He didn't take a lot of pictures.

That had been Masami's thing. She had always felt the need to document everything that happened to them. Everything from the birth of their son to the time she had made him that cake…and she knew that he hated cake. But she had made him a spice cake anyway for his birthday. She had insisted that it wouldn't be sweet, and it wasn't that sweet, but he still had not been a fan. She had taken a picture of the face he made when he took the first bite. She had called it adorable. Had called him adorable.

And also she had laughed.

He didn't need to take a picture to remember her laugh. The way her whole face lit up. The way she smiled so wide that he could see all of her teeth. He remembered the sound of it, too, of her laughter. The way it made him feel. The fact that with just the simple act of laughing she could shoot his control to hell...

It had been such a gift to hear her laugh.

Being with her had been such a gift. Even if he knew that the smart thing, the rational thing, would have been doing anything and everything in his power to forget that he had ever even had a wife to begin with. She was perfect, his most perfect person, but now she was gone. She was gone somewhere and he was somewhere else. He was hurling through the sky at thousands of miles an hour with their children in tow. The time had come to say goodbye to the nation of Japan and to say hello to…he couldn't even remember where it was that he was headed.

The way he felt made no sense.

He had been upset to enter and now he was upset to leave. Some part of him, some stupid part of him, had been worried about…or anticipating…running into her. Even though he knew that the odds of running into her were a million to one…or a billion. He didn't know, he hadn't done any statistics since university. He just knew that some stupid, irrational, part of him wanted to run into her while they were still in Japan. He wanted to see her and…and he didn't know what. Throw himself down onto the ground in the kowtow to end all kowtows. Cling to her ankles like one of the children and beg her never to leave again? Scream at her? Tell her that she had no right to leave, to betray him? He had no idea what it was that he would have done.

He just wanted to see her again.

Which was what brought him to his pictures. He had some of her, a few, mostly of the two of them together. She had been fond of taking pictures. Sometimes with his phone. Why hadn't he taken more pictures? He'd had half a decade to take more pictures. Of her smiling and her laughing or even her just…being. Just being there and…and…and he was being irrational. He had work to do. He always had work to do, even flying through the air in this flimsy piece of metal, and he needed to tend to that work and not sit there flipping through pictures of his ex-wife.

What?

WHAT?

The plane shakes. It isn't turbulence. No, it's him. It is him and the absurd thought that he had just had. She was still his wife. She was his wife and she would always be his wife. Even if they were far apart. Even if he had no idea where in the world she even was. Even if it had been years and years since he had even set eyes on her…she was still his wife. His wife and no one else's.

"Cool! We're going to die!" shouted Son. He was at the other end of the plane. He still had that toy gun, or maybe it was a new one, and he had made a game of attempting to shoot anyone and everyone. Why so many people put up with this insanity he would never know. Masami had been good, better than him anyway, at putting up with Son's antics. Daughter took after her in the respect. She had been letting Son use her as target practice even though Suzuki could not imagine that being a fun game for her…or anyone involved.

"Sho, don't be like that. We're not going to die. Sometimes planes just get shaky, that's all. Like remember the one we took from Zurich? That one got all shaky and you said that we were going to die then, too, but we didn't. Dad would never let us die." Said Daughter. She had such faith in him. He liked that about her. Of course he would not have let them all die. These were his children, first of all, and also three of his most irreplaceable espers. Minegishi, because Daughter liked them as well as Fukuda because they needed a healer and Shimazaki because these attempts on his life were tiresome. Also Son seemed to like him…his children had the strangest taste in companions.

"If I have to hear the word 'die' one more time someone is getting kicked off this plane." Said Minegishi

"Die. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die…." Said Shimazaki. Suzuki wondered how many times he planned on saying 'die'. What there was to gain by upsetting Minegishi he did not know. Maybe that was why he and Son got along so well. Now Son was joining in even though Daughter was telling him in plain Japanese to knock it off.

So, this was his life.

He had been the one to start all of this. If he hadn't lost control, then, then the chain of events which had kick started this would never have happened. This was his retribution. He deserved it. He shouldn't have even been looking through his pictures. He knew that he had pictures of her, of Masami, of his wife there. He knew that he should have exorcised the pictures of her from his phone and the memory of her from his mind. That was the healthiest thing for him to do, the most rational thing for him to do, but he just….couldn't.

