Madison’s World Redux Season 3 Episode 70

McKenzie set her dad down in the habitat and made sure the latch was secure before she turned toward the bathroom.

Greg watched her from inside the enclosure, small beneath the soft habitat lights, surrounded by the carefully arranged bedding and miniature furnishings she had chosen for him. McKenzie gave him one last look, one of those quick checks she now performed without thinking. Was he warm enough? Was the water accessible? Was the bedding right? Was he too close to anything he could climb unsafely? Had she remembered the little folded shirt she wanted him to wear after she showered?

He was fine.

Of course he was fine.

She had made sure of it.

“I’m going to shower,” she said.

Greg looked up at her. “Okay.”

“I’ll be quick.”

“You don’t have to be.”

McKenzie smiled faintly, though the tiredness in her face softened it into something more fragile. “I know.”

She turned away before either of them could say anything else.

The bathroom on the second floor was not as convenient as the downstairs hallway bathroom, at least not in the way Madison’s was. Technically, Madison did not own the upstairs bathroom. No one had ever formally given it to her. Before Smallara, Mom and Dad used it sometimes. McKenzie used it when she needed to. Guests used it if they were upstairs and polite enough to ask where it was.

But everyone knew.

It was Madison’s bathroom.

It had become Madison’s in the slow, unmistakable way things often became Madison’s. Her skincare lined the counter. Her hair products filled the corners. Her makeup bags appeared near the sink and then never fully disappeared. Her scrunchies, clips, body sprays, lotions, face masks, dance hair supplies, and half-used products multiplied until the room no longer looked shared. Madison had not seized it in a single dramatic act. She had burrowed into it.

That was how Madison worked.

She settled herself into spaces until they adjusted around her. She brought objects first. Then routines. Then assumptions. Eventually, without anyone agreeing out loud, everyone understood that a place had been drawn beneath Madison’s banner.

The upstairs bathroom was Madison’s bathroom.

The living room, after school, became Madison’s hangout spot.

The kitchen became Madison’s kitchen when her friends were hungry and Cindy was needed as the recipe book.

Even Mom had become part of Madison’s world, slowly absorbed into the shape Madison wanted.

McKenzie stepped into her own bathroom and closed the door behind her.

The quiet hit differently there. Smaller, more private. Less claimed by anyone else. She set her phone on the counter, tugged the elastic from her hair, and let the day begin to fall off in pieces. Shirt. Tennis skirt. Socks. The clothes landed on the floor with soft, careless thuds. She would pick them up later. Or maybe she would not until morning. Right now, she did not care.

She reached into the shower and turned the hot water on.

The pipes gave their familiar shudder before the spray steadied. Steam began to gather almost immediately, fogging the mirror in a slow bloom. McKenzie liked her showers hot. Too hot, according to Madison. Scalding, according to Greg before Smallara, though he had never stopped her beyond the usual dad warnings about drying out her skin or passing out if she made the bathroom a sauna.

McKenzie liked the heat.

She liked how it demanded attention. How it covered the body so completely there was no room to pretend she was fine. The first blast always stung, a sharp heat against the skin that made her inhale through her teeth, but then it settled into relief. Muscles loosened. Shoulders dropped. Thoughts organized themselves under the pressure of the water.

She stepped in and closed the shower door.

For a few seconds, she did nothing but stand there.

The water beat against the back of her neck and ran down her shoulders, carrying the day with it in thin streams. School. Practice. Madison’s excitement. Greg’s careful questions. Cindy’s admission. The way Madison’s face had looked when she held Mom out and said, with almost childlike joy, that Mom had finally admitted she was her Little.

McKenzie closed her eyes.

Today had been hard.

Necessary, but hard.

She had told Madison that Dad would be living with her now. Not visiting. Not sometimes staying over like this was a sleepover between sisters sharing a pet. Living with her. He would be in her room at night, in her habitat, under her care. Madison could still have him after school. Madison could still love him, pet him, bring him to dance, save him little pieces of food, and include him in the routines she had built. McKenzie had made sure to say that. She had not wanted it to sound like she was taking him away.

Dad belonged to both of them.

In the old sense, anyway.

He was both their dad. Madison and Greg had a relationship, an ebb and flow McKenzie did not want destroyed. Madison softened around Dad in ways she did not always soften around Mom. She still sought his approval. She still lit up when he joked with her. He mattered to Madison in a way McKenzie could not simply erase, even if part of her wanted to pull him entirely out of Madison’s reach and hide him somewhere safe.

But she could not let Madison be Madison with him.

Not completely.

That was the truth.

McKenzie knew her sister.

