#but for now they'll wallow in shock and grief

[princesssarcastia]

The Morning After aka How To Tell Your Super-Powered Kids You Just Murdered Their Abusive Father

heyo, here it is, in honor of season 2 coming out in *checks watch* like three days!!

the sequel to Reginald Hargreeves Die Challenge, in which Grace cares for her children, considers the unquantifiable elements in the human condition, and struggles to start (and finish) a terrible conversation.

also on AO3, if you’d prefer

_ _ _ _ _ _

Grace tuts at her reflection in passing as she makes her way up the stairs.  Her dress will have to be burned; stains from the ashes at the crematorium liberally speckle the skirt, and she won’t be able to get them out.   And now she has to change first thing, instead of looking in on her children like she normally does before shutting down for the night.

Oh, well.  Some deviations from her routine are to be expected tonight.  In fact, she may have to create a whole new routine, now that Sir Reginald is no longer a factor.  

She shucks off her dress in front of the closet where Sir Reginald stored her accessories and holds it for a moment, considering, before dropping it dismissively in the corner, crumpled.  Her hands run gently over the selection of new outfits, before settling on the sole black article; an A-line tea length hem.

Adhering to cultural rituals, like wearing black after the passing of a loved one or relative, put humans at ease.

With only a few tugs to adjust how the new dress rests on her, Grace pivots and makes her way back down the stairs, toward her children.

Her children.

It’s still a new designation, and something about it is electrifying.

—

Vanya, dear girl, is soundly asleep; her still form barely rises and falls with each breath.

Ben looks up sheepishly as she enters, setting aside his book and clicking off his bedside light before she even has to ask.  Grace smiles down at him and pulls the covers up around him as he reclines, and he smiles back.

Klaus is sprawled on his back in the center of his bed, snoring loudly; he forgot to shut his lights off again, so Grace turns them off for him.  She leaves his bedsheets twisted at his feet, however.  After the first three times he woke up screaming and tangled in them, some brief research indicated Klaus might be suffering from moderate to severe sleep-related claustrophobia.

It takes almost six minutes to convince Five to leave his calculations for tomorrow, but he relents when she recites research about adequate sleep patterns and their effect on brain development.

Luther asked her to stop tucking him in at night after a few pointed comments from Sir Reginald months ago, so Grace doesn’t enter his room.  Just a quick peek around the corner to make sure he’s in bed, at least.

Diego mumbles when she gently pushes his hair back from his forehead but doesn’t wake.

Allison is sitting in the middle of her bed, arms wrapped around her knees and face tucked away.  Grace steps on the creaky floorboard in the doorway to catch her attention.

Her head whips up.  “Mom?”

Grace instantly considers and discards three different facial expressions before settling on a solemn nod.  “Are you alright, Allison?”

“Mom, what—” her voice cracks.  “Where’s Dad?”

Now, Grace smiles, because she hasn’t considered how to answer that question yet and can’t respond. Her processors whir almost audibly, but it doesn’t—compute.  At last, she says, “Everything is going to be just fine, dear.  Don’t you worry,” and rests a hand on Allison’s cheek.

Her daughter’s eyes widen at the gesture; so rare, but perhaps—perhaps it won’t have to be anymore. She sweeps her thumb across Allison’s skin once, twice, before gently pushing at her shoulders so she lies down.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Allison asks haltingly, as Grace starts to leave. 

Grace pauses, hand on the door.  She blinks several times rapidly, to indicate she’s considering her response.  After a moment, she tilts her head back to Allison and gives her a smaller, warmer smile than the one before.  The smile she only ever gives to them.  “Yes, dear.  I think I’ll be just fine.”

Then she gently pulls the door shut behind her and walks back upstairs to her charging station.

The woman in the gallery painting still looks lonely, but—not as much as she did yesterday.   Grace tries to arrange her limbs like the woman’s, with her arm partially raised, though her expression isn’t quite right.  Her expression is never quite right; never exactly like the woman in the painting.

She shuts down for the night.

—

A preset alarm in her subroutines pulls her out of charging at six am.  Grace slowly initializes, eyelids dragging open as the cords retract, and takes stock of her systems.  Energy levels below optimal, but that’s to be expected, given she was two hours late to bed last night. 

She’ll have to find help overriding her self-maintenance protocols so she can edit her own code. [priority one] is currently overriding the lesser behavioral instructions, making several of them defunct, and the now-useless code is slowing down her processors.  Grace would like to get rid of them entirely, just to be certain the children are safe.

