Losing Princesses

When did princesses and rabbit holes turn into mud between her toes? When did the mud flecks mixed with the freckles over the bridge of her nose start? When he found brown footprints leading through the kitchen to the sound of hot running water.

He liked to blame her parents, whoever they were. Some crazy Frenchwoman and her crazy French lover.

He tried to comb clumps of knots out of her messy hair while she groused and squirmed. When he let her escape, she was out the door before he could stand up, her scrawny legs vaulting her off the top step of the porch to land barefooted in the grass.

She ate her dinner like the devil was on her tail. She didn't answer of his sparse questions--parent questions like "What did you do today?" to which, if any response came at all, she answered "Nothing."

Her fourteenth birthday would be in two weeks. When planning her party, Ben came to the realization that he didn't know his own daughter anymore. He didn't know which cake she might want, what presents to get for her, how much was too much anymore. Any time he opened his mouth in her presence, it was all she could do to restrain the exaggerated roll of her eyes. Singing was out of the question.

Instead of taking him by the hand to read him bedtime stories and build daisy chains, she fought with swords made of sticks and curled her lip, full of sarcasm and a boldness she wore like a badge on her chest.

When did he lose his little girl?

She got home after the sun went down. Ben sat in his study, hiding in the single beam of his desk lamp and hunched over a much-belaboured piece of paper. She tiptoed past his open doorway as quietly as she could manage, but Ben had the ears of a father.

Only seconds after she'd closed her door without a creak, Ben whipped it back open to stand in the doorway. She jumped, her hair damp from the sprinkling rain and her bare feet slick with mud. He didn't close the door behind him.

"Where were you, Alexandra?" His voice wasn't harsh. Probing, but not harsh.

Her eyebrows pressed down until a line formed between them. "I hate it when you call me that."

"It's your name," Ben responded, taking another step in. "I'm going to ask again, and this time you really should answer me, Alex. Where were you?"

"What's it matter?" Alex responded, ruffling her hair to muss it even further.

"It matters because I'm your father," he said, his back going straight. "That means I make the rules and you follow them."

"What rules?" Alex asked, backing away as if it didn't matter, rooting through her clothes for something comfortable to sleep in.

"Curfew," Ben retorted sharply. He paused, which cut the edge from his voice. "Home before the sun goes down, does that sound familiar to you at all, Alex?"

"The sun was still up when I started back home," she muttered, flinging a sock across the room from her drawer.

"I didn't say start home at sundown," he continued, taking another hard step forward. "I said home at sundown." He waited again, watching her with anxious eyes turned hard. "You were with that boy again, weren't you?"

This caused her to slam her drawer shut, turning like a cornered animal on her father. He didn't wince or back down like she wanted him to.

"I like Karl," she ground back, fisting her hands. "He listens to me. Taught me how to fire a slingshot, look out for myself. And he's not a boy."

"He's a boy and you're still just a girl," Ben whipped out, his voice still low with a sting to it.

"I'm growing up whether you like it or not, Daddy!"

"Alex--"

"Or what?" Her eyes were glassy, intense, staring him through. "Are you gonna ground me? Lock my window so I don't sneak out? Hide me down in the basement and feed me through a slot?"

Ben's lips pressed together, fine and straight in a single line.

"You can't control everything," she shot at him when he said nothing. "Especially not me."

The next step he took had them nearly right up against one another, Ben staring his daughter hard in the eyes.

"The thing is, I can," he told her, his voice steady. "And no, I won't stick you in the basement, but I am very capable of locking your window along with every other window in this house. As long as you're my daughter, I keep on making the rules."

"Maybe I don't wanna be your daughter!"

It came like lightning. Her face set and full of red adolescent fury, fists clenched and shoulders hunched at an offensive level. Ben's mouth slipped open half a notch, but it was enough to register the rending shock all through his face. Alex never backed down, never took it back.

He didn't take a breath, worried that it might betray more than he already had. He turned quickly, paused only slightly to shake off the jolt of it, then stalked the few steps necessary to leave her room.

Ben didn't bother closing her door. As soon as he was five steps out of her room, Alex slammed the door after him, rattling the glass picture frames on the wall of the hallway. Ben steadied one with a careful, knowing hand.

Alex when she was seven, blue flowers in her hair, hugging a stuffed dog to her chest. She wasn't allowed a real dog, and in his guilt at a little girl's tears, Ben had found the largest stuffed one he thought possible as recompense. The picture was taken on her seventh birthday, her pink paper hat strapped under her chin and her big white grin as she hugged the stuffed dog nearly as large as she was.

He took the frame from the wall, his eyes hanging on the details, the springy curls of her youth and the glee sparkling in her eyes. He took it with him into his study.

Hours later, after the rain had pattered away, Alex's door creaked open again. Feet that should have been slippered were bare and scuffed the carpet, and the belt of her blue robe dangled to the ground. A beam of light fell across the floor from the half-open door of her father's study.

She hid her bottom lip between her teeth as she eased his door open and peeked inside.

Ben was asleep in the yellow lamp light, a pencil still hanging loosely in one hand. Near him lay the picture of Alex's seventh birthday, the stuffed dog that now took up a corner in her closet. As she tiptoed closer, the paper under his forehead came into view. Some sort of list, with her name underlined at the top. Cakes, presents, guests, several suggestions written in and scratched out in frustration. Notations too small to read at her distance, several in different inks from different pens as they ran out.

Her mouth turned down even further as she saw everything he'd scratched out, every idea that sounded bad as soon as his pencil touched paper. There were more scribbles than ideas.

She stood on her toes to reach the top shelf of his closet, from which she pulled a soft blanket. She tucked it up over his shoulders and reached across to turn off his desk lamp. All went into darkness as Alex crept back to her room.

AN: I'm back. No, you can't get rid of me (: Ben is still hanging out in my head, but this time hormonal teenage Alex jumped in here too. I guess I needed my own personal transition from adorable!Alex to spiteful!Alex in the show. Was this terrible? Cliche? Was it Ben-ish at all? I dunno, I just love writing it. :D Lemme know what you think, leave us some love, and stay awesome!