Chapter 04 - The Shadow of a Mother

Disclaimer: I don't own Worm

I sat in my room with the curtains of the windows closed. The light was on, bathing my room in a place filled with the shadows of the various items I had in it. My complete attention wasn't focused on any of those shadows but solely on my own.

Full of anticipation, I waited for this moment since I made mom into a shade, but now in the safety of my room, I hesitated.

Fearing the result, I second-guessed myself with the same old arguments. Ultimately, I had to lay them to rest. I already made the decision and acted in accordance with it. There was no turning back; I could only go forward.

I took a deep breath and summoned what the Abyss took from my mother's grave. My shadow extended in front of me. Her head broke through the surface of the blackness at my feet first, wearing those same curly hairs that I saw every time I looked in the mirror.

Their color was different than I remembered it; a lot darker, not the black color of my hair but the pitch black all of my shades were made of. She was no exception. The rest of her body followed slowly after.

My mother was standing right in front of me. We were no more than a meter apart when my shadow on the floor returned to its proper place.

The first thing I noticed; She seemed younger, like in one of those pictures Dad and Mom used to show me from the time they met each other. When they were around 20 years of age.

My hopes plummeted. If there was such a drastic change in her appearance alone, I didn't put much stock on it that it would be any better when it came to her personality. As disappointment almost turned to despair, the last of my hope pushed me to weakly ask

"Mom?"

The shade seemed confused for a moment before it responded.

"Taylor, is that you?"

I made one small step towards her, not fully comprehending what I just heard, "MOM!" was what I shouted when I finally did. I crossed the short distance to her in a run without a moment's hesitation and embraced her.

The happiness I felt in that moment, my arms slung around her was incomprehensible; nothing I ever felt before even came close. I couldn't stop myself from crying. How long had it been since the last time I cried, joy and not sadness in one of its various variations responsible for it.

She gently stroke my hair like she always did when I was troubled in the past. She was back. My Mom was back. I still couldn't believe it, despite me hugging her to death.

The comfort her proximity brought me was incredible. I wanted never to have to go without it. If it was up to me, I would never ever let go of her again.

"Ssch, Taylor everything is gonna be okay."

Mom slowly tried to loosen our embrace, to soothe me further, but I didn't want to be separated from her again. With the condition Dad was in, she was all that I had. I couldn't bear to be alone, not again.

The very next moment, the body I leaned against was no longer there. I was hugging nothing but thin air and had to struggle not to lose my balance and fall to the floor.

What the... was all that was on my mind, where did she disappear to? I tried to find her inside the Abyss, but to my surprise, she wasn't there with the other shades. She just seemed to have vanished.

Before I could start panicking, in the face of the one thing I feared most seemingly having come true, I couldn't help but notice some changes in myself. My body felt stronger. I knew how to fight, and there was this whole abundant knowledge of the English language. But the most drastic change, I noticed, was the fact, that I could sense another presence inside of me, mixing fusing with me. Us becoming one, the distinctions between us blurring.

There was some kind of barely noticeable force trying to separate us again.

It was an alien sensation to suddenly be so much more, while still being the same, to have access to skills you never acquired, invested time in refining them.

It was an elation, but at the same time, a scary thing to experience. I concentrated on the force that was at odds with us being one and let up on what I did to keep it from separating us.

I was flung on top of my bed while my Mom was thrown against the wall. Note to myself, in the future slow decreases should do the trick, might prevent collateral damage.

I raised myself from the prone position I found myself in upon the bed into a sitting one. The bruises on my upper body made their disapproval known with a jolt of pain.

"Taylor, are you alright?" mother asked concerned.

"Yes," I said with a groan. "What was that?"

My mother stood up before responding, and I was confronted with the fact that she was naked something, I, so far, managed to ignore. "If I had to guess," she said. "I would say some kind of utility power to complement your main set."

"Huh," was my initial not exactly intelligible response, to which I added. "But something like this never happened before."

"Did you try?" she wondered.

I shook my head at her question, and she continued to explain.

"Most powers are instinctual, meaning, for the most part, you know how to use them. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, like there are to any rule. Some power uses have to be discovered, either through experimentation or certain situations, you might find yourself, in. Furthermore, there are rare instances of powers capable of changing, evolving. I'm not sure in which category your power falls, Taylor."

"I'm not sure myself," I confessed. "Even though I had them since the day you died. I only started using them yesterday."