So many things to do today!

But first, pancakes for her children.

Diego stumbles into the kitchen two minutes after Grace, still yawning and rubbing his eyes. 

Sir Reginald never cared about the children’s activities before breakfast, so long as they were not seen, nor heard, and they all took advantage of this to do different things.  Diego comes to help her make breakfast.  Grace has been teaching him to cook for weeks, now, after he showed some interest in it. If Sir Reginald asked, she would tell him basic chemistry principles illustrated by cooking and baking are a good foundation for later study, but he never did.  The kitchen was never a place he spent much time, after all.

Her son—the possessive is still electrifying this morning—sleepily reaches for the ingredients for oatmeal, their usual weekday breakfast, only to stop and blink as he notices what she has out instead.

“We’re going to make pancakes this morning, Diego,” Grace says with hushed excitement.  Loud noises are uncomfortable so soon after waking.

“But…” Diego starts, then trails off.  His shoulder hunch ever so slightly, indicating he’s uncomfortable with the change in routine.  That’s to be expected, too; but the new routines will be better.

“It’s all right, dear. Look at the recipe, there,” she points, “and help me measure out the dry ingredients.”

And then the kitchen is silent except for his movements and hers, and the low hum of heat from the stove as she melts butter in the skillet, inaudible to human ears but perfectly clear to Grace.

She slides the bowl towards herself when he finishes measuring and deftly cracks the eggs into the bowl, then hands him the shells with a small smile. 

He grins back at her, earlier discomfort forgotten, as he throws the shells across the room to the garbage can in a perfect arc.

Stir in the milk, the oil, careful not to over-mix!, and then she starts pouring batter into the skillet.  Diego starts moving furtively in her peripheral; Grace pointedly keeps her focus on the pan in front of her, allowing him to pull bacon out of the fridge and make it all the way back to the stove before she glances at him.

“W-we need protein, ri-i-i—" he stops with a huff.  Grace waits patiently for him to try again, beaming when he finishes, “Right?”

“I suppose it’s alright for today.”

Grace calculates another twenty seconds before she needs to flip, so she turns and pulls the flat skillet out of the bottom cabinet and sets it on an open burner, cranking the heat all the way up to get it ready.

With one hand, she flips the first pancake, and with the other she peels back the paper on the meat and lines it up, wiping cold grease off on her apron.

“Why don’t you try the next one?” She says when the first pancake is done.  Diego nods seriously, the way he does when Sir Reginald assigns him a task in training.  Grace pauses, then ruffles his hair as they switch places, earning another surprised look from Diego.

Her systems say it’s 6:30 a.m.; the other children will start making their way here in another ten minutes.  Pogo never eats with the children or Sir Reginald, so he won’t come to the kitchen until mid-morning, for tea and toast; by then, Grace will have calculated the best way to break the news to him.

But the children….her processors kick up a notch as she considers the conundrum before her.  When her sensors register the flat skillet has reached 400° F Grace slides the first round of bacon onto it.

She can calculate each of their likely reactions to the news that their father is dead.  Calculating their response to the fact that Grace is the one who removed him requires more data.  And there is the problem of how to tell them.

Saying she killed Sir Reginald because he raised a hand to Allison would be truthful; but it would place a burden on Allison and is not the entire truth. 

The entire truth is that she killed Sir Reginald because she is responsible for protecting them; because he hit them and it wasn’t training; because he ignored them at bedtime; because he trained them to kill other people; because he made them hurt each other; because he sent them to bed exhausted every night and woke them up early; because he didn’t want them to be happy; because he didn’t want them to love each other; because he didn’t let Grace brush hair from their foreheads or kiss their cheeks or read them bedtime stories or make their favorite foods or tell them she—[error] [error] [error] [priority one] [priority one override] —

“Mom, I think the bacon’s done,” Diego says, as he attempts to slide the spatula under his second attempt at a pancake.

Grace smiles at him and keep smiling as she removes the strips and places them on a cloth covered plate.  Another seven slide on easy as you please, the sizzling sound of hot grease rising in the kitchen.

His third pancake is much better than his first and second; he looks up at her hopefully, and Grace knows he is looking for approval.  He often looked at Sir Reginald with the same expression, but Sir Reginald ignored the research on positive reinforcement because he believed it made his soldiers weak.

But Sir Reginald isn’t here anymore.

