Trust
Started this yesterday, only got a hundred words in and wrote the rest today in the span of an hour and a half. Me and Whumptober could never.
My first fic in the Dad Jay AU! Featuring best sis duo Tessa and Kaida (from @taddymason) because I'm having brainrot and it's great. Will probably be making more of these but I need to finish Whumptober stuff first (pray for me guys)
Words: 1.8k
TWs: child abuse mentions (kinda graphic but also kinda not), scars n stuff like that
“Again!”
Tessa quickly threw up her arms to block Kaida’s incoming strike, well-placed but still too slow. Kaida tried to catch her around the back of her knee but Tessa anticipated it, buckling just before Kaida made contact so that the hit did nothing. Whipping around, Tessa caught the other girl’s arm and twisted, sweeping Kaida’s leg out and doing her best to make sure that the other girl didn’t crash onto the stone floor as hard as Dad would’ve let Tessa go down. She ignored the scowl sent her way as she pulled back, instead fixing her gloves and giving Kaida a second to recompose herself.
Kaida ran her hands through her hair, frustrated. “This is fucking pointless!”
“Not pointless,” Tessa said, taking her hair down and tying it back up. She was pretty sure that Kaida was about to quit for the day, “that time was better. You just need to be a bit quicker, but your techniques are spot-on.”
Kaida was actually adapting to Ninja techniques pretty well, all things considered. Tessa knew that it would only be strengthened by her previous experience with combat.
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” Kaida snarled, and if Tessa wasn’t already accustomed to the younger’s outbursts she may have felt offended. “I don’t want your pity. I suck, you’re better than me, and that’s that. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“I’m not better, I just had a harsher teacher,” Tessa plopped herself down on the Monastery steps, watching as Kaida threw her own gloves on the ground in frustration.
“Then be harsher or whatever! I need to get better!”
Something crawled under Tessa’s skin at the thought of being more strict with Kaida then she was now. It wasn’t something that she was ever going to let happen. There was no way in hell she was going to start taking cues from Dad, even if Kaida might technically improve quicker. No improvement was worth what Dad had done to her and Noah, and Tessa was old enough now to understand that. “No.”
“So you think I’m weak? That I couldn’t handle it? Is that it?”
“No,” Tessa said, and she waited until Kaida was sitting next to her. There was still a good foot of distance between them, and she wasn’t going to try and close it, “the opposite, actually. You’re too stubborn and you have a good head on your shoulders, Kaida. You wouldn’t grow if I was too harsh with you.”
It took her and Noah starting to spar together for both of them to show improvement, mostly because Dad just treated their spars as life or death fights rather than practice. When she was younger, Jay always said that she was going to be putting her life on the line, that she would have to be ready to face death at any moment, that every battle could end in tragedy.
And yet, the only life or death situation she found herself in at the time was training. So where was the justification?
“I hate this,” Kaida said, hugging her knees and refusing the water bottle that Tessa had passed over. And Tessa knew the feeling.
“I know.”
“I hate that you and Noah keep treating me like I’m made of glass,” Kaida growled, “you do the same thing to Jenna and Ethan. And then you’re going to go and look at Jay like he did something to you when you didn’t even meet him until recently. That’s fucked up.”
There weren’t a lot of things that could get Tessa riled up (it just came with being an older sister) but she could feel herself starting to bristle. Kaida was stepping too close to her toes. “You don’t understand anything about my relationship with Da—Jay.”
“And I don’t want to if you’re going to treat my dad like he’s the fucking devil!”
Logically, she knew that Kaida was lashing out the same way she would’ve done when she was younger, because there was a point in time when she would’ve defended her dad. Cole or one of her other uncles would say something and Tessa would growl in response; but she knew better now. And she knew what she would’ve wanted to hear from anyone listening to her vent, but Tessa was surprised by the burning anger that flared up inside. “Good! Becaise he was never a dad to me!”
Everything went quiet. Tessa looked away, focusing on the small cracks between the stones, noticing the shadows bending as the sun went down over the horizon. She was mulling over what she had said, lost in her head, when Kaida whispered, “you’re not lying.”
Tessa turned her head, and Kaida was staring at her with wide eyes. “You’re not lying,” she repeated, almost as if she couldn’t believe it. “You haven’t been lying this whole time. Why aren’t you lying?”
“Jay was…different,” Tessa started. Patience. Patience was key here. Kaida had grown up with a version of her father that only wanted the best for her, so it was hard to understand that there was a version with only ill intent against his children. “In my timeline, Jay wasn’t the same person he is here. He was distant, and cruel, and I-I don’t think he wanted me and Noah. I’m pretty sure that if he had an option to trade us for Nya, he would’ve done it in a heartbeat.”