She loved Madison, but she knew her.

Madison would build a life around him. Not just any life. Her life. She would pull him into her orbit and make the orbit feel warm enough that he would stop noticing how little choice he had. She would create routines, structures, little rituals of affection and dependency until Dad and Madison’s World became indistinguishable from each other. Madison would use him, care for him, love him, decorate him, feed him, show him off, and fold him into her identity until everyone forgot there had ever been a version of Dad that existed outside her.

McKenzie could already see it happening with Mom.

Madison’s Little.

Madison’s recipe book.

Madison’s homework helper.

Madison’s future school project.

Madison’s styled, scented, groomed, corrected, praised, and privately cherished Little mother.

McKenzie turned her face into the water.

She hated that she had to take action.

She hated that taking action meant taking only one parent.

Madison liked to think she was the smartest person in the room. That she was playing chess while everyone else was still trying to figure out how a marble worked. The annoying part was that sometimes Madison was the smartest person in the room, just not in the way she thought. Madison’s advantage was not book smarts. It was people.

She understood pressure.

She understood attention.

She understood how to make a want feel like a favor, a favor feel like a routine, and a routine feel like something everyone had always agreed to.

She was like Mom that way.

That thought made McKenzie’s jaw tighten.

Mom had been brilliant at making what she wanted sound like what was best for everyone. She could take a personal preference, wrap it in moral language, reinforce it with policy, and deliver it as common sense. She could make disagreement feel childish, irresponsible, or sentimental. She could make people thank her for narrowing their options.

But Mom, for all her wrongness, had believed in something beyond herself.

That was the difference McKenzie kept coming back to.

Cindy’s beliefs were misguided. More than misguided. Harmful. Cruel in ways Cindy had never fully admitted because cruelty dressed as structure could look like responsibility if everyone in the room had already agreed who mattered most. But Cindy had genuinely believed she was right. She believed hard lines protected society. She believed Little education prevented abuse. She believed Guardian authority preserved order. She believed she was building something for future generations.

Madison was different.

Madison’s instincts were not ideological first. They were personal.

Madison used her gifts to make sure Madison was on top, that the people Madison loved were safe near the top, and that Madison got exactly what Madison wanted. Her altruism was real, but narrow. It extended fiercely to those she loved, and even then it often looked like ownership. If Madison cared about someone, she pulled them close, named their place, and shaped the world until that place became difficult to leave.

That was why Dad had to be with McKenzie.

It was not because Madison did not love him.

It was because Madison did.

McKenzie needed a place where Madison’s influence was managed. A place where Dad could be cared for without being absorbed. A place where someone would hear him when he said no, even if the answer could not always be yes. A place where his role as Dad had more weight than his usefulness as a Little.

That was what this was all about.

The water ran down McKenzie’s face, and for a moment she let it hide the expression she could feel forming.

As much as she had issues with Mom, McKenzie knew there was only so much she could do for her.

Cindy was ultimately Madison’s.

That had been the original arrangement.

Mom in Madison’s room. Dad with Madison too, at first, but Mom most of all. Madison had taken to it quickly, perhaps too quickly. The household had formed around the assumption before McKenzie had fully understood how permanent it would become.

If push came to shove, if the sisters fought and went separate ways, if the house split not just emotionally but practically, McKenzie could only protect one parent.

It was brutal.

There was no softer word for it.

She had tried to find one.

She had turned the problem over and over in her mind during the days after the infection, during the frantic travel home, during the meetings with the case worker, during the paperwork and arrangements and all the awful adult conversations that happened above Mom and Dad’s heads while everyone pretended this was simply procedure.

There could only be one.

One parent she could center her life around.

One parent she could build a protective structure for.

One parent she could claim before Madison’s world swallowed both.

When the choice became clear, McKenzie seized it before Madison even understood what was happening.

She had claimed Dad.

And in doing so, she had left Mom.

McKenzie pressed her palms against the shower wall and lowered her head.

The regret was there.

It had not left.

It probably never would.

Her mother had dug her own moat and built her own castle inside it. Cindy had taught Madison to believe what she believed. She had spent years insisting her way was not merely a way but the way. She had smothered McKenzie’s ideas with certainty, treated hesitation as softness, disagreement as immaturity, compassion as weakness if it came from the wrong angle. The fights between them had not started with Smallara. They had been building for years.

McKenzie had fought her mother because Cindy’s beliefs always had to be right.

Always.

And it was not until Mom and Dad were infected that Cindy showed even the smallest crack in the structure.

Except McKenzie was not sure even that was true.

That was what bothered her most.

Mom did not really think she had been wrong.

Not fully.

