Logs:Daddy Issues

Daddy Issues
Dramatis Personae Akihiro, Kitty
In Absentia Leo	2023-03-08 Trauma doesn’t give you permission to be an asshole.
Location <NYC> RESOBOX - East Village
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the ability of grad students to survive grad school is dependant on their ability to Have Hobbies Outside Of Their Field. Less acknowledged, perhaps, among Kitty's small circle of mutant grad students, is that vigilantism, activism, and terrorism are not the most restorative of hobbies. She has others, probably, maybe. Definitely normal hobbies that get her out of the apartment for other reasons! Today she is making sure that people know this is true, taking a very carefully framed photo of her finished painting and adding it to her close friends Instagram story. Is the ink wash painting clearly a little bird on a plum twig, as per the promise of the workshop? Debatable -- while the bird is mostly bird-shaped, too many strokes of too wet ink for the branch make the paper curl and distort whatever Kitty had tried for. She's dressed casually in a light blue tee-shirt reading "MATSURI 2013 - Columbia Japan Society" tucked into high-waisted wide jeans, her coat draped over the chair behind her, Magen David pendent resting on her chest and jade bangle tight around her left hand. Her hair is tied back with a lavender bandana, and there's only a little bit of black ink on her cheek, somehow. She's one of the last attendee's of the first workshop still seated -- with a guilty look at the group drifting into the art space, Kitty begins to pack up. “Excuse me,” Akihiro says, glancing over at Kitty, “you’ve got a little schmutz on your cheek.” He points out the spot on his own face before leaning back in his seat. His painting is clearly a bush warbler perched on a twig, but it’s also clear that he didn’t actually need the lesson to begin with. “That’s not bad for your first attempt, you’ll keep at it I hope?” Kitty blinks, looking owlishly over at her fellow student. "Oh! {Mr. Hanayama! Thank you --}" she licks her thumb and rubs at the spot, checking the pad of her thumb until it is black with sumi ink instead, "{-- I wouldn't have noticed for an age.}" How weird is it for this little white girl to be talking in Japanese? In this space, she's far from the only one. She's blushing faintly when she looks back down at her birb, then over at Akihiro's. "Art's not really my thing," she hedges, "but this was kind of fun? Maybe I'll try again." She shrugs on her coat, tugging the tight sleeve over her jade bracelet, before wandering closer to look at Akihiro's bird. "Geez, no wonder the teacher just let you go. Do you even need the class?" “{Again, you can just call me gramps.}” Akihiro waves his hand dismissively at the honorifics before glancing down at his own painting. “{I painted a lot when I was younger, but I wouldn’t be half as good as I am if it wasn’t for my mother.} She’s a wonderful artist,” he pauses to pull his iPhone out, opening the photo app and scrolling to an oil painting of a man that looks remarkably like Logan, “She painted this a few years ago, she’s been working on something for a few years now, but it’s hard for her to hold the brush for longer than a few minutes at a time.” he slides the phone over to Kitty so she can see. “{And again, I have my own grandparents, Mr. Hanayama,}” Kitty replies, rolling her eyes but smiling all the same. There’s a flutter of — something in her eyes when she takes in the painting, clearly there then quashed again. “{It’s beautiful.}” She stares at it a moment longer before looking back up at Akihiro. “Arthritis, yeah? It sucks. My grandmother made bracelets until she couldn’t anymore, it was so bad for her hands but she loved doing it.” Kitty flexes her hands at her sides. “There are, like, special brushes, I think, for people with hand pain.” “She’s also ninety-seven. {I’m almost eighty myself.}” Akihiro takes his phone back and pockets it, noting the flash in Kitty’s eyes. “He was a teacher when you were in school, right? Never ran into him myself but last I heard he disappeared again.” His shoulders raise in a shrug. “Not that it’s important. Unless he visits my mother again before she dies I don’t have any intention of speaking to him.” He seems to realize he’s overshared and turns a shade of red, “{Apologies, I guess painting has gotten me sentimental.