In a gloomy room far below the campus Temple, Euphy sat on a cold stone bench, picking at the frayed tips of her gloves and reflecting that she’d severely underestimated her Goddess’ dedication to fucking with her.
Across from her, although he did not look like it, was her father. Neither of them spoke, and for a while the only thing that broke the painful silence between them was the faint sound of running water.
She thought to herself, This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
When miraculously reunited with someone you’d missed for a very long time, she knew that the next step was running up to them and hugging and crying a lot, but for some reason all she’d been able to do was look at him briefly, after which she’d become unable to do or say anything else. She was sure she was feeling something, she just had yet to sort out what it was, only knowing it felt so heavy that try as she might she couldn’t seem to get out from under it.
Her dad was sitting just as still, although she had a feeling this was less because he couldn’t move and more because he was afraid of startling her, which finally gave her at least one recognizable emotion: guilt.
She couldn’t open her mouth, but if she could she’d have apologized, she’d have explained that she also didn’t know why she was being like this, that she’d actually handled things pretty well when Iphis broke the news to her earlier.
While it was, to put it lightly, rather shocking to find out that Ianthe was possessed, and even more alarming to discover that she was being possessed by a transmigrator, neither of those things were beyond the realm of Euphy’s understanding.
In fact, while Iphis had offered her a long explanation, coupled with the Saint herself backing things up, Euphy hadn’t needed any of that to believe him. Something about Ianthe had been bugging her from the moment they’d first met, a confusing sense of familiarity that, in retrospect, felt a lot like running into someone she hadn’t seen in a very long time who’d radically changed their style since they’d last met, so that even though she felt she ought to recognize them it wasn’t until someone else gave her the answer that everything just clicked.
The only part she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around was that someone from her past had made it here. That thought felt like watching a penny roll towards the edge of a table, and for some reason she was afraid to see it drop.
Her father, who’d never been able to endure any kind of silence for very long, finally cleared his throat and said in an unfamiliar voice, “Hey, bubbeleh…1little bean it’s been a while, huh?”
Euphy jolted, her eyes widening.
It’d been so long since she’d heard anyone else speak English that his words hit her ears like a bolt of electricity, shocking her out of her stupor.
“Um…. Y-yeah, I guess,” she managed to squeak out despite the fact that her tongue felt like lead.
“I’m, uh… I’m sorry I took so long,” he continued, somehow sounding exactly like he always had despite having Ianthe’s vocal cords. “See, the thing is, when the Goddess told me what happened to you, I mighta freaked out a little, so I wasn’t thinking too clearly when I asked Her to send me after you, so I, uh… I didn’t realize there might be a time difference. I guess I shoulda been more specific…”
Oh, Gods, now he was apologizing to her! It made her feel so guilty that she curled up like a miserable pillbug, drawing her knees to her chest and hugging them.
“It’s fine!” she forced herself to say, because she knew if she didn’t he’d just keep going until existence itself somehow became his fault. “I don’t blame you. Actually I…”
There were a lot of things she wanted to say, things like ‘I really missed you’ and ‘I’m so happy you’re here,’ but instead what finally came out was, “Are you still sick? You looked pretty bad the other day. Did you go to the infirmary?”
At the time she’d been too busy panicking but now, thinking back on how ill he’d looked, she cursed herself for not doing the right thing and making sure he got medical attention anyway.
Wanting to see if he was doing better, she forced herself to look at him again, fighting back the discomfort that gave her.
Damnit, he really did look exactly like Ianthe.
Fuck.
Seeing him like this felt ridiculously disorienting. Half of her brain kept saying this person was her would-be murderer, and the other half kept somehow effortlessly recognizing him as her father. Their roles in her mind were so diametrically opposed that it even made her feel a little upset, as though the Lady making him look this way was a kind of insult.
Seriously, her scum Goddess couldn’t have put him in anybody else? It just had to be the person who’d plagued her nightmares for years?
“Oh, yeah, about that… I’m fine now, it wasn’t that big a deal, just had a bit of a rough landing, haha…” he said, waving her off with a hand, his voice getting a little higher at the end like it always did whenever he was lying to her and feeling guilty about it. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
She scowled in response, and for the first time since she’d learned he was here she began to feel angry.
