Chapter Text
Faint beeps started to register in the young girl’s mind and filled the room as Asami Sato glanced at the disfigured figure in front of her. Deep scars covered her mama’s body from head to toe, each one wider and deeper than the last. A mask was thrown over her mouth but her breathing could still be heard. It was faint, crackly and desperately trying to cling onto any oxygen as she laid in an unconscious state.
“Two broken ribs, both of her legs were shattered in the crash and numerous glass cuts,” the doctor told the six year old and her father. He seemed genuinely sorry as if it happened to him as well. Asami’s father had been unresponsive for most of the time the two of them had been at the hospital. He had been crying into the comfort of his knees as the doctor told him the news. “I need to be strong. For her…,” he thought to himself as he slowly raised his head up for the first time they got there. He was Hiroshi Sato for christ’s sake. He proceeded to wipe the tears with the sleeve of his shirt as he slowly shook his head in understanding.
The doctor proceeded to show the two family members x-rays. Two of her floating ribs had been seemingly severed from her body and the doctor was pointing at a specific fragment. It seemed to be suspended in air, stuck in the sea of her own body. Hiroshi could understand the circumstances even without verbal confirmation and that pushed him over the edge of breaking down once again. He first glanced over to Asami, who was staring perplexed at the x-ray, silently trying to put the pieces together. Hiroshi then turned to the love of his life and said...
“Yasuko”
One word. That was all he needed. The life support beeping continued while he began to crawl back into his cocoon, shutting out everything and everyone as he slowly tried to process the information around him. “That bastard will pay,” Hiroshi thought to himself as the tears continued to flow and the life support continued to beep. It almost sounded like a song.
Asami, eyes once again fixated on her mother and the doctors coming in and out of the room, couldn’t understand the extreme tension in the room. Doctors were supposed to help fix people and bring them back to good health. At least that was what she was told her whole life. All of her experiences with doctors involved her being prescribed with medicine to make her feel better after contracting colds and other simple illnesses but this time it seemed different.
Asami could hear words spoken around her but one kept her attention...
“Internal bleeding.”
It sounded both familiar but also foreign to her six year old mind. Asami had experienced bleeding before from cuts she got from falls or accidents from playing with her dad’s tools from his toolbox. It would involve a few tears before the bleeding was quickly stopped by a band-aid and a kiss from her mother as Asami would go back to her activities.
Asami turned to her father, back in his shell, to ask “Daddy, what is internal bleeding?”
Hiroshi raised his head again from his shell, looking at her daughter with a dejected look before replying “The blood is flowing out inside of her, sweetie.”
“Can’t they stick a Band-Aid on it like mama used to do to me?” Asami asked again.
“A band-aid won’t help. However, she will be alright sweetie. Trust me. Your mother has always been a strong woman. I think you got that from her,” he replied with a sad chuckle, trying to lighten the mood from the depressive state Asami saw her father in when he looked up.
Asami was content with the news for now. It was all she could get.
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For what seemed like hours, it had been relatively quiet on the developments of what the hospital could do for Yasuko. Despite how quickly the panic died down, the panic began again in full force back in the medical room. The life support machine seemed to be slowing down it’s song subtly enough to pick up Hiroshi’s attention from his shell as well as from his silent mutters of revenge and sadness. The agony of being in the room was getting to him more and more.
Hiroshi looked up in fear, eyes widening, realizing what this could mean. He turned to Asami, now trying to read a magazine placed next to her by the doctor’s for entertainment. It was cute but that was not the focus right now. He spoke up, in a calm tone of voice, to her and said, “‘Sami, I need to tell the medical workers here something important. Can you stay here for me, sweetie?” Asami nodded her head with a confused look as Hiroshi ran out of the room. She hoped that he would be back soon as she went back to her reading.
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A part of Asami slowly began to grow worried about what was happening and she assumed it had to do with her mother. She was able to pick up on the slowing of the machine but didn’t question it that much. Her father hadn’t been gone for a while but Asami felt an extreme sense of anxiety start to set in for no apparent reason.
Luckily enough, Hiroshi was back in the room right as the tightening of her stomach began with two doctors and one nurse, as they were analyzing Yasuko’s vitals. It eased Asami seeing her father back in her vicinity. Subtle groans could be heard from Yasuko as she kept breathing in that raspy tone as one huge piece clicked into Asami’s head. “That fragment had hit her mama’s lung!” she quickly thought to herself.
