Survival Of The Fittest

"Ah, Mina..."

"Yes love? Don't sound so hesitant, no one likes a coward."

"I know Sakura is supposed to stay with you here after her little trip but..."

"You want me all to yourself just a liiittle while longer?"

He'd nodded. They'd had everything prepared, permissions given by all parties for Sakurako Jackson to be picked up by her aunt in Washington D.C. instead of riding home on the bus. They'd celebrate and gossip, go to Chattanooga in business class, and send her on her way to graduation. Her little sister would party, and be a social butterfly the likes her class had never seen, then go back to NYC with her until it was time to pack up for the City of Angels. A good summer, the best yet.

But putting it off for a few days for her future husband wasn't a crime.

Even when Saku-chan offered to stay in a hotel instead, she'd gently nudged her to go back home.

--

"He's so spoiled! Such a baby! But go ahead and have your romantic time and scoop me up later."

She'd looked a bit hurt, but hid it with a wild grin. In that moment Saku-chan was the spitting image of her mother Akane, defying her mother to marry the man she loved.

"Mata raishu, love yooou."

"She had her whole life ahead of her."

Was he thinking of his sister, long dead?

His daughter, doomed to suffer the same fate?

Orlando hadn't been happy when he heard about the abduction of his child's entire class. He knew the pain she'd suffer even having escaped it, the survivor's guilt. It was hard enough to deal with as a grown man. But he was prepared to give her all the best support, to take leave off of work, whatever it took. Anything.

Then Akane got a phone call from her younger sister, who'd sent her back to die with the rest. It took everything he had not to call back, to keep from that old life and those old tendencies. In his wrath, hurting Minako would have been nothing to him.

But he had to think of the after-

You sobered up from anger. His brother had, after getting his own getback for the tragic shooting of a little girl who'd been destined to better the world. Now he was locked up, and Orlando was just as alone as he had been after that open-and-shut case. He knew his wife was going to bury herself in work as much as she possibly could. He knew Minako loved her niece just as dearly as the girl had loved her back, and living with that would be more painful than anything he was willing to inflict.

He knew his daughter like he knew his own mind.

She was unreasonably understanding, the other great joy of his life. She was a flower field of potential.

His pride and joy.

All her life, he'd steered her away from the wrong path, only for that to become her only life line. His baby wasn't coming home.

Orlando poured himself a glass of whiskey at the thought, his chief vice. It didn't seem enough of one, but for now it would have to do. He sat on the leather couch where they'd sat on movie nights for years, wishing there was some kind of indentation on it. The living room itself was clean, and he'd never know how she kept dust bunnies away for so long, or how she slipped out the house so easily when his mother-in-law was in town. Like his own mind?

Fuck.

Oddly enough, what he'd been looking for was already queued up to play. Turning it on, he heard her voice squeal, saw her frazzled expression.

"Mooooom, are you recording this? Why are y-... fiiine."

It was the start of one of her little sk- no. It was a set, just five minutes of her joking about her high school woes. All the jokes didn't land, she'd still been workshopping them but they'd all laughed anyway.

Sakurako's laughter was always the loudest.

It wasn't enough to keep him from sobbing.