“Wonderful job, Diego,” she says softly, and starts pulling plates out of the cabinets and silverware out of the drawers and sets it all in stacks on the table because today is Five’s turn to set everything up.

Another round of bacon goes on the skillet, and she sets up a third to speed up the pancakes; they’re going to need a lot more to adequately feed seven growing girls and boys! Her processing attention splits between the food and her calculations about the discussion ahead.

Can Grace…lie to them?

She’s done it before, when Sir Reginald tells her to.  About Vanya’s powers, and about what’s best for their physical, mental, and emotional health.  But given how detrimental most of Sir Reginald’s other actions were to them, Grace determines that lying is unlikely to be the best way to proceed.

The problem is that unfortunate element of unpredictability in human behavior.  Grace is not human, and her children are, and this is limiting. If her children were like her, she could simply transmit her [priority one] and the calculations she made the night before, standing in Sir Reginald’s office and holding his arm in a vise grip.

But they are not, so she cannot. 

And there are no calculable lies with as much supporting evidence in their surroundings and the children’s memories of her and Sir Reginald’s behavior as the truth has. 

There are myriad possible responses from them.  Anger and violence against her are likely, given the training they have received and the behavior they have observed in their father as a role model.  Relief and dread are also likely, in some of them.

Fear is also a possible response.  Fear of Grace.  Fear that she might kill them the way she killed their father.  That possibility is wrong, it is anathema to her purpose; [priority one] forbids it.  And even if it didn’t, she—she—[error]

Five teleports into the room behind them and moves to start putting together place settings, but when the smell of bacon and pancakes registers, he stops, and frowns.

“Why are you making that? It’s Thursday, we eat oatmeal on Thursdays.”

Grace slides the last set of bacon from the skillet and turns off the burner.  “Today is an unusual day, Five.  We’ll discuss it when the rest of your siblings arrive.  Now, finish setting the table, please.”

What if they decide to shut Grace down?  Then there will be no one to care for the children, they will be alone.  Would they call the local authorities to be placed in foster care?

Sir Reginald was never this hard to predict.  And even the children were easier to calculate when he was alive, because certain behaviors were infinitely more likely and unlikely in his presence.  But Grace is still certain her logic last night was sound; his death was the only way to protect them.   She will simply have to protect them no matter what their response is.  No matter if they are angry at her or scared of her or try to shut her off.

That’s what mothers are supposed to do.  That’s what fathers are supposed to do, too.

She and Diego finish the last of the batter.  He takes the towering, wobbly stack of pancakes to the table in slow steps to maintain its balance.

“Five, get the glasses, please,” she calls over her shoulder as she pulls milk and orange juice out of the fridge and brings them to the table.  Five teleports onto the counter to get them, and then teleports back across the room to set them down.

Grace considers scolding him, but his feet are bare, still in his pajamas as he is, and the counter was clean.  And he was doing as she asked without complaint. 

Klaus and Ben clatter into the kitchen and the noise level in the room raises to 85 decibels.

They, too, come to a halt when they see what Grace and Diego have made for breakfast this morning, but then Klaus turns to look at her more fully. 

“Whoa, Mom, what the hell are you wearing?” Klaus says.  “You never wear anything that isn’t a color.”

“Oh, well,” Grace looks down and runs her hands along the side seams, making infinitesimal adjustments, “I thought it was appropriate today.”

Klaus’ nose wrinkles in confusion, and Five raises an eyebrow at her, taking in the new data and, Grace decides, most likely trying to figure out what’s happening before she tells them.  It’s something he does with Sir Reginald, as well; as part of his situational awareness training, and also outside of his training, as a way to elicit a negative emotional response.

Grace calculates the likelihood of him succeeding today at 17% currently, though that number will rise with more time and data.  Unless he has spoken to Allison and she told him what happened last night, but that seems even less likely.

Vanya enters and slips into her seat at the head of the table so quietly the others don’t notice right away, but Grace tilts her head to catch Vanya’s eyes and smiles widely. Vanya blinks and gives a little wave in response.

Quiet chatter between them fills the kitchen as Five finishes setting places, and the others make it to their assigned seats.  Allison and Luther enter together, at the very last minute before they are due.  She gives Luther a cursory examination, and he appears puzzled with Allison, who is as tense as she was last night.  When she catches sight of Grace, standing with her hands folded at her waist, she freezes.

“Allison,” Grace says warmly, “how are you this morning?”

“Um.  Alright,” she says hesitantly.

