"I cannot believe I'm loosing to a pregnant woman."
Yumiko grinned and nudged Vincent's arm with her leg. "Maternity leave is the most boring thing in the world. I coped last time because Dion kept fussing over me and I had my own set of nerves to worry about - this time, however, I know what to expect so I'm just taking it easy." She grinned again and pushed various buttons on the video game controller in her hands. "Which is one of the most boring things to do in the world."
"No wonder you're so good at this game then."
She shrugged, setting up the next match. "Everyone's either at work or at school. I had Tay come round yesterday to change all the fuses just because I felt so lonely. I know I should enjoy this because once the baby is born I'm going to be rushed off my feet, but I'm just not meant to be on my own."
Vincent glanced up at her from where he sat on the carpet. He'd been skiving school because he was feeling weak and drained after last night. It had been a long time since he'd suffered through such a painful transformation, but after talking to Jae when the sun came up he assumed it wasn't just him that had been affected. Something must have been in the air. Sometimes the moon was just overpowering. It was rare, but Vincent knew it happened.
He had apologized to Marshall, saying that he didn't feel up to attending classes today. However, neither did he feel like spending the day alone. Somewhere deep inside himself he felt a pull towards the feeling of family. After years of thinking that he no longer needed nor wanted anything like that anymore Vincent was unsure within himself now that not only was his father back in his life, but the woman he was seeing was willingly offering Vincent something similar to a second chance.
Knocking on her door had felt weird. Telling her why he was there had felt even weirder. Yet, she just smiled at him and welcomed him into her home with open arms - and a hug, telling him that he was always welcome to come and visit.
"Is that why you're so happy with such an extended family?"
"Do you mean you and Jesse, or Collin? Or Tay and Jung? I like being around people and being with them."
"You had your own family before my Dad came into your life, and now you have his own kids to deal with. Not to mention you're having his baby too."
Releasing the controller with one hand, she dropped it to her baby bump, stroking it fondly. "I've accepted that Alex has his own history. Sometimes I do worry that making him go through it all again might make him slip back into the man you knew back in Ireland, but then I look at him and I just know he won't give up this time." She gave Vincent another of her sunny smiles and went back to defeating Vincent's character in another death match round on the video game console.
"Does Dad..." Vincent paused, thinking of how to say the words that hung on the tip of his tongue. It was his father he was prying into, in a way a son rarely did. A son didn't ask the current lover of his father what they said to one another. Some things were just private, between the two adults. But still, he was curious. "Does he talk to you about Ireland? When he was there, my mother...?"
She paused the game and lowered the controller to rest on her swollen stomach. Reaching over, she brushed her fingers fondly through Vincent's blue-black spikes, stroking the tips of her fingers against his scalp. "You've told me more than he has. Julian has told me more than Alex has ever said about when he was married to your mother, but he remembers them, and when I touch his hand I see flashes of those times. He tried, he really did. The drinking, the smoking, even the womanising came about because he felt like he failed being what he thought he was supposed to be with your mother."
He blinked at her. "You really think that?"
"He really thinks that," she replied with a small smile. "That's my 'power'. I don't really talk about it, because I think it's wrong to pry into people's memories. Memories are private and very precious, but I can see them. I usually have to concentrate, but if someone is thinking about certain memories I can see them with just a brush of skin," she explained. "I've told Alex that I'm 'Gifted', but explaining what I can do can become confusing. It's not reading someone's mind - it's reading things they've got locked away. Even things they themselves can no longer remember."
Vincent had thought she must have been gifted, but he had no idea what Yumiko's power was. Poppy had told him about Dion's, and demonstrated her own. By the looks of things, Poppy's power was completely different from either of her parents. She had terrakinesis. He had originally assumed Yumi had something similar. To find out that Yumi had a power that affected a person's mind rather than the physical world came as quite the shock. "So you can see what people remember?"
She nodded. "I can also take them away," she admitted with a downward turn of her lips. "And make false ones."
"So you can take away a person's memories?"
"I can, but I won't unless they have a reason to no longer want them. Our memories are what makes us who we are, Vincent, I refuse to destroy a person just because of something bad happening to them."
"You can make my Dad think he never left me, can't you?" She nodded, but the expression on her face was solemn; sad even. He gave her a comforting smile and nudged her leg with his shoulder. "I won't ask you to do something like that to him. You might turn him into a bigger dork than he already is. Heck, you might turn him into a 'Soccer Dad'."
Her lips pulle dinto a pout and a crease formed in the space between her eyebrows at the top of her nose. She didn't look angry - more confused. "You mean he doesn't play soccer?"
"Have you ever seen him do any form of physical exercise?"
The furrow deepened for a few moments while Yumi seemed to process this question, running through her mind all the instances where she had seen Alex and any activity that involved physical exertion (bar one particular act, but she was currently carrying one of the consequences of that act). After the moments passed, her face split into a wide grin. "He dances!" she announced, clapping her hands together like a small and over excited child.
This caused Vincent to let out a bark of laughter. "He does not dance. He's a man over the age of twenty nine."
She shook her head. "Oh no, I've seen him. We've danced a lot, even if it was just in private. Did you know he's learning how to tango?"
He stared at her, completely gobsmacked. Never in his entire life had he ever expected that his father would willingly learn any form of dancing. This woman was a stark contrast to his mother - the woman Alex had married. He was doing things for her he had never done for anyone before. He was doing things for himself that he would have never done before. Somewhere inside him, Vincent felt tugs of saddness. Alex had left him - had left an entire family behind and now here he was forming a whole new one.
But there was a huge difference between the life Alex once had and the one he was living now;
It had Yumiko in it.
Vincent smiled up at her, feeling the warmth in her smile through his whole body. "You're too good for him," he said softly.
"No one is ever too good for anyone else," she replied, reaching down and fondly ruffling his hair. "People just think that some need to change to be able to be with other people. No one should have to change to be in love. It just happens. Take the bad with the good because everyone has a flaw that they think makes them worthless compared to the one they love."
"What's your's?" He felt bad for asking it, but she had put it out there.
She smiled: small, sweet and gentle but there was a slight sadness lingering beneath, as if a grey storm cloud formed in a bright blue sky. Vincent couldn't find a flaw with the young woman that would make her want to feel worthless, but as he read her smile something she said earlier clicked into place. "You can hurt peoples minds..." he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Yumiko could potentially destroy a person's mind. She could turn them into a blank slate, or give them memories that were not their own. There were people at the school who could destroy with fire they created with their minds. He knew there existed monsters out in the world that could kill. For years he believed he was nothing more than a beast - a thing to be caged and hated.
But Yumiko - She could be dangerous on a level that a human should never possess, but everyone she met simply adored her. She was happiness in human form. Love and honesty and kindness. The pregnant woman sat on the sofa beside him was the direct opposite of every demon Vincent had ever met or heard about and yet she had the potential to become something far worse than anything like that.
"I'm glad you are who you are, Yumes," he added after a silence that settled. "And because of that I think it makes what you see as a flaw invisible to everyone else." He smiled up at her. "Take it from someone who thought he was a monster; you're far from the terrible thing you think you might be. I'm glad my Dad met you. I think that you're the best thing thats ever happened to him."
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