Family's Family

That's all there was to it? Having seen someone make one, she couldn't imagine how she'd managed to make dumplings more complicated.

"I don't think aaaaanyone has ever called me sweet before," Taylor smiled. "You must be older than you look." She quickly went down the row and folded all the dumplings.

She stopped and gave Junko a skeptical look. "Delicious" and "Ichiro" were two things that did not mix. She went to the sink to rinse off her hands.

"Damn, dude, I dunno. He's... I guess he's good looking and all, but... really? I can't imagine him actually being attractive." She compared Johnny and Ichiro in her mind, looking for the congruent features or anything that might score Ichiro points. She didn't come up with anything, but maybe she was biased.

"I don't know why I'd worry about that, though. Even if you did, it wouldn't change anything. I told you, Jun-Bug and me are a thing, and we always will be. Nothing will ever change that. I..." She hesitated. It was odd that it came to mind, and even moreso that she would feel comfortable saying it to Junko. She hadn't even told Johnny about this part of her life.

"I slept with a lot of guys in New York." She said, all at once, as if ripping off a band-aid. "I didn't have what you would call high self esteem, and... ya know, daddy issues and all that. I just wanted to fit in with the guys, ya know, like at the gym, but... turns out being easy doesn't get you respect. Live and learn, right?" She said, with an uncommon shade of cynicism in her voice.

Junko grinned as she seemed to have breached new ground with Taylor and she wasn't sure if Taylor's next words were complimentary or not, but she took them as flattery. She looked good. damn good for her age. Most girls half her age would kill to look as good as she did. She pulled up the dumpling tray and took them to the steamer where she put them in and listened to Taylor.

"When she was finally finished, she frowned. "I'm not dude, Taylor-chan." She said dryly. "I'm Okaa-chan." She then tilted her head. "Hmmmm... Well... when we're young and foolish, we do foolish things. If we can live to regret them, I guess we're all the better for it." She said and nodded. "You seem to have achieved some level of confidence in yourself now and you aren't sleeping with anyone but Junichi-kun, so, I think it all worked out in the end, right?" She said and smiled softly.

Junko smiled. "I wasn't exactly miss prim and proper in my day, I'll tell you. Though, I slept around with a lot more girls than I did guys." Junko raised a wry eyebrow. "I slept with a few guys though,... when I thought I could get something fro them." Junko then sighed. "I'm not particularly proud of those days but it helped shape who I am. I'm much more sturdy for the experience and I definitely know what I want. Maybe some day I'll find another man to spend my twilight years with, but those are a long ways off."

Junko lowered her head. "Ichiro..." Junko frowned. "I feel like it's my fault. Like there's something I could have said or done. The divorce was just so ugly..." She said.

Taylor laughed. "Twilight years." It seemed so dramatic. It's not like she was withering away or anything.

She had long since given up with being surprised that everyone in any way associated with AFW was a lesbian, so she didn't bat an eye when Junko mentioned her past escapades. It did seem a little weird now that it was her mother-in-law, though.

"Yeah..." She said. She knew a thing or two about messy divorces, but only as a young girl watching her parents go through the routine. She knew about the fights with hushed voices behind closed doors and the fights that spilled out into the open. She knew about the cold look her mother got at the dinner table, and how her father would find anything else to focus on, as if the family was a commercial and he was waiting for the show to come back on. And she knew the gut wrenching feeling of inevitability when the whole thing started to collapse. Most of all, she remembered the feeling she got when the phone rang and her mom answered it, and every time how she wondered if it was her dad.

She looked at Junko, and she hurt for her. "Johnny doesn't talk about that." She said. She had never had the heart to dig too deeply into it.

Junko frowned at Taylor's words. She busied herself with pulling out the dumplings while she thought about it. "Junichi-kun doesn't talk about a lot of things." She said as she set them on a plate and put them on the table for the two to eat at their leisure. 'The fruits of our labor, Taylor-chan.!" She said with a grin. "How'd we do?" She asked, motioning for her to take one and try it.