}” “{I wish that was harder to believe. You wear your age well. He did too, I suppose.}” Kitty takes her own piece of paper, drifting away from the classroom space but in a way that invites Akihiro to follow. She speaks a little more slowly. “It was after I started college. Didn’t get to know him much.” She doesn’t seem to be judging Akihiro’s small talk — the small furrow in her brow suggests she’s considering it intently. “Does your mother want to see him?” Genuine curiosity fills Kitty’s tone, though her question is quiet. “Would that be a good idea?” “{She clearly misses him. She didn’t remarry after my step-father died, he ended up in her art.}.” Akihiro says quietly as they step away. “From what I hear he’s a hard man to know. I can’t really blame him though, the program was hard on all of us.” He idly rubs a thumb across the small scars between his knuckles. “You know how things like that can shape a person though.” “Mm.” Kitty’s hum of agreement comes not with a touch to scars hidden under her coat but with a press of fingertips to her pendant, a glance down at her bangle. “I — don’t know, directly, but…” She pauses to push open the door onto 3rd Street, though once on the corner she doesn’t seem keen to continue moving. Glances back down at the page in her hands. “I know so many people who have been through hell, you know? Here, at home — my grandfather made sure to be there for his family, for me, even with all his baggage.” There’s a creeping edge of frustration in Kitty’s tone now. “Trauma doesn’t have to make someone a bad partner or parent. Sometimes, that shows up separately.” Her fingertips curl tighter into the side of the paper. “Often, even.” Akihiro follows along, nodding as he listens to Kitty. “Exactly. Trauma doesn’t give you permission to be an asshole. Loss is hard, but you have to grow as much as you can and not let it control you. In Logan’s defense though, I don’t think he knows I exist. From what I gather he was a prisoner of war at a camp she was a nurse at, at least that’s the only timeline that makes sense.” He fishes the cigarettes from his pocket and places it between his lips but doesn’t light it. “You don’t have a responsibility to forgive bad parents either, even if they try to repair the bridges they burned.” “Prisoner of -“ Kitty leans against a building wall, brow furrowing in an approximation of the Math Lady meme. "...Huh. Very Miss Saigon. Would you want to talk to him? If he actually didn't know?" This does not sound like a favorable comparison. She shakes her head. "You catch on fast. I'm good on guidance around boundaries, promise, it's just..." Kitty's nose wrinkles. "It's come up again. Recently." “I wouldn’t be a very good old man if I didn’t occasionally say something useful.” Akihiro grins around the cigarette. “Also, Miss Saigon is racist as hell.” He pauses to think about the question. “Maybe. He wouldn’t ever really be my father though, Aki was, even though he introduced me to the bōsōzuku life.” "I know." The slight curl at the edge of Kitty's mouth suggests that maybe she is calling someone else who is not here racist, by proxy. "And the songs aren't even catchy." She's looking at the lit end cigarette with some mild curiousity. "Bōsōzuku, do you mean the greaser look or the organized --" Her phone chirps from the depths of her coat pocket. "-- crime -- sorry...." Kitty pulls out her phone, glances at it and immediately scowls. "How does he do that," she mutters, before looking up at Akihiro again, phone still in grip but Determinedly Ignored. "Did he give you a choice?" “Ran my own group before I was eighteen.” Akihiro’s grin turns into a full blown smile. “He had his own bike. All it took was one look and I was hooked. He had a group himself, tried his best to keep me away from it, but you can only keep it away from home for so long.” He pauses for a moment as he takes in the memory. “Ran my neighborhood until I was twenty-nine before they bagged me and drug me to Canada, next thing I know it’s the early nineties and I’m clawing my way out of a base and into the woods. Probably don’t want to know what they had me doing all those years.” "Yeesh. And they say Canadians are nice." Somewhere in this story Kitty's