She thought the rules were wrong for her.

She thought she was above them. A different class. A special case. A shrunken human, not a Little. A woman who should be exempt from the system because she remembered standing on the other side of it.

But to McKenzie, that only proved the old problem remained.

Mom could see injustice when it touched her own body.

She had not yet admitted it was injustice when it touched anyone else.

Still, despite all of that, part of McKenzie wanted to help her.

That was the guilt.

Not the clean guilt of having wronged an innocent person. It would have been easier if Mom were innocent. Or if she were completely guilty. Either version would have given McKenzie something solid to stand on.

But Cindy was Mom.

And Cindy had hurt people.

And Cindy was being hurt.

All of it was true.

The water beat against McKenzie’s shoulders as she remembered the meeting with the case worker.

It had not happened exactly like a court scene. There had been no dramatic gavel, no formal declaration that the daughters must divide their parents between them. It had been calmer than that. More bureaucratic. More terrible because of how ordinary everyone sounded.

The case worker had introduced the topic gently. Long term care arrangements. Stability. Primary Guardian assignment. Household divisions. Developmental needs. Emotional compatibility. Safety considerations. The kind of language designed to make horror sound manageable.

McKenzie had already known it was coming.

Of course she had.

She had researched obsessively on the way home from tennis camp. Read guidelines, forums, state resources, Guardian testimonials, medical advisories, legal summaries. She had read until the words blurred, until the only clear thing left was the fact that decisions would have to be made quickly and whoever spoke first with enough force might shape the entire outcome.

So when the case worker opened the door, McKenzie stepped through it.

There was no hesitation.

No letting Madison think.

No giving the room time to soften or complicate.

McKenzie said she was taking Dad.

Flatly.

Clearly.

In front of Madison.

In front of the case worker.

In front of everyone.

She made it clear that she wanted no part of primary care for her mother and that Dad would be with her. If that meant restructuring the household, fine. If that meant changing paperwork, fine. If that meant delaying other decisions, fine. If anyone thought she was bluffing, she was not. She would not emancipate without him. She would rather become a ward of the state and keep her father than accept a version of stability that handed him fully to Madison.

The Generitech money did not matter.

The house did not matter.

Convenience did not matter.

Dad mattered.

The words had barely settled into Madison’s ears before McKenzie made the line impossible to move.

Madison had not fought.

Not then.

McKenzie knew why.

She had seen it in Madison’s eyes. The surprise first. Then the calculation. Madison realizing, perhaps a second too late, that McKenzie had entered the conversation not as a sister negotiating but as an opponent making a decisive strike. Madison had thought, naively, that she could work around it later. That she could charm, maneuver, wait, argue, or slowly weasel her way back into Dad’s central life once the emotional intensity passed.

But McKenzie was not one of Madison’s middle school friends.

She was not Ava, softening under a look.

She was not Brooklyn, playing along because the chaos was fun.

She was not Mom, caught in a system she herself had built.

McKenzie was an athlete.

A competitor.

On the tennis court, people called her ruthless. Cutthroat, sometimes, though never to her face unless they were trying to flatter her. She had pinpoint accuracy and the patience to turn accuracy into punishment. She would train for hours, lining up dimes on the far side of the court and serving until the ball landed exactly where she wanted. The dime would not slide. It would not jump. It would barely move. From her side of the court, it was a tiny target, almost nothing, a flash of metal against distance.

And she hit it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

That was how she played.

She did not simply try to win points. She moved opponents. She made them run. At first, they did not notice. Everyone on the court was an athlete. Everyone expected to sprint. But over a set, over a match, over the relentless pattern of being sent full speed to the furthest possible place from where they stood, the cost added up. McKenzie had the power to return the ball from awkward angles, the control to place it precisely, and the patience to keep doing it until the person across from her was not merely beaten, but dismantled.

She had her parents to thank for that.

Both of them.

When McKenzie had said she was serious about tennis, they had made it happen. Camps. Trainers. Equipment. Fitness instruction early enough that her body had grown into the demands of the sport. Strength where she needed it. Endurance. Rotational power. Footwork. Recovery. Her muscles had been built for tennis because her parents had listened when she said it mattered.

Dad especially.

He had worked extra shifts when the best things were beyond what they should have been able to afford. Camps that cost too much. Trainers with waitlists. Rackets, shoes, tournament fees, travel. He had found ways to make it happen. And he had shown up.

Always.

Every match went on his work calendar. Blocked out. Protected. Nothing at work was more important than seeing her play. Nothing short of actual catastrophe could move him. He did the same for Madison’s dance competitions, even though he never fully understood dance. He did not know the scoring the way Mom did. He could not always tell why one routine placed above another. But he was there. Cheering. Recording. Taking Madison and her friends out for food afterward, listening to them talk too fast about judges and costumes and someone’s turn sequence.

