a fortress for a reason. The children called it a castle but really it was a fortress. All it needed was armed guards to keep them safe, but those would come later, once he had enough power that nobody would dare tell him no.

"….that's not the point. The point is that they…you've read about this, I know you have. Right now they're at a critical period of attachment. They're looking to you for safety and love and they're looking to our relationship as a blueprint for the relationships that they'll have in their adult lives. It's…it's important for them to see us and to spend time with you. You want Sho to grow up to be like you, right? Well he can only grow up to be like you if he watches you. The same goes for Shigeko. The way she sees you acting, the way you are with her, will be her script for when she finds the man she wants to marry." Said Masami. She tried to be as logical as possible, Touichirou understood logic above all else, and it seemed like she was getting through to him. He was sitting very still and he was watching her with unblinking eyes. She held his shirt in her hands and waiting with baited breath. It was like the world had stopped turning, it always felt like that when Touichirou got that look on his face. That deep, pensive, look.

"I understand." Said Suzuki after a moment. After he had chewed on what she said. The children needed him to be there for them or they wouldn't attach to him properly. It was in his best interest for the children to be attached to him. It would do him no good to have his heirs usurp him once he took the throne of the world. Yes, it was in his best interest to keep the children on his side…and it was in his best interest for the children to imitate him as well. They loved to play pretend, to act out different roles, and occasionally those roles took them to wearing their parents' clothes and pretending that they were parents themselves. Masami thought that this was adorable. Suzuki had always found it annoying, he didn't like having his things touched by anyone other than his wife, but she was right that he should have been encouraging that behavior…

But he could not stay.

And he could not hurry his trip.

He had important work to do. He had to build up his organization to he could take the world that was rightfully his. He could not weight the needs of the children against the needs of the world. The world needed him. The world needed him because the world was his. Masami had a point, the children would one day grow up, and that day would come faster than he thought. It still felt like yesterday that they had brought home Sho, small and wailing, from the hospital….Shigeko small and quiet from the orphan prison…

Which did he value more? The present or the future?

"So…so will you cut this trip short?" asked Masami hopefully

"No." said Suzuki. He saw her face fall. She just didn't understand, that was all. She tended to be remarkably shortsighted about things sometimes. That was fine. He knew what he had to do and he would do it…

Though the face she was making brought back that unpleasant feeling. He swiftly exorcised that emotion. His aura was beginning to show it and if he lost control, well, then their discussion would have been pointless.

"Touichirou, please. They miss you. They need you. When you're gone they beg me to tell you to come back. They like having you around even for the simple things, things they don't even like, like bedtime and bath time. Please." said Masami clutching his shirt to tightly that she could swear she felt the fabric begin to separate.

"I cannot sacrifice my work but I can…I suppose that I could…read to them." Said Suzuki. He did not like the feelings that she was giving him, the way his aura reacted, the fact that no matter how much he tried he could not exorcise this emotion. This strange, painful, emotion that would not go away….

"That…that would be wonderful." Said Masami. She may have lost her cool for a moment but she had at least managed to get through to him somewhat. He was making progress, thank God, and maybe there was hope for him yet. She didn't know what his childhood had been like, he was loathe to speak of it, but she assumed that his father had been the same sort of man that he was. The children deserved better than that. They deserved a father who was there, who cared for them, who loved-

She stopped herself.

Her husband loved the children.

That was why he was getting up and going to read the children a story even though he was not a fan of their favorites. She put his shirt down and sat on the bed. The bed groaned and his suitcase leaned onto her thigh. She'd get back to it later, after she sat for a moment, because this whole thing had been so draining….

He could be so draining sometimes.

But she loved him.

He was a good man. He may have seemed cold, sometimes, but he was a good man. He cared for his family. He must have. Even now she could hear his voice through the walls, through the vents, and he was speaking nicely. He may have seemed toneless, monotone, in his speech but there was a timbre to him. She had been married to him long enough to know what he meant, how he felt, through his one of voice.

She crawled over and pressed her ear against the wall. She let herself listen, eavesdrop, but she did not feel guilty. Touichirou so rarely spent time alone with the children. He always hovered around her when she was with the children. Sometimes he picked them up with his powers, sometimes he spoke with them, but never on his own. Always hovering. The children still cared for him, still missed him, and she sometimes wondered if he returned their affects…which was a crazy thought to have, of course, because he was their father and a father cared for his children even if he didn't always show it.

But now he was showing it.

She tried to remember what book it was that he was reading to the children. They had their favorites, books that she had read over and over again until she could recite them with her eyes closed and, in fact, had at the ends of days so long and tiring that she could barely keep her head up and her eyes opened but she still had to read to them because she was their mother and she was all alone with them and if she didn't read to them then who would?

Touichirou was never around.

But he was around now.

"….and the father remade the world for his children. It was not only his birthright but theirs-"

"What's a birthright?"

"Something that is yours by right of birth. Now don't interrupt."

She frowned just a bit. Sho really needed to stop interrupting like that. He knew how his father felt about that. He knew that his father had a temper. He was three years old, now, not old enough to understand a lot of things but old enough to understand that his father did not appreciate being interrupted. Touichirou loved his son, he really did, he just had a bit of a temper. A bit of a temper that Masami was worried that her son had, or was about to, set off…but he hadn't. He hadn't and that was good. Maybe Shigeko's influence was rubbing off on him. She was such a good girl, that one, always so quiet. Aside from a few…incidents…with her powers, which she was still too young to understand the full danger of, she was such a good girl.

Not that she or her husband were about to play favorites.

Sho was more like her, Shigeko was more like Touichirou, and that was fine. She loved the children equally and so did Touichirou…even if he didn't always show it. That was fine. The children…they understood. They understood that he loved them and when they grew up they would understand the importance of the work he did for them…even if Masami herself didn't quite understand it.

You didn't have to understand, you just had to believe.

"Is it a true story, dad?"

"It will be, given time."