A/N: Hey, y'all! Sorry this took so long - this chapter could've gone several different directions, and I couldn't decide, then had writer's block for a bit. :/ I'm trying to update my other stories as well - so keep an eye out!
Thank you to jellybean96 and two guests for your reviews! :)
Guest #1 - I'm glad you loved it; more to come!
Guest #2 - I'm so sorry that my updates weren't sooner, but I'm super glad that you love them all :3
Cal and Grant were already in Jiaying's office when the mother and daughter pair entered. Rolling her eyes at Cal's unsurprising behaviour, Jiaying smiled at Grant and swept through the room to sit behind her desk. Cal, who had been lounging on an old recliner, bounced to his feet and hurried to hug Skye. Beaming at her and receiving an awkward smile in return, he moved back to stand at Jiaying's side. Grant moved over from his position by the bookshelf towards Skye. Grinning, Skye wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, not minding at all that her parents were watching. Grant was a little surprised at the blatant display of affection in front of Skye's parents, but he happily kissed her back.
"D'you think we should do that?" Cal stage-whispered to Jiaying as the young couple broke apart. Jiaying turned to give him a half amused expression, one eyebrow raised questioningly. Cal sniggered as he looked over at Skye, who had pulled a sour face yet didn't quite know why she was so objecting to the idea. Grant just looked somewhat lost, his gaze darting between the other people in the room as he searched for what would be the appropriate response for him to make.
"Perhaps not." Jiaying replied, turning back to face a relieved Skye and Grant. However, she continued addressing Cal. "Skye was just telling me about what she knew of her family history."
"What do you know?" Cal asked Skye, eager to share.
"Just the S.H.I.E.L.D. version of events." She replied, leaning into Grant. "And Mom told me you're from America." Jiaying brightened when Skye said 'mom', but she let her daughter continue.
"Yeah!" Cal said jovially. "From Milwaukee, specifically. I had a clinic there, not far from a lovely Swiss bakery." His expression turned thoughtful. "I hope it's still there."
"So," Skye paused, unsure of how to proceed. "Um, would we have lived in America or China? If I had…stayed."
"We were already planning to move back to your father's home town before you were old enough for school." Jiaying answered. "I was to enrol at a medical school near to the clinic, and there was an elementary nearby."
"What about the clinic in the Hunan Province?"
"Small." Cal answered this time. "And was fine at the time. But I had only gone to China for volunteer work, and my Chinese was terrible–"
"Still is." Jiaying interjected. Skye and Grant chuckled.
"…and I still missed my family back home. Your grandparents wanted to meet you." Cal continued, merely glancing at Jiaying with faint amusement, and smiled at his daughter. "But, a few months after you were born…" he trailed off, everyone in the room understanding what he meant.
"When was I born?" Skye asked, her gaze flicking from one parent to the next.
Her parents shared a look, Cal with a raised eyebrow and Jiaying smiling at him expectedly. The former answered with a bright smile.
"July second, 1988."
"'88?" Skye repeated, confused. "I'm twenty seven?"
"Of course." Jiaying replied, a hint of confusion in her own expression.
At the same time, Cal stood up straighter and had a more amused look. "How old did you think you were?"
"Twenty five, twenty six." Skye shrugged. "It was just an estimation that the nuns made when I was dropped off at the orphanage."
Jiaying and Cal both frowned, concerned. Cal opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
"Babies grow quickly. To someone who works with children for a living, a three month old should be no problem for anyone estimating their age, especially with all the developments they go through." She said. "Were the nuns blind?"
"No…" Skye's eyebrows furrowed together. "And they weren't all old."
"That's a head-scratcher, for sure." Cal put in. "But perhaps we'll never know." Smiling, he looked satisfied that the matter was done.
Skye and Grant shared a look. "Do you often let things go so easily?" he asked.
"Nope." Cal replied in the same jovial tone.
"Moving on." Jiaying said, trying to bring the conversation back to its original topic. "Skye, is there anything else you want to know right now?"
"Um…my grandparents?" Skye shrugged. "I know I wouldn't have met your parents," she addressed Jiaying. "But I'd still like to know their names."
Her mother smiled fondly. "Guan Fuhua and Liew Lijuan. I was one of seven children, yet I was the only one selected for the Terrigenisis transformation."
"What about their kids? Were any of them selected?"
"No." Jiaying replied. "But two of my great-grandnieces were approved."
"Could you draw out a family tree?" Skye stepped forward, excited.
"I have a pen!" Cal simultaneously whipped the writing utensil out of his jacket, beaming the whole time.
"Thank you, Cal." Jiaying said politely, eyebrow raised slightly at his puppy-like behaviour. She accepted the pen and took the top sheet of paper from the small stack on her desk. "As I said, my parents had seven children," she began, writing Guan Fuhua and Liew Lijuan at the top of the paper, adding their Chinese character counterparts underneath. She wrote lengthwise along the sheet, and linked the two names with two long parallel lines. "The eldest was my brother, Qiang." Jiaying divided the landscape length of the piece of paper into eight segments, writing Qiang under the first line down, also underlined with Chinese characters. Moving to the next descending stroke, she wrote Deshi under it. "My second eldest brother, Deshi, was a year younger."
"Yikes." Grant muttered, moving to stand behind Skye and wrap his arms around her.