"The day I died..." she slowly repeated after me savoring every word. "That's why the last thing can remember; is being jammed in my car." Her head, she slightly lowered during her reminiscences, suddenly whipped around focusing on me. "You were there! I saw you as some men removed you drowned in tears from the vicinity screaming my name."

Her words brought to mind this exact scene, my breath started to hitch, and my heart rate increased before it could devolve into a full panic attack. I found myself enveloped in a hug, which served to calm me down. "I'm so sorry," I heard her whisper into my ear. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault; it was mine," I pressed out in between my sobbing. "If I hadn't called you while I knew you were driving, none of this would have happened."

"That's not true Taylor. It wasn't your fault. It was my decision to accept your call while I was driving. You did not tell me to do it. I could have just as easily stopped the car and then answered. If anybody is to blame, it would be me." She released me from her embrace and reached for my head, and forced me to look her straight in the eyes as she insistently said, "You hear me; never let anybody tell you otherwise."

In a lighter tone, with a slight smile on her lips, as her grip slackened she added,

"You also have to consider that if that never happened. You wouldn't have triggered with the ability to bring me back."

"Triggered?" I wondered.

"That is the term used to describe the event that gives us para-humans our powers. It is generally described as the worst moment of one's life. The powers you gain in the trigger event are tied to what made you trigger in the first place. Me being here means that your powers are steemed from the desire to bring me back." Mom hesitated, uneasily biting on her lip, and gently added. "I'm so very sorry that you had to see me die, that I made you go through that."

"It is okay," I appeased. "You are right. If I wouldn't have been there if the circumstances would have been different. I might not have gained powers at all or different ones. Therefore I'm glad everything happened as it did."

"But something is strange," she said and earned her a questioning look from me. "I can't feel nor see your power. I always do when I'm close to a parahuman."

"What does that mean?" I wanted to know.

"I'm not sure yet," she said.

She was about to mull it over, but this time, I didn't let myself get distracted and pointed my mother to the clothes I had laid out on my bed. I went through her closet in preparation and took out her favorite dress. She worldlessly put it on.

"There are a few scenarios I could think of. But to verify them, I need to know more about your power," she mused. "Taylor, am I the only one you were able to bring back from the dead so far?"

"No, there were others," I reluctantly admitted.

"Tell me about them."

"There is this woman, I'm pretty sure is or was Iron Rain, and then there are two ABB members," I told her.

"Do the two have powers?" she wanted to know.

"No," I said. It was a scary thought. I would have never stood a chance if they had.

"Can you summon the woman, or whatever it is you have to do to make them appear?" My mom asked.

"Yeah."

I summoned Iron Rain. My mother was inspecting the process with absolute curiosity.

"That is some incredible power you have there, little owl." She praised. "Am I right in assuming, that she possesses the same power she did when she was still alive?"

"As far as I can tell, yes."

"That clears up some things because I can't see or interact with her power either. This either means being a construct of yours that I'm excluded from interacting with your power and by extension the powers of your constructs, or you might have a secondary power that doesn't allow for tampering and this protection extends to your summons." She hypothesized. "Then there is the third option, unlikely as it may seem, that your power is something entirely different than the parahuman powers I interacted with in the past. Frankly speaking, this is the very first time this has happened."

After a short contemplation, she added.

"The third possibility seems to be the one less likely. Because as far as I'm aware, there has never been a case of someone displaying any kind of powers that weren't classified as a Parahuman or could be traced back to one. To be fair, aside from a few trumps this is irrelevant; nobody might have bothered to look. It would be interesting to verify which of the other two theories is true. It might be useful to know for sure for the future. Unfortunately, we have no way to make sure one way or the other."

I looked at her and understood where she was coming from. If it was my power not allowing hers to mess with mine, that might mean other power manipulators might be able to, but if it turned out her second theory was correct and my power was somehow immune to being tampered with, it would be a great boon. But as she said, it was something we alone might never be able to prove one way or the other without meeting someone capable of doing something like this, and at that point, it might already be too late for the information to be useful.

Her attention shifted towards Iron Rain.

"Can you do the same thing with her that you did with me?"

I stepped towards her and touched her arm. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the sensation I felt as I fused with mom. This time I was actively aware of what my power did. I noticed how the black shade essence Iron Rain was made of flowed into me, not back into the Abyss that was within me, but into what I could only describe as myself and became a part of me.