This revelation had shaken Asami and everything else started to make sense. The doctor’s sympathetic tone, her father’s isolated self and that raspy breathing coming from her mother since the moment they arrived in the room. All of these things overwhelmed Asami as she thought one thing...
“My mother is going to leave very soon,” Asami said and that’s when the tears started to flow. Just as her father had done earlier, She began to huddle into a cocoon in her knees and cry as the slowing down of the life support was all she could hear.
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She couldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t think about it. Asami had already dealt with the leaving of another relative in the close past. An uncle taken from old age. She really didn’t have a connection with him but she still felt something seeing him in that casket. Guilt? Sympathy? Confusion? It was a swell of emotions that the six year old couldn’t grasp yet.
Asami raised her head from her knees but didn’t know how long she had been in her cocoon but things seemed to be getting worse. Nurses and doctors were piling in one by one, brainstorming an idea to keep her precious mother alive.
Hiroshi turned to his daughter, noticing the concern and anger bubbling from her young six year old face while he stood inside the crowd of medical employees. “She really looks like her mother,” Hiroshi thought as he walked over to her daughter in her chair and proceeded to say, “What did I tell you earlier? Your mother is so strong. The doctors are just a little worried about what the next move will be,” he said with a fake smile, trying his best to comfort her emotionally distraught daughter at this time.
It was enough to pull Asami from her worried state but as quick it took for Asami to feel better, she was already back into panic. Her father had broken away from her after a quick message had been whispered into his ear and that tension in his face came back as he ran out of the room once again. However, Asami was in pursuit of her panicked father but as she passed through the same exit door her father did moments prior, a bright light in front of Asami and...
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Asami woke up in a panic. Her eyes darted around the room in a frenzy, trying to affirm her reality. “It was just a dream,” she thought to herself, almost being relieved until she finally turned her head and glanced at the hospital bed in front of her and realized what she was seeing was not a dream. Hiroshi Sato, the only person in her family left, laying in a coma-like state while those same life support machines continued to beep, playing that same song she heard over fifteen years earlier.
After the incident, her father was the only person who she could confide in but that relationship did not go both ways.
Hiroshi began to bury himself in his work, pushing all outside forces away from him, even removing pictures of his wife from the house entirely. He didn’t want, nor need, to think about her anymore with the weight of his company placed upon him.
Hiroshi was a hard-working man, always determined to reach the highest levels of achievement for his company in Republic City known as Future Industries. They were the leading innovators of the city, inventing the first Satomobiles, an extremely eco-friendly automobile. It was revolutionary for the metropolis and slowly made Future Industries as well as the Sato family extremely successful financially. His fear of losing his whole life’s work was the thought that kept him going.
But that all changed in the blink of an eye. It started with a persistent pain in Hiroshi’s back, burning as he would walk around the job. It ranged in intensity based on the days. He still pushed on forward, spending his days either at the Satomobile production facilities or his own home workshop, tinkering with Satomobiles and other inventions. However, Hiroshi’s urine began to turn blood red as the days drew on whenever he went to the bathroom, drawing a major concern. It started as a red tint to his urine before reaching points of intense pain and blood red urine shooting out over the course of a couple weeks. He couldn’t worry his daughter and company about it. “That would put all of my hard work to shame if I quit here,” Hiroshi always thought to himself in order to keep him going.
However, Hiroshi’s body hit a breaking point at a business meeting. It had started alright, with investors working on a new partnership with some water company. During this discussion though, Hiroshi started to experience the most immense shots of pain coming from his back than ever before. It had been too much to bear and he collapsed. It sent him straight to the hospital as the doctors tried to figure out the source of this pain and blood red urine after Hiroshi was forced to take a drug test.
They tried every test available and analyzed for diseases from kidney stones to osteoarthritis until they performed a core needle biopsy in the area of pain for further analysis. A tiny tissue sample was all the doctor’s needed to figure out the issue. Hiroshi couldn’t believe that this was what he was facing. Prostate cancer.
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This news destroyed Asami but luckily the cancer had not metastasized by the time of discovery. “Chemo treatments would ensue and hopefully her dad would get better,” Asami would think as a way to calm herself down. Asami, now sixteen, couldn’t imagine her life without any family left. Hiroshi was the only one she had left after the loss of her mother. The after effects of that night had never subsided.