"It's not that he doesn't think about it, I'm sure. I guess... he just thinks that it's silly to worry over everything. There's only so much control you have int he world and a lot of people spend it being negative. Junichi-kun doesn't and that's one reason why I love him. He's always been such a ... beam of sunshine." Junko chuckled. "Though, he's gotten into his fair share of trouble for his cavalier attitude. He would be so reckless as a kid. he'd go off wandering because he was curious or would play where he shouldn't be. I bet if a stranger offered him candy, he wouldn't think twice about it. He's always been very trusting. I guess he just expects everyone will be the same as him." Junko put a finger to her lips in thought. "In that way, I guess he sort of is like Ichiro. Ichiro always just expected everyone to follow the same rules he did. Things were a certain way for him, so why wouldn't they be for everyone else? I guess the concept of an unfair world never really settled in with them, if you know what I mean. I guess that eventually wore Ichiro down. I don't see it happening to Junichi-kun though."

When the divorce was happening, did take Ichiro's side. I mean, he was never really.... against me... but I guess he thought that I could probably do more to keep us together when it was clear that I was the one who had most of the issues. Junichi-kun doesn't like fighting, which is an odd thing to say about a wrestler. He likes harmony and when there isn't harmony, he doesn't know quite what to do."

Junko then decided to take a bite from one of the dumplings and quickly approved. She then looked at Taylor. "So, Taylor-chan. Tell me a little bit about your family. You don't have to go into the gorey details, but I'm still curious. You're my daughter, after all, I want to know as much about you as I do my own sons." She said with a smile.

Taylor poured some soy sauce in a dish and idly dabbed at it with a dumpling. It was all true, what she said about Johnny. He was just no good at fighting. It worked out very well, because Taylor was exceptionally gifted. They'd have been in serious trouble as a couple were Johnny not so patient and harmonious.

She found herself wearing a faint smile as Junko talked, despite the subject. She always liked talking about Johnny, but more than that she realized that Junko knew Johnny like she did. If nothing else, they had that in common.

She stopped smiling at the mention of her family, and took a bite of her dumpling so that she wouldn't have to answer right away. Her appetite had vanished again, always at the worst times, and she took her time chewing and swallowing.

"Well..." She began slowly. "My dad left, ya know. I... I dunno, I couldn't really blame him for leaving my mom, but I just really wished he didn't leave me. He was awesome, though. He used to take me out every once in a while, when he was in town, because he moved around a lot, and I'd just talk his ear off about everything." She paused. "Well, not everything. I wouldn't really talk about my mom... and I definitely didn't tell him about getting beat up and all that stuff. I know now that he was actually a pretty shitty dad, but I really loved him. He died right after I won the Entropy belt. Right around Christmas of 2011."

She drew a deep breath. It did feel good to talk about it. She felt like she should be eating more, and dipped her dumpling again. "My mom, though, she's a real piece of work. She never wanted a family, but my dad was a charmer, ya know, he had the smile and stuff, so... here I am. I don't really remember her being anything but miserable after he left, and I know a lot of that was because she was stuck raising me.

"She didn't really care when I came or went. Like, she'd scream at me when she wanted to if I showed up at three in the morning on a school night, but she never tried to stop me, and it's not like I was going to stick around at home if I had the choice. I got into a lot of trouble like that. I remember when the fights started, she... she didn't like that. That's the only thing I've ever really been good at, starting fights. I remember coming home one day all fucked up, like bleeding from the face and shit, and..." She paused for a moment while the parallels sunk in like a knife turning in her stomach. "She told me she wished I was never part of the family, and I was a disgrace. She told me I'd never be worth anything, so I could stay out all night..." She stopped, and lowered her eyes. "Sorry."

Junko listened very carefully to Taylor's words. Her heart began to break as Taylor spoke. A father she loved who seemed to only reciprocate enough to keep her hopes up. A mother who was absolutely despicable. Junko was more like her son, a lover, not a fighter but in that moment, she thought that there was one person she'd love to beat the shit out of. Junko loved Taylor with all her heart and really the girl was a stranger to her. But that's how family was. you loved them regardless of anything else.

