All Charles wants is a stiff drink and a hot shower.
The drink to – if not forget – then as least to not remember all too vividly what he has done.
The shower to get rid of the smell of the murky water and the cold. A cold that has settled comfortably into his bones ever since he has waded out of the harbor two hours ago. He has changed on the boat and tossed his clothes but it wouldn't help.
Now that he looks at his daughter, he wonders if anything ever will.
Diana shouldn't be home. She should be out with her friends or her boyfriend, doing what girls her age do. Normal girls, that is. Not girls who are witches. Who's dads are witches. Who's dads kill their friends.
"Hi, dad," Diana says, turning away from the open fridge she has been staring into. Her voice is very quiet. She knows. Of course, she does.
"Hey, honey." The word feels alien on his tongue, almost like a lie.
"Nick is dead," she says more blatantly than he has ever heard her say anything. He has raised a polite young woman who usually considers every word before speaking it. Apparently, a lot of things are different tonight.
"I heard," he replies, leaning against the kitchen counter next to her.
"How?" Diana frowns at him and for a second he wonder if she can see it, if she knows that as well.
"The police called Dawn." The lie shouldn't come this easily. "I was with her when... it happened." When I killed him, his mind adds.
Diana nods and brushes a tear off her cheek.
"You were friends, right?" Charles hears himself ask. He doesn't even know why he wants to know.
She shrugs with one shoulder. "Not until a few weeks ago. He and Melissa started dating recently and we started hanging out together. I didn't really know him. None of us did."
It's a strange sensation to know that she lies but that she doesn't know he knows.
He can't look at her when he nods. "I'm sorry." For what could fill a book.
The next thing he knows is his daughter wrapping her arms around him. She's warm. So warm that he almost feels human again.
He pulls her closer and buries his face in her hair. She smells of perfume and something else, something charred. He can only suspect what it is and it makes him sick.
They stay like that for a while until she withdraws slightly, tears have smeared her make-up.
"He is the only person I know who died since...," her words trail off and she looks up at him with those big Bambi eyes she hasn't inherited from him.
"Your mother," Charles finishes for her.
Diana nods, sniffling for one last time. "I didn't even know her but I miss her."
Charles tries to smile but he fails. The muscles in his face just won't cooperate. He reaches up to brush a strand of her hair behind her ear. "If you had known her, you would miss her even more."
She smiles, wordlessly agreeing. "I think I need some ice cream. Do you want some? We're all out of whipped cream, though," she asks with faux cheer. Her mouth quirks a little but her eyes betray her.
Ice cream. Ice. Icy water reaching up to his hips, making his clothes cling to his body like they, all by themselves, try to pull him under as well. Maybe they should have.
"Dad?"
Charles flinches as Diana's hand closes down on his. The hands that... "What?"
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
He wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. He is haunted already.
This time, he manages that smile but he knows it's only half-hearted. "Just thinking about your mom," he lies and she accepts it.
She turns back to the fridge and produces a tub of chocolate chip ice cream. "You sure you don't want any?"
He shakes his head. "I think I need something stronger than that."
Diana nods in understanding and scoops some of the chocolate-y consolation into a glass bowl. "Nick had it worse than any of us. He never knew any of his parents."
Charles' fingers dig into the counter top as he fights the urge to yell at her, to give room to the raging emotions inside him. He wants to tell her that he knows because he has been there when Nick's parents died. That he had seen them, heard them die because they – all of them – had been too young and too foolish to think they were in control.
He feels a vile smile creep on his face when he realizes that this is what it all lead up to. That they all had started killing Nick sixteen years ago and tonight he had just given him the final push.
Knowing that should ease the pain but it doesn't. It's just another excuse.
"Dad, you remember that song you sang to me when I couldn't sleep? You always said it was mom's favorite in the year I was born."
He frowns for a second, then remembers. "That old Live song."
"'I Alone', yes."
"What about it?"
She smiles sheepishly and it makes her look even more like her mother. "Will you sing it to me?"
"Aren't you a little too old for that?"
She shakes her head. "Not tonight."
He nods. She is right. Tonight, things are different. Things have changed. Probably forever.
Charles wraps an arm around Diana's shoulders and leads her over into the living room where he fixes himself a drink and she sits down on the couch, listlessly pushing the ice cream around in its bowl.
Glass in hand, he sits down next to her and she snuggles up against him. It feels good, her warmth seeping into his body and he realizes how tired he is. Killing people is exhausting, some part of his brain taunts and he drowns that voice with a long sip from his drink. Drowns... right.
"Dad, I'm glad that you and Miss Chamberlain are dating," Diana states after a while around a spoonful of ice cream. "You've both been alone for too long and you shouldn't be, especially now."
Charles can't help but laugh a wryly at that. Dawn. If it hadn't been for her...
No, that isn't true. The dominos have already started tipping sixteen years ago and he has been in it back then as well. Dawn isn't to blame any more than he is. He and Ethan and Amelia and the others.
He isn't stupid, though. He is well aware that she has played him, using whatever it is he feels for her to justify their his actions. To a certain degree, she is right. He has saved her, and probably many others, too, who may have gotten hurt if they had let Abbadon roam free (again). But that doesn't make it any better, that doesn't justify killing a child. A child that may as well have been his own.
Something inside him clenches, makes him sick but that feeling scatters when Diana inches even closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder. Diana is still here, she is alive and well and it is because of what he has done. For now, she is save from what he has helped conjure up because he ended it with his own hands. A wicked Catch 22.
Quietly, he begins to sing his wife's favorite song of 1995. Her eyes had always started to sparkle when it came on the radio. With that radiant smile he had fallen in love with she had beamed at him, claiming the band must have written that song just for them.
After her death, he had always sung that song for Diana when she couldn't sleep and would crawl into his bed at night. That way, a part of her mother had still been with them.
Soon enough, he hears Diana's breath even out and her body relaxes against his, the half-empty bowl of molten ice cream still in her limp hand.
Charles can't help but smile at the picture. No matter how grown up she is – and after tonight probably even more so – she is still his little girl.
Carefully, he extracts the bowl from her hand and sets it on the coffee table. Then he scoops her up and carries her upstairs into her room where he lays her on the bed. She isn't wearing shoes and her clothes are comfortable enough to sleep in, so he just drapes a blanket over her. Trying not to make too much noise, he sits down on the cushioned chair by the door and watches her sleep, watches her curl an arm around her pillow.
As he sits there in darkness (where he belongs), he makes a promise.
That no matter what happens, he will do everything in his power (magical or otherwise) to protect Diana. Even from himself.