I was not certain what abstract concept would be the most apt to describe the presence of myself I felt, soul, inner being, or something else entirely. But when Iron Rain fused with it, we became something else, something more. It was difficult to put it in words.

This time without experiencing the panic I did the first time, I could discern that we didn't really become one, at least not down to the very last part.

I was still in control, not the End product of the fusion of us. It was more like she was added to me. I was still me, self-aware, my mind my own.

She did have no more control than mom did over what action I took or influenced my mind or my feelings, at least not in a way that I could tell, but she gave me a new perspective, new experiences knowledge to draw from. I instinctively knew how to speak german, how to drive to fight unarmed, and with most bladed weapons, there was so much she was eager to share with me. It was overwhelming.

But the most interesting observation I made was that I had access to her power. I knew exactly what they were capable of doing.

I allowed myself a small smile.

This new aspect of my power somehow bestowed me with a comprehensive understanding of Iron Rains skills and abilities, quite useful to know. This way, I could easily find out what future powered-shades I might gain are capable of and consequently, how best to utilize them.

I gained access to the sense her power provided. I could feel every metal for quite some distance and knew exactly what to do, to subject the metal to my will. It was exhilarating. I was about to lose myself in this new way to perceive the world when I decided to end this experiment, for now.

I searched for the force trying to keep us apart and slowly decreased what I instinctively did to fight it in its intensity, careful to avoid a drastic outcome like last time.

When I reached a threshold we split. I saw how some shadowy dust left my body and converged right in front of me to form the body of Iron Rain. I was fairly certain, the process must look like this in reverse when we became one.

"So how was it?" mom asked.

I turned around and faced her. Still occupied in processing the sensations of this fusion when I recalled that there was something else, I noticed how parts of the Abyss seemed to resonate with the parts of Iron Rain that blurred with me as if we had something in common prior to being one person. I concentrated on this part of me that resonated. I still had some rapidly vanishing inkling on how she manipulated her power. Before it was completely gone, I tried to apply it.

I noticed how the Abyss responded. Pitch black wisps of shadow came into existence and flickered around my underarm. It was neither a liquid nor metal, something in between gaseous and liquid. But there were undoubtedly similarities to Iron Rain's ability. I was able to generate it from my body, and I could control it, even though it was fickle and difficult to do so as if I had to fight against a will of its own.

Given what I knew, the Abyss was able to do with a touch to the living; I decided to be really careful in experimenting with this ability.

I noticed how mom was watching with great interest what I was doing.

"You said, that you never fused before. What if you weren't able to?" She wondered aloud. "It is just a theory at this point, but I am quite perceptive. With a power like mine, I had to be or risk dying."

My facial expression apparently was able to relay my confusion of where she was going with this because she took a moment to explain.

"Perhaps I should have started with telling you about my power. I'm what the PRT calls a striker/trump. With a simple touch, I can rob parahumans of their power and use them as if they were mine for a short duration. The longer I keep a power, the harder it gets to hold on to it. After a few hours, I usually end up with a headache that gets worse over time, to a head-splitting migraine. Eventually, I start bleeding out of my orifice, nose, eyes until I fall unconscious. I'm not limited to steal just one power, but for every successive power I take, it gets harder to hold onto them; The headache start earlier and get worse a lot faster, reducing the time I can effectively use them by quite a lot."

"Furthermore, in case they would ever learn of the full scope of my powers I most definitely would receive a thinker rating, a high one at one I'm sure. Neither the Protectorate nor the cape community are welcoming to anyone who can identify parahumans by sight like I can. Having the misfortune of a power rendering mask ineffective, being a walking transgressions of the unwritten rules." she deeply sighed.

"To me, every parahuman" she went on to explain "looks as if surrounded by an aura. The colors vary, and by studying the kaleidoscope their aura is made of, I can analyze and understand it. A process that takes time. Usually minutes of uninterrupted concentration. Which by itself would make my power rather useless, because in most cases, there would be no time to do such a thing."

"Fortunately, there is more to it," she said grinning. "The instant I steal a power, I get a near-complete understanding of what it can do.

A manual of sorts, allowing me to skip the whole learning about the power part. In the past, this allowed me to utilize the power better than their original owner. More often than not, powers are greatly limited by the imagination and creativity of its user. Despite this, being able to see the aura of Parahumans happens to be the most important component of my power. Because if I wanted to steal power I needed to get close to them. To do that in a fight I needed to get a grasp of what I was dealing with, If I didn't or misjudged the power it wouldn't have ended well for me."