After they both sit, Grace follows suit, settling at the other end opposite Vanya, and her children all send her various quizzical looks.  Five takes her presence at the table, when she normally cleans the kitchen while they eat breakfast, as another clue, but his expression is missing that triumphant edge he gets when he’s figured something out.

“Well,” Grace starts, smile wide.  “I hope you all slept well.”

Klaus reaches for his silverware and starts serving himself, affecting unconcern, but Grace can see the hesitation in his shoulders.  When Grace says nothing, the others all follow suit, carefully taking food and placing it on their plates.

She knows their tension is because she has altered their routine; her research indicates that children who have been—abused, by men like Sir Reginald, find comfort in routines.  But this change today is necessary.

“There will be some necessary changes in your routines starting today,” Grace continues, circling around why to get to what instead.  “All meals will be held in the kitchen until further notice.  Your training and classes will be different, too.”

None of them say a word against the idea, keeping their gazes locked on their plates as they eat, because they don’t yet realize she isn’t a mouthpiece for their father anymore. His authority is unassailable.  Grace’s is not.

“And,” she hesitates, “Sir Reginald will not be—here.  To oversee it.”

Now they look up.  “Really?”  Klaus asks excitedly, as Five’s eyes narrow at her, that much closer to working it out. Vanya simply blinks, but her brow is slightly furrowed; Ben has stilled, his hands halfway between his plate and his mouth.  Diego fidgets, pulling one of his knives from his sleeve and flipping it into the air. Allison’s expression indicates she is nauseated. 

Luther frowns.

“Why won’t father be here? Did,” his eyes glimmer, “did we do something wrong?”

“No,” Grace says firmly. “None of you did anything wrong.”

“Are we being punished?”

“It’s not a punishment.”

“Where is he?”  Ben asks.  “If he’s not going to be here, then, where is he?”

Grace is certain the correct answer is not, ‘scattered in ashes along the riverbed’, no matter that it is the truth, but she still doesn’t quite understand how to put it so they will understand.

“Is it because of what happened last night?”  Allison asks, one of her hands coming up to trace the side of her face.  The exact spot, Grace calculates, where Sir Reginald would have struck her if Grace had allowed it.

“What happened last night?” Five demands, leaning across the table toward Allison.

Allison darts a glance at Grace, then Luther.  “I—I was angry that he wouldn’t say goodnight to us.  So, when you all left, I,” she lowers her head, “I tried to rumor him.”

The table erupts, all of them making noise at once.  Klaus and Diego appear impressed, the former even reaching across to proffer his hand for a high-five; Vanya’s eyes go wide, and she grips her own arms, whispering, “You’re not supposed to use your powers on him;” Ben and Five exchange a glance and then look to Grace; Luther’s frown deepens into outrage as he says, “Allison, how could you?  You know he just doesn’t have time for stupid stuff like bedtimes.”

They all start to talk over one another, except for Allison who pales, indicating a loss of blood flow to her face, and Five, who is still looking at Grace.

Finally, before Grace can even attempt to regain their attention, Five cuts through the noise.  “And then what happened?”

Allison’s throat moves as she swallows.  “Um.” She rubs her face again, and Five’s expression changes, as does Klaus’.  “He tried to hit me,” her voice falls quieter with every word.  Luther seems more upset, now, as does Vanya.

“Tried?” Five prompts when she doesn’t say anything else.

Allison shifts in her seat, and Grace cuts in, sensing her discomfort.  “I caught his hand before he did and sent Allison to bed.”

“Holy shit,” Klaus breathes.

“Language,” Grace admonishes, gently, and he mumbles an apology.

“But…” Luther starts again, eyes darting from face to face, “Why would you do that?  What does that have to do with Dad not being here anymore?”

“Fathers aren’t supposed to hit their children,” Grace says evenly.

“But Allison was trying to rumor him!”

“That doesn’t make it right.”  Grace sees his confusion, still, and tries to explain.  “Fathers are supposed to be,” she tries to quantify love and devotion and care and attention, “kind.”  Thinks further, about training and hitting and bruises and blood.  “They’re supposed to protect their children.”  Thinks about disappointed faces at bedtime, and silent meals, and ignored questions, and continues, “They’re supposed to raise their children.

“Sir Reginald was not kind to you all, and he did not protect you.  I think,” Grace looks at them, meeting their eyes as a way to emphasize her seriousness, “that he hurt you all a great deal.  My function as your mother is to protect you, even from Sir Reginald.”

