iiregularhunters:

“Training, huh?”

Zero didn’t doubt her, but he also wasn’t dumb enough to outright believe her. Rebecca looked far too stressed out for that to be the case. There was more going on here and he was fairly confident that he could guess just what the other bits were.

“Sure, right.” Stepping inside, he reached out to idly snag a knickknack off her dresser. Nothing fragile or important, just something that he could hold instead of flailing his arms around uselessly. “Is training what they call ‘avoiding your dad’ these days? Cause I’ve definitely noticed that since, y’know.”

A beat before Zero looked up, gazing at Rebecca as he forced himself to say words that even he didn’t want to hear out loud. “Aerin’s core was shot through and I was left at the hands of Kai.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you, Papa.”

Which was the truth, that was her genuine reason for being so busy all the time. At what Zero said last though, that made a flinch go through her, and she lowered her head, her bangs shading her eyes.

“I wasn’t good enough. I was stupid enough to get captured. So I want to get better so it doesn’t happen again.”

She acknowledged that she had been stupid a while ago. Now all she wanted to do was make sure she wouldn’t be stupid in the future.