A/N: Written for:

The Prompts in Steps Challenge, 4.08 - labour
New Year's Mini-Advent 2016, day 8 - write about someone showing gratitude to their mentor/senior
5Ds bingo, the non-flash version, #193 - "A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories." Honoré De Balzac
Diversity Writing Challenge, d96 - fic wherein characters are recognisable without mentioning the name (in any form, including nicknames and titles) of a single character.

Yusei and Martha

You're the first of my collection. Quite literally, I find you in the rubble of my home and, you know, it's your fault it was rubble in the first place. Or your father's. But that's okay because a house is worth far less than a life and if my house crumbling was what what it took to save you, then so be it. You gave me more than enough wonderful memories to make up for it - and quite a few I could have done without, as well.

And despite what you may say, not all of them are related to the whole Signer business I won't even pretend to understand. Romance troubles are one of the highlights of a mother's life and I did enjoy teasing you about her, the Senator's daughter, even if neither of you chose to pursue it in the end. And I can respect that too. You'd have made a good pair at the time, but likewise either of you could have found somebody else and it's as much a choice as some sort of intuitive connection and I'm not banking on any one particular person, so long as you can be happy with them. Still, first crushes are one of those memorable things for a mother, even if you forget about it afterwards. The two of you are lucky enough to be linked in other ways, other lasting ways that means you'll never forget each other and that's twofold for your brothers: the boys you grew up with and lived together with for a time, even after the lot of you had flew from the nest.

Though when I heard what the three of you had been up to in the interim, I sometimes wish you'd never left the nest at all. I didn't expect it, and honestly, I don't know why I didn't. Maybe the other two, but you were always the pacifist. The reasonable one who could keep your head down if you needed to and you knew this was a place where you needed to keep your head down to keep going. I can concede it now: if you hadn't done what you did, all those things you did, then this place wouldn't have changed for the better and my new children wouldn't have much hope for the future.

Still, even a lack of possibility can't kill hope because we never know when someone like you can show up and shake the foundations of the world as we know it.

And someone to play the stage. We know now that someone played the stage - but really, would you have changed anything? The others might have. They had things they regretted, things they were manipulated into and now that they were aware of that manipulation, could resist. But you, you only responded to them. You were the pacifist who rarely started a fight on his own; you only intervened in them all. And then came your chance to intervene with the quarrel between the City and Satellite and you did that as well. You weren't the knight in shining armour - or flaming red wings, rather - who'd come to someone's aid, but the man who'd bring wisdom with the wind and, sometimes, I wondered where you learnt it all as well. Wisdom came with age and you're young; you were still young back then.

But you all grew up so quickly, and there'd been a dark cloud over you the other boys didn't have because you'd known, even then, how you'd arrived at my home. Perhaps that was my mistake. Perhaps I offered you that weight to bear too early, too quickly - but once you left the nest, I may never have gotten a chance to tell you again.

So I told you the tale, of how you'd flown through the sky and crashed through my roof but was still alive in that little escape pod of yours to hear the tale. Tenderly buckled and neatly labelled like a parcel being sent off, and then tossed into the sky as though they couldn't wait for the delivery man anymore.

That was the day Zero Reverse occurred and Satellite took far greater damage than a hole in the roof that caused it to cave. My family began that day, with you, and then with other children who wandered the streets, their parents suddenly gone and their everyday lives suddenly uprooted…

But it wasn't only me. It couldn't be or all you children wouldn't have lived long enough to drift over to me. You were different. You came to me directly but the others, they bounced like rocks skipping along a pond. Sometimes it was because it was impossible: mothers that took pity on an infant but couldn't handle a child who began to demand more… There'd been some who'd lost their own babies that night and it because a mutual trade, a facade that became too unbearable to continue on. The children suffered for that, floating with no-one to care for them until they worked out how to take care of themselves - but that was a cruel world. A world where children banded together and created gangs, taking their own niches in the streets or abandoned buildings where they couldn't find a home for themselves. I saw that and it was a sad fate for a child and I already had you and why couldn't I take others as well?

I went out searching. I knew if I waited to stumble onto them, it might be too late and you'd been a special case: a gift quite literally from the heavens. And I found them. Children hiding under bridges, in lonely corners hiding from security and gangs alike and hoping someone kind and caring would come along even in this world where people could barely care for themselves.

I was lucky. I had the means, at least for a while - and then my children grew up and they helped, and it became a thriving place. To tell the truth, you helped with that as well and it was part of the tale I sent you from my nest with, the baggage on your shoulders. The pod you'd arrived it fetched quite a bit on the market that sprung up in the depths of Satellite and, in the end, I kept only your papers. There'd been no photos otherwise I'd have kept those as well and I wondered, for a time, why there hadn't been because everything else had been so carefully prepared but perhaps it was a safety measure. Your life might have been very different if someone had recognised you as the son of the man responsible for Zero Reverse - or so he'd been labelled to be. You know the truth now, and with that, I learned the truth as well. He'd been trying to save you from the offset and this had been his last and most painful resort.

Honestly, I thought he was a fool for a time after that. If he'd had the time to load you into an escape pod, he could have simply prepared a larger one and escaped with you as well. Your life would have been very different then. You might not have needed me to be your mother: you'd have had your own father, a father of your blood. You told me once he was a strict father and all you knew was his ghost. Perhaps you wouldn't have gotten into as much trouble if you'd been raised by him or maybe you'd gotten into different sorts. Would you have grown up with so many siblings and, at some point when you were far older than them, your nieces and nephews, or would it have just been you and your father? Would you have even stayed in Satellite? Or would you have moved? Or would your father not have been allowed to live free after the role he'd played, however unfair, in Zero Reverse?

But for me, I'm a little glad because you're my son, the first of them and one who became the springboard of our much larger family. And look at us now. You have your own nest now and you visit like a son who visits his mother and you bring presents for the children and give them rides on your Runner and give me a hug because you know full well you'll be sleeping outside if you forget and I might not have had any of it if you hadn't crashed through my roof while the world outside crumbled at all.