"Shimazaki! Who's the eight year old?! You or him?!" shouted Minegishi. Suzuki knew that he should have done something about that. One word from him and the rest of their plane ride would have been silent. He would have been able to hear himself think again….and that was why he allowed that. He didn't want to hear himself think. If he started to think then his thoughts would have inevitably gone to Masami. He didn't want to think about her. He didn't want…he wished, sometimes, that he had never met her.

Because then he wouldn't have had to exorcise her.

If she had just been another woman, another face in the crowd, then he never would have been in this mess. He never would have begun to feel what it was that she made him feel. The emotions that she inspired within him. Ones that he had vowed never to feel again. Ones that he wished that he had never felt in the first place. Love, it was not a good feeling. Love was such an imprecise word…and such an imprecise feeling. The love he felt for Masami was actually a mixture of several different emotions. There was obsession, sexual desire, fear, anxiety, joy, and a whole lot of other feelings. The same sorts of feelings that fed into his powers. The same sorts of feelings that made him lose control…and there was no way that he was ever losing control again.

He had to set a good example for his children.

"Dad?" asked Daughter. He opened his eyes. He'd had them closed, before, in an effort to shut out the world. To shut himself away from his own thoughts. That had been stupid. If he wanted to escape his own internal monologue then, maybe, he should not have shut out the outside world. Even if it was annoying. Even if his head was killing him, now, because there was some sort of argument going on…but better the argument out there than the racing thoughts in his own mind.

"Yes?" asked Suzuki. Daughter took a seat next to him. She didn't have to climb into her seat anymore. When they'd first started traveling she'd had to climb up using her whole body. Now she just had to give herself a slight boost. She was taller now, and growing. She came up past his waist now. He wondered if he should have been measuring the children. Masami measured their heights against a door frame. They weren't ever in one place long enough to keep a record of the children's heights…so he supposed that they had to measure themselves against him.

Son was still slightly smaller than Daughter.

He wondered if that was normal. Weren't boys supposed to be taller than girls? Or was that only when they got older. He had no idea. He had no idea if Son was normal or not. He acted like he was ten children instead of one most of the time. Was that normal? He couldn't pay attention to one thing for very long, either. Was that normal? Suzuki had no idea. Masami would have known. She knew so much more about childrearing than he did. No amount of study had prepared him for the reality of having small humans who were completely dependent on him for everything.

"We aren't going to die, right? You could catch us if the plane fell out of the sky?" asked Daughter

"Of course I could. Lifting an airplane is child's play." Said Suzuki. While he had never really gotten to the limits of his strength he knew for a fact that he could lift five commercial airplanes without breaking a sweat. He would have lifted more but people started to notice.

"Oh…ok. But if you can lift planes and stuff then why are we flying in one? Couldn't you just lift me and Sho and-" said Daughter

"This is just easier and it's less likely to get me noticed. We don't run the world yet, Daughter, we still need to have a degree of anonymity." Said Suzuki. He hated that about the world they lived in. He had wanted to give his children a world where they never would have had to hide…but that was not possible now. Now he was still building that world for them and building their empire. One day they wouldn't have to hide. One day the world would be his…theirs. That day was just not coming any time soon.

"Ok." Said Daughter. She sat beside him. The arguing at the other side of the plane was over. He did not envy Fukuda having to sit back there between Minegishi and Shimazaki as well as across from Son. At least Son had stopped with the gun. Now he was sitting there drawing something. Suzuki would have to see what it was later. Son's drawings were always very good. Everyone needed a talent in life and art was Son's. Suzuki had never been one for art. Sure he could reproduce images he saw but he couldn't create something from nothing like Son could. He inherited that from Masami. She had always been very creative.

He needed to stop thinking about Masami.

There was no reason to be thinking about her. It wasn't her birthday or their wedding anniversary or even the anniversary of when they'd first met. He had no reason to think about her, not that some arbitrary turn of the calendar was a good reason to think of her, but now he especially had no reason to think about her. He was leaving Japan, had left Japan some time ago. So what? He had no idea if she was even still in Japan.

"Dad, are you ok? Your aura is being all…pointy." Said Daughter. Suzuki mad an effort, a conscious effort, to smooth down his aura. He had no reason whatsoever to be upset. She was right. That was why she was pointing out the fact that his aura had been acting up. She was telling him that he needed to calm down for her sake. If he went and lost control then she would also think that it was acceptable to lose control and the world would not have survived long enough for him to take it over if she went around losing control.

