Chapter 406: Chapter 406 - Choosing The Family Of The Person Who Chose You
A breeze rustled through the leaves of the sapling and the girl on her shoulder watched them dance and sway. Against the tension and quiet, she didn’t care a wit. She just babbled about what she saw before hugging onto Qat’s neck and getting comfortable.
’It’s nice that one of us is enjoying the time out here.’
The swordswoman could tell that the two older cultivators were still in a sort of shock. Even if they knew where the conversation was going, having it said by the blonde still needed some time to process. Time which Qatrand had allowed for in this visit... but she still started to talk anyway to fill the uncomfortable silence.
"Before you entirely misunderstand, I made the choices to go along with it. Chose to train as they wanted me to, chose to act as they expected, and chose to become their version of an acceptable heir."
"What are you talking about? That’s just-"
"But they weren’t real choices. They were the only path to getting any approval at all from the people controlling my life. Yes, I understand that."
Interrupting an emotional Yatrel, her voice carried years of unvoiced emotion herself. She’d had these conversations with Elua calmly, for the most part, because her mint-drop always seemed to understand and accept what was, what could be, and what Qat thought of anything at any point in the process.
"What started as pretending to be what they wanted became living as what they made me. Which became understanding who I really am... and really want underneath all of it. And what I understand is that I’m still the same person you’ve known all this time."
"Qatrand... this... you don’t need to clarify that to us."
Ondua spoke for the first time, his voice rough. Not because he was having trouble accepting what she was saying, but because he was having trouble internalizing how long she had been carrying such a worrisome weight. It reminded him of his little girl, apparently bursting with a past life of memories and keeping quiet about it until not that long ago.
’They... they couldn’t rely on us. But at least... at least they found each other?’
"I know."
A low voice spoke softly at first, before taking in a deep breath and letting it out again. Her tendrils of spirit were being clutched at in each of the Goltbred parent’s own way - or rather, the same one on Ondua was being pressed with a sort of intent by them both.
The paternal love that had, from each of them, touched her before was now a strange and moving feeling. One that she was sure she would not have been able to appreciate the same way without her breakthrough - and without spending so much time paying attention to someone’s complex spiritual signals.
"I know that, Father, but I need to say it. I need you to hear it. And to reaffirm things while you know the difference that I’ve lied about. I’m still the person who loves your eldest daughter so very much that I cannot and do not want to imagine a world in which we never met."
’Or one in which we never meet again.’
The two understood the thought unvoiced, even without her saying it. When Yatrel heard that the girl was missing, she had wanted to march into that fort and begin smashing down walls until she found a clue. It was only the fact that one of the girl’s Skydancers showed up unannounced the night before that... which stopped her.
And then came a letter that explained nothing and really said nothing... but reassured her and redirected her attention all at once. A letter from Klaytei, who talked about a fox the heiress sent her to perform some task alongside Qatrand. The content also let the duelist in on the troubles facing her husband while the man himself was being a bit too ’manly’ for her liking.
’Standing to face it alone with the investigators crawling over the estate. Well, he made it up to me a little last night, but I won’t let him off so easy.’
Feeling a chill, Ondua rubbed at his sore neck and looked over to his wife clenching and opening her fist. With great poise, the reddish-blonde stood and walked towards the Yecine. A set of mint eyes that held their own sort of beauty and own sort of emotional depth bore into the pigeon blues.
"Can I do it first, or will I have to wait in line?"
"...I’m sorry?"
There was ’hostility’ radiating out of the Earth elementalist, but it wasn’t directed at Qatrand. She could take some guesses as to what was happening, but in the end... she was very clever but not as quick on the uptake as Elua - who had been through so many situations in five millennia that it essentially boiled down to pattern matching.
"Punching Anper right in his stern jaw. I’ve wanted to do it for years, and years, but it feels like now I’m not the one with the most right to do so."
Her eyes had taken on the dangerous trance dulling that usually preceded her more simple, *uncreative* dueling solutions. Namely, hit them until they stop moving. It didn’t really matter that her target was not currently here. It wouldn’t be the first time she came back to her senses with her fists bloody and had to retrace a walk through a city.
’It would be the first walk through the countryside, though.’
"Your father knows about this and carried on with us this entire time, lying to our faces. I am quite upset about that. I’m also upset about what he has been doing lately, but that... no, I’m most upset that I know now why the two of you do not get along."
Phrasing which sounded too small of a way to put it and too large made Qatrand’s chest tighten painfully... close to that cold stab of an area whose edges were a little smoother but would probably never fill completely. Her mother-in-law had always been fairly perceptive and what she said next...
"Because you were a girl. I don’t know why I never matched the look on his face, but maybe it was because there is something slightly different about it when it was his child he was looking down on. But I’ve seen that face he probably knows he is making. All of them in your family have the same one when they call me a ’duelist’."
It did not come as a surprise to the teenager that she had noticed something about the men in the Yecine. That she had correctly and quickly tied things together. She nodded shortly, trying not to move too much with Onya beginning to doze.
"He doesn’t just dismiss women as less capable. He seems to view my being born this way as something that negates any possibility of competence, worth, or fitness for leadership in our family. As if the gender itself makes everything else I’ve worked hard for irrelevant."
"It doesn’t."
One Hero of the Last Descent said this to one Hero of the current invasion. He approached the two of them from a side that he could place a hand on his daughter-in-law’s muscular shoulder without bothering his youngest. It wasn’t *at all* that he didn’t want to risk her shoving at his hand because she didn’t want him nearby while hugging Qat...
"The reports I’ve read through tell me that the success you’ve achieved is not small. Whether you are male or female does not matter to that."
"Well..."
A slightly scrunched face and a low chuckle made the toddler shift and grumble.
"Until recently, I was terrified that telling anyone would destroy some of the things I’d built. My position as heir that I want to keep so I can fix my family. My relationship with both of you. But... my marriage was not one of them."
Even though what she was about to say was true - and even though in a way it was sort of devastating... basically a world in which she and El never got together... she still smiled. Her sense of appreciation for ’darker’ humor had not yet been outgrown, and she was not sure it ever would be.
"I’ve heard from Elua herself something very particular. Something that makes my actual gender important. That there was a good chance she still would have requested for the two of you to cancel our marriage if I was an actual male."
Yatrel opened her mouth and closed it before thinking back... and thinking that with everything she knew about the reincarnator now, it was possible! Ondua looked mildly uncomfortable, though for a different reason than most fathers might be. His first thought - irrelevant to what Anper was putting his family through now - was regret that he had ever arranged something like that... done before knowing how his daughter might grow up.
’Same sex cultivator relationships are just rare enough that it never crossed my mind to think about my first child’s preference. Another reason to never, ever do that with Onya. In fact, if she never marries at all that will be just fine!’
"...And I would tell anyone and everyone if I could that her help and support since I was young is the only reason I am where I am today. She has known since we were children - she might not want me to tell you this, but she saw through the deception almost immediately."
"Immediate... ly?"
The brunette felt what was left of his fatherly pride shatter. Untrusted, tricked, made fun of, chosen second... he was bitterly sure that he’d never want to have children again! Until that pride recrystallized four seconds later when a reddish blonde head started twisting as if uncomfortable - and reached for Ondua er Goltbred.
She wanted her father the most right now. She wanted...
"Oh, smells like someone needs changed."
The chubby faced little toddler wanted the best of the three janitors to take care of that evolving problem. And if that gave him his raison d’etre, the little ’river bend’ would probably be pleased... at least as she was now.
Years later, when he brings up changing her, she would be far, *far* less pleased.