Constant awakenings from nightmares and an increased sense of paranoia she had picked up from her father after the rise of the Future Industries name both affected Asami dearly. She would occasionally glance over her shoulders whenever she walked down the street outside. Asami always tried to find the fastest routes from Point A to B in an attempt to calm her paranoia. She felt a glooming presence always around her so she kept to herself. It had left her broken and confused about her future but she had to hide it. Asami always remained calm and organized around anyone but when she was alone, she was the complete opposite. Always stuck in her head, isolated in her room staring at her ceiling playing whatever music she had in her playlists trying to help her get through the days. James Blake and Kid Cudi were two specific artists who Asami felt spoke directly to her. In these sessions, Asami would be unmotivated to do anything until one night, she finally thought about something. Her family. It had been too long.
“She needed to be there for her Dad,” she thought as she slowly decided to get up and walk down the 2nd floor hallway to his workshop, hearing the sound of an engine humming. It was always a sound that calmed Asami from a young age. When she reached the door, she opened it slowly, trying not to disturb the working her Dad was doing.
She cleared her throat to try and catch the attention of her father, still focused on the engine in front of him. The engine had been turned off by now. After a little more courage, she spoke up and said “Hi Dad.”
“Asami, what brings you here at this hour?” Hiroshi said with some anger in his voice. It was only 7:30 PM though and Asami noticed the tiny purple bags below her father’s eyes but did not mention it.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go do something tonight with me. Eat some food, watch a movie. Maybe even just talk,” Asami said with the last part being faint, trying to hide her true intentions.
“Just let me try and finish this project Asami. I’m so close to figuring out an easier way to power this thing. I will be out in a minute,” Hiroshi said with a forced smile.
“Alright. I’ll be waiting in my room when you are finished,” Asami said, with a half smile as her father quickly nodded. She exited the room and proceeded back to her sanctuary, got back into her bed and began to stare at the ceiling as she queued the next song, waiting for her father.
But he never came…
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It eventually became routine for Asami. Every time Asami would want to walk in and ask to spend time with her father or even have dinner, it would be the same response. “I will be out in a minute sweetie,” followed by her father quickly getting back to his projects that had been placed in front of him, tuning her daughter completely out of his life.
Luckily, Hiroshi still took the treatments and over the course of the next two years, the cancer dwindled to almost nothing. The results of Hiroshi’s treatment blew away the doctor’s as well as Asami herself. It seemed to be a miracle from the universe itself who thought Hiroshi still had a purpose.
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While she was reminiscing and questioning what to do next, the nurse who was taking care of her father walked into the room. “What happened, Nurse?” Asami said and the doctor replied with “heart attack. It seemed to be a stress-induced one and with your father’s history of chemo, heart attacks are at a higher risk of occurrence.” Asami couldn’t believe the news. “Ever since then, your father has been in an extended unconscious state,” the nurse said. He wasn’t wrong, hearing subtle groans and shuffles of Hiroshi’s feet coming from the bedside.
She remembered receiving a phone call from one of his co-workers, Varrick, telling her that Hiroshi was headed to the Republic City Hospital. Varrick didn’t have information about what happened to her father. Without thinking, Asami had already been out of the door, phone in hand, desperately trying to get into her car. Varrick had been on the line the whole drive there, trying to calm her down as she was swerving through every line of traffic to make it there. Asami, with over five years of driving experience, was very good at maneuvering even if some of the techniques border on an illegal NASCAR driver. “Not like this,” she thought to herself. She had to see his face again.
After reaching the Republic City hospital, Asami bursted through the front doors with an amount of force she didn’t even know she had. Out of breath, Asami proceeded to ask the front desk secretary what room Hiroshi Sato was located at. She told her “2A West Wing” and she was on the run. “Not like this,” she kept thinking over and over again until she was in front of the room.
Asami was relieved to see her father’s life support machines still functioning and that beep still playing. “He’s not dead,” she thought as she pulled up a chair next to his bed and sat down accordingly. She reached her hand down and proceeded to stroke her father’s tight grey hair. “Hey Dad,” she said as the tears started to fall.
“And judging by the circumstances at hand currently, we don’t know what the outcome will be so I would recommend that you say your goodbyes now,” the nurse told Asami as she finished her vitals check back from her most recent reminiscion.
Asami, through a set of newly formed tears, croaked a “Thank you Nurse,” before dipping her head down.
“Call me Kya and you’re welcome” the nurse said as she walked out of the room after rubbing Asami’s shoulder, leaving Asami and Hiroshi back together again.
“I don’t know where to start,” Asami said, contemplating the things she wanted to confess to her father if these minutes were the last she would have with him. She finally figured it out, quickly glancing at the life support machine. “Still that song,” she thought as she finally opened her mouth, finally having some semblance of a goodbye statement.