Her father had always been like this, downplaying anything serious that happened to him, and whenever she caught him doing it he’d excuse it as not wanting her to ‘worry’, but it had always felt more like he didn’t think his well-being was any of her business, and how was that fair? She was his only daughter, who else was going to take care of him? It wasn’t even like she could trust him to handle his own health, he was the kind of idiot who’d put off going to the doctor for months even when his coughing got so bad he could barely speak! If she hadn’t threatened him into it, gods only knew how big that lump might have gotten before someone caught it, and this jerk had been planning to hide even that from her, if not for her auntie letting the news slip he probably would have kept lying and telling her it was just pleurisy all the way to his damn grave—
Ah.
Just like that, the penny dropped.
“Dad,” she asked, lowering her eyes, “why are you here? What happened to you, back there?”
“Huh?” he asked, blinking in confusion. “Didn’t that bast—ah, I mean, didn’t Iphis explain things? I came here to help you.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
She clenched her fists and took in a deep breath through her nose, trying to hold back the emotion that threatened to burst from her chest. Her voice quietly cracking, she finally asked, “Dad… did you die?”
He must have, right?
There was only one way to get a new life, and that meant somewhere, for some reason, he’d died and…
She hadn’t been there.
She hadn’t even known it was happening.
She knew this wasn’t something she could control, that she hadn’t left him on purpose, but that didn’t stop the bottom from dropping out of her heart.
“Hey, wait, why are you crying!?”
She turned her face away, furious he’d even think to ask her that.
Not a second later he was next to her, putting his arm around her and rubbing her back as he said, “Okay, yes, technically I died, but I mean—look, I got better!”
She shook her head and mashed the heels of her palms against her eyes, biting down on her pathetically quivering lip until it bled.
She wanted to be happy that he was trying to comfort her, he’d done this sort of thing countless times before, but this time it wasn’t the same, this time everything was subtly wrong. The shape of his hand against her back, the sound of his voice, even the way he smelled was so different. Even if it was him it didn’t feel like him, all the things about his presence that used to make her feel comfortable and safe had vanished, and that just made her cry harder.
“Why? How could you?” she hiccuped, distantly aware that blaming him was unreasonable but unable to suppress the confused resentment she felt. “You were supposed to be fine, the Goddess promised to protect you…”
She only vaguely remembered the deal she’d struck with the Goddess, first because it had been a long time ago, and secondly because she’d been so distressed when she made it. Back then, having just found out about her own death, all she could think about was what would happen to her family and her friends without her, and so she’d agreed to help the Goddess with the Calamity so long as She kept them all safe, but if her dad was here, then—
Then either the Goddess had broken their deal, or She’d lied.
Or maybe it was worse than that, what if it was her fault and she’d made the same mistake her father had, by not being specific enough?
The belief that everyone she’d left behind would be fine was the only way she’d been able to move on from losing them, the raft she’d clung to in order to keep herself afloat in this lonely new world.
If she didn’t have that, then what did she have?
Had she really agreed to risk her life for the Goddess for nothing?
“Hey, come on, stuff happens, right? It’s not like She—”
He paused, then quickly recovered, “It’s not like you or I did anything on purpose! Anyway, look, as far as I know everybody else was fine when I left, so that’s good, right? I’m old anyway, who cares if I kick it?”
Unsurprisingly, the news that only her father had died did not do much to make her stop crying. Instead it made her shove him away angrily as she shouted, “I do!”
“Okay, sorry, that was the wrong thing to say—”
“You think!?”
This asshole, how could he joke about something like this? Did he think he mattered that little to her? Did he think her life was better without him?
Yes, she’d been raised here, but that was done out of obligation, because the alternative was letting an orphan die and that would make people feel guilty, not because anyone wanted her to be here, not because anyone loved her. She was born an inconvenience, and the only thing Sainthood did was finally give the people in charge a way to make her useful, and all remembering her past did was show her exactly how painful being a tree without roots was.
Unfortunately, she couldn't figure out how to put the words in order to make him understand, so instead she just cried harder and tried to push him away again.
“Hey, don’t try and run away, c’mere,” he said, and gingerly tried to pull her towards him.
