Note: Written mostly in Zaitsu's point of view. I kept his name "Zaitsu" in the description to avoid reader confusion. Takes place roughly nine years after chapter 63 in Insanity.

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'It's times like these I stop and realize just how smart my son is. He's now thirteen years old, and still remembers a brief point in his life back when he had just turned four years old.

My girlfriend at the time had moved back in with me. I hadn't had custody of my son before she moved out, and therefore he didn't know who she was. Now, just really quick, I'd like to clarify something. Although I call him my son, and he calls me his father, he's really my nephew. The son of my older brother.

However, I will always call him my son, and though he learned at the age of eight that I'm his uncle, he has continued to call me father and accepted the explanation I gave him for why I was the one who raised him.

Now, back to the story.

My girlfriend at the time had just moved back in with me, and my son was four years old. At first he didn't really seem to understand why there was a new person in the house, and why she was sleeping in my bed. After coming home from school one day, he began to call her "Mommy." This startled me, seeing as he barely knew her, and she was even younger than I was at the time. It was awkward having a four year old calling an eighteen year old "Mommy." But, she seemed to deal with it alright, and we went on with our lives.

Now this is the point when I'm going to give her a name. Not her real name, to save her the embarrassment of possibly reading this and having her realize who I am. She probably regrets ever being with me, and I can't really blame her.

From this point on, I'll call her Phoenix. This way she'll know who she is but anyone she might be in a relationship with will be none the wiser.

About a month and a half after Phoenix moved in, an incident occurred and I was hospitalized for a little over a month. When I came home, immediately things were going wrong. I held a little hope in my heart that night when I fell asleep, my son sleeping in my arms and Phoenix sleeping next to us, that things would work out and he could continue to have a mother figure in his life.

Within days Phoenix had lashed out against a teenage boy that was living with us at the time, and had lashed out against a friend's younger sister, and myself. It was only a matter of time before she lashed out at my son as well. Everyone was upset, and I was miserable. My son had to go to the hospital to have his appendix removed, and that night I left my house, the teenage boy, the friend's younger sister, and the two pets in tow. We slept in the car that night in an empty parking lot, seeing as after a month of hospitalization, I didn't have the money for a hotel room.

The next day I gathered up my pride and kicked Phoenix out of the house. About a week later I was on my way to pick up my son from my friend's house where he'd spent the night, and I was in a car accident. Some idiot ran a red light and totaled my Dodge Neon. The car was a loss, but I walked away with relatively minor injuries and a bad case of whiplash.

Depression overwhelmed me for about a year after my breakup with Phoenix. Although we were only together for a few months, she was the first person I ever loved romantically, and to be honest, I still love her to this day. During my bought of depression, I couldn't figure out what to do with my life, and I must confess, I was a horrible father.

Still, my son loved me regardless and I thank him for not giving up on me and for not letting my behavior scar him for life. Of course, I didn't act as badly as you'd think, by the way I talk about it. But I still feel incredibly guilty seeing as friends and family had to step in and make sure he was taken care of and getting the attention that any young child needs.

Now, please forgive me for taking so long to get to the point of this article, but I had to make sure you had the full background story in order to fully appreciate how intelligent my son is.

Last weekend my son and I were sitting down at the table, emptying out his backpack and taking out anything he didn't need, organizing his papers, and checking his homework to make sure he had done it all, like we do several times each week. It satisfies my OCD to make sure that he's organized and will have everything he needs for school.

It was during this obsessive ritual that I was going through his English folder and looking through his past writing assignments, checking the grades he'd gotten. That was when I found it.'

"Hey Dad!" Zack called, knocking on the door of the master bedroom. "Come on, I want to shoot some hoops before we go to the movies!" He'd grown into a fine young man. Gone were the days when his head was level with his father's hip, here were the days that he could just barely see over his father's shoulder.

The door to the room opened up and Zaitsu stood in the doorway. His hair was long now, pulled back at the base of his neck. He wore glasses, thick black frames in front of those bright red eyes of his.