"Fine. I'm fine." Said Suzuki. That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. She was still looking at him. Her hair was starting to float. Her braids. The rest of it was tied into two braids and also imprisoned under the ridiculous cat ears headband she was always wearing. He wondered why she wore that thing. She should have gotten rid of it ages ago. She knew who gave it to her….actually she had no idea what the problem even was…and he was not explaining that to her. She was nine, first of all, and second of all even if she had been a grown woman the last thing that she would have wanted from her father was to know the dirty details of his sordid affairs.

"Because I did try and tell Sho to stop." Said Daughter. He wondered why she was rehashing this. He knew what had happened. He was right there. She had tried to get her brother to stop. That was normal. He hadn't listened to her. That was also normal. He wondered how Masami had gotten the children to listen. For all of the things that she had taught Daughter before she had left maybe how to get children to listen and obey should have been one of those lessons.

"I know." Said Suzuki. He wondered if this would be the end of it. He had told her that he acknowledged her efforts. What more did she ask for? Maybe she wanted his attention and affection. She did seek him out often. Not as often as when she had been young but she did seek him out often. He reached an arm over his shoulders and pulled her close. Maybe this was what she wanted. Maybe this would be the thing to make her stop with this already.

"He just wouldn't listen to me." Said Daughter as she leaned into him. She was so small and warm. This was pleasant. She was always so pleasant…even if she insist on rehashing the events of just a few moments ago. Sometimes he didn't understand her, like now, but three decades, a generation, and gender separated them. There was no way that he would ever be able to understand her totally and completely. Still, though, he understood her better than most. She was still his child even if he hadn't fathered her. They were in the same boat in a lot of ways. Their powers. The loneliness that came with them…he imagined. He wondered if she had been lonely for other children. He wondered if she ever wanted another companion….not that he was planning on giving her any siblings.

"I'm aware." Said Suzuki. He hoped that this would be the last time that he had to tell her that he was aware of the events that had just transpired. This was becoming tiresome. It would have been more tiresome, though, if she hadn't been so pleasant to be around. There was a comfort to it, holding someone smaller and warmer than he was, something instinctive. Because this was his child. Because she was his child and he was the one who was supposed to protect her. Yes, this was…he thought of Masami less. He had stopped thinking about her until he remembered her. Daughter was good for that, taking his mind off of things that it should not have been on in the first place.

"But he did end up stopping so that's ok, right?" asked Daughter. He wanted to sigh. What was with her? He didn't know. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted her to just sit there so that he could hold her close and just enjoy her presence. If she was there, near him, then she exorcised the thoughts of Masami from his mind better than he ever could through sheer force of will.

"Yes, that's fine Daughter. You brother is quiet now. There's no need to go over and over and over what happened? Yes? Now, please, enough of this." Said Suzuki. Daughter nodded. She attempted to get up. He didn't let her go. He didn't let her go and…and he didn't want her to go. He wanted her there by his side.

Not that he was dependent on her or anything like that.

He didn't need her. The only person who he needed was himself. He was a full and complete person on his own. He just…enjoyed her presence. He enjoyed her presence but if she wanted to leave then she could have left at any time…but she didn't want to leave. She just thought that he had dismissed her. She asked him that sometimes, if he wanted her to go, even when she should have known that he wanted her to stay…not that he cared either way.

He didn't care either way.

She just…if she went back there, with Son, then he would have….gotten all riled up again. If he got all riled up again then the plane ride would have become truly unbearable and he could not have had that. Then the other two back there would start up again, he couldn't tell if they loved or hated each other, and then Fukuda would probably end up stressed out and he couldn't work if he was stressed out. So, really, the thing to do was to keep Daughter right there beside him. For the sake of the rest of this plane ride.

"You want me to stay?" asked Daughter

"If you go back there then your brother will start up again and, frankly, he's very tiresome when he starts up like that." Said Suzuki

"But I wanted to see if Minegishi wanted to-" said Daughter

"They're asleep. You know that they always sleep through plane rides." Said Suzuki

"I know. I just wanted to-" said Daughter

"Stay sitting." Said Suzuki. He wondered why she wanted to leave him. Well she couldn't. She was not going to leave him….even though he knew that he was being irrational. Well it was her fault for saying, all those weeks ago back when they first came back to Japan, that she wanted to leave him to go back to the old house. She was not supposed to want to leave him. She was his Daughter. She was his and she was never going anywhere.

"Yes dad." Said Daughter. She pulled out her phone. He watched her screen. He was just curious as to what she could have been doing. She was brushing some kind of pink kitten…horse…thing with wings and a horn and also there were rainbows and sparkles. One of her games. He didn't even begin to try to understand her.

