outline: shinkane 2

[cloudedhues]

fandom: psycho pass | shinkane
prompt/summary: "Please talk to me about single dad ko raising his and Akane's kid" - anonymous

ok here goes - akane dies from unidentified disney-mom-syndrome (aka “the sickness”/accident/got shot/died in the field of duty/perished off-screen/etc etc) and kou’s left in the aftermath with their one-year old daughter

some thoughts:

• much as i’d like kou to be the noble grieving single dad/widow, he’d probably end up self-destructing like he always does. ginoza and the others probably take care of the kid for a good while after akane’s death.
• kou gets his shit together (aka akane visits him in a dream and tells him to get his shit together aka idk insert your wake-the-fuck-up-kou scenario here). kou reconciles with his daughter.
• some days are better than others. but after being absent for that long, he’s never turning his back again, no matter how hollow and how aching his bones feel to even get out of bed and go through each day.
• one night, the kid (im not good with names. let’s call her mushroom bc that’s kou’s eventual nickname for her as she grows older. she absolutely hates it, like her mother did.) wakes up crying. kou doesn’t believe in baby monitors; her crib is in his room so he wakes up alongside her. kou tries to calm her down but she keeps on crying. he tries to sing, lull her to sleep, feed her her bottle, but none of it works. he just kind of rocks her for awhile and he doesn’t know when the tears start until they’re already out and he’s spouting off a litany of apologies (“–i’m sorry she’s not here. i’m sorry i’m not her. i’m sorry i’m not good at this–”) until the words kind of run together and absurdly enough, that’s when she starts to calm down.
• masaoka helps a lot. he knows what it’s like.
• she grows up to be a relatively independent child with a big penchant for adventure. she takes a lot after kou: his perceptiveness; the dry, unexpected snark; his love for books; his capacity for overlooking the rules. but the sense of wonder, the earnestness, the stubbornness, the heart and the empathy – that’s all akane.
• kou does his best. but he’s deeply flawed and mangled. there are times when he’ll unwittingly hurt her because of his distance, because they’re too similar to even understand each other, because there are times where it’s painful to even look at her. she can’t change most of those things but at the very least, there’s a reason why she keeps her hair long on purpose.
• she never asks him what akane was like. she’ll ask her uncles and her aunts and grandma tomoya but never him. one thing she knows for certain is that her mother must be close enough of a miracle to get someone as shut-off as her father to open up. in some ways, she envies akane for that.
• it’s not always bad days. she loves her father and she knows she’s the most important thing in his life. he picks her up from school, helps her make a macaroni house for an arts and crafts project, teaches her the basics of self-defense, lets her doodle on his most prized books. when they’re both a little older, she’ll take him to the park and have a nice walk or go to the nearby bookstore to fill his shelves. even when she’s eighteen, when she finds herself falling asleep on the couch – without fail, she will wake up in her bed, blankets tucked in and secure.
• she loves her aunts but who can blame her for wishing for a mother? her father takes her matchmaking attempts with an endeared sort of humor and it is only when he sets her down and tells her straight out that he doesn’t need anyone else but her that she finally stops.
• he’d be the type of dad that all her friends would admire and be slightly intimidated by. even though she complains otherwise about what a goof he is. examples: starts nicknaming her “mushroom” on purpose after she gives herself a horrendous haircut after finding some safety scissors tucked away in a drawer somewhere. steals her fries when she isn’t looking. jokes about doing a background check on the people she dates (she suspects he’s not fully kidding). is intentionally candid and shameless so he can embarrass her whenever she invites her friends over. 
• if there’s one thing kou does well as a father is that he doesn’t coddle and doesn’t patronize. if asked a question, he will give out a straight answer. when she starts going through puberty, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash at any of her inquiries. he’ll walk out of that pharmacy and carry out a box of tampons and birth control with no problem. 
• because he trusts her enough to do things for herself, she’s pretty open with him about a lot of things. if there’s one flaw in their relationship, it’s certainly not awkwardness or lack of trust on her part. the first and only time she ever lies to him is on the 15th anniversary of akane’s death. she visits her mother’s grave by herself and when he asks where she’s been, he doesn’t challenge her claim even when they both know she’s not telling the truth.
• the first time they have a proper conversation about her mother, she’s already 20 and in college. during a visit back home, she finds an old photograph of akane at the same age she is now and when she finally asks him what she was like, the conversation isn’t the easiest but it’s certainly not as difficult as she thought it’d be. the true answer is long and beyond words because akane was and is a lot of things for him but the simplest one he can give her is that “she was a lot like you”. whether it’s a relief or disappointment that his answer is not at all surprising, she isn’t certain.
• she travels a lot as she grows older and never really stays in one place for too long. she never gives notice when she returns to japan to visit her father so in all respects, he shouldn’t know when she’s coming. but even then, it’s as if he knows anyway regardless. there will always be a second empty plate for her on the table and her old bedroom will already be made and waiting as if he always expected her to come home from the start.
• she doesn’t know her mother enough to love her. but from seeing how much her father does, it’s a bit of a comfort to know how much she would as well had things been different.