Jiaying looked up, a musing expression on her face. "This was the early 1880s, Grant." She gently informed him. "Women were not so well cared for as they are now. It certainly wasn't something my father ever considered, so we thought nothing of the stress a mother goes through just to produce a child." Turning her focus back to the family tree, she wrote Wencheng under the third line. "Wencheng was my third brother, but he died not long after he was born." She sighed sadly. "My mother finally got the rest she needed, and two years later she fell pregnant to my last elder brother, Quon." She wrote the name under the fourth line, adding the Chinese version as she had with the others. "Another two years later, I was born." Jiaying brightened a bit at this, writing her own name under the fifth line along the page. "My younger brother Geming was a year and a half later," she paused as she wrote Geming under the sixth line. "And finally, my sister Yuequin was born, five years after me." Adding Yuequin to the page under the seventh and final line, she looked up to see her daughter's reaction. "My mother then refused to get pregnant again, and my father was pressured by my mother's parents to cede to her wishes."
While Skye was just staring at the piece of paper, as though watching it could help her learn more about her grandparents and aunts and uncles, Grant moved the discussion along.
"Did they all have kids themselves? Not including Wencheng, of course."
"No." Jiaying replied with a heavy sigh. "Geming was killed falling out of a tree at around six years old, and Quon died in World War I." Feeling restless, she started twirling the pen around her fingers. "He was a pilot."
"And the others?" Skye asked.
Shaking her head to clear it, her mother moved her pen to the paper, drawing parallel lines from Qiang. "My eldest brother married Gao Zhilan. She was very young, perhaps only seventeen at the time, while Qiang was twenty three. I adored her, absolutely loved having an elder sister, but she was so scared of making Qiang angry. A result of her own father, I suspect. Our mother would never have let him hurt her."
"She sounds amazing." Skye whispered. "Did he ever try?"
"To hurt her?" Jiaying asked to confirm, and Skye nodded. "No. He wanted mentally sound children of his own, not violent or desperate, hoping that one of them would be selected for Terrigenisis." She laughed softly. "That didn't happen, but Zhilan's face when she found out…we all made her swear to secrecy." She continued, the faraway look in her eyes fading. "If the Imperial family found out, we would likely be experimented on, 'persuaded' to join the household, or die. At least, that's what my father told us."
"Did the same thing happen with your parents?"
"No, they were both fully aware of their Inhuman ancestry." Jiaying turned her attention back to the family tree. "Qiang and Zhilan had two children; Zhilan found it difficult to become pregnant, at least to my brother. It took her so long, Deshi, who married a year later, had his son before our brother did. When she finally fell pregnant, Qiang was so desperate for Zhilan to carry the child to full term, he absolutely doted on her. She trusted him more after that, and finally they had their son, Rong." Jiaying drew the addition, leaving enough room for another name. "My niece, Xiulan, was born three years later. She narrowed her whole life's purpose to becoming a candidate for transformation, that she never considered the possibility of being denied the honour."
"Why was she?" Grant inquired this time.
"She was too shallow. And after she was point blank refused the one thing she'd done everything for, she sank into a slump. I suppose, now it would be classed as severe depression."
"Harsh, I know." Cal put in for the first time in a while. "This was still before World War II, and mental illnesses aren't so well known these days, either. Something to do with the general human incapacity to feel genuine compassion for a handicap they can't see."
"Isn't that what therapists are for?" Grant asked.
"Why do you think they're referred to as shrinks?" Cal countered. "It's difficult for anyone to open up to a stranger, even professionally. How do you think it would be for someone with low self-esteem, or with an anomaly in their brain chemicals that makes them wack out?"
Grant inclined his head, acquiescing to Cal's point.
"Did they marry?" Skye brought the conversation back to less unhappy tones.
"Rong did. Xiulan never recovered, and died before her twenty-seventh birthday." Jiaying answered.
"Oh."
"Rong had two children of his own. He didn't want as many as my parents, and gave up on having sons after his wife, Pong Meili, gave him daughters." Jiaying added them in, writing Meifeng under the first line from Rong and Meili, Yanmei written under the next. "Rong then died in World War II, late 1944. He was nineteen."
"Bit young to be a father of two." Grant muttered.
"He sounds brash." Skye added.
"He was." Jiaying agreed, looking up at her. "Meili didn't particularly miss him, and she remarried an older man…a very old man. She didn't get pregnant to him, but she wanted the money and the protection of marriage for her and her daughters."
"A determined mother." Cal interjected, not seeming disgusted by the actions at all. He appeared impressed.
"Anyway…" Jiaying continued. "Yanmei never got married either, but that was merely a personal choice. She has been teaching piano in Shanghai for almost three decades."
"She's still alive?" Skye asked, eyes wide.
"And wants nothing to do with the family legacy." She smiled. "But she does like the fact that my gift has allowed her to learn more about our family, from a very first-hand point of view."
"Each to their own." Skye said.
"Quite." Jiaying grinned, always amused at the irony of it. Looking back down, she wrote Tin Yongrui with connecting parallel lines to Meili. "Meifeng is one of my great-grandnieces who was selected. She hasn't married, but she had a son in 1990 to her then-boyfriend. He's since left, and Meifeng brought Tengfei here when he was five."
"Are they still alive?"
"Yes, and Meifeng lives here, but Tengfei's off on his tour of the world." Jiaying beamed proudly. "He's a brilliant young man – makes money wherever he goes, so he's managed to stay on his own for a while."
Grant grinned and nudged Skye, causing her to laugh. "I was much the same." She explained. "Computer genius and all."
"It's how we found her." Grant added. "In an old van parked in an alley using café WiFi."
"I was in the middle of a podcast!" Skye retorted before seeing the unimpressed looks on her parents' faces. "…oops?"