This is not the best chapter. I am sorry that this will be extremely low quality but I just wanted to get this chapter out. I have been sitting back and ignoring this story for long enough and it isn't fair to you guys that I don't finish it. Tell me this chapter sucks, you got a free pass to do so because hell, even I acknowledge that it does. When this story is over I will fix this chapter but for now I want to get this story moving again and finish everything so that I can shift the stories on my profile over to originals strictly which will make me lose followers of course but I want to move on from fanfiction. I'm too old to be writing this stuff (in my own personal opinion!! no shade to people who write fanfictions in their late teens or early adulthood because hell, this is a good way to develop your writing skill so write away!!)

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Fear was an entity that one couldn't see but could feel slowly wrapping its skinny fingers around your neck as it breathed down your neck constricting your throat and causing your heart to beat harder and harder inside of your chest almost as if a thunderstorm were roaring inside of your body. Your blood would turn to ice and you would be chilled to your core as it told you everything you wanted to push to the back of your mind as your palms became sweaty.

That was what fear was for Takashi. As he sat quietly in a chair in front of a pane of bullet-proof glass with his sister gripping tightly onto his hand, he couldn't help but feel these things as he waited for the boogeyman's arrival. Every sound made the young man flinch as his grey eyes darted around the room trying to find the source of the noises. He wanted to shove the guard out of the way behind him and go running back out to the car. He didn't care if he would be arrested for assaulting an officer, it was better than facing the very being that caused Takashi all this pain.

"Officer Kirk is probably having issues getting him out here; your father never likes leaving his cell and he had only ever had two visitors... he may not want to see you two," The guard behind Takashi spoke gruffly.

"Oh," Aila tightened her grip on her brother's hand as she looked behind them, "My mother visited him while he was on trial, but I don't know who else would come here to see that monster."

"Some man with weirdly light brown hair."

"Adam," Takashi whispered to himself and clenched his jaw. Adam had visited this god forsaken hellhole before he had told Takashi to do the same thing.

Before Aila could ask any more questions though, the door on the other side of the glass opened and an older man was shoved through it. Takashi's eyes widened as he watched the greying man shout profanity at the guard before he was shoved into the chair, the man's grey eyes full of pure and unbridled hatred as he was forced to comply with the guard's orders. However, when he looked at the siblings sitting across from him any sign of anger disappeared from his face. A smile slowly tugged at the corners of his lips and showed yellowed teeth. Takashi's father looked as if he had been dragged through every level of hell and then had his face pummeled in a few times before he made it to the chair in front of the teen boy. His hair was a ragged mess of grey and black, his facial hair had grown in patchy and had stains in it while his right eyebrow had a deep scar going through it. The burly man from Takashi's memories, the one who had the strength of a thousand men was no more. Now he looked weak and pitiful in the ugly orange colored garbs he wore.

"My sweet children came to visit me," Nathaniel chuckled and raised his cuffed hands up to point at his kids as he looked at the guard who escorted him into the room, "Aren't they just the best, Volkov?"

The guard, Volkov, simply looked away from Nathaniel and stood in front of the only door to make sure the prisoner didn't make a break for it.

Takashi felt his chest tightening as he listened to his father's words. Though Nathaniel's appearance went through a change, his voice remained the same. Takashi's teeth clamped together as he instantly tugged his gaze away from his father and lowered them to the ground. "Nathaniel," Aila spoke quietly as she took in a deep breath.

Nathaniel's carefree manner broke as his eyes narrowed on his daughter, "Did I give you permission to address me by my first name, girl?"

"Prisoner!" Volkov exclaimed.

"Oh, shut up," Nathaniel rolled his eyes and shrugged, "This is only friendly banter, right, Lee?"

Upon hearing Aila's nickname leave their father's mouth she instantly broke her grip on Takashi's hand and stood up to walk over to the corner on the room and lean against the wall trying not to gag. Takashi looked over his shoulder as his heartrate spiked.

"Ma'am are you okay?"

"Y-Yeah, I just need a second before I speak to him..."

"So," Nathaniel turned his attention to his favorite toy, "How is school going for you?"