addendum: "Wait what if instead of dying in the single parent au Akane gets added to the sibyl system" - anonymous

i always wonder at what would have to happen in order for akane to join sibyl. i have a hard time believing akane would do this willingly especially after she’s given birth to her kid. but similarly i have a hard time believing sibyl coerced her through brute force. not to say that they wouldn’t resort to something so primitive (because of course they would) but they’re a pragmatic kind of bunch who default to mind games before outright violent opposition with someone like akane, especially since at this point in canon she’s playing nice with them (or as nice as she can get hahaha). so something major has to happen in order for her to fully start opposing them (something that overrides her initial goal for stability in japan) and force their hand. i like the idea that she sacrifices herself for her daughter’s sake though. they give her a choice between her initial motivations and her kid’s life and really what else can she choose??? anyway she submits and joins them but like basically as a bucky barnes-esque brainwashed puppet bc there’s more angst that way (and it’s hard to evoke any kind of real tension if akane’s just one nondescript brain among the bunch)

a few thoughts tho:

• unfortunately i can’t really come up with any cute domestic hcs in this scenario bc i feel as if kou would be even more distant here. he’d be too busy simultaneously ruining himself and sibyl. their kid grows up, resents him even though she hates that she understands why her upbringing isn’t exactly the happiest. kou only sees her in passing and if they happen to be in each other’s presence for more than a minute, it’s difficult for them to overlook the tension to really connect. the only true indication of fatherly love he gives her is his intentional denial of her participation in any real action in the cause. she trains anyway to spite him.
• i think the most painful part is their kid growing up and thinking that her mom is dead because that’s all kou will ever say about the matter when the reality of it is much worse. she does eventually find out and can’t decide which of the two feels more painful: that her mother is very much “alive” or that her father lied to her about it.
• im all for the skeptic/believer dynamic. kou’s pretty much trying to shut every soft part of himself off, every affection and love he has towards akane, to get the job done and their kid is still holding onto the hope that she’s not as gone as he thinks. 
• he does love her though in his own dysfunctional, flawed way. their kid, who is basically a product of her parents’ respective idealism and impulsiveness, recklessly goes after akane herself to see if she can turn her. kou finds out and raises hell to get her back.
• the only time when they’ll actually reconcile and start building something close to a functional relationship is after sibyl is no longer in the picture (meaning akane dies along with sibyl or somehow gets de-programmed). either way it ends with a final confrontation with all three of them. extra points if akane momentarily returns to herself when she sees her daughter bc why the fuck not
• akane dying sounds a bit predictable at this point so i’m a big fan of the idea that she does get de-programmed because it’s not exactly the happy ending that everyone expects. sometimes healing and learning to move on from trauma is so much harder than experiencing the actual trauma itself. like the shit sibyl made akane do, the layers of love and resentment built between kou and their kid, mixed with the general reality that all three of them are incredibly dysfunctional in ways that maybe not even forgiveness can fix can’t be easily tied to a neat bow at the end. sometimes just love itself, no matter how much they have between all three of them, isn’t enough. there’s a lot of ways akane, kou and their kid can go from there. maybe one of them leaves because it harms them more to to stay, maybe they make it work, maybe they don’t, or maybe they come to a place that’s as realistic to a happy ending as they can get.