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“How many times do I have to tell you?!”
Yor lifted her head from the coffee she was pouring in the kitchen. She knew that Loid sometimes became irritated with Anya’s studying habits, but this level of volume was a rare performance.
She couldn’t see Anya over the back of the living room chair, but Loid stayed bent to the child’s eye level all the same, pointing at an unknown piece of paper. “Anya, you need to listen to me. In English, it is ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’. That-” He tapped a finger on a specific line, Yor craning her neck to see it. “Is just two ‘c’s.”
“It’s an e and a c!” Anya’s tinny voice rang out.
“Anya, if I can’t read it, the teacher can’t read it. Also, the word ‘seize’ starts with an ‘s’.”
“So it is…” She scribbled on the paper before holding it up to him.
“No!” He growled, snatching it up. “It’s spelled S-E-I-Z-E.”
“But ‘i’ before ‘e’...”
“There are exceptions to every rule, Anya.”
“Like letting me watch Spy Wars when I haven’t finished studying.”
Loid pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing dramatically. “We will try again after dinner.”
“Spy Wars!” Anya wailed, immediately scrambling to the television. Loid flopped onto the main chair, blue eyes emptily staring at the page.
Yor bit her lip, picking up the tray of mugs with Bond trailing her journey to the living room. She set down Loid’s mug with the pitcher of warmed milk, then Anya’s hot cocoa to sip during the commercial break. She sat on the couch arm closest to Loid as she studied her cup.
“Loid, I-” She stopped, unsure if she had his attention, until he looked up. “I know you said that as a part of this family, I’m allowed to-to share my thoughts on your parenting style?” Oh no that came out wrong, she thought with a gulp.
He stopped rationing his milk with precision, placing it with a placid expression on the tray before swiping up his coffee. “Of course, Yor. I value Anya’s success as equal to my own.” His eyes widened almost imperceptibly before shifting into their friendly roundness, the sharp focus disappearing into the amicable face of her husband. “As her father, I mean. If my child fails, then there’s something I’m not doing to help her reach her fullest potential.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Yor nursed her coffee, thinking back on how hard it was to help Yuri succeed. How he kept coming home in tears, then the teachers insisted on sending him to a specialist, and her after him…
“Do you have a suggestion?” Loid tilted his head, watching her closely. “One based on personal experience?”
“Huh?!”
“You raised Yuri yourself, correct? Maybe there’s something you’re picking up on that I’m not.”
“Oh. Well.” She curled her fingers around the warmth of the mug, wondering why she shook so violently. “I-I was just thinking. When Yuri was having a lot of trouble in school, they sent him to the counselor, who suggested I take him to a doctor, and…”
“And?”
And if Yuri doesn’t want people knowing his diagnosis, it’s not my secret to tell. Besides, Yor didn’t feel it fair to discuss her brother like that while conveniently leaving out how she had an identical secret. “When the teachers knew what was going on with him, they offered to help. They called them ‘learning accommodations’. He could take tests in a separate room if he gets overwhelmed, and when he broke his arm-” -when I accidentally broke his arm- “-they had someone writing out his answers to worksheets for him.”
“A separate room when overwhelmed? Writing out answers?” The narrowed eyes returned, Loid studying the frankly abysmal script. “That would certainly help with her difficulty in crowds…and her reading grades…maybe in classical language too…” His voice faded into inconsistent mumbling, mulling over his coffee and the homework with equal intensity.
Yor thought the conversation ended there, idly watching Spy Wars with Anya. Oh, they did not give that man nearly enough bones. The forearm had the radius and the ulna, and while yes, the radius may stick up like that upon breaking, the ulna would most likely follow it, unless he rather spectacularly managed to only flay that one bone with the muscles hanging off as they ripped and tore specifically to remove that fraction, to leave just one scrap of stability in the limb so they could still work and forever be left with a warning-why was Anya watching her in horror?
She ducked out of that line of questioning with a separate one posed by Loid. Anya somehow sensed Yor’s immediate unease (such a perceptive girl), announcing she was going to study in her room before gathering her books and shutting the door. Yor had no choice but to pull out books she purchased a lifetime ago as Loid cleaned the remains of their coffee. When they were back on the couch, he nodded along as she expanded on lists and summarized paragraphs, running his finger down sections she highlighted with the attention of a curious scholar. Eventually, she went back into her room to pull out a few torn pages of careful notes. His eyes popped when he saw them, holding her script in cautious hands.
“You did all this for your brother?”
“I’m not the best with reading long passages,” she admitted, looking away. “I needed to keep track for my own benefit. There’s also some solutions I came up with to help him study. Not all of them worked, but…well, if I was in school, I would’ve needed them too.”
“If you were in school?” Loid echoed.
“I had to drop out due to, eh-” -assassination work- “-similar difficulties.” That too.
“Drop out?” Loid sounded genuinely horrified at that, returning to the notes.
“It was my decision, of course, and with a brother to take care of, someone had to-”
“School was so difficult due to this condition that you could no longer attend?” His voice hushed into a whisper, running his thumb along her misspelled scribbles.
“It’s not that way for everyone.”
“But if you don’t have additional help, it hinders your ability to excel.”
“I guess.” Yor froze, only then realizing what he implied earlier. “Wait, how did you know that I’m also-”
“I’m a psychiatrist, Yor. I’m not unfamiliar with autism, and I know it has a strong genetic component. I just-I work more with shell shock. Soldiers, and such. So I didn’t even consider that-” He sighed, burying his face in his hands. “I just thought she didn’t like studying, not that-”
Oh, Loid. Yor’s heart squeezed. She placed one careful hand on his shoulder. “When I learned Yuri needed extra help that whole time and I wasn’t giving it to him, I felt terrible. I was a teenager with no experience in it, so I didn’t know what to do.”
“I’m supposed to know everything about her, I’m a-” he stopped himself, taking in a breath. “-a doctor, and her father.”
“It’s not a doctor’s job to treat their children.” Yor said it so simply it must be true, gathering up her research into a neat pile. “I’ll leave all of this for you, but some of it may be out of date-”
“I’ll look into it myself.” Loid tapped one finger on the notebook at the top of the stack. “And I’ll take her to the hospital on Saturday to see if they can run those tests you were talking about. If I have it on paper, the school may be more willing to listen.”
She smiled, nodding once before standing. He caught her wrist in his hand.
“Thank you, Yor. You’ve helped a lot. And since you know what this is like, on both sides of my interactions with Anya…” His eyes glassed over as he searched for the right words. Those irises settled back on her face with deep sincerity. “Tell me if I push too hard.”
“Of course, Loid.”