Chapter Text
For all that his imprisonment felt like it aged him by decades, Yoshi really wasn’t gone for more than three years. He finds out when he drags himself into the blinding lights of the Manhattan rush hour and staggers drunkenly to a bodega to snatch up a newspaper.
Three years. After all the things he’s seen and done, that is what he can’t believe. The date is far more impossible than Hidden Cities and yokai masquerading as beautiful roadies. Three years.
His talent manager, a short, round woman who never liked Big Mama for reasons Yoshi had previously shortsightedly misconstrued as jealousy and now considers a god-given gift of clairvoyance or at the very least insane intuition, is near-apoplectic with rage but somehow not angry enough to have deleted his number. Hers is the first call he gets when paparazzi pictures leak of “Lou Jitsu Spotted in Midtown! Thrilled Fans Speculate Secret New Project in Works!”—which is a fair assumption, given that he’s still dressed for the Battle Nexus and looks like he just rolled out of a war zone.
“What secret project is it, exactly?” Hala demands in that very level tone that only ever precedes her losing her absolute shit in a big way. “Something your agency should know about, maybe? Something you should have explained before you dropped off the face of the planet for MULTIPLE YEARS?”
“Probably,” he says weakly.
He’s more than a little bewildered. For so long, his only interactions with any living creatures were the pit fights he was thrown into. He doesn’t know how to handle the sense of normalcy in a phone call from a friend. It’s hostile, sure, but not in an immediately life-threatening way, and Yoshi has to stare really hard at the Caller ID so his face doesn’t crumple with overwhelmed tears when Hala says his name.
It’s not entirely surprising that his townhouse is still here, exactly the way he left it before that ill-fated dinner date, given that all fees and payments are set up to come out of his accounts automatically—but it’s still a lot to process. That he could just walk out of one world and into another. Step through a vaguely familiar door into a former life.
For years he didn’t have anything but an empty cell. It shouldn’t be possible that he could be surrounded by wealth now. He doesn’t know what to do with the luxury furnishings. He’s almost certainly staining his sofa beyond repair just from sitting on it.
He got home six hours ago. He’s been in a stupor since then, with a precious bundle of stolen cloak and baby turtles sleeping soundly in the crook of his arm.
“—even listening to me? Lou, I swear to—”
“I am, I am,” Yoshi lies. “Uh, look, can I call you back?”
“Oh, do you have something more important than the future of your entire career to deal with?” Hala asks icily.
The littlest of the four babies opens its eyes. They’re a perfect mirror of Yoshi’s own, warm brown and human. It’s hard to guess how old the turtles are, but they’re definitely old enough to smile, and the little one proves it.
It makes a quiet noise, something between a babble and a coo, and lifts one pudgy hand up toward Yoshi’s face.
The call is on speaker and the noise must carry. Hala cuts herself off mid-word, surprised; then she exhales slowly, as if in understanding. Whatever it is she understands Yoshi must have missed entirely, because his whole brain is preoccupied by giving this tiny reaching creature whatever it wants. Lifting his arm and dipping his head, until the spotted turtle can paw around at his cheek and nose with its miraculous little fingers, clumsy and curious and delighted.
Like it has some kind of good opinion of Yoshi already. Like somehow it’s happy to see him.
It’s only been about three years since Yoshi was spirited away. That means Yoshi is not quite thirty years old. He feels ancient, and at the same time absurdly young.
He never, ever imagined himself with children. It’s something he and Big Mama talked about as their relationship progressed past casual and into more serious territory. He couldn’t imagine bringing a child into the world, potentially saddling them with the Hamato mantle and all the pain and loss that came with it. He couldn’t imagine leaving them the way his mother disappeared from his life. If you’d asked him even a day ago whether or not he thought he could open his heart up like that again Yoshi is pretty sure his answer would have been a resounding no.
But now there are these four fragile creatures, no longer animal, not fully human, who don’t have anywhere else to belong in the whole world. Four babies, so small that Yoshi’s heart leaps with panic at the idea of letting them go, with green-toned skin and three-fingered hands and eyes the same shape and color of his own.
Their tiny faces ease Yoshi out of his shock—bring him sinking back into his body, and all its pain and hunger and exhaustion, all its proof of life.
Yoshi forgets about the ongoing call in his opposite hand until the spotted turtle starts to squirm and almost dislodges its siblings and Yoshi moves to support them and finds a phone in the way.
Hala is silent on the other end of the line. He remembers, belatedly, that he never answered her question.
So he says, “Yes, I do.”