Something I should really tell you about America is that it's largely a wasteland. It was once a lot like Japan, or so it seems from the stories we learn as kids, but a lot can change when ruthless leaders come into power during the hecticness of quirk emergence. What was once an open country became a collection of large areas that locked themselves away into compounds, creating a stark inside and outside of haves and have nots. People both within and outside of the walls them began training vigorously, reproducing strategically, and stabbing people in the back. Most of the compounds eventually fell, except for one in California and another in New York.
My father was born and raised in the wastelands. He doesn't remember his parents, or at least claims not to. The way his story goes is that he developed his quirk early, trained it day and night, and snuck his way into the compounds, where he only survived by impressing some of the higher ups of the council at the time. He entered the school system and went on tour. Heir Stronghold paints himself as quite the underdog in these stories. I've heard many tales of his being left on battlefields, bloody and battered, after his stamina had run out, and having to be rescued by his comrades, and nursed back to health from the brink of death a number of times. How much of it is true, you may ask? Good question. I don't know, and I don't care.
Family monarchy had already been introduced before he'd even entered the compounds. He wasn't anything prestigious, but he claims that he'd gotten a few courtship proposals. It might be true. It wasn't against any rules for monarchy kids to marry someone outside of it. Many impressive individuals from insignificant families got into family monarchy this way. If he'd accepted, he would have been instantly recognized as a King and his children as immediate Princes and Princesses. However, he went on a tour, one of the last before he graduated into the adult hero program, to aid in a villain attack in some country he never bothers to name. One of the people he'd saved had been a young Japanese woman on vacation with her family, every one of which had died in the catastrophe. She had had an empty home to return to, but her and my dad fell so deeply and quickly in love that she decided to go back to America to be with him instead.
The council was outraged. They didn't tend to accept newcomers in general, my powerful even was a legendary exception, but allowing entrance to someone quirkless was ludicrous and unthinkable. The compounds were about achieving and maintaining the power against the wastes; they housed only those who could pull their weight, either in raw power or influence. A quirkless woman had neither, and my father hadn't yet acquired enough of either to have much sway. He had been a good talker, though, and he somehow convinced them to allow my mother to stay on the compound. She was the only quirkless person there, and it was extremely disgraceful. My dad had had to fight for both of them on his own. He claimed that they both had the dream of wanting to have a family, belong to the compound, and enter family monarchy. It's not the whole truth, of course, but I trust enough of it not to question it.
The two of them proceeded to have two phenomenal children. He'd trained his own quirk into something incredible by the time they were born, and it came through greatly amplified in them. My sisters were prodigies. They mastered their own quirks at a much faster rate than the rest of their classmates and joined my father in his side business of training others. As you can imagine, there was a high demand of people that found it helpful to train with an indestructible partner. Even the higher ups noticed and praised them. However, they were girls.
And my mom was tired from having them. My dad has never audibly acknowledged it, but they have done studies on what bearing children with quirks, especially powerful ones, does to quirkless women. It's hard on their bodies and it's hard on their minds. She was still some kind of conscious though, because Melanie used to tell me stories of how she took them to the park, brushed their hair, and spoke and taught Japanese to them. But then she gave birth to me, Cassiopeia Stronghold, a baby whose quirk had been active in every single fucking cell constantly since the first fucking one. She really fell apart after that. And the kicker was? I was a girl too. I was the last chance, and I'd fallen short.
To his credit, my father had often treated me as a means to an end, but he had never treated me as if he hated me for it. That's one of the reasons I seek his approval so viciously, maybe. I want him to feel like it was worth it. Like there was an equivalent exchange. But what we have between us is too selfish to be love. He too, is a means to an end to me. It's a respectful agreement. We silently allow it to be that way.
What I had with my sisters was closer to love than what I had with my dad, but it was still not quite it. From the very beginning, I watched the two of them fight and compete for my father's attention and affection through their training and obedience. I joined this battle as soon as I could. There was a special kind of ruthlessness we shared, being offspring of the best. We clawed at each other more than most sisters do. And it wasn't just that, either. No matter how much time we spent together, and no matter how much of it may have counted as bonding, I had taken their mom from them. There were times when our competitions would peak and their tempers would flare and they would remind me of it. I didn't blame them for feeling that way. I might have too, if the roles were reversed. Raina felt and acted out on it more so than Melanie, but I understood that. She'd had her longer and had lost more. My sisters and I did genuinely like each other, I thought, but there was a lot of tension underlying our relationships.
I can recognize all of this as not being love because I love my mom. I love her so purely and selflessly because she has never and could never give me anything in return. Even though I don't know her, and I probably never will. Not really, anyways. I live in my father's fantasies about their incredible love story and I don't question it because I want to believe it. I want that for her. I want to make her proud. I want to be someone that she would have been proud of. I'm probably not, but I want to believe that I could be. Maybe one day.
I love Momo too. She's the only other person I feel that way about. I feel it for certain, and I have never questioned it. She's the only person I have in my life that I say it to out loud or allow to say it to me. I used to say it to my mom so that she would repeat it, but it broke my heart so badly that I'd only ever heard it a few times. Momo is someone who has always been by my side and allowed me to exist entirely beside her. She's the long-lost sister every lonely little girl hopes she has. She's the Melanie that never left. She's my family. She's perhaps more family than the rest of them.