#trans jigen

Oh HO! I knew you’d be sending this ask XD I’m ready for ya!

So, Jigen’s living in New York with his family as a kid. Mom’s immigrated from Japan and married his dad (Italian American because Jigen just gives Italian vibes, let’s he so fair).

His dads an alcoholic with mob ties, does shady work that nobody really knows what it is, but when anyone asks they say he’s a mover for businesses in the area when it comes to distributing goods like food or hardware. Despite the mob ties, they’re pretty poor.

Jigen’s mom raises him and his little sister and younger brother in a cramped, shitty apparently in the Bronx. It’s loud and chaotic and Jigen’s the oldest of three, he’s trying to be in charge like his mother, who raises him just like a little mother (gotta remember that Jigen is trans in this AU so, obviously, there’s a LOT to process with moving away from being so close with his mom in regards to being his moms “little doll” or whatever).

Despite her husbands rough demeanor, Jigen’s mom is the sweetest woman? She’s cooking and cleaning and childrearing and trying to hold this crumbling apartment together on her own because her husband drinks their money away and is out doing suspicious shit day after day, but she’s holding it down and we love her for that. She spends time with her kids, reads them books, teaches them life skills and her language and generally is a good mother for the time.

Jigen tries his best to help her out. He’s cleaning the house a lot and trying to keep his siblings out of the way. He has a hard time relating to them. He’s supposed to relate to his sister right? He can’t quite relate all the way. He likes the dolls, but pink? Nah. Blue is his favorite color and the dolls all wear pink or red or white and it drives him NUTS! His sister doesn’t like to shoot bottles with slingshots off the fence in the alley. He doesn’t like the pink nail polish or the frilly dresses or not climbing or having to be cute and clean and quiet. He’s loud! He’s dirty and his knees are always scraped up! He’s chipped his front tooth falling out of a tree, he isn’t anywhere near the traditional definition of feminine that his sister has been raised to be. She fits the mold well (despite growing out of it as she grows), and Jigen never can. His brother, despite being so little, adores him but they can’t fully relate to each other either. His dad enforces strict gender rolls in the house. If he knew Jigen had a slingshot he would be livid. He’s not home enough to know but he’s pissed enough about the ripped skirts and messy hair. His brother can’t relate fully to “sissy girls”.

Jigen realizes in middle school that he HATES how his body is changing. He can’t wrestle anymore with boys in his class. They call him weird, try to flirt with him. The flirting was nice to an extent, some of them were fun guys, but he didn’t like them flirting with a version of himself he couldn’t understand. It was superficial. They were SUPPOSED TO. It changed the dynamic. He doesn’t fit in with the girls or the boys. He turns into a loner. His grades drop. He starts stealing. When he leaves the house he changes into pants and jackets, wrapping bandages around sports bras to hide his chest and hats pulled low to hide any feminine features. What started as a way to cope turns into a signature look. People don’t recognize him. He starts going by his last name and kids at school are surprised when he speaks and they can tell he isn’t male. He steals his dads cigarettes and beer, why doesn’t he feel right? He isn’t a girl but he isn’t a boy? He could be a boy. No. No, he couldn’t. Dad would kill him.

His mother knows he’s pulling away. She’s trying to figure out what’s wrong. Puberty? Well, puberty is hard. She notices Jigen has no friends, she’s worried about him. She doesn’t know how to handle it, Jigen has walked himself off. His sister doesn’t understand. She knows hes smoking and changing clothes and hiding things but doesn’t understand why. She won’t rat him out. She knows the punishments from their father are too harsh. His brother doesn’t even notice, why would he? They aren’t close anymore.