scowl is getting deeper, though whether that's from the tale or the fact her phone keeps buzzing at her every couple minutes is unclear. "So that's a yes and a no, then." Kitty closes her eyes, leans her head back against the bricks with her arms crossed over her chest. "Bikes are kind of sexy, I guess, and the Mongrels do good work. That kind of stuff, I think is okay, but..." She opens her eyes, still looking up at Akihiro, and shrugs. "The people my father ran with? I was not impressed." “Only because they’re over America.” Akihiro points out, “Otherwise they’d have the reputation they deserve.” His gaze drifts towards Kitty’s phone. “Seems like he’s begging you to go no contact, but I don’t know what he did exactly. Judging from the context clues it’s something pretty fucked up though.” “Yeah, well, fucked up is relative in our circles. It wasn’t Prometheus, so, point for him.” Kitty opens her phone again, putting it on silent before skimming the many text messages from her father. “It’s… hard to forgive what he did, especially with the complete lack of apologies ever. He likes to pretend I’m being difficult for no reason.” She puts her phone away with a grimace. “And now he wants to set me up on blind dates. Ugh. Are you,” and this is suddenly earnest to Akihiro, Kitty’s eyes alight with a sudden idea, “busy this evening at all?” “One of those human extremist groups?” Akihiro asks, eyebrow raised. “Would be extra fucked up considering they gave you the genes for your mutation.” He pauses to think about his plans before shaking his head. “Have a bird house I want to finish up, but that can wait. Want me to fill in for Leo to piss him off?” “No, just regular kidnapping and extortion, before I manifested.” Kitty sounds remarkably blasé about this, but maybe that’s because she’s texting her father and not really focusing on this explanation. “He is a bigot though, just way more low-key, usually?” She pauses at the mention of Leo, sucking in a deep breath through her nostrils. “My boyfriend doesn’t need his brand of bullshit right now. So, be my not-nice not-Jewish not-a-mobster date for the evening?” Kitty looks back up at Akihiro, eyelashes fluttering in mock earnestness, a scrunched mischievous smile forming on her face. “{He doesn’t speak Japanese, either, which could be hilarious.}” “Oh, is that it? Done plenty of that back in the day. We were a lot less like the mongrels, but it’s definitely a nice change of pace from the old ways.” Akihiro doesn’t sound too ashamed to admit that. “{So I can definitely be most of those things for you.}” Is that it? It’s not visibly obvious when Kitty freezes beyond the hovering of her thumbs over the keyboard, but to Akihiro’s senses the quickening of her heartbeat is easily spotted. “It seemed a lot more exceptional when I was ten and being dangled off the top of a skyscraper.” No venom there, but a faint fear is in Kitty’s voice under her manufactured casualness. More anxiously, she adds, “{Please don’t give him any new ideas.}” “{No women, and no children. I hope whoever did it was taken care of.}” Akihiro does seem more upset about that. “I’ve mostly reformed, so he could take a few pointed from me. If you’re going to commit crimes it should at least be for somebody else.” Kitty tucks her phone away, possibly for real this time, and pushes away from the wall. “{No idea. I’m not that interested in finding out, either. Dad says he is all legal now, but who knows how true that is.}” She’s comforted some by Akihiro’s change in tune, enough to start walking north. “{Maybe don’t tell him you’re older than him, either? We can workshop this on the way.}” “We’ve got options.” Akihiro pulls a lighter out, finally touching flame to the cigarette. “Could be a dishwasher, dog walker, starving artist, or I could look him in the face and just say I’m in ‘waste management’.” He suggests, mostly joking. “Guess it really depends on how uncomfortable you want him to be.” “Oh, nooo,” Kitty says, some cheer back in her voice, “all of those are so essential and he would hate all of them. You’re good at this. Let’s go for… uncomfortable enough that he doesn’t want to meet my boyfriend ever again, comfortable enough that he doesn’t try to ruin my relationship. Other than that?” She smiles, bright and amused. “Just be yourself.”