#Emi probably will be allowed to do stuff with them but only in the holidays and only 'easier' tasks

[factorialsotherfandoms]

In which Emi takes after her mother in more ways than one.

(For @rabbit-harpist , but also anyone else who wants to read it)

(Also on ao3)

There are university brochures scattered all over the dining room table, a sea of bright colours and photographs of smiling young adults. Most are Mexican establishments - they do live there, after all - but there's a couple from Lucie's old home of Switzerland, Diego's Brazil, Jeffry's America... A scattering of places under one roof, just like their family.

Emi is leafing through one, while Lucie looks at another, a spreadsheet with the local crime rates and housing costs also up on her laptop.

"What about here?" Lucie asks, passing the booklet over to her daughter. "It looks pretty, no? And it is very good for programming."

"It's too far away," Emi barely looks at it, same as most of the rest. "I want to stay close."

"You're good enough," Lucie knows Emi's been fine traveling before - surely the problem is the grades? "I know you can do it."

"It's not that," Emi looks down, and to the side, fingers flexing uncomfortably against the paper. "I want to stay with you. To help."

"I have your fathers," Lucie promises. "And if I need lady help, Abuelita is here."

"Not like that," a bit of a snap. "With your investigations! I know I need to learn to program better, but I speak French, and Portuguese, and English, and Spanish, and I can run, and I can hide, and I'm a very fast reader! I know I'm not old enough yet, but once I turn eighteen..."

"Non."

Lucie's response is immediate, instinctual, soaked in blood and in fear and in all the things that have happened.

"No?"

"It's too dangerous," Lucie says, and all she can see are the corpses of friends she has made. "You can keep helping with the planning, but you are not coming."

"Why not? You do it all the time!"

"It's not safe! Do you think we want this for you? To see you loose limbs and eyes and your life! You could be something, Emi! Why would you throw it away to end up in some monster's stomach?!"

"Because I want to help! You're out there - you're all out there all the time - and I'm sick of being helpless! I'm eighteen in six months! I've been training, practicing! I can do it if you let me!"

"Emília Sophia da Silva," there's fear in Lucie's spine, fear she hasn't felt since the eighth time one of them nearly died, fear she didn't think she knew how to feel anymore, not when the tenth passed and she had not recovered - fear that comes out as a snap and a shout. "You are /not/ getting more involved than you already are! You never should have been involved in the first place!"

"Well I am involved now! And you can't stop me! If you won't let me join your team, I'll just find someone else's!"

"Why can't you just be a normal child and stay safe?!"

"I stopped being a normal child the day I watched my father die!"

"And maybe we just want to give you a normal life! Just wait a bit longer! Until you graduate, until you find yourself at least!"

"I thought you of all people would understand!" Emi screams back, voice finally cracking. "And I know who I am! I've always known who the fuck I am!"

"You're seventeen! No seventeen year old knows who they are!"

"I'm /your/ daughter, aren't I?!"

Lucie freezes.

Emi watches her for a moment, before turning and fleeing. She leaves the door to the dining room open, but cracks the handle into the wall as she throws it to the side.

One, two, three...

A door upstairs slams shut.

Lucie burrows her head in her hands, and she screams in frustration.

She screams, and it becomes sobs, and Benito answers. He whistles, leaning on the doorframe, watching her cry.

Lucie takes a deep breath, wipes her tears, turns to him, "you heard that, then?"

"Well, yeah, I think the neighbors did too. You too really don't know how to be quiet, do you?"

"Not now, Benito," Lucie keeps herself in check better than she expected she could. "Not right now."

He comes over, sits down, picks up the brochure Emi had been favour and starts flicking through. It might have taken them all a few years, but he has learnt how to be quiet.

Lucie takes her time, hisses her frustrations through her teeth. Stupid child, foolish child, why can't she want things a normal child wants? Why can't she just want to go out to the club, get drunk, fall asleep on someone's couch and have to get to lectures in the morning?

"Why can't she be /safe/?" is the frustration she verbalises, the one at the root of it all.

Benito grabs another booklet, starts flicking through that instead, "she's your daughter."

"She's your daughter too," Lucie doesn't even have a pencil to hand, so she threatens him with a finger. "Fuck this. I'm getting wine."

She goes to move and fetch some, only for Benito to reveal he's been carrying some the whole time. She snatches the bottle, takes a couple of mouthfuls, and hands it back.

Benito uses a glass.

Faker.

"You know what I mean, though," Benito swishes his glass - and, ah, he just wanted to be dramatic. "She's grown up surrounded by this. Just like Luis isn't escaping the mob, she isn't escaping the Order."

"I just want her to be safe," Lucie gestures to her legs, to the scar peeking out from Benito's sunglasses, to the photo on the mantle where Jeffrey has a broken leg. "What sort of parents are we, that we can't keep her safe?"

"We were never going to," and Benito has shifted, taking on that quieter, reflective voice that Lucie hates because it means he has finally decided to talk sense. "The moment her father walked her into Pancea's office? She was never going to be safe again."

"She's going to die," Lucie whispers. "I'm letting my baby die, if I let her do this."

"And you're killing her yourself if you don't," Benito finally drinks some of the wine, almost two thirds of his glass in one go. "Pancea killed her father, the Order saved her mother, and gives her the chance for revenge."

Lucie is fairly sure it isn't about revenge for Emi, it's about the fact her parents keep going back into danger, and she's at home and helpless and...

And Lucie understands.

She does understand, she understands so well; she could have stayed away, Benito, Jeffrey, Diego and Luis could all have stayed away, but they didn't. They didn't, because still hunted they weren't safe. They didn't because the others were going, or because they couldn't live with not knowing, or because hunting the monsters makes those under the bed less threatening, or...

Lucie likes to think they joined the Order to save people, but she knows it's a lie.

They did it to save themselves, to save each other, and because when the world had decided they were nothing they /refused/ to accept it and they demanded to leave their mark.

"When did you start making sense?" Lucie asks, but she knows, she knows, and she knows why too.

"About when Abuelita kicked it into me," he laughs.

It wasn't.

It was with blood on his hands and screaming for help, it was in nights huddled under a closet praying nothing would hurt him, it was when the other cell in the city were wiped out overnight, and it was Benito who had to autopsy the corpses.

Lucie leans over as much as she can; Benito shuffles over, lets her rest her head on his shoulder.

"Sounds about right," she says, and she breathes, and continues. "Maybe it would be nice to have Emi close? Abuelita would like her to be able to come for family dinners."

"Exactly!" Benito's grin picks back up, and he gestures with his glass. "And nobody says no to Abuelita, not even in her old age."

"Oui," Lucie shuts her eyes, and sighs, and adds. "... I should go apologise."

"Finish the bottle first," Benito passes it to her. "Let Pizza Boy calm her down and Diego talk it through with her first."

He isn't a pizza boy, not any more - but its comforting, perhaps, how the nickname sticks.

She takes a glass this time. Benito half-fills it, and she takes the time to sip it.

Cheap shit, of course, because it's still fucking Benito.