Songs of Innocence - Daniel's F.

Sighing, Mark dipped his head for a moment, rubbing his temples with one hand. Unfortunately, the tension didn't ebb away as it did when his wife's hands massaged the area, but at that moment, she was at the hospital working. That had left Mark to collect their twelve-year-old son, Daniel, from school that afternoon. Of course, it had seemed simple enough, and he had done it hundreds of times, but he wished that Addison were here to help him deal with what had been revealed when he had taken Danny's lunch box from his school bag.

A piece of paper was held in his loose hand, which he used to lean against the back of the couch. It had been straightened out as best he could, and it was still legible, but it had clearly been shoved into the bag to try and hide the evidence of what it showed. Clearly, this was something that Danny thought Mom could handle better than Dad.

Part of Mark agreed with that - and that part of him was struggling to understand how his son, the math genius, had come home with a fail in math.

When Mark was his son's age, his own father would have sent him to his room without dinner. His own father might have beaten him, as well. In all practicality, his own father would have hit the roof with unleashed anger, but that wasn't something Mark was going to do. All he had to do was look at his son, the image of his mother in every way, and he felt all the anger disappear from inside of him.

Danny was a beautiful kid, and there wasn't a bone in his body that could deny that. This was his son, the son that Addison bore him. The first child of two that their love had created. He had Addison's shining red hair, and the same blue eyes that sparkled with happiness and curiosity. The sun-kissed skin from playing in the park over the recent summer had left him with a subtle dusting of freckles over his fair skin, as well, something that Mark wasn't prone to, but he knew from photographs that both his mother experienced on their summer holidays as a child.

At the moment, Danny was sitting on the couch that Mark leaned on. From his position behind him, Mark could only look down at the top of his bowed head, and it didn't take a genius to work out that the young boy was just waiting for an outburst. He was waiting to be punished, and that was what Mark couldn't understand. Naturally, as a curious and limitless child, Danny had his share of getting in to trouble, and he occassionally got punished by the taking away of video games for a week, or no television after dinner, but he never got punished in the way Mark had been. He had never been belted, or phsyically hurt, by anyone. That had been Mark's silent promise the moment he had first held his son in his arms, twelve years, two months and three days ago. He would never become his father. He would never use abuse for punishment. He would do nothing but love the child he had aided into the world.

Mark never understood how anyone can see past the stream of love that flowed when they looked at their child, to the point where they wanted their child to feel pain.

"I'm not angry." He spoke into the silence of the room. Danny, head bowed on the couch still, didn't move. "I'm just disappointed."

Finally, the young boy moved. He turned on the couch, leaning up on his knees so that his face was closer to his fathers. "Do you want to hear my side of it?" He asked. That was something that he had learnt from observing the bickering between his unofficial cousins; the Shepherd children and the Burke clan; that there were two sides to every story.

Mark looked at him tiredly. "Danny, how can there be two sides to it?"

"There are!" Danny insisted unfairly. "I got every question right on the test, and the only reason Mr. Krahern failed me was because I didn't write down my working out." He explained.

"Why not?" Mark asked.

Danny shrugged, as if his answer were the simplest thing in the world. "I do them in my head."

"Did you tell Mr. Krahern that?"

Danny nodded furiously. "Yeah, I did, and he said he didn't believe me."

"Danny-"

"He said that if he couldn't do them in his head and I could then I must be cheating." He interrupted.

Mark loked at him incredulously. "That's ridiculous! How can he fail you for being smarter than he is?"

"That's what I said." Danny told him.

"You did?" Mark asked, a subtle hint of a smirk crossing his lips. Whilst his son had both his mother and his father's intelligence, even at twelve years old, he had definately acquired his mothers spirit. "What did he say about that?"

Danny pointed to the paper in Mark's hand. "He failed me, remember?"

Surprising both himself and his son, Mark laughed. Taking a nearby pen, he signed next to the notion of 'parents signature' on the bottom of the letter explaining the failed test, and shook his head, still laughing softy. After a moment, understanding that his father had clearly not been angry at all with him, Danny joined in. Smiling, Mark was pleased to see the happier expression on his son's face again, and ruffled the red hair on top of his head. It was getting longer now, and the ends were in desperate need of a trim before it started to look messy.

"Dad, do we have to tell Mom about this?" Danny asked after a moment.

"You don't want to tell her?" Danny shook his head. "Why not?"

He looked away, scrunching up his nose. "If we tell Mom, she'll go and shout at Mr. Krahern again, and that was kinda embarrassing last time."

Mark nodded, remembering the encounter at the last parents night that had left an interesting story going round the hospital the next day. "Alright." He decided, giving his son a hug. "It'll be our secret." He assured him.

"Thanks Dad." Danny grinned, giving him that hard, crushing hug that Mark had only ever had from his child. "You're the best."