“You’re stupid and I hate you,” she sobbed, no longer used to being comforted and unsure if she even deserved to be, thinking that she’d left him first, that maybe the loneliness she’d endured here was punishment for that. But when he tried to pull her close again she grew worried that he’d get things confused, that he’d think her resistance was because she was upset at seeing him, and so she finally gave up and crawled into his arms to cry there instead.
He hugged her tightly, saying, “You’ve really been going through it, haven’t you, kid?”
She hiccuped in response and clung to the lapels of his coat, burying her face into his neck. At first she didn’t think he was bothered, she didn’t hear him crying the way she was, but up close she could feel his shoulders begin to shake, and when he spoke again his voice was cracked and broken.
“I’m—I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know what the hell happened to us, but I really am sorry.”
He pressed a kiss against her hair, then leaned his head against hers.
She didn’t reply, just held him and poured out two lifetimes worth of incoherent, blubbering grievances as he petted her head and made nonsense sounds of acknowledgement.
He still felt different, and everything about what had happened was so strange, but all she could think was that it’d been so long since she’d been able to hug one of her parents that she could no longer bring herself to care.
To his credit, he made no move to interrupt her. It wasn’t until she eventually ran out of tears and dissolved into pathetic hiccups that he finally tapped her on the shoulder, and she felt something fabric press against her cheek.
Looking up, she squinted at it through red, swollen eyes, and saw that it was a handkerchief.
He said, “I, uh, probably coulda given this to you earlier, but… hey, what else are shoulders good for?”
Taking it from him, she sat back and furiously scrubbed at her face. Lowering the handkerchief, she saw that she’d made a mess out of his coat and frowned, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Huh, you want to apologize for something, apologize for making me cry in an eyepatch,” her father grumbled, lifting it part-ways off his face and wincing, “Good God, it’s like I’m pouring out a bucket, and the chafing—you’d think tears would be a little more skin-friendly…”
Her entire face felt hot and stuffy, and she’d given herself a headache, so she tapped herself with a quick spell and healed away the worst of it.
Then, while he was busy wiping his own face, she reached over and poked his cheek, casting a quick healing spell on him too.
He paused in surprise, then exclaimed, “Fuck, magic is convenient. Thanks, kiddo.”
Reminded of his eye patch, she gave him a look over, noticing that despite all the fuss he’d managed to keep his left eye hidden from her this whole time. About to ask about it, she was rudely interrupted by a bottle of juice he grabbed from a storage artifact and shoved against her cheek.
Flinching back from the cold surface, she hissed, “Tate!2dad Cut it out!”
“Stop messing with magic and drink something, you’re dehydrated. Hey, do you like strawberry juice? Can you believe it, I never had it till I came here, but I think it’s really good—I got a few other flavors if you don’t like it, though, there’s this mint lemonade one, and I think this one’s mango—oh, hold on, I have some crackers, too—”
A moment later she’d acquired an armful of juice bottles and crackers, and she stared down at them blankly.
Ever since she got to Aegis it felt like so many people kept giving her food, and it made her feel both embarrassed and happy, as though they weren’t giving her snacks so much as little morsels of the care they felt for her.
Inspired, she set this collection aside and quickly gave him some things from her storage bracelet as well, stuffing them into his hands and saying in a stern tone, “You have to eat something too.”
He took them without complaint, and for a while they fell into silence, accompanied only by the gently glowing pool in the middle of the room as they ate.
Now and again Euphy stole glances at him, and while it still felt weird to see him like this, the more she looked the less he seemed like Ianthe. For example, no noblewoman alive would ever be caught slouching the way he was, and at some point in the past few days he’d managed to pick up a tan, which she never would have guessed Ianthe would be capable of. That said, the biggest difference was probably his expressiveness. The few aristocrats she’d run into were uniformly stone-faced, but right now her father was frowning at the pool with concern so deep it’d framed his mouth with parenthesis and carved a little ‘w’ between his eyebrows.
“Dad, what are you thinking about?”
Tilting his head to the side, his eyes still on the pool as his red hair fell across his shoulders, he absently replied, “I’m thinking… I know I said I’d pick you up without question if you ever needed it, but don’t you think this is a little excessive?”
