"the moment a child realizes adults are fallible"

Technically he shouldn't have Kalinka there at work, or let Forte in through the mernavi's employee entrance to loiter in the hospital entryway, but it was one of those technicalities that went unenforced. He took advantage of this to have a family lunch, since dinners were a little too impractical.

Kalinka had taken off her sandals and rolled up her pants legs so she could sit on the edge of the pool and splash her feet in the water, idly kicking, her cheeks puffed and mouth open as she tried to chew down the entirely-too-large bites of her sandwich.

"I just don't get how you can live like that. Gravity always pushing you down, fighting to balance on those creepy spindly legs."

Forte was leaning on the edge, head propped on his left hand, casually sipping fuel as he complained about how absurd and bothersome humans were. (Present company excepted, of course.)

"You sure talk a lot of trash," she said without guile, mumbling through a mouthful of food. After swallowing a couple times, she continued, "For someone who got adopted by the first human they met."

Forte lifted his head and blinked at her, like a cat registering a bird outside the window, before deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

"I've had encounters with humans before. Dr. Cossack wasn't the first," he replied with a sneer.

It left Dr. Cossack with an unpleasant crawling sensation, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Kalinka's eyes flicked towards the scar branded across his half-submerged chest.

"Is that how come you…" She started, then caught herself and fell silent. She was at that delicate age where she was balanced on unsteady social graces, growing out of a young child's tactlessness, still so unsure how to smoothly recover from awkward missteps or blunders. (Some people never learned. Kalinka was figuring it out, but it was a process, built upon repeatedly putting one's foot in mouth and then removing it.)

There was a heavy feeling of uneasiness that hung in the space between them, awkward seconds slipping by.

Forte's sneer vanished.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to," he said, and the lack of an edge to his voice made it a piece of matter-of-fact advice instead of a warning.

Not sure what to do, she took another giant bite and chewed aggressively, face burning.

"If you ever want to talk about it…" Dr. Cossack had told him once.

"I really don't," Forte had replied.

But Mikhail was a smart man. He knew what he needed to know: that Forte's parents were dead, that the massive scar emblazoned across his chest was related, that he'd carried around an anger and resentment like it was all that had ever kept him warm at night— raw like the edges of a snapped bone that hadn't knit together quite right, that his dislike and distrust of humans was buried in something more than just ignorance or bigotry. Dr. Cossack could put together the pieces and fill in the gaps.

Where his daughter was stumbling her way through these sort of socially awkward situations, however, he was quite deft at handling them. He patiently and expertly picked away at Forte's defenses whenever the opportunity presented itself. They'd get there eventually.

'Eventually' came on a warm summer day. One of the handy things about being a marine biologist with a mernavi son was that Forte could scout out locations for him better than any satellite or tracer or human-built robot submersible could. Dr. Cossack was still working with mackerel, but he was hoping to get funding for a study on bluntnose sixgill sharks, and had some promising responses. In anticipation of the study, he'd taken a small sailing dinghy out to go snorkeling among reef whitetips and hammerheads. He needed to get back into a shark state of mind.

It was a nice dive, and they'd both had fun, even though Forte didn't quite match Dr. Cossack's enthusiasm for sharks. Getting ready to head back to shore, Forte had climbed up to spend a few minutes lounging on the deck. He'd laid there, hands tucked behind his head— it couldn't be comfortable, lying back, with those crests in the way like that— when he suddenly sat up.

"How much longer will you live?"

"Eh?" Dr. Cossack blinked in surprise.

"You guys live, what, like fifty years? How much more time do you have?"

He laughed. "We live a little longer than that. I hope to get another sixty, but realistically, at least another forty years. Barring any unexpected accidents or cancer."

"What's cancer?"

"It's a disease that organic creatures can get. Cells grow out of control, forming tumors, eating away organs…"

Forte tried to look like he had any clue what Dr. Cossack was talking about.

"A tumor is a mass," he said, pantomiming a round shape. "An unnatural growth."

"Oh. So if you don't get a cancer, or killed, then I get sixty years."

"Maybe. Hopefully." Of course, those last ten or twenty years… it would be hard to say how much he could even interact with the water-dwelling navi during his twilight years, but this wasn't really the time or place to get into any of that.

"Better than I got with the others," Forte replied with a huff. It earned a questioning look, but before Dr. Cossack could ask, he went right ahead. "You know how… how you can understand something and still not really believe it? I knew they could die, everyone dies, but I never believed it would happen. Then my Auxiliary—" he paused, brows furrowed, tip of his tail switching in concentration. "—you don't have a word for it. She was the third out of three."

"Well, we usually call our maternal parents 'mother'…"

"She didn't create the initialization chip for me. My Primary— my dad— did."

Dr. Cossack blinked several more times. He really needed to do a more in-depth reading of mernavi reproduction, because he understood what Forte had said just as much as Forte had understood Dr. Cossack's explanation of cancer.

Instead of elaborating, however, Forte got back on topic.

"When she died, it became real."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged— another gesture learned from humans. "I don't really remember. It's frustrating, actually, how little I remember about any of them, and the… lack of…" He paused, struggling. "It was so long ago, I don't miss them. Do you understand? I feel like I should, like there's something wrong with me because I should miss them and grieve for them, but there's just this… this…"

"Resentment?"

"Yes!" Then he paused again, this time because he abruptly realized how uncomfortable the air was as his plating dried off. "Hang on, it's getting too hot for this." With that, he threw himself back into the water.

Dr. Cossack approached the side of the boat, hanging one arm lazily over the hull. Forte surfaced after a moment, swimming alongside.

"…so, that was… I think… a sea monster killed her." He gave Dr. Cossack a strange look. "I don't remember it, actually, just what it did to her. It was— not a good death. A few years later, the other two, my Primary and Secondary, they…" He traced his fingers along the deep groove of the scar. "…they were killed by some humans, I don't know why. Illegal fishing or smuggling or something, and didn't want anyone disrupting their operation. I'm not even sure if I was just caught in the crossfire, or if they tried to kill me, too, but failed. Guess it doesn't matter."

For a little while, Dr. Cossack didn't reply. He was too far to actually reach Forte, but stretched his hand out anyway, as if symbolically offering a comforting touch. "I'm so sorry," was all he could really think to say. Sometimes, even those skilled in social graces could find themselves wanting.

"It's fine." Then, thinking it over, Forte said, "I've been alone for longer than not. Sixty years isn't bad, I'll take it."

Dr. Cossack just laughed, but there was a mournful note in his voice.

A/N: I'd love to hear prompts & suggestions for this fic, if you have any.

Bluntnose Sixgill Sharks are pretty neat! When studied they were more interested in the researchers robot submersibles than the bait, because they're curious about the electrical equipment. :)