Jigen skips out on high school. He got caught kissing girls behind the school and left before rumors would ruin him or make it home. Was he a lesbian? He couldn’t tell at this point. He tried his best to be a boy but probably had to settle for being a lesbian. Girls were nice enough but..just didn’t feel right. It didn’t matter much though, nobody knew him enough to identify him unless he stuck around anyway. Leaving saved him a lot of grief from peers. His mom catches him smoking that night, they fight. Jigen’s father comes in at the most inopportune moment. They fight. It gets heated, blows are exchanged. How dare he steal cigarettes? How dare he drop out of school? Had they wasted everything on a screwup? Jigen packs a bag and leaves. His mother is crying in the doorway. He wishes he could explain without her hating him.

Weeks on the street end in him salvaging what he could of belongings that were mugged off of him and joining the military. He manages to bribe his way in. Nobody needs to know about his chest or anything else for that matter. Vocal training, cigarettes, and his normal methods of hiding his features and being quietly intimidating keep everyone off his back. Fighting and training are easy. It’s like how he used to play, except his mom doesn’t bandages his knees when he falls anymore. He has to pick himself up and keep going. Slingshot is exchanged for a rifle. It’s clumsy in his hands but soon becomes a perfect fit. He’s the fastest draw on his team. Everyone is impressed. He begins a relationship with a man on his crew. He doesn’t mind that Jigen has secrets. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Jigen goes AWOL after rumors begin to circulate and he almost gets assaulted in the locker room.

Jigen goes back to New York. Stints in the mafia gain him a high ranking. He knows his away around a gun and he’s more careful. He won’t let them get close enough to hurt him like everyone else. Daisuke Jigen, that’s his name now. A sharpshooter that gets his job done and gets his cash fast. He’s a favorite among bosses world wide. He sets prices and can make decent money. He can even afford to pay off certain men to keep his secrets in exchange for affairs that fall out in ways that leave him drinking himself stupid, which is stupid when you’re a world class assassin and everyone wants you dead these days. He gets reckless, crosses a boss wrong. Suddenly, everyone’s against him again. Good things don’t last for him, never will. He’s beaten and shot and barely manages to get out, he’s a sharpshooter after all. He always hits his target. He’s out of the mafia. He should’ve never joined in the first place.

Years down the line he’s doing odd jobs like his dad. The old man’s been dead for years, he’s kept tabs on them after all. He’s tried to call his mom but hung up when she answered more times than he can count. She probably thought he was a prank caller. He’s got shitty boyfriends that keep trying to kill him, women that double cross him, and he’s turning into his father with how much alcohol he consumes. He’s ready for the repetitive cycle of depressed day drinking and chain smoking to end. A funny looking monkey man dances into his life. Suddenly, he’s not so depressed.

He’s got a new family. Lupin was the first person he could really relate to. He wouldn’t let himself entertain the trauma of another fucked up relationship that would end with him or the thief dead, but they did get their tits chopped off by a samurai who was facing the same issues. Fujiko even understood him. He had a significantly safer job robbing big banks and stealing treasure and fucking up actual monsters and having fun doing it! He was finally Daisuke Jigen. He was finally living.

A stint in New York takes them to the Bronx. Jigen works up the courage to explain his past to Lupin while Fujiko has Goemon escort her off shopping in skyscraper malls. The thief is supportive. Tells the man he should face his past before it consumes him. So, they make a trip down to the old neighborhood, and stand outside the door to the crappy apartment. It’s quieter now, no kids invading the halls like there used to be. And Jigen can’t bring himself to knock so Lupin finally does for him. And before Jigen can kick him down the stairs the door is opening and his mother is there. She’s she’s more worn down than she was when he left but she’s just as warm and inviting as she was before. And he’s scared. Will she recognize him? Was this a mistake? But she smiles. She knows his face so well. And it takes some explaining but she understands her boy. She tried to keep tabs on him as best she could while he was away, and while she did lose him, she heard stories about a marksman with a familiar surname circulating in conversations in the Italian neighborhoods. Jigen all but cries, all the grief he’s gone through just to get to this moment. He had worried she would’ve just slammed the door in his face. They get to catch up and, while they don’t tell her about his current occupation, he assures her he has a great job and good friends and that makes her happy.

“Come on, even the guys at the shooting gallery would say something nice after a shot that good”