Takashi looked up in confusion from the totally normal small talk his father was making with him. The teen wanted to scream a string of curse words at the man but staring at his father face to face left him speechless. How the hell was he even supposed to answer something like that? "Uh," Takashi looked around at the guard standing a few feet behind him as if the man were going to answer for him. Realizing that it was just wishful thinking, he slowly turned back to his father and looked down at his hands as he whispered his reply, "Fine."

Nathaniel leaned back in his metal chair and let out a long sigh, "I bet it is pretty fine since you are such a handsome young man, surely you have women and possibly even a man crawling around begging for your attention. Those looks are all from me after all so you are definitely going to get a lot from just putting your dick in any hole you find like how you did with that one kid," Nathaniel cleared his throat as he glared at Takashi, "Adam was his name, right?"

Takashi looked up at his father in pure shock. The man was truly as disgusting and vulgar as he had always been. "Pardon?"

"Adam, that nasty little four-eyes has been giving it to you, hasn't he?"

"What the fuck?" Takashi breathed as he began to feel his blood boil in his veins.

"Oh please," Nathaniel lifted his hands up and picked at his teeth with his nails, "It is obvious he has a thing for you. He was all Takashi this and Takashi that when he came in to interrogate me and if you remember from the wonderful time we got to spend together when you were younger, I hate being questioned."

Takashi's jaw clenched as he balled his hands into fists wanting to slam them into his father's face. Of course, he remembered. He remembered everything. The way Nathaniel's hand would strike him if he didn't listen, the way his gut would twist up into a knot when he felt the man's touch, the way his father made him so frightened of the world around him. He remembered absolutely every single detail right down to the scratches of the chair he was forced to sit in for many of his punishments. This monster, Takashi's personal little boogeyman, deserved to rot in hell and be tortured personally by the devil himself.

"Taki?" Aila's voice sounded softly in his ears snapping him out of the memories he had with his father. Takashi looked over at his sister and watched as she mouthed the words 'calm down' at him while she carefully unclenched his fists and rubbed the palms of his hands where his nails dug into his skin with her thumbs.

Takashi shook his head and took in a deep breath as he tried to calm his nerves, "I'm not here to talk about Adam or anything like that I just came here to see you and leave," Takashi stated with a quiver in his voice.

"Yeah and I'm totally here to just stare at how adorable my two precious babies got," Nathaniel mocked, "Cut the bullshit Shishi, we both know you're here to ease some of your worries I'm not stupid."

"Well you may not be stupid but you're a fucking waste of space," Aila hissed.

So much for being calm.

"Oh wow, big girl words? How you've grown!" Nathaniel chuckled as he held his hands up in mock surprise. How easy it was to act tough when there was a barrier separating you from the two people who hated you the most was surprising.

Takashi nudged his sister to make her shut up and he began trying to make an effort to help himself get over his fears. "You're no longer a threat to us," Takashi stated as if he were trying to reassure himself. "You aren't the monster that hides under my bed waiting to prey on me now, I have nothing to be scared of and that is why I am here, to let you know you have no control over me."

"Really?"

"Y-Yes."

"Then, tell me boy," Nathaniel leaned forwards in his seat with a sinister smile, "Why did you replace me?"

The hairs on the back of Takashi's neck stood up as an eerie chill ran down his back as if a cold wind passed through the sealed off room they were stuck in. Had he really replaced his father with Adam? In some ways he did replace Nathaniel without a single doubt in his mind. The things he and Adam did was supposed to help him get over his trauma but, in the end, it was like rubbing salt in his wounds. The episodes never went away, and he still struggled with having new people in his life; he didn't even interact with people in the support group outside of Pidge and Allura. Adam did become Nathaniel's replacement in some ways, but he also became something much more. His name made Takashi's heart throb every time he listened to it leave someone's mouth. He missed looking at the freckles spotting the man's face and he missed the summers they would spend together out in the field he had taken Allura to in order to get all the anger inside of her out.

"I didn't replace you," Takashi whimpered as he lowered his gaze. "There was nothing let to replace once you were taken away. What you did to me left a hole in my heart and he tried to help me piece it back together in any way he could which was more than what anyone has ever done for me before."