"So you not only did you have powers, you never told me about. But you also were an active cape." I stated while my emotions went through a rollercoaster. I was unsure if she noticed the hurt in my voice as the overlying happiness I felt for having her back mixed with the sudden sting of her keeping that a secret from me.

"At some point, yes," she admitted. "Remember when I told you I was with Lustrum at the beginning of her feminist movement and got out before they started to get violent." I did. "Well, that was not entirely true. You see, I pretty much was her right-hand-woman for quite some time. I stopped being a cape when I noticed that I was pregnant with you. A short time later, the authorities were able to apprehend Lustrum, and with her, out of the picture, the movement died. You could say I was lucky. Thanks to you, I didn't suffer the same fate."

The only thing that came to mind, that came even close to describe what reaction this induced in me was a

"Woah, that's... I don't even know where to begin."

"I can tell you all about it later," she deflected. "I was about to make a point remember." I nodded. "Good, I could not fail to note that the way you generated those wisp of shadow greatly resemble the way Iron Rain conjures metal, and I also noticed that the way you are able to fuse with one of us your shades has a great resemblance to how I can steal powers."

I looked at her, not comprehending what she was trying to hint at. After she waited in vain for me to get it, she clarified her thoughts.

"I think, that your original power is capable of growth, of learning." she had trouble to keep the excitement out of her voice. "The best way to describe it is probably the word mimicry. Your power tries to imitate what it comes in contact with, meaning the powers of the shades you create."

"So if I understand you correctly, you are trying to say that the wisp of shadow is my version of Iron Rain's power. Then the ability to fuse with a shade and being able to use their power, as my own is my power's version of yours?" That would explain why I instantly gained the knowledge of how to use hers. It is like mom described her own.

"Exactly," mom said grinning "if I'm right, it is quite possible that your power has the potential of unlimited growth, not just because you can make more and more shades, but because it evolves with every shade you get, possessing a power of its own."

Mom approached Iron Rain. "Hello, my name is Annette Hebert. I'm sure you are already aware, that I'm Taylor's mom. I'm pleased to meet you."

Iron Rain didn't respond. I knew through the interaction with her in the past, that she was intelligent, and the time I was fused with her drove this point home, but she somehow was still different than mom. There was something present that limited how she was able to apply the use of said intelligence, therefore she couldn't be considered sentient in the stricter sense of the word.

But where was the difference? What exactly made her different than mom? Was it my wish for mom to be her old self, or was there something else at work that I missed?

"Why isn't she responding?" mom asked.

"I'm not sure she is capable of answering, let alone interact with anything out of her own free will," I said. In response to mom raising her eyebrows in a questioning manner, I went on and told her. "You are the first of my shades able to communicate with me verbally. The others understand me just fine, my intentions what I want them to do. But they can't express themselves in a normal way. I get impressions from them, I can sense their responses, but when they do, I get the feeling that they are somehow restricted. That they aren't allowed free will but that their personalities are somehow suppressed, parts of them muted."

"Do you sense the same from me?"

"No, you are different. This restriction I can sense from the others is barely even present in you, and it is far stronger coming from Aka and Kuro than what is present in Iron Rain."

Mom pondered a moment over this information. She then jerked her hand forward in what looked like a silly attempt to hit the air.

"That proves it." she declared.

"What?"

"I just tried to hit you, but I am unable to. I'm quite certain, that what you describe is some kind of a failsafe of your power. Ensuring the obedience of your shades, the more likely the ones resurrected under your power are to act against you, the more severe they are chained and vice versa. Which is the reason I can pretty much act freely with next to no restriction, you being my daughter there is no way I would do anything knowingly to harm you or allow something bad to happen to you."

"So my power is mastering every one of you, to a varying degree. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that." I said.

"You shouldn't worry about this too much. Considering the alternative, in my case, would be death. I'm very much preferring this, even if the restrictions put on me would be a lot harsher. At least this way I'm able to help you, watch over you beyond what should be possible." Hearing her say that made me happy until my mind caught up with my feelings and the implications set in.

"You could just be saying that because my power made you," I stated.