Greg Wessen showed up.

That was who he was.

Some of McKenzie’s fondest memories were not the matches she won, though she had won many. Not the opponents she crushed or the trophies lined on shelves. They were the moments after. Seeing Dad near the fence. The way he smiled before she reached him. The post match meal where, for an hour or two, she could stop being an athlete and just be his daughter. They would sit across from each other with food between them, and he would ask questions even when he did not understand every answer. He would tell her what he saw. How hard she fought. How proud he was.

It was almost ridiculous, in hindsight.

McKenzie knew she could have asked him for that time without winning anything. Dad would have dropped everything for her if she asked. She knew that. Madison knew it too. That was part of what made him Dad.

But the competition made the meal special.

It made it feel earned.

Not because Dad required it.

Because McKenzie did.

She needed to earn the moment for herself.

When Madison called and said their parents had gotten Smallara, tennis camp had vanished from McKenzie’s mind as if someone had cut a cord.

Tennis meant nothing.

Practice meant nothing.

The future meant nothing.

All she could think about was getting home.

What happened next. What Madison was doing. What Mom was saying. Whether Dad was scared. Whether anyone competent was there. Whether the wrong decisions were already being made because McKenzie was not present to stop them.

Mckenzie’s mind kept circling back to those moments after. She had researched on the way back home because she could not stand not doing something. She read until the outlines emerged. There would be care assignments. There would be classifications. There would be questions about who could handle whom, who had emotional compatibility, who had legal standing, who had practical willingness. The system would want stability, and stability would mean choices.

When the moment came, McKenzie recognized it like a ball hanging at the perfect height across the net.

There was no time to admire it.

No time to feel sorry.

No time to ask Madison what she wanted.

Madison was not on her side in that moment.

For the first time in McKenzie’s life, Madison was not in her cheering section. She was not the little sister to protect, tease, support, or roll her eyes at. She was the opponent across the court. If McKenzie hesitated, Madison would take the point and maybe the match.

So McKenzie did what she had trained her whole life to do.

She placed the shot where it had to go.

She said the words.

She took their father.

And she left their mother to Madison. Her thoughts kept going back to that central point.

The water ran hotter over her skin, or maybe McKenzie only noticed it more now.

She stood in the steam, eyes closed, and let herself think the thought without softening it.

She had thrown her mother to the wolves.

No.

Not wolves.

That would have been easier. Wolves were outside. Wolves were monsters. Wolves could be hated without complication.

She had thrown her mother to Madison.

Her sister.

Her mother’s student.

The girl Cindy had shaped.

The girl who would love Cindy with all the conviction Cindy had taught her to use.

The regret was something McKenzie had to live with.

But it was something she could live with.

The alternative had never been a possibility.

McKenzie turned off the shower.

For a few seconds, the bathroom rang with the absence of water. Steam drifted around her. Her skin felt hot, almost raw, but her mind had settled into its usual post-shower clarity. The guilt remained. The fear remained. The knowledge that she could not save both parents remained.

But beneath it was the same hard line she had drawn in that meeting.

Dad was with her.

She would protect him.

And tomorrow, because he had asked, she would bring him to Mom.

That was what she could do.

Not everything.

Not enough.

But something.

McKenzie stepped out of the shower and reached for her towel, already thinking through the morning. What time she needed to wake up. What Greg would need before school. Whether Madison would object to Cindy and Greg spending time together. Whether Mom would use the meeting to pull Dad backward into denial. Whether Dad would come back heavier than he left.

The mirror was fogged, hiding her reflection.

McKenzie wiped a hand across it and looked at herself through the cleared streak.

She looked tired.

Older than she wanted to look.

Still, there was no regret in her eyes about the choice itself.

Only the cost.

She wrapped the towel around herself and opened the bathroom door.

Greg was waiting in the habitat, exactly where she had left him. He looked up when she entered, and something in his expression softened at the sight of her.

Dad.

Small now.

Dependent now.

Still Dad.

McKenzie’s chest tightened.

She crossed the room and smiled down at him.

“Hey,” she said softly. “I’m back.”

Greg looked up at her through the clear wall. “Feel better?”

McKenzie thought about the shower, the memories, the choice, the guilt, the line she had drawn and would draw again if she had to.

“A little,” she said.

Then she reached for the habitat latch, because the night routine was not finished, and because protecting him meant doing the next small thing, then the next, then the next after that.

Related Images: