Papercuts || Klance AU

IV - Letters from Kaltenecker High

Dear Lance,

So I guess I've decided to keep writing to you. It would be kind of weird to stop now, as I've gotten into the habit of doing it. Plus my mom seems to be pleased that I'm actually "engaging" in schoolwork for once, and no way am I going to pass up an opportunity to convince her that's what I'm doing.

I've only lived with my mom for a few years. I lived in a care home for most of my life, so I never knew my mom or dad, or anything about my family. I was just another miracle of life that comes from a teenage pregnancy.

Then, when I was 8, the orphanage found that I had a brother in the system, too. The first time I met Shiro was the first time I began to understand what this "family" bullshit really meant. Even from the start, he treated me like an equal, like I was worth something, like he believed in me. In my entire 8 years, no one had ever really treated me that way before.

Then, when I was fourteen, everything changed. Krolia, my mom, found us. Ok, I'll describe her for you: She's a tall, Japanese woman, with piercing eyes and a short, wild black mane of hair, and red burn scars on each cheek. Everyone always says she looks a lot like me and Shiro. I was, admittedly, excited to finally have a mom, but Shiro just wanted answers. Here's what she told me:

When she was fifteen, she got pregnant with Shiro, to a man named Asahi Shirogane. When she told him, he left her. Claimed it wasn't his. Blamed her for being "too easy", whatever the fuck that means. She was broken and hurt, and when her parents found out they forced her to put him up for adoption, under his name, so that no one could trace it back to her and her life would not be ruined, according to them.

Then, two years later, I happened. It was different this time. My father, Austin West, was a good person. He offered to help take care of me. He fought back against her parents when they tried to do the same thing they did to Shiro. They were happy together. I was due shortly before graduation, and then they planned to run away. Take me with them, find Shiro, and live a full life away from the stuck up and backwards people around them. Things were going to be ok.

But then the fire happened.

At this point in the story, Krolia started crying. I'd seen people cry before, sure, but that was always loud tantrums and screaming fits from the other kids, not silent and shaky and reducing her to whispers. It was kind of scary.

She continued on, to talk about how there was a house fire at Austin's. A pair of straighteners left on accidentally when someone went to bed, the fire department told her, but whatever it was, it consumed him. She wasn't there when it happened. She didn't explain why she had burns on her face, but I would find out much later that she did that to herself (but I'll get to that soon).

With Austin gone, she lost all hope for a brighter future. She knew she couldn't take care of me, not by herself, not when her parents were constantly rasping down her neck, not when she could barely will herself to get out of bed. If she, almost 18, couldn't survive in the hellhole house she lived in, how could she expect a baby to do so, too? So, she let her parents take me away, and put me up for adoption, but not without getting the last word. My last name - Kogane.

Shirogane and Kogane. Silver and gold, in Japanese.

Finally, years later, Krolia finally got the courage to cut herself off from her parents, and from the toxic life she had tried to hard to get away from. She wanted to start again, and to make things right. By the time she had managed to find us, we'd spent about 15 years in the system.

For me, Krolia was everything. For Shiro, she was nothing. He couldn't bring himself to forgive her, not when he had had to be everything for me, had to be my brother and my father and my best friend. He saw this as an insult. "If you want to go with that woman, go ahead!"