Instantly pissed off, she punched his arm and threatened, “Go on, joke about dying again, see what it gets you!”
“Ow,” he mumbled, rubbing the spot and giving her a sore look. “Damn, since when did you become such a slugger? Hey, wait, do you think—”
“No, they don’t have baseball here, and you’re not allowed to try and teach it to them.”
“Oh, come on, I bet it’d be fun—”
“Do you remember how it happened?” she interrupted, then coughed awkwardly. “You… passing, I mean.”
“Nope, nothing,” he replied with a shrug, still infuriatingly unconcerned about his own demise. “Actually, I don’t remember anything happening to either of us… do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“… Huh. Hey, do you think we maybe, uh… went together, or something?”
She chewed on a cracker as she considered this possibility, and decided that as morbid as it was, it was still better than the alternative. If they’d died together, then she hadn’t left him alone, and maybe that would explain why the wish she’d made to the Goddess hadn’t applied to him.
“What, you think like… carbon monoxide?” she suggested.
“Or, you know… hit by a truck?”
“Wow, dad… I’m impressed you know that reference.”
Confused, he stared back at her and asked, “What reference?”
…
She suppressed a sigh.
Even if Iphis hadn’t told her anything, the blank look on his face was so familiar that she’d definitely have known this man was her father.
Deciding it was best to ignore him, she turned her focus to the eerie underground room they were in. It looked like it was an abandoned temple underneath the campus’ actual temple, which she thought was pretty neat, if not kind of redundant. Between the ancient architecture, the disturbing carvings, and huge glowing pool, she silently gave it a seven out of ten in terms of ominous liminal ambiance.
“Hey Tate, don’t you think this place looks like a boss room?”
“Eh? Yeah, now that you mention it, like… the big-ass double doors would be the fog wall, and then,” he pointed at the pool with a cracker, his expression serious, “there’d be a cutscene where you walk right up to the edge of the water, and bam! Something huge pops out of it, and it’s terrifying and wants to kill you but also like, later you find out it was only here for a fucking depressing reason.”
“Yeah, exactly… ha, you know, something like that happened to me once.”
“Really?” he asked. Then, belatedly realizing that she was not referring to a video game, said again with significantly more alarm, “Wait, really!?”
“Yepp, a big monster grabbed me and pulled me in and everything… I almost drowned.”
He stared at her in horror, the cracker he was holding pausing dramatically before falling to the floor.
“That… you… dragged in by a monster? You really… are you okay!?”
She smiled at him and said, “Oh? So you don’t like it when I’m flippant about bad things that happened to me? Wow, who would have guessed?”
He opened his mouth, angry for the first time since they’d reunited, but then he hesitated, realized what she was getting at, and meekly reflected,
“I’m sorry, I’ll stop… But really, you’re okay, though?”
With a snort she tossed back her hair and said, “Of course! You think I’d get defeated so easily?”
Then, more honestly she coughed and added, “Anyway, it turned out to be a misunderstanding. She was trying to help me, she was just a bit freaky-looking so I assumed the worst…”
“So a monster tried to drown you in a friendly way?”
“Oh, forget about it. It happened years ago, it doesn’t matter.”
“I disagree, I’d really like to know what happened,” he said, and she recognized the expression he was wearing as the one that usually preceded him giving her a long-winded safety lecture.
“Then get back on my good side, and maybe I’ll consider telling you,” she refused, crossing her arms. “I’m nineteen, I can take care of myself, okay?”
“Oh,” he replied, crestfallen.
Ah, wait, she hadn’t meant it like that. She just wasn't used to sincere concern anymore, refusing was a reflex she’d learned to avoid future humiliation, she actually felt rather touched that he cared to ask at all.
“Wait, Dad—”
However, before she could explain things further he was already changing the topic, saying, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, do you think I can pull off being a red-head?”
Her earlier thoughts knocked off course, she looked at him in surprise as he gestured at himself, taking in his now-rumpled outfit, his messy ponytail, and his face, which was splotchy from the crying earlier…
“Yeah, of course, you look very handsome,” she quickly reassured him, realizing with shame that all this time she’d been feeling uncomfortable about his recent changes, she hadn’t yet considered how much they might be affecting him. “You’ve definitely got your own vibe going on.”