Junko's eyes softened and she took a bit of her dumpling. She then grinned. "Taylor-chan, she said and smiled softly. "You aren't half bad t folding dumplings either. So, that's something else you can add to your list." She said as she sheepishly grinned, trying to lighten up the mood.

"If I could make sure that bad things and tough times never happened to anyone, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'd love to turn back time and find that younger you and love her and spoil her and tell her everything was going to be ok and that she was a good girl and loved."

Junko stood up and dabbed at the corner of her eye. She couldn't help herself and hugged Taylor again. This time she felt like she was hugging a little girl who had been deceived by a cruel world and she didn't want to let go. "Taylor-chan..." She whispered, crying softly. "I'm proud of you and you'll never, ever disgrace this family." She said as she kissed the top of Taylor's head over and over as though she had to make up for some sort of lost time.

The moment Junko's arms wrapped around Taylor, her whole body felt heavy, like she had flipped a switch in her and shut off the flow of panic and spunk that made her tick. She felt helpless, too weak to lift a finger, but missing was the sick lump dread in the pit of her stomach that always melted her insides whenever she lowered her guard. For a moment, she was fifteen again, a high schooler desperately in need of someone to tell her that she was worth more than everyone else seemed to think before they convinced her to think the same.

She drew a deep, unsteady breath and let it out slowly to prepare herself. Then, with an effort as if she was lifting the weight of two flawed decades, she stood up and faced Junko and wrapped her arms tightly around her. She had to lean down to put her head on the shorter woman's shoulder.

"I don't want to call you okaa-chan," she whispered.

Junko watched as Taylor stood up and she eased into a mutual hug. Junko sighed pleasantly as they embraced, her arms squeezing tightly around her taller daughter-in-law.

Junko patted Taylor's back and rubbed it as she felt Taylor's head on her shoulder. She heard the words and smiled. "Why's that, dear?" She asked with a slight coyness in her tone.

Taylor let go. "No reason," she said with red-eyes and a smile.


Later that night, the two lounged on the couch watching a movie, surrounded by a spread of random food, Taylor with a pillow on her lap. The movie was about ninjas. A young man raised in some ninja village didn't want to grow up to sneak around and kill people, so he staged a daring escape while a girl he'd grown up with secretly helped him. On the outside, he went about trying to track down his natural mother, but was careless enough to be detected by the village's spies. The one they sent to kill him was the girl who had helped him escape, and before long they were both hunted by ninjas while trying to escape to the coast with the young man's mother. He and the girl fell in love, but neither said or did anything about it, and it drove Taylor nuts.

"Dammit, just tell him!" Taylor waved a hand at the TV and shook her box of Pocky. "How can she be badass enough to fight ninjas, but too much of a pussy to speak up? I mean... 'hey, I like you'. Is that so hard?"

She glanced at Junko and settled down. She bit a cold dumpling and slouched lower into the couch. "I hate it when the girls can't handle their business in these, but at least she can kick ass."

After their little heart to heart, Juno and Taylor settled down. They decided to watch a movie and while it progressed Junko paid more attention to Taylor than the movie. She enjoyed it well enough. It combined good drama with intriguing romance but Junko wasn't a huge movie person. She just liked the thought of spending some time with her daughter-in-law and enjoying a relaxing evening.

She just kept an eye on Taylor in her peripheral as the ninjas did their thing. As the movie seemed to come to a close, Taylor began to get frustrated. Junko frowned at her words but then smiled.

"Taylor-chan, it really isn't easy for everyone to be so bold. Aside from that, it's just not her place. A Japanese woman, especially, is supposed to be courted by a man. It's that boy's duty to confess to her, not the other way around." She knew that Taylor really didn't get the way things were in Japan. Or, if she did get it, she didn't like it. Junko couldn't blame her either. She didn't quite follow things to a T either.

"If you're going to be living here, you should immerse yourself in the culture. You don't have to follow it, but it's not such a bad idea to see where everyone else in the country you're living in is coming from. There's more to Japan than just wrestling and the AFW doesn't really do it justice. That place is such a melting pot that I barely even consider it Japan. It's like some weird and huge building in the middle of Japan that should belong to some other place."