Mortem ad Wrens

Chapter 26: Someday We Will Discover

Summary:

tw: vomiting, abuse, flashback, intrusive thoughts, starved, vomiting, fear, memories of bodily harm, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, ed thoughts, child abuse, muzzling, abandonment, foster care, drugs, seizures, creepy adult, ableism

Therapy, bit of Popmic, and training camp begins

Notes:

Summary of Chapter 25: Akira's taken to a secondary location where the traffickers are holding other children for auction or experimentation. They're put up for online auction, but the heroes raid the facility. Only one other child survives. Akira promises to let Fat Gum know if they know they're going to be kidnapped, and they have dinner with the Yamazawas, Fat Gum, and Amajiki. MiriTama and ShinKami confirmed.

'text' JSL
Text thoughts

'Seeing them just reminded me of when I was younger,' Akira leaned against the tree trunk on the lowest branch. Fortunately, the late July heat had let up enough to make being outside bearable for longer than a few minutes. Akira still had extra water bottles and their crutches against the tree.

"That must've been hard," Inui murmured. "You were in a very difficult position, waiting for heroes while you couldn't be there for them."

Akira rolled their eyes but shrunk in on themself. 'If I can't save them, how can I...' they put their head on their knees. They couldn't exactly tell Inui their plan, but their family always seemed to haunt their sessions.

"We can't be everywhere at once," Inui pointed out gently. At Akira's half-hearted glare, he smiled sadly. "Heroes save a lot of people, but the first ones you lose are the hardest. Working with the community, reaching out to their family members, and seeking out people you care about can help with the grieving process."

'I don't want to burden them with this, though,' Akira huffed in frustration and picked at the rough bark poking into their legs. 'It's not like I haven't seen bodies before, much less children. That's pretty common on the streets as much as we try to help each other.'

"Why do you think what happened is harder for you?"

Akira started to respond but paused, lightly worrying their bottom lip. 'We take care of each other. Those kids had no one, and most of their injuries were old.'

"Do you think they had an unhealthy relationship with their caretakers?"

'What do you mean?' Akira peered at Inui from their tree branch.

Inui hummed thoughtfully. "We often compare ourselves to others, especially in familiar situations."

Akira shook their head. 'No, I mean... What would you call an unhealthy relationship? I feel like we've been working towards a baseline, but I still get caught off guard a lot.'

Inui nodded slowly and took a moment to collect his thoughts. "It depends on the type of relationship, but for this, we're talking about a healthy parental figure relationship."

Pulling from their previous sessions, Akira hesitantly replied, 'So healthy aspects would be what, only harming each other as punishment and being responsible for each other?'

Inui frowned, "That's a very low bar. Can you try setting it higher?"

Akira tensed before letting a shudder release some of the tension. Brow pinched in concentration, they tried to think of the snippets he'd shared against some of the "punishments" their family doled out, but most of what they talked about was coping mechanisms and clarifying what was abuse. Granted, the few acts Akira did let slip were some of the less severe methods the Wrens used.