He nodded, then casually added, “I, uh, I like your new look too. Is it… ‘new-new?’”
She blinked and tilted her head. What did he mean, ‘new-new?’ She hadn’t changed anything about her style in a long time—
Wait.
Oh.
She’d gotten so wrapped up in the whole ‘her father died and resurrected in the body of her would-be nemesis’ thing that she’d overlooked a tiny detail about their reunion.
Namely, that she’d never actually come out to him.
She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated, unsure how she should feel about this.
In her defense, being transgender was something that hadn’t given her any trouble for a long, long time. Cimmerian culture considered that sort of thing pretty ordinary, so when she’d decided to come out in this life the entire thing boiled down to telling Abbott Museaus she’d like to be treated as a girl from then on, to which he’d immediately agreed.
It took less than fifteen minutes, and rarely ever came up again outside of health exams, so since then she’d just lived normally.
Even after she remembered her past, the mundanity of the process here made the stress she’d faced in her last life feel ridiculously unnecessary, so she may or may not have unconsciously buried those difficult memories in favor of her newer ones.
Anyway, those things had happened so long ago that she was probably over them by now.
Yet despite this, she couldn’t help but dart a furtive glance at her father, trying to gauge his expression.
There was no way he was only figuring this out now. He’d seen her Sunday, and even if he’d somehow failed to notice she was a girl then, surely one of the Temple employees he’d been in contact with would have mentioned it.
Yet, so far, her dad hadn’t really acted out of the ordinary. In fact, if he hadn’t mentioned it himself, there was a good chance she’d have continued forgetting until the realization randomly hit her in the middle of the night.
“It’s not new,” she said, watching him warily. “I’m trans, in this life and the last… does that bother you?”
“What? No, I mean—wait? This one too?”
He paused and she tensed, bracing herself to hear something unpleasant.
“Did you file a complaint?”
…
“Dad!”
She smacked his arm, careful to control her strength, but feeling insulted nonetheless.
“What!?” he asked, gesturing with his hands. “I’m just saying, that’s twice in a row, and you’ve got a direct line now, don’t you? Does the Goddess not take feedback or something?”
“So what? I don’t think it’s a problem, so why should I complain?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that—”
Still offended, she huffed and folded her arms.
Really, what had she expected? She’d always known this man shared a single brain cell with all the orange cats in the world, so what was the use of getting annoyed with him now?
“Look, what I meant to say was that no, of course not, why the hell would I give a shit?”
She glared at him, and he corrected,
“I mean, I—I do care, but only because it affects you! If it does, that is, I don’t know, maybe you’re fine with it, I don’t want to assume…”
“Okay, please stop, you’re making me embarrassed for you,” she muttered, putting up a hand.
She was used to him saying more stupid things than normal when he got nervous, but why was he nervous? Shouldn’t she be the one who was worried?
Anyway, it wasn’t like she’d been hoping for a perfectly worded response, but Gods above, given the amount of counseling they'd been through together, sometimes it felt like he was the only person she’d met who was immune to learning therapy talk.
He was lucky, really, that she was old enough to understand that this was genuinely an attempt to reassure her, because when she’d been younger and more insecure about both her gender and their relationship, her emotions had been so raw all the time that even the slightest hint of rejection felt like an attack…
Oh.
It suddenly struck her that their time difference meant he was still thinking of her as the fourteen-year-old version of herself he’d only just left behind.
… Well, that explained a lot, didn’t it?
Clearing her throat, she put on the most calm and mature expression she could muster and said, “Dad, I’m a girl, and I’ve always been a girl… You really don’t have any feelings about that at all?”
“Ah…”
He trailed off, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck, “Honestly, I’d say… it probably explains a lot? I mean, you’ve always been kinda fruity.”
…
She rubbed her face with her hand, thinking that maybe she ought to lower her standards a little more.
He continued, “Actually, I, uh… more than anything else, I wanted to apologize to you.”
“For calling me fruity?”
“Huh? No, why, what’s wrong with that?”
“No, nevermind, just go on.”
“I mean for, um… knowing what was going on with you, but never directly addressing it… I think that was wrong of me.”