"I can't at the moment. I'm sorry. My deadline's tomorrow. I shouldn't take too much longer though, I seem to be on a roll. If we don't have time to play before the movie, we'll stay up late and play afterwards, okay?" he asked the boy.

"You promise?" Zack asked, giving his father a suspicious look, holding his basketball in front of his stomach.

"It's a four day weekend, you don't have school tomorrow. Yes, I promise. And since Lissy is planning on spending most of the weekend with Iicha and Kitty, I'm all yours. We can do whatever you want this weekend." He couldn't help but smile.

"Really!?" Zack asked excitedly.

"Of course," he laughed.

"Okay. I'm gonna go practice my jump shot," Zack said with a nod, heading down the hallway towards the front door.

"Leave the front door open," Zaitsu called after him, before returning to his desk and his computer. He left his bedroom door open so he could hear Zack easier.

He cracked his knuckles and resumed typing.

'It was a writing exercise that he'd been assigned for English class. The instructions were to choose one of your parents and a super hero, and to write about how that parent is like that super hero. The title of it was what first caught my attention, "My dad is Superman." I double checked to make sure I wasn't seeing things, then looked at my son for an explanation. He told me it was for class and that he'd been given a week to write it.

When I asked him why he never mentioned it before, his answer was simplistic and the kind of answer that children are so famous for that is a kick in the ego no matter what size that ego may be. I must admit, I laughed. After all, children are here to kick us when we're on our high horses and bring us back to reality faster than you can shoot a bullet from a gun, and their here to pick us right back up again in our worst of days. Take my word for it, my son has taught me that lesson many times, and still does on occasion.

After my son had gone to bed for the night, I sat in my room at my desk, tapping a pen against the spacebar of my computer, trying to think of something to write in time for my deadline. My thoughts began to stray to the paper my son had written. So I got up and took it out of his backpack, settling back at my desk with the essay and a hot cup of tea, and began to read.

It started out with the way I was around the age of twenty-one, back when he was four and I worked twelve-hour days and two jobs, while trying to balance law school. I attended every parent teacher meeting, and was only late picking him up from school once. An act that to this day I still feel a pang of guilt about whenever I think of it.

He wrote that he realizes now that there are very few twenty-one year olds that would take on the responsibility of taking care of their four year old nephew. I moved from my apartment into a four bedroom house with a big front yard and an even bigger back yard, making sure he had enough room to play and grow.

He mentioned when I was injured and in the hospital for that long, trying month. I was touched by his words: "My father almost died that month, and I went to see him every chance I could. All I wanted was my father to come back home. He fought Death and won. When he came home, even as weak and sickly as he was, he had proven that he could overcome even the worst odds. I decided right then and there that my father was the strongest man on Earth, and I stand by that belief even now."

I was fighting back both tears and laughter at the same time. I'm the farthest thing from the strongest man on Earth that you can get. I'm not exactly what you'd call brave, and I believe that every time I've been severely injured, that my survival was just a fluke in the greater plan. Ah yes, here I am, typing this, a glitch in the computer program that is life, like somehow managing to draw the Princess Peach card in the mini fortune telling game in the special edition of Super Mario Brothers for the game boy color. When you draw the card before starting your game, it gives you five extra lives, if I remember correctly.

My life has consisted of random one-up mushrooms just in the nick of time. Unfortunately, I don't just go back to the place before I died and continue on like nothing happened. No, it doesn't work like that, much to my dismay.

As I read on, he mentioned the car crash, saying that no matter how many times Death would try to claim me, that I wouldn't leave him. I wasn't sure what to think of this. Over the years I've become increasingly stubborn when it comes to injuries and illness. Unlike in my younger days, I don't just try to brush things off anymore. No. If my cat so much as scratches me I scrub the wound, apply ointment, and put a bandage on it. If I so much as wake up with sinus trouble, I call my doctor and make an appointment for that day.