Her response consisted of rolling her eyes "You were always too smart for your own good Taylor. While I can't refute your statement I'm quite certain you can't prove it either. So you just have to have a little trust or do you really think I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than with you?"

"No -" She had a point, mom always found time to spend it with me. Having doubted her, even if just for a second was gnawing at me.

"You said, that your power allows you to steal and hold onto several other powers. That gave me an idea." I reached with my mind for both my mother and Iron Rain and called them to me. Apparently, I didn't have the same prerequisites as my mother. I was able to forgo the need to touch my shades to fuse with them. Since we were connected at all times to each other.

We became one. It was similar, but different than the last time because instead of one shade being added to me, there were now two. Granting me a lot more knowledge and skills than either of them did by itself.

I felt greater than ever before. This really drove it home for me; I needed to be very careful with this ability because I suspected that after we would separate. I would be feeling to be that much less.

I, therefore, saw this ability as a potential pitfall. I could quite easily see myself becoming addicted to the feeling of being fused. For this very reason, I decided to limit myself from using it too often.

Another thing I noticed; it had been a lot more difficult to hold us three together as one than it was with just one of them. It was like trying to get the sides of two magnets with the same polarity to touch each other; constantly fighting against it, trying their hardest to get away from each other.

I relished in this state a moment longer before I ended it. As predicted, just a few moments later, I got hit with a feeling of inadequacy.

It took my mother talking to me to get me out of my funk.

"There is one more thing we absolutely have to test."

I looked at her questioning. "You need to know what happened if one of your shades suffers damage and ends up destroyed. It could be quite dangerous to find out the limitations of your master's ability during a fight."

"Yeah, I can see that. It would really suck to find out you can die, again this time permanently." I said to her and at the same time left a whole lot unspoken, chief among them that I doubted I could ever hope to recover losing her a second time.

"Yes, but that is only part of it. You should consider what would happen if losing a shade has some kind of effect on you," mom lectured. "I knew of a few masters with projections, which suffered repercussions every time one of their projections got injured or destroyed. If there is some kind of backslash and you are unaware of it, it could spell disaster if you are affected by it at an inopportune moment Taylor. That is why you need to know."

"Got it. But how do we test this?"

"Since we don't know what is gonna happen with us shades when one of us gets destroyed, especially with the abilities your power copied from one of us." She pointed at Iron Rain than at herself

"I would suggest we try this first with one of those other shades you possess, and then you should repeat this with one of us."

She had a point. It would be more than wasteful to use either one of them for this. It could not only result in me losing them as shades but also the abilities my power adopted from them. I summoned Aka. I did my best to keep my eyes above his waist their lack of clothes; a problem I had to solve at one point.

For now, ignoring it had to suffice. I ordered Iron Rain to destroy him. She created over a dozen blobs of black metallic liquid above her outstretched palm and fired it at him. They punched walnut-sized holes into him; his solid form faded into wisps of pitch-black shadow, similar to how smoke loses its form and vanished into thin air.

I expected to happen something along those lines. What I didn't really expect was the backlash that befell me like a hit in the solar plexus. Losing the shade was this complete alien sensation of feeling unwell. Out of all the aches and injuries throughout my life, the feeling that came closest was being ill with a really bad case of the flu. There was this constant grumbling in my stomach as if I had to vomit every moment, without it being the case, the exhaustion didn't even register in comparison. In short, I felt miserable.

On the plus side, I still could feel Aka. He returned into the Abyss not as a whole but as fragments striving to become one again. It was hard to guess how long it would take the shade to restore itself. I could only tell that it would be possible.

I was, despite the condition I found myself in, quite happy to make this discovery. Because it meant; I no longer would have to dread losing mom again. Speaking of which, she looked at me with a worried expression that Iron Rain shared with her.

"I'm okay. I was just startled." That simple statement relieved them.

"It is quite the nasty backlash. But I can say with quite some confidence that I doubt I can permanently lose any one of you. If they get destroyed aside from the backslash, it only takes some time for them to regenerate."

"In that case, we should perhaps put it on hold to try it on, either myself or Iron Rain. Because at this point we are your only real defense. Not that I think you are in any danger Taylor, but the moment you became a cape, you have become part of a dangerous and cruel world. You can't ever be too careful." mom cautioned, her tone leaving no doubt how serious she was with that statement.

