Early on an icy weekday in January, with a razor-like wind outside doing its best to shear through the heavy coats on passers-by, the Edo-Tokyo Museum was practically deserted. As far as Rose could tell, they were the only visitors. The museum itself was a big white building resembling a traditional warehouse, only built with modern materials and construction methods. If it was not as big as a football stadium, it was not that much smaller, to Rose's eye. The top floors were exhibition space, and the three of them ascended via escalator.
The escalator was shielded from the worst of the wind, but it still shrieked and whistled through the tube and up, making Rose's ears ache with cold, even with the hood of her new coat pulled up. Her father looked impassive, of course, because he was far too macho to let mere frostbite bother him, but Yukie looked as though the cold not only didn't bother her, it delighted her.
However, seeing Rose's discomfort, her brow creased with concern. "Unless the wind dies down and the sky clears, this may not be the best day for sight-seeing. Slade, I arranged a temporary membership for you at a gym with facilities for meta clients." When you could bench press over a ton, as Slade Wilson could, you needed special facilities for working out. Yukie continued, "It would not be difficult to add Rose to it—or she and I could visit my old dojo. Which would you prefer, Rose?"
Work out with her father there to point out how inadequate her progress had been since they parted ways, or hang out with Yukie? No question there. "Oh, I'll go with you," Rose immediately chose.
They reached the top and went into a blessedly wind-proof and warm foyer, where her father stepped up and paid for the tickets and they checked their coats in. After politely turning down the volunteer guide, Yukie led them over a replica bridge into the past, faithful in every detail.
"Why don't we split up and look at what interests us the most?" she suggested. "Everything is labeled in several languages, and the English translations are very accurate, or so I understand. This is the Edo half. Shall we phone each other in an hour or so and then move on to the Tokyo part?"
"Okay," Rose agreed. Slade nodded, and consulted a site map.
Most of the exhibits were models built to various scales showing the city of Tokyo as it was before it was called Tokyo, from life-size like the replica Kabuki theatre, to the model-train size cityscape. This was the world of the Kurosawa movies she'd seen, with all the little figures of townspeople in kimonos.
It was wonderful. There were the streets, thronging with life-here were women shopping in the market, and a fishmonger with two baskets of shining silver fish hanging from the yoke on his shoulders. There was a bridal procession taking the newly-wedded lady to her new home in a palanquin hung with silk, so only her sleeves showed. On that street was a funeral procession. Would the two cross paths, life beginning and life ended?
Then there were the larger town houses. Going from one to the other along a typical street, she saw all sorts of scenes—a craftsman in his work-shop, a silk merchant measuring out goods—a family scene where a new mother sat up in bed, watching the midwife wash her newborn, while her older children and her husband looked on.
That scene made Rose pause. What if Yukie and her father had a baby together? That question awoke a turbulent storm of reaction in her, both positive and negative, from 'Wow, I'd be a big sister!' to 'Please, God, don't let my father ever breed again, let alone raise another kid!' and 'But maybe it would be okay!' and even all the way to 'Then I wouldn't be the baby anymore!'
She tried to rein in her thoughts. Genetically speaking, only Joey had wound up with a bad mutation, one he couldn't control. She and Grant were fine. Grant, who she remembered as both impatient and kind of lazy, had taken an unstable serum that broke down and turned toxic—poor judgment on his part, yes, but not due to bad genes.
As far as being a father instead of just fathering kids… Well, their father had raised Grant on his own after their mother had taken Joseph and run while still carrying Rose. He pushed the only son remaining to him hard, making him work hard, harder still, pushing him to be better, to be the best. Jump higher. Strike harder. Aim better. Rose knew how it went; she'd been through it herself.
But he'd left Joey and Rose to his wife to train. Joseph wasn't a natural fighter—his talent was for music. Slade Wilson had respected that. He hadn't forced Joey to become something he wasn't. He simply wasn't there much for his younger son at all. The problem was, Joseph had wound up with powers as well as talent, and maybe if he'd had more training, he'd have had the mental discipline to keep his mind separate from the people he possessed.
So Grant had been raised too much by their father, and Joey maybe not enough. When it came to Rose herself—her mother raised her, but first losing Grant and then Joey left her an empty shell. There was nothing left but a burning hatred for the man responsible—her former husband. He had pushed Grant until he took the unstable serum, had killed Joseph with his own hands.
Adeline Kane Wilson hadn't been there for her daughter after that. Not really. The downward spiral had begun.
Let's face it. It was losing Joey. He was always her favorite. When it came to it, she took Joey and left Grant behind. She only took me because she had no choice, because I wasn't born yet.
If it was too dangerous for her and Joey to stay with Dad, then it was too dangerous for Grant too.
If it was too dangerous for her to stay with Dad, then it was too dangerous for me.
But she died and left me behind. If she really died, that is.
If she abandoned a child once—and she did—then she could do it again.
She said Dad destroyed her family, but I was still alive. Didn't I count?
So at the age of thirteen, following her mother's death, Rose was left in the care of a father she hadn't met until she was six and who hadn't been there more than half the time even before the divorce. It was hard to separate how she really felt about her father from what her mother had said about him over the years, and her mother had not been shy about sharing.
Yet Dad never said anything negative about her…
It wasn't the training that was so bad. Okay, yes it was, but it was the kind of bad I could handle, and I was getting better. I was, I am, a good fighter. Better than Grant. I have the talent and the discipline he didn't have. Okay, so there was no way I could ever pack on muscle like a guy, I'd never have that powerful an upper body. He modified the training to play to my strengths.
Then why did he do it? Why did he dose me with the serum?
-Waking up with a puncture mark in her arm and a burning feeling in her blood, and never feeling quite safe or sane ever again. Now she could bench-press fifteen hundred pounds and see what her opponent was going to do ten seconds before they did it.-
Even if he told me the truth, even if I knew what the truth was when I heard it…
What made him the way he was?
What did she really know about her father? Nothing about where he grew up or went to school, nothing about his family… He'd once said he was born the day he joined the Army, but he didn't start living until he met her mother. That was during one of the rare times they were getting along.
She realized she'd been staring at the scene with the little family for a very long time and shook her head. There was no point in thinking about it now. She was in a museum and she was going to make the most of it. Looking at the nearest signage, she started reading.
TBC...
YOU ARE READING
Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)
FanfictionNOW A WATTPAD FEATURED LIST STORY!!! Being the best comes with a terrible price. Slade Wilson, AKA Deathstroke, is among the finest assassins and mercenaries in the world, but every relationship he’s ever had has ended in carnage and betrayal, whet...