I have a habit of getting hurt, though minor, and I've gotten better over the years. However, once the problem is being treated, I become stubborn and brush it off like it's nothing. I'm determined not to let anything phase me or cause me to lose my composure. Of course, this doesn't apply when my children get sick. Yes, I said children. I have a daughter as well, though like my son, she's really the child of a relative I ended up raising. I don't regret it, either.

When my children get sick, I take them to the doctor immediately. I don't believe in the "Just wait it out" method. No. My daughter has taught me several times that often if you wait and see, by the time you realize it's something much worse it's already too late and you can't spare the child any pain or suffering.

I wonder when my son will realize that his "Man of steel" is really just a man well armed with a first aid kit and a cellphone.

Then the essay came to the part that described kryptonite. I must say, I wanted to put it down and stop reading, I was afraid of what he'd written. But I needed to know what my son saw as my weakness, and so I read on.

Ah, yes, Phoenix. That's what he wrote. He described that she had left us. I had never told him the absolute truth, I wanted to keep his image of her pure and innocent. I wanted him to always love her as the woman he called his mother, all those years ago. When he'd asked me why she was gone, I simply told him that I'd asked her to leave and she did. When he asked me why I'd do such I thing, I told him I'd tell him when he was older and could understand.

Of course, my son realized what had happened long before I was ready to tell him. I must say, he'll make a wonderful detective, or investigative reporter, or whatever he chooses to be when he's older. I'm not picky about what he chooses, as long as he's happy and feels it's what's right for him.

I hope that in three or four years, when my daughter is being given the same assignment, that she'll write of me as the dark knight rather than the man of steel.

Batman. Reborn from the ashes of misfortune and despair, to become a stronger, better man. Who can balance many more things at once than he should be able to, and who can always respond to a crises quickly and make the right decision without breaking a sweat.

Yes, I think I'd rather be Batman.

Nine years have passed since my breakup with Phoenix. I still live in my four bedroom house with the two big yards. I bought a new Dodge Neon, the same year and color as my last (I liked my car, and I'd like to give the man who destroyed it a piece of my mind and slap him with a lawsuit).

Although law school turned out not to be my thing, I still went back to school, claiming a masters in English and Psychology. I work at home now, writing my weekly article for the city's newspaper, along with writing various books. That's right, I'm an author. I never thought my mindless writing would ever earn me money, but now I'm quite comfortable.

I never thought I'd like working at home. But I was wrong. I'm always here when my children need me, and even when they don't. I have time to cook breakfast and dinner, I can sleep in when I want and spoil myself with my spotless house. Didn't I mention I was obsessive compulsive?

I changed my name a few years back, trading in my unusual first name in favor of my softer sounding middle name. I found out that my old name was Japanese, and a common last name for men. However, I never did learn the real meaning. All I managed to find was something to do with a species of cactus.

Through the years I've found my peace. I'm happier than I ever thought possible. I'm a single father. I have two wonderful children, a beautiful cat, and a cranky old dog. I'm thirty years old, and have something that most people much older than me don't have: True happiness.

I still love Phoenix. I still miss her. I can only hope that she found her perfect somebody, who can both take care of her and love her unconditionally. And who's twice as stubborn as she is, just to keep her in line and make sure she doesn't get off track. I hope that she's as happy as I am, maybe even happier, if that's even posible.

They say the best revenge is living well. But I didn't want revenge. I hope she doesn't see this as me biting my thumb at her. I want her to know that I'm okay, and I hope that she's doing as well as I am.

It's times like these I realize why my father insists that I'm really gay and just won't admit it. Oh well, he can keep thinking that if he wants.

I love you, Phoenix.

--Julian Marez'

He saved the file and sent it to his editor, before leaning back in his chair and stretching. He glanced up at the wall clock and saw the time, hurriedly getting up and going outside, leaning in the front doorway and watching his son shooting baskets in the driveway.

"Hey Zack! Still wanna play?" he called to his son.

Zack grinned and threw the basketball to his father, who caught it and joined his son in the driveway to play a game of one-on-one.