“Wait, you knew I was trans?” she asked, genuinely surprised, as he’d never been very observant and she thought she’d been hiding things pretty well.
“What? No, I didn’t know that, I just thought you were gay.”
She blinked a few times, then figuring if she was in for a penny she might as go in for a pound, and said, “I mean, I am? I’m bisexual.”
“Oh! Then…” his face brightened and he smacked his fist into his palm, saying, “Hey, so I was half right?”
“Dad!”
“Eh, or is it more than half right? Is bisexual twice as gay, or half as gay? How do you guys measure that?”
“Dad, can you please focus? And—and please, for the love of all that’s holy, never say that kind of thing to anyone else ever again.”
Covering her face with her hands, she took in a deep breath and let out a long sigh.
On the one hand, it was nice that he seemed so genuinely unconcerned, but on the other, she couldn’t help but feel a little unhappy.
She’d struggled with whether or not to tell him for so long, and now it turned out that she’d been anxious for no reason at all?
Looking back up at him, she asked, “If you knew, then why didn’t you say anything?”
“Well, because, uh… you know… it never felt like the right time…”
Noticing him getting squirrely, she said, “Bullshit. Seriously, just tell me the reason!”
He hesitated, obviously reluctant to say what he was actually thinking, so she narrowed her eyes and glowered at him in silence until he finally gave up and admitted,
“Look, I don’t want it to sound like I’m blaming you, I’m not blaming you at all, it’s just… things were already pretty tense between us, weren’t they? We were fighting so much over little things, right, and then here’s this big, very sensitive thing, and I thought…”
Now he looked down at his hands, threading his fingers together. His face, lit by the gentle blue light from the pool, creased with discomfort and guilt.
“I thought if I said the wrong thing—and I knew I’d say the wrong thing, or… or if I confronted you before you were ready, then… I was afraid I’d push you further away.”
Frowning, Euphy looked down at her hands as well, and tried to digest this while sorting through her tangled feelings.
With her current perspective, she could look back and see that, while her father wasn’t perfect, he’d never treated her badly, and while he might have been shit at communicating, he was good at doing things that made his affection clear.
Despite the relative absurdity of their current situation, and even knowing that he was a lying bastard who hated being serious about anything, she hadn’t for a moment questioned the idea that he came here out of concern for her.
In light of all that, it felt strange to think back even further and remember that in the beginning she’d hated him.
When she was little, he hadn’t been there. Her mother’s explanation had always been that he was a chó chết3dead/useless dog, that his absence wasn’t Euphy’s fault, but how could she believe that? Other kids had fathers but she didn’t, not because he wasn’t alive but because she wasn’t important enough for him to care, and something about that had broken her in a way her mother's love couldn’t fix.
So when he finally showed up, too late to do her or the mother she’d lost any good, of course she’d hated him.
She’d also firmly believed that she’d never forgive him, and she’d done everything in her power to make sure he knew that, everything she could to drive him away so that when she was inevitably abandoned again it would be because she wanted to be.
The only problem with that plan was that he refused to leave. No matter what cruel things she said, or what embarrassment she caused, or what trouble she got into, he stuck around and endured it. Eventually, even if she didn’t entirely believe his excuses, she couldn’t pretend that he had any reason to put up with her shit unless he really did care about her, and so little by little she began to let him in.
She even began to hope that when he said he’d never leave her again, that he really meant it.
So when she’d gotten older, and started questioning herself, she’d gotten scared.
He always seemed so laid back about everything, but that was almost always in regards to things he considered ‘other people’s business.’ When it came to who he was and what he actually felt, the little information she could get out of him was almost always buried in jokes and exaggeration, so no matter how much she pried most of what he genuinely thought remained a mystery.
“Dad, I… really wish you’d’ve said something,” she murmured.
It wasn’t like she’d been convinced he’d reject her, but at the same time she could never be sure.
What if, after all that time and effort he’d spent winning her over, something fundamental about who she was was the thing that finally made him leave?
If that happened, she thought she might just shatter, and even if she could pick up those pieces she hadn't wanted to.
It felt so much safer to suffocate just a little bit every day than to risk losing a parent again.
