flower wreath
by mirajens
.
.
.
Cana is twenty-one the next time she hears about her father.
It's in a letter— soggy parchment rolled up and tied up with yarn with a stamp from the bank. It tells her that one Gildarts Clive has legally passed and in his last will and testament, he named his only living family, his daughter Cana Alberona, as his sole benefactor.
The first emotion that courses through her is numbness. Something biting into her skin that is counteracted by the coldness that desensitized her flesh. Inside of her something rots and she lets it. The putrid pain toiling in her belly makes her fight through the nausea.
She thinks: the bank sure is tactless in telling someone that their father is dead and that they inherited a small fortune in one breath. And the follow up thought to that is: Gildarts is a fucking prick. Of all places he can kick the bucket in, he has to do it in Apropa where nothing but whorehouses and casinos flourish. What does that say about her? That her father died in the arms of strange women and his daughter doesn't even get to say goodbye, doesn't even know where his sorry ass is buried.
She contemplates visiting her brand new financial advisor who comes with Gildarts' fucking money. If anything just to ask which plot holds the remains of her idiot father. Maybe, if she feels like it, she'll ask how he died, too. It never occurred to her to wonder that. The old man seemed too indestructible to attach himself with something as final as death. Maybe its the little girl in Cana that holds on to that. She still can't quite convince herself that this isn't just a bad joke.
Now she wonders about Gildarts' final days. Did her father know he was about to die and did he try to fight it? Did he ever try coming back home to say a final goodbye to the daughter her professed to love so much or did his ailments prevent him from the winding travel? What did he do during the days leading up to her demise? Did he spend it in a joy woman's arms or did he spend it in bed shaking from some incurable disease that ate at his bones?
Did he give Cana a thought at all? Or did a fever cage him in delusions so he forgot about how his daughter waited for his return? Did he die in pain? Were his last thoughts about how bleak it was that nobody was holding his hand through his final breaths?
She wonders if he knew where Cornelia lay. Or that when Cana was six years old, a nun held her hand as she watched her mother's casket lowered into a plot outside the church from her hometown while an old priest said some bare words that held more gloom than comfort? She wondered, would he like to get transferred there? To make his final resting place by the side of the woman he couldn't stay for all those years ago? Would he like to be reunited with the only woman he ever loved, whose face he kept seeing on all those temporary bedwarmers he's had after she left and took his whole world with him?
In death, would he find his love again? He deserves it, Cana thinks, after his long, lonely life. Lonesomeness runs in the Clive blood so she knows how that feels and hopes that this time, he will find the woman with the brown hair and purple eyes and fall in love with her all over again. Maybe this time the wanderlust had been staved off his soul and he'd make Cornelia happy.
A shaky breath leaves Cana's lips, the only show of distress she allows herself. Her eyes harden when the parchment crumples in her clenching fist. Maybe she'd give the old man's money to the church that took care of her when he couldn't. Maybe, while she's at it, she can retrieve her father's body and have it settled in that old village her parents got married in and her mother rested in. One last effort to reunite her scattered family and then she'll wash her hands off the grief and walk on like she always did.
There is an uncorked bottle of burning ale that sits in front of her and because it's the easiest and most dependable comfort she knows, Cana tips the bottle up so its contents spill into her mouth, foregoing the decency of using the glass that came with it. The liquid is hot down her throat but effective in extinguishing the fire that roared in her gut. The liquor's alcohol count is something impressive in the sense that it could knock a cow out but it always did take that much poison to water down all the turmoil in her heart.
She always had quite the extreme way of dealing with grief.
note: I'm such a fucking mess for the clive family YOU DONT EVEN FUCKING KNOW HOW MUCH I CRY ABOUT THEIR FAMILY... please talk to me about cana, my beautiful queen of the lonely hearts club, dj daddy i$$ues and the most amazing lady to ever live? And her badass fucking dad who can't get his shit straight, loves his daughter so much but doesn't know how to be there for her LIKE DAMN IT GILDARTS. JUST STOP LEAVING. GET TO KNOW UR FUCKING DAUGHTER! BEFORE U DIE! and damn ok do we ever talk about cornelia. how hard it must have been for her. how even after gildarts fucking disappointed her she still left him their daughter because she still probably loved him even as she was dying and all alone... FUCK ME UP CLIVE FAMILY. FUCK ME THE FUCK UP.