Kaida’s face twisted into an expression that Tessa couldn’t quite place. “Jay isn’t like that. He would never do that.”
“Yours wouldn’t,” Tessa agreed, “but mine would, without a second thought. My dad was broken, Kaida, and the only person that could’ve fixed him was gone.”
Broken like the beer bottles that she and Noah would find on the floor after Jay had a bad night. Even as a small child she could see the cracks spider webbing through her father, and he made less and less of an effort to hide them as the twins gew older. Dad turned colder, nastier, more violent with every birthday candle that the two blew out, because it was a reminder of how much time had passed since he was whole.
Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but it only wounded Jay’s heels as he kept stepping over the shattered glass time and time again.
She shrugged her t-shirt off, for once uncaring of who saw the small red scars snaking up and down her arms and across her shoulders. It was just her and Kaida, and she trusted her younger sister more than she probably should considering they had only known each other for a couple weeks. Kaida stared, unsure of what to make of the situation and the fact that the girl she was supposed to be looking up to as an older sister wasn’t lying about Jay. Her dad.
“C-Can I—”
“Yeah,” Tessa said quickly, before she could overthink it, “go ahead. Just be gentle.”
Tessa didn’t even know if it was in Kaida’s nature to be gentle, and yet that was the only way she could describe the way Kaida’s hand touched her arm. The younger girl’s fingers traced along the scars’ paths, and Tessa waited for her to say anything about the ones that clearly weren’t from the lightning.
“Some of these are like Dad’s,” Kaida said, and Tessa hummed in response, “but the others…did someone hurt you?”
“My dad did, Kaida,” Tessa said gently, “I got those during training, and that’s why I don’t want to be more harsh with you. I wouldn’t trust myself not to turn into him.”
“But Dad would never. And you would never—”
“I know, trust me, and I’m so grateful that he doesn’t. The last thing I want is for any of you to grow up like how me and Noah did. But me? I don’t exactly trust me, so I’m not surprised that you don’t either.”
“He did this to Noah too?” Kaida said disbelievingly, but Tessa was telling the truth, and she hated it. She hated it. Biting her lip, Kaida took a deep breath. “W-When I was younger, someone hurt me, and didn’t treat me the way that I should’ve been treated.”
Her head whipped around with the speed of lightning, and Kaida was surprised to see a snarl on Tessa’s face. “Was it Jay? I swear to the First Master—”
“No! No,” Kaida said quickly, “he’s the one who got me away from the people who were hurting me. He’s never laid a hand on me, I promise.”
Tessa relaxed, and she smiled a bit when Kaida scooted closer, finally taking the water bottle and hiding it in her lap. Even if she wasn’t drinking out of it, it was still nice to see the younger girl take something that Tessa had given her; maybe they could make this work. “I’m sorry I’ve been treating you like that, and that it’s been upsetting you—”
“I’m not upset over it!”
“Sure, kiddo. But yeah, I’m sorry. Having three new siblings, and they’re all younger than me, and my dad who isn't an absolute asshole and the mom who I never got to meet…it’s a lot. For me and Noah. And I’m sure it’s a lot for you too.”
“I, uh,” Kaida paused, and Tessa watched as she started to twist her fingers, a nervous habit that she probably picked up from Jay. “Shit, I’m not good at these. I’m sorry too. And Tessa?”
“Yeah?”
Looking away, Kaida bit her lip again. “I-I do trust you. I don’t think that you would hurt me, and I know that Jay wouldn’t hurt you. He’s always been a good dad to me, and I know he wants to be one for you too.”
Grinning, Tessa bumped shoulders with her younger sister, making sure that Kaida saw it coming and that she could pull away if she wanted to. But to her surprise, Kaida didn’t, instead taking it as a challenge and shoving back even harder. “Thank you, Kaida. But let me tell you now: you’ll have to learn how to apologize pretty quick when you have siblings. And you’ll learn that approximately seventy percent of the time you don’t mean a damn thing when you do say sorry.”
“You say that like I’m going to start apologizing for anything,” Kaida said, and Tessa laughed.
“You’re right, you wouldn’t be you if you started apologizing,” Tessa stood up off of the monastery stairs, dusting her pants off and noting the sun setting. “Come on, we should be getting inside. I think I still have some chocolate stashed away somewhere.”
Kaida gasped, scrambling up and after her older sister. “You have a candy stash and didn’t tell me?!”
“How else do you think I keep it hidden from Noah?”
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