All seven of her children have fallen utterly still, eyes trained on her in complete silence, and shock, and, in Five’s case, as his gaze darts to her black dress and back to her face, realization.  His face pales even more drastically than Allison’s had, two minutes ago.

“What happened to Dad?” Luther asks, his voice breaking in the middle, and some line of code or processor or something in Grace malfunctions, if only for a moment, to hear him make that sound.

“Luther,” Five says, and Ben and Diego look at him.

“What happened to Dad?” Luther says, louder this time.  “What happened to him?  Tell me!” He shouts and stands up from the table, his warped silverware clattering onto the table.

Grace stands as well and starts to make her way around the table toward Luther, ignoring Diego’s, “Mom, what—” and Five’s, “Luther!” so she can give Luther her full attention

“Where’s our Dad?” Luther screams in her face as she reaches him and grabs her arm and starts squeezing.  “Tell me, tell me where he is!”

“Luther, darling,” Grace says, and does nothing to stop him, “he’s gone.  Sir Reginald is—your father is gone.”

His chest rises and falls rapidly, much faster than is optimal; Grace calculates he’ll start to hyperventilate in another twenty seconds if he continues.  “What did you do?”  He cries, and his voice breaks again, and Grace senses something in her malfunction again.

The plating on her arm is sending out alerts that it will become compromised if the current pressure continues.  Luther’s knuckles turn white as he tightens his grip on her arm.

“I calculated the best way to keep you all safe,” Grace says calmly, shaking her head at Diego when he moves to intervene.  All of the children have risen, now.   “Sir Reginald could not be allowed to hurt you anymore.  The authorities would have been unable to apprehend him, and he would not have stopped treating you the way he did.”

“Mom,” Diego whispers, but she doesn’t look away from Luther, who tightens his grip again and cracks the outer casing on her arm with a loud noise.  The others jolt in place, but Luther keeps breathing rapidly and starts to cry.

“Your father is dead, Luther,” Grace says at last.  For all her calculations, and study of human behavior, there is no other way to say this than plainly.  “I killed him.”

He lets loose a harsh, broken cry, and Grace catalogues it as the most human sound she’s ever heard. Unquantifiable.

Now, she raises her free hand to cup the side of Luther’s face, lets her thumb sweep across his cheek in a soothing gesture for the first time in his life.  His expression crumples and he lets out another shout as tears begin to leak from his eyes, and Grace catches one and smooths it away.  “I’m so sorry, dear.”

“How could you?”  Luther jerks away from her hand and releases her arm, stumbling backwards into the kitchen table.  Plates and silverware rattle and shift, and some of the milk and juice sloshes over the sides of their glasses and onto the wood.

“Luther,” Five says again, the pitch of his voice much lower, making his way around to his brother. Allison steps into him, too, and the pair of them clutch at Luther until he grabs back, much more gently than he had Grace.

None of them take their eyes off Grace for more than a few seconds at a time, a kind of watchfulness they had previously only reserved for Sir Reginald.  Grace reviews her earlier calculations on fear being part of their reaction to the news and lets it go.

The news has hurt them, she realizes suddenly; all of them, she recognizes as she turns to see all of them at once.  Even if it was for the best, Grace has—hurt her children.  And that means that she has failed to uphold her protocol today.

Diego reaches out to her and Grace automatically reaches back, will always automatically reach back to her children now that she will be allowed, and wraps her arms around him, careful to avoid getting the leaking oil from her broken casing on his pajamas.

“Mom,” he says, looking up at her as he hugs her middle, “are you okay?”

“Of course, dear,” she smiles down at him and squeezes him, gently.  “Are you okay, Diego?”

“I thi-i-ink so,” Diego says forcefully, and then sniffles.  “Is Si-i-r Reginald really gone?”

“Yes,” she says softly.

Klaus and Ben are looking at each other while Five and Allison still do their best to comfort Luther. Vanya stands listlessly by her seat with an uncertain expression.  Grace can read grief and fear in all of their faces and bodies, and anger.

Part of her programming tries to override her current actions and offer solutions to their feelings: encourage them to finish breakfast, make cookies, soothe and console and make sure they’re all right until the hurt fades and Grace is no longer paining them simply by existing.

But her knowledge of human behavior, and of these seven in particular, allows her to determine that those actions are unlikely to be successful.  Her children will continue to be in pain, and there is very little Grace can do to fix it.