TITLE: My Immortal

AUTHOR: Kristen Kilar (chickadee(underscore)from(underscore)3(at)yahoo(dot)com)

RATING: T (PG). Drug use. Language. Angst.

DISCLAIMER: If I owned Andromeda, the writing staff would consist of Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Ethlie Ann Vare, and Gordon Michael Woolvett. Sadly, this isn't so. "My Immortal" belongs to Evanescence.

ARCHIVE: Sure, but please ask. I like to know where my babies are spending the night.

SUMMARY: "Cui Bono" tag: Beka remembers her father. Songfic.

SPOILERS: References to things mentioned in "The Ties That Blind", "The Pearls That Were His Eyes", "It Makes A Lovely Light", "Cui Bono", "Exalted Reason, Resplendent Daughter", and "Time Out Of Mind".

AUTHOR'S NOTES: charli and I traded plot bunnies. She knows how much I love Ignatius and sent over this adorable bunny singing Evanescence. The bunny even managed to briefly coax my muse out of his tequila-inspired stupor! Also, go read the fantastic stories she wrote with the plot bunnies I gave her in return – "My Worst Fear" and "Reflections".

So much love to charli, and I hope I did your bunny justice.

As always, much love to my darling beta, Allie/Myna/niki blue/rah rah replica, the best friend and beta a girl could have!

Please read and review.

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

Old Earth Song Lyrics
Evanescence
circa 2000AD

I don't drink, did you know that? I don't drink. I don't squirt, I don't snort, I don't inhale, I don't—GAH! I've been straight-edged all my life, all my life, because I'm my daddy's little girl, and I don't want to be like my daddy.

Capt. Rebeka B. Valentine
circa CY 10087

"Truth's a bitch," I'd told Dylan before leaving and coming back here to the Maru. Truer words were never spoken.

The Maru has always been my home. The one place in the universe that's mine, the one constant throughout my life.

My father's life.

Maybe Sid was right. Maybe Daddy did screw up my life.

Maybe he wasn't the hero I remember him as.

When I was a kid and he would come home drunk or high…sometimes he scared me. He had a temper when he was on Flash. He never laid a finger on me, but he hit Rafe more than once. He swore a lot and more than a few of the Maru's dents came from him.

I hated seeing him like that.

So when I grew up, I was determined that I would not fall prey to the same sickness.

I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. I was completely, teetotaler clean.

And I ended up addicted to Flash anyway.

In my own way, I ended up mimicking his downfall. I battled a Flash addiction. I fell in love with the guys who would lie to me and leave me the way my mother left my family.

Daddy loved Mom. It was obvious to everyone who ever saw him.

Mom was not quite so devoted to her husband. And then she left.

And our family was never the same again.

My longest, most stable relationship was with the darling Bobby Jensen, who lied to me and used me and left me over and over and over again and I let him, because I thought I loved him.

Maybe my father's life patterns really did scar me, because I haven't been doing much better with my life than he did with his.

When I was a teenager, at the height of my dad's addiction, I would cry at night, and wish that he'd just leave, go away and never come back, instead of leaving me in bits at a time, dying by stages while I watched helplessly.

And even now, when he's dead and gone for all these years, I'm still not alone. He's still here with me. In me. And I'm acting out the same old patterns, again and again.

The one memory of my childhood that won't stop nagging at me now is the sight of my wonderful dad, eyes white with Flash, barely aware of who I was, screaming at me in a paranoid fury while I tried to calm him down.

And I remember doing the exact same thing to Trance.

Maybe my father wasn't as good a man as I thought he was.

Maybe I'm reenacting his drama.

Damn Sid! Why do I suddenly doubt my own memories of Daddy?

Because of Sid and his insinuating, oh-so-innocent little remarks.

I hate him.

I hate him…because I can't hate my dad.