“I want you to know that I’m here for you. I’m still a part of you despite the massive rift we placed between one another. I wish I could have more time to speak with you and bond. It’s funny how you don’t realize the most important things in your life until they are about to be gone. We used to be so close before she died. I always loved when you would help roast marshmallows for me after I burned myself that one time,” Asami said, still reminiscing on the past.
“I remember the times we would eat meals together, joking at anything we could from the media to a stupid movie idea. The times you would read me bedtime stories when I was younger. The days where you would show me those little cartoons in the newspaper that you thought would make me laugh whenever I looked a little down. You come into my room to make sure I’m alright after waking up from those nightmares. The times we spent together.”
Just as she finished her first section of her last words, the machine started to slow down almost as if Asami was comforting him to the next life. She knew she couldn’t stop it so she kept going. She had to be there at least.
“I wish we could have kept that connection. You left me alone after she died. It felt like you didn’t even know I existed half of the time. Always kept up in your work and distancing yourself from your own fucking daughter.” Asami silently yelled at him, which caused his monitor to jolt a little before settling to a slow pace.
“I just wanted to feel like your own blood again. I guess you are probably sad hearing these words come from your daughter but I wanted to say...” Asami pausing for a moment, before deciding to mouth those three words. “I forgive you”. It wasn’t fully true, Asami knew this, but hopefully it would comfort him.
“I understand your reasoning for doing the things you did. You couldn’t take losing her but you wanted to remain strong in front of me. And when you got the cancer and beat it, I was so proud of your dedication. However, that didn’t change our relationship. Once you got better, the same routine from the past continued.” Asami said.
The pulsing got slower as the lines began to grow less frequent and the space between the beeps was stretched out more and more.
“I wish it didn’t have to be like this. I know we could have figured this out. We could have fixed this. I hope you can still be a part of me like I am to you. I hope that you can keep mom safe wherever you go. I wish that wherever you go next will keep you happy and will still allow you to watch over me. I wish you could say you will even though I know you will,” Asami said with a hint of uncertainty but tried to keep a faint smile despite the cold interior Asami had that she didn’t want peeking through.
“I love you so much,” Asami said, kissing his forehead and letting the final round of tears flow as the machine played that single goodbye tone. It almost sounded like a choir.
The past did not matter right now. Asami was truly alone. No family to rely on. So what if she was angry at her father still. She had no true blood that she could get in contact with that she knew about. No brothers or sisters that she could keep by her side. No grandparents as well. They were gone too.
It didn’t take long for panic to start in Asami. A tightening of her gut as the world seemed so disconnected from her. She felt like a ghost in her own body, staring down at her deceased father. This had happened many times before to Asami but every time, it was still a horrible experience. Realizations of what this means for her broke Asami to the very core.
She realized that the company was now going to be under her charge. She was only 21, not even out of college yet. She had a big responsibility to uphold. Luckily, Asami’s dad prepared for this, educated her in financial and mechanical engineering from a young age. Asami had always had an analytical mind proven by the many long nights focusing on her school projects. Even though she didn’t enjoy her father for what he was in his later years, she still cared deeply for the people invested in Future Industries as well as the company itself. And she would have to go through this with no family either.
As this panic attack continued and the doctors started to funnel in after hearing that final chord, Asami felt trapped in the swell of eyes surrounding her, analyzing her every movement as if she was some exotic animal at the zoo.
Asami, in this hint of panic, briskly started to walk out of the room and on her way to her car. She could not be seen like this in public. She needed to be safe. She could worry about what to do with her father later. She needed to get away.
Once she reached her car after the horrors of the hospital parking lot and unlocked it in a haste, she slowly started to begin deep breathing exercises taught to her by her therapist from when she was a kid. He never really helped but some things stuck with Asami as she slowly began to relax her muscles and calm down.
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After calming down from her panic attack, Asami went to put the keys into her car, ready to drive back to her father’s mansion where her boyfriend Mako also resided. “At least I have him,” Asami thought to herself as she slowly began to back out of the hospital parking lot. She didn’t know how long that would last though. One doctor tried to stop Asami but she kept driving. “Now is not the time for that,” she thought to herself as she drove out of the hospital, onto the freeway and back to her home. She needed to think of a way to tell Mako without suffering the same breakdown she just experienced. It will all be figured out soon enough. “It all takes time,” Asami thought to herself.