“I thought I could just show you, I thought… if you could see I’d be fine with anything, then you’d come to me when you were ready.”
He paused, and then added, “But I didn’t do a good enough job thinking about it from your perspective. I forgot how scary being a kid is, having no one to rely on but your parents, and… I don’t know. Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, maybe I didn’t want to think about it, maybe I was just being selfish… this sort of emotional stuff, it’s always scared me.”
“Yeah, but… I was scared too.”
She rubbed her eyes angrily, feeling them start to burn again and hating the sudden weakness in her voice.
What was she, a fucking faucet? She was not going to cry. She felt like all she’d been doing since she got to college was crying, and she was tired of it.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m sorry.”
She didn’t reply, just chewed on her lip and tried to ride out the wave of bitterness she felt.
All that struggle really had been for nothing. If they’d just talked things out sooner, what would life have been like? Thinking back, half the ridiculous fights they’d had were because she’d been testing him, trying to figure out the answer without asking the question and getting upset every time she thought she got a clue she didn’t like.
How ironic, that his reluctance to fight with her had only encouraged her to start more fights.
Still, now that she was older, she regretted being so passive aggressive. Even if she’d only behaved like that because she’d been terrified, she knew it wasn’t the right way to go about it, so she decided that the mature thing to do would be to apologize as well.
Unfortunately, when she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was a very small and pathetic, “I was just so afraid you might hate me.”
… Oh no. Fuck.
There went her stupid emotions again.
Maybe she really was a faucet.
“What? Why in the world would that make me hate you?”
“Do you really not know?” she demanded, balling her fists in her lap. “Even if you say you don’t mind, do you really? What about what other people would think? Don’t all fathers want sons? Dad, I didn’t even want to keep your grandfather’s name, aren’t you disappointed? Do you realize we’re not even related in this life—”
“Whoa, hold on, slow down, time out!” he said, taking hold of her shoulders and giving her a small shake. “Where is all of this coming from? When did I even talk about any of that?”
“I…”
She shrank in on herself, feeling somewhat bewildered. Actually, she wasn’t sure where any of that came from. She couldn’t remember ever really hearing it from him. Maybe it had come from the same people who got upset with her whenever they found out she’d refused to take her father’s last name after her mother died, or from pop culture or the news or the internet, where she’d unconsciously learned that there was a certain type of dad that liked certain types of things, and even if her father wasn’t exactly like them, sometimes he still reminded her of them, and…
Alright, it was probably time to admit that despite how long she’d lived in this world, she’d clearly resolved fuck-all from the last one.
Seeing that she wasn’t able to reply, her dad sighed and said, “Okay, first of all, screw other people, I don’t give a damn about them. Second of all, I never wanted kids to begin with, so why would I care what you—”
He stopped.
She saw the sudden look of horror on his face, and for some reason found it so funny that she hiccup-laughed and had to cover her mouth.
“Comforting me by reminding me I’m an accident… that’s a bold move, Dad,” she said from behind her hands.
Thankfully, she knew what he meant. Both her mother and father had always been honest about this fact, and they’d also made it clear they were happy to have her anyways, so she didn’t mind.
In fact, the distress on his face actually cheered her up a bit.
“Okay, I—look, I didn’t mean I don’t want you, I do want you, that just came out wrong—”
“I know, it’s okay,” she said, taking pity on him.
“I, um… I was just trying to say that I never had any expectations, so anything’s fine? And, as for the name thing, you only got that because your mother gets sentimental over the strangest things, seriously, that one’s not on me, and… shit, I lost track, what was the last one?”
“We’re not related anymore.”
“Yeah! Right, we’re not, so do you not see me as your father anymore?”
“No, of course I do—“
“Then why hold me to a different standard? Do you think I’m incapable?”
“No, it’s just—I feel like I barely know anything about you, you just joke all the time and never say anything serious or talk about yourself, so I just…”
“That—that’s, well… oy, I’m seeing a pattern here, hold on.”
He pried her hands away from her face, gave them a squeeze and leaned in closer as he said, “Alright, I’m going to make this as clear as possible: Euphy, sweetheart, the only thing I’ve ever wanted from you is for you to be happy.”
“What, that’s it?” she scoffed. “You really expect me to believe that?”
