Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 39: Yukie: The Reconciliation Elegy

Yukie held Rose and let the girl cry herself out against her shoulder, crying with her, crying for her.

I cannot do it. Whatever I might learn on Mount Hakkoda, if indeed there are answers to be had there, they are not more important than Rose and Slade. Besides, it is a mountain and it is not going anywhere. If in ten years time or twenty, I feel differently, Hakkoda will still be here. If Ra's Al Ghul is correct and I am a long-lifer, it could even be longer.

And so the conflict which had wracked her for weeks was finally resolved, and instead of anger or resentment, peace like a thick blanket of fresh snow spread itself over her making everything clean and beautiful.

It was so simple, finally.

It was all due to the girl she held in her arms. Were it not for Rose, she would never have learned that Slade thought differently of their relationship than she did, back before Christmas. Had Rose not flown to Japan and been caught, they never would have talked so much about matters, and if the girl were not there now, Yukie might have simply gone for a walk one afternoon at the resort, and never returned. (Breaking up with Slade was out of the question. They were getting along far too well for that to be credible. He would simply laugh, and if she brought up reasons, no doubt he would have counterarguments for every single one.)

But she could not walk away from Rose. Not after learning what her mother had done.

Always she had striven to be fair to Adeline Kane Wilson, even in her private thoughts. Whatever Slade Wilson had been like before he volunteered to test a serum that was meant to enable soldiers to learn a new language easily and swiftly, afterwards he was an entirely different man. These days, genetic testing would have identified him as a potential meta, someone whose genes were only waiting for a catalyst to give him powers undreamt of, but back then, there was no way of knowing what it would do to him.

Yukie had only met him years after that change, after twenty years and more had come and gone and he had grown into who he was now. What he had not told her, she could infer for herself.

The Slade Wilson Adeline married was as gone as if he were dead, replaced by a stranger with his face, his voice, his name, a stranger who was more aggressive, more volatile, more suspicious and secretive. He barely slept, rarely spoke, hardly ever smiled. He embarked upon a secret new career which brought her and their children into peril.

Yukie had not lived through what Adeline had. She had no right to criticize how Adeline had coped or not coped.

That, however, was before she learned what Rose had gone through, and she believed what Slade's daughter said because she had seen the signs of it from the first hour. Whatever had gone wrong between husband and wife was one thing, but Rose had been neglected, not physically or materially, but kept on an emotional starvation diet and parched for attention. She had been left ignorant of even simple and practical things, like that bloodstains on clothing were best treated with hydrogen peroxide and then washed with cold water, surely something every girl of an age to menstruate ought to know.

When it came to the truly important matters, such as her own worth as a person, it was worse. Rose did not see how wonderful, how intelligent and lovely she was, how irreplaceable.

It was that which broke Yukie's heart and incited her to fury against Adeline. True, the woman had been afraid, and rightly so, for the life and sanity of her son Joseph, but that did not excuse her. If she were alive, and more concerned for Joseph still—! It would be better if they never crossed paths. She would never say a word against her, but Yukie no longer felt any constraints as to how she should think of her.

Yukie and Rose were still hugging when Slade returned. "What happened?" he asked, looking bewildered and appalled at the emotional disaster area. "Did someone die?"