As much as I would like to believe otherwise, she was right. I was a 14-year-old girl alone at home without anyone else present despite my shades. No matter how safe I felt being here if I learned anything from the last few days. Then it was the fact that I was quite vulnerable without my powers.

No longer requiring Iron Rain services, I sent her away - back into the Abyss. Mom meanwhile took in her surroundings. She paused with her sight on the closed curtain of my room.

"It is already dark outside shouldn't your father be home by now."

This innocent statement reminded me that I haven't told her the reason I attempted to raise her from the dead. It also served to get me back on track away from the distraction my power provided.

"Mom, Dad won't be coming home." I forced myself to say. Worry settled in mom's expression. "He is in the hospital, which, in a roundabout way ist the reason I brought you back. I needed someone to talk to, to listen to me to, I don't know help me somehow. I couldn't bear the thought to lose him too." She walked the few steps that separated us over to me and hugged me.

"Taylor, why are you even here at home alone, while Danny is in the hospital, shouldn't you staying with the Barnes with Emma?" she wondered, and in an epiphany slowed down as she said in a clipped tone "Couldn't you confide in her?"

"They don't know about Dad," I confessed, "and even if they did, I wouldn't want to stay there, not anymore."

Concerned my mother followed up on it.

"Why little Owl? What happened?"

"I don't know," I said more harshly than intended while freeing myself from my mother's embrace. It took me walking the short distance to my bed and sitting down on it to calm myself. "I came back from summer camp, and Emma said she was sick of me, and out of the blue ended our friendship."

"That doesn't sound like the Emma I know," she said musing. "Did something happen during the time you were in summer camp that could explain her behavior?"

"No, not that I know of." While I was telling her that, searching my memory I found my statement not entirely accurate. "The only thing that comes to mind is that one interrupted phone-call. It was near impossible to get a hold of Emma afterward. Aside from that, I can't think of anything else that was strange."

By that point, mom had moved in front of me and place a hand on my shoulder reassuring me. "That just means if you want to have answers, and Emma isn't willing to provide them, we have to get them from somebody else." she encouraged with a mischievous smile "But that can wait. Tell me what happened to your Dad."

"The morning after I returned home from visiting Emma and the subsequent run-in with Aka and Kuro. Those two ABB members I was forced to kill, dad overslept. At first, I thought he was already up and was running some errand or was at work, despite telling me different, until I noticed the car was still there. So I went to his room and to my surprise, he was still in bed. So I woke him."

I hesitated a moment, sorting through my memories.

"When he came down a few minutes later, he looked bad, as if he hadn't slept for the days. While I prepared breakfast, we talked. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dad started to bleed from his nose.

He hadn't even enough time to wonder about it when he lost consciousness and fell on the kitchen floor." I noticed that the more I recalled the events that morning the more they got to me. My voice getting frantic that was when mom pulled me to her chest and stroke my hair. "I called 911, and the paramedics that came took him to the hospital. The attending physician couldn't tell me what was wrong with Dad. He told me we have to wait for some kind of test being administered before he could say more."

I raised my head from her bosom and looked her in the eyes as pleaded. "Mom, I'm really scared. I already lost you once, I don't want to undergo something like this ever again."

"It's alright Taylor, we won't let that happen now, won't we. You should go to bed and rest, and tomorrow after a good night's sleep we will visit your Dad."

"But..." I started a multitude of objections on the tip of my tongue.

"No, buts Taylor. As far as we know we can't do a thing to help him, so it is absolutely meaningless to rack one's brain over this and lose your sleep. Don't jeopardize your health in a futile endeavor." She paused for a moment and added. "If your Dad would be here, he would tell you the same thing."

I knew she was right, it wouldn't do me any good staying awake the whole night worrying, but I wasn't willing to just give up. There had to be something we could do. I was about to say something to that effect when she continued.

"You also have to consider that given your abilities there might be a chance for us to do something to improve his condition. Do you really want to attempt something potentially dangerous for you and your father while you are exhausted?"

The words forming my response appeared shallow after hearing her say this even before I could utter them, but I was lost for words. No matter how hard I tried to come up with something she had me beat, everything she said made sense and was logical but... was that my stubbornness at play? I wondered why am I fighting here?

This introspection, without giving me an answer took out my resistance, she was just blown away. I could only whisper

"Okay."

I changed my clothes to some sleepwear, and when I was done she tucked me in laid down next to me. I slowly drifted off to sleep with my mom softly caressing my hair.