“Yes! I—look, it’s true I never expected to have you in my life, but neshomele4little soul, I’ll never be able to convey just how grateful I am to have met you. You, just existing at all, you really—”
His voice cracked, and his hands tightened on hers as he looked away for a second, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he clenched his teeth.
Taking a shaky breath, he looked back at her and reached out to tuck a few of her stray hairs behind her ears, his visible eye reddening again.
“You have no idea how much you mean to me. However you want to live, whoever you want to be, I don’t care, as long as you’re you. If being a girl makes you happier, then behatzlacha5good luck/have success, you have my blessing.”
She nodded, unsure how to react. He was so rarely sincere about anything that she didn’t know how to handle it now that he was, and she felt so overwhelmed by confusion mixed with relief that she almost wished he’d just go back to joking.
“Okay, but you… can’t take that back,” she finally said, looking away in embarrassment.
“I’m not going to take it back.”
“Even if I become evil or something, you can’t complain.”
“Oh, yeah? Go on, then, I’d like to see you try,” he laughed, then reached out and pinched her cheek.
“I’m serious!” she said, swatting his hand away, “And don’t pinch my cheek, I’m an adult, I’m—I’m thirty three!”
“You, an adult…?” He quickly looked her up and down, then laughed again. “Yeah, sure, like two kids in a trench coat.”
She tried to punch him again, but this time he was ready and dodged.
“You’re such an asshole,” she muttered. “I can’t believe I ever wanted your approval, I must have been blind. You’re lucky I’m so forgiving.”
“Speaking of which… does that mean you’re willing to give me another chance?”
Resisting the urge to try to hit him again, she glared at him and snapped, “What ‘another chance?’ Who said you’re not still on the first chance? I’m not even that mad.”
“Wait, you’re not? I thought you’d be, you know… pretty upset. I mean, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve, um, made a huge mess of things.”
She blinked at him, noting the genuine surprise and relief on his face, and thought…
Hold on, had he really thought she’d cut him off just for this?
Sure, she wasn’t exactly over the whole thing, but being able to talk it through was all she’d really wanted.
Then it occurred to her that, even if she knew that she loved him, she’d spent so many years openly hating his guts that… well, maybe it was possible he didn’t realize those feelings were only in the past?
Then again, maybe he hadn’t realized it because she hadn’t explicitly told him…
Damnit, had they really spent years miscommunicating in circles just because they were both afraid of being hated by the other?
That was so stupid. Gods, they were both so stupid.
“I get to decide what I forgive, don’t I?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
She shoved him gently and said, “Dad, I don’t hate you. Even when I was younger I didn’t really hate you.”
“… Oh.”
He didn’t seem to know what to do with that, and shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
“Anyway… it wasn’t like you were completely wrong,” she mumbled. “I mean, if you had tried to confront me, I probably would have freaked the fuck out, it’s just… After that, I wouldn’t have had to guess anymore, which would have been nice.”
“Right,” he said, tilting his face downward, his eyebrows furrowed in mild confusion.
“But you have to promise to actually tell me stuff from now on! You can’t just say nothing and expect me to guess, because I promise you, I will always guess the worst possible answer!”
“Okay…”
“And stop lying to me all the time! You think I don’t notice? Or would you prefer I start lying to you more often?”
“N-no, wait, don’t do that—”
“Don’t you think it’s unfair that you know so much about me, but I don’t know anything about you? How would you like it if I just refused to tell you anything about my life here? You’re such a damn hypocrite, it drives me nuts!”
“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll—I’ll try to say stuff from now on, alright?”
“Ha, like I’ll believe you.”
“No, really! I’ll change, I swear, okay? I may just, uh, need a few reminders, you know how I forget stuff…”
“Oh, I’ll remind you,” she promised, cracking her knuckles in emphasis.
This jerk, why had she put up with so much of his bullshit when she was younger? She should have started threatening him with a taste of his own medicine ages ago, he clearly deserved it.
Then a thought occurred to her, and she realized she might have a rare opportunity to wrest a morsel of truth from her weasley father.
Keeping her voice light and innocent, she asked, “Since you’ve agreed to be honest from now on… Dad, did you really lose contact with Mom because of a car accident?”