"Do you want a turn?" asked Daughter

"A turn?" asked Suzuki

"At this. You're looking over my shoulder like Sho does when he wants a turn." Said Daughter

"No, I don't want a turn, I just wanted to know what you were doing. What even is that creature supposed to be?" asked Suzuki

"Rainbow unicorn kitty friend." Said Daughter. As if that string of words was supposed to mean anything to him at all. He much preferred Son's games. His at least revolved around taking care of animals that existed in life. Also the colors didn't make his eyes feel like they were starting to bleed.

"Which is a…pet of some sort?" asked Suzuki

"Yes. He's my pet. I take care of him." said Daughter

"What is the purpose of this game?" asked Suzuki. When he was her age he had been the reason for the hundred yen shortage in Japan at the time. So many hours spent playing Space Invaders. There had been other games but Space Invaders was the best. Just him defending the world from aliens…so simple but complex…those had been good times. From what he could remember. He wondered why she never played games that were actually fun…he'd have to show her some games worth playing. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga, Galaxian, all of his old time wasters. The things that used to be so important to him when he was younger….

His parents hadn't been able to understand him, either.

He hadn't thought about this in decades. Coming home long after dinner had been served and cleaned up. A week's worth of money lost in an afternoon. That was shortly before he learned how to trick the machines with his powers. How to stand there for hours and hours on his own playing the same games until….why did he stop playing? Oh yes, he got bored. He played for so long that the game had stopped being able to generate levels. Something else that he was far too good at…and he had come home so angry….and his parents hadn't known what to make of him…

"To have fun. There's mini games and stuff and also it's just fun to take care of something that's not….real." said Daughter

"Right….you just…enjoy that." Said Suzuki. Daughter was still brushing it's digital fur. The children wanted a real pet. It was still out of the question. He did not like animals, he did not want to love in close proximity to one, and the children didn't need one anyway. They had digital pets. What more did they need? All the fun of taking care of a pet but no torment for the parent.

"I will. Are you ok, dad? You made the plane shake before and I'm sort of worried about you." Said Daughter

"Don't worry about me. I'm perfectly fine. You just play your game." Said Suzuki. She nodded and went back to staring at her phone. Masami hadn't let him get the children their own phones even though she complained all the time about them borrowing hers. Well she wasn't around and he wanted them quiet…and they were being quiet. Maybe too quiet. Maybe he needed them to make noise so that they could drown out his thoughts…

Maybe he should have let her go.

But then she would have been gone from him. She was there, now, and he liked it. She had wanted to be near her friend but said friend was passed out as they were on every plane ride. He wondered how they managed it. Sleeping on an airplane. He couldn't sleep with so many people around. He could barely sleep when it was just him and Daughter.

It had taken him some time, too, to get used to sleeping next to Masami.

He had spent so much time on those first few nights, when they had been married and the house had been bought and she hadn't been big with Sho yet, just watching her sleep. The faces she made. The way her eyelashes caught the morning light. The way her hair seemed to float out in all directions like a halo. Even the way she would open her eyes first thing in the morning. He wished that he had taken a picture. He'd had half a decade to take a picture. He wished that he could have seen, just one more time, her face while she drifted off to whatever her dreams were….

He always slept with his back to Daughter.

He didn't want to watch her sleep. He didn't want to watch her face while she closed her eyes and went to the place where her dreams were born. He didn't want to see her while she was there all small and drifted off….so he didn't. So he slept on his side with his back to her even though he hated sleeping like that. He could have slept on his back, she hardly took up any of the bed, and he could have kicked her out at any time…but he didn't. He liked having her near.

Even now he liked having her near.

She looked….adorable….if that was the word to use. Yes, it was. She was so adorable there with that expression of serious concentration on her face and her aura…she was just so adorable. That would have been Masami's word for her. Masami would have asked him to take a picture, to preserve that scene for the rest of existence. Like the one of her he had, the one he didn't like to look at, of the day he'd brought her home. Masami had been so happy that day…and he had her happiness there, preserved for eternity, in his phone. He could have seen her, seen how happy she had been that day, back when she had been his….but he didn't. He didn't. He focused on Daughter. The serious sort of happiness on her face. The way her headband was askew. The way she bit the ends of her fingers….all of it. She was so….she was so like her mother…and he didn't want to think about it. So he didn't. He just watched her.

He didn't take a lot of pictures and he wasn't going to start now.