"Taki," Aila whispered, her eyes full of regret as tears began to form in her eyes.

Nathaniel rolled his eyes and made a puking noise, "How romantic. You know, one day this is all going to bite you in your ass kiddo. The only person you can rely on in this world is yourself and you're going to learn that the hard way."

"That isn't true!" Takashi stood up abruptly knocking over his chair and causing the security guard to tense up behind him, "There are so many people in the world that you can rely on but you just have to make the effort to reach out and connect to them. People don't drag you down, you do it to yourself and in the end, you just become an empty, lonely shell of a human being!" He slammed his fist against the table wanting to strangle his father for everything he had ever done to him.

He wanted to slam the man's head into the table until there was nothing left of his face except for a bloody pulp. He wanted to see Nathaniel cry for mercy, to apologize to both Takashi and Aila. In the end that is all he wanted, an apology. He didn't want to be father and son again. He didn't want to sit here and talk to this man. He just wanted to hear the sincere regrets of a man who became a sinner.

"God," Nathaniel curled his lip slightly, "Did that little bitch make you a pansy?"

Aila stood up and glared down at Nathaniel causing Takashi to look at her in surprise, "What makes you such a good judge in character? You're sitting behind a pane of bullet-proof glass talking so highly when there's a scar marking you as someone else's bitch." Slowly raising her finger at the man, she glowered, "Don't you dare speak to Takashi as if you know the man he is today. Don't talk down to him when he is trying to make a better life for himself while you rot away in here!"

Takashi placed his hand on his fuming sister's shoulder trying to calm her down. Nathaniel narrowed his eyes at her and shrugged, "Yeah, child molesters don't fare well here in prison. I have a rough time getting through each day but in a year, I'll be out of here and I won't have to keep an eye over my shoulder. Do you want me to apologize to any of you because I won't. You are nothing but dirt and God won't take pity on the two of you."

God? What God existed in a world such as this? A world where pests like Nathaniel thrive and prey on the weak, why would Takashi rely on the big guy? "If he looks down upon us then what is it that he thinks of you?" Takashi asked. "You're among the evil things that come from the heart of a man apart from God."

Nathaniel stared at Takashi but spoke no words. Slowly he lifted his hands up and looked at the guard behind him, "Take me back to my cell."

"That's it?" Aila exclaimed, getting close enough to the glass so that her hot breath formed fog upon its surface. "You're just going to leave like that?"

"God will be the judge of my character, not the two of you."

The siblings had watched the guard tote the prisoner away from them in silence. There wasn't anything more they could say or do. Anything that Takashi would have asked would have only brought him more grief. They left the prison. They stood in the café parking lot where they had finally reunited and said their second goodbye. The road home was a long one for the lost man behind the wheel. Many things had occurred to him that day. He was missing an important half of himself he only realized he needed not too long ago and meeting Nathaniel only rooted this stray thought into his brain, slowly infecting any other thought with the same name of the person he truly loved and needed to see in this very moment.

Stepping up the staircase in front of him, he climbed towards the door that would bring him either to nirvana or to a life worse than death. Lifting his hand up he brought the knuckle of his index finger down onto the wooden door. Hearing a lock slowly turn from the other side after a short moment, the door creaked open and a pair of eyes peeked through the crack of the door.

"Takashi?" Adam's voice sounded surprised as he opened the door wider so that his entire body was in the doorway. He was wearing a pair of flannel pj pants and a stained Queen shirt. His hair was a ragged mess as if he had been hung over from a night out drinking and his glasses rested crookedly on his face. "Are you oka-"

"I need to say something to you," Takashi interrupted.

Adam blinked in bewilderment before he slowly opened the door and stepped to the side, "Y-Yeah, come on in. Wyatt's on date so we have the place to ourselves to talk."

Without thinking twice, Takashi stepped into the apartment and took in a deep breath; today was going to be one hell of a day.

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Again  I am sorry for the low quality, I just want to focus on my original books more than fanfiction at this point so I am going to be trying to rush through the story as fast as I can while providing good quality (minus this one) chapters.

Please, have a good night and make sure you eat your dinner!

-Anri