AN: First of all, thank you everyone for your concern, I didn't mean to spook anyone about my hospital trips. It was nothing life-threatening, I just blew an eardrum and had to deal with the repercussions. But apart from being deaf on one side until it's healed, I am well and healthy again. And very very grateful for everyone's well wishing.
On a second note, this chapter and the last were actually supposed to be just one chapter, but Destiny's personality sort of took over and refused to be condensed. Even though I've been imagining the scene that takes place near the end of the chapter since I first created the idea of this story, it turned out to be an extremely difficult scene to write. I'm mostly satisfied with it now, hopefully you all agree. And I promise, the drama and confrontations you're all asking for will be coming soon(ish).
Chapter 9
When I finish the song Destiny cheers excitedly and then immediately asks for another one. I laugh, shaking my head. We've already been at it for more than a half hour, Destiny naming songs from all her favorite princess movies and thankfully they're almost all classic Disney songs that I know from growing up. Once she runs out of suggestions, I sing a few random songs I know how to play on the guitar, mostly Beatles and classic rock standards that I play for work. She applauds enthusiastically when I improvise a guitar solo in the middle of one song, and the rest of the time she is practically bouncing on the bed as she listens, occasionally humming along.
"Another?" Destiny asks hopefully. I place a hand against the still vibrating strings of the guitar and glance at the clock.
"No, I think that's enough for now," I say when I realize it's after nine. I'm kind of hoping there's no one in the rooms on either side of me. "Besides, you still need to take a bath. Your mom will murder me if she sees all that chocolate on your face."
Destiny groans dramatically, rubbing a hand over her face in an attempt to clean it up. "All better?" she asks and I laugh.
"Not even close, kiddo." I roll over and put my guitar back into its case, strapping it shut. While Destiny falls back against the mattress with a huff, I move into the bathroom and awkwardly manage to lift the bench out of the tub. With that out of the way, I turn on the water, checking the temperature, before stoppering the tub and heading back out into the room.
Destiny is still sprawled on the bed and when I come in she looks over at me and pushes her lower lip out in a pout. "Do I have to?" she whines.
"Yes," I say firmly, trying not to smile at her expression. "C'mon, take your bath and then maybe we can do something fun afterward, okay?"
"O-kay," Destiny says, stretching the word out resignedly and sliding off the bed. When she stops next to me I carefully ease the elastic off one of her pigtails and start unbraiding it. "Can you put them back after?"
"Of course I can," I say, finishing with the first braid and moving on to the other one. "I am a master at piggytails." Unfortunately this isn't a lie. It's one of my hidden talents, which I keep hidden for good reason. Weird questions come up when a guy is good at hair, and even after I explain that I have a little sister I still get strange looks for it.
Her hair now let loose, I realize it has a slight wave to it unlike Tina's pin-straight hair. I glance upward at where the edge of my fringe curls outward and smile. Another mark for me on the inheritance chart. I help Destiny get undressed and then she climbs into the bathtub as I reach over to shut off the water before it gets too high. Even though she was so against the idea of a bath, once she's in the water she giggles and ducks her head under the surface, blowing bubbles before she pops back up.
Bathing a little kid is just as much of an adventure as I remember it used to be. She's old enough that she can scrub herself, but she still gets overly excited when the shampoo gets foamy and I end up with my fair share of bubbles on me too. I'm sitting in the doorway of the bathroom, keeping an eye on her and humming "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin under my breath (because who doesn't think of this song whenever baths are involved?), when I hear the knock on the door.
"No slipping underwater, okay princess?" I say and wait for Destiny's nod before I roll out to open the door. I'm not all that surprised to see Tina standing there, even if seeing her still does momentarily stun my brain, but she takes one look at the water spots on my clothes and her eyes widen.
"Bathtime?" she asks curiously.
"How'd you guess?" I ask in return, laughing. She reaches out and I tense when her hand touches my head, but then she pulls it back and I see she's got soapy bubbles on her fingers. "Oh, I suppose that would do it," I concede and then move backwards. "Come in, if you've got the time."
"Is that Mommy?" Destiny calls from in the bathroom. Tina smiles as she walks past me and to the bathroom doorway.
"Are you behaving yourself?" she asks, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe casually. I look down at my lap, because she used to do that all the time and it looks too normal, which is weirding me out again.
Destiny answers with a loud yes and then launches into rambling about what we've done so far. Midway through she's talking so fast and animatedly that she starts stumbling over her words, and Tina has to remind her to slow down. Destiny finishes washing up while she's talking and when she climbs out of the bath, I take one look at Tina's dress and suggest she moves so I can dry off the little girl. The last thing she needs is to go perform in wet clothes, and I'm already wet anyway.
I towel Destiny off and when I'm done I look up to see Tina's gotten her pajamas out of the backpack and brought them over. I'm just helping Destiny to get dressed when Tina makes a noise of annoyance, so I glance over my shoulder at her. "Sorry," she says, blushing, and I can tell she didn't mean to make the sound aloud, "I just noticed I have to get back in just a minute."
"They don't give you much downtime, do they?" I ask, trying to keep things light and conversational for Destiny's sake. If it weren't for the little girl listening attentively to everything we're saying, I'd be asking the more serious questions that I can't get out of my head.
"Not on weekend shows," Tina says. She's looking over mine and Destiny's heads, checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror and wiping away a spot where her eyeliner is smudged. Fully dressed once more, Destiny breaks away and hugs Tina's legs. Tina smiles that real smile again and carefully kneels down to hug her back. "You should go to sleep soon, sweetie," she says.
Destiny pouts and protests, "But I'm having fun with Daddy." I notice the way Tina's eyes flick up to me at this and I know it's the new title that surprises her. Admittedly it still catches me a little off guard to hear it, but at the same time it sounds right and that eases the shock.
"Okay, just not too late," Tina says. "It's already after your bedtime." Destiny just grumbles an unintelligible response that makes Tina laugh quietly. "I've gotta go back to work now, okay? Kisses?" They exchange the same sort of farewell as last time, and Tina thanks me again before heading for the door. This time when she hesitates and looks back, Destiny's already climbing up into my lap and demanding that I fix her hair. For the briefest moment it looks like Tina's actually smiling at me. And then she's gone.
I get Destiny to go sit on the bed while I clean up the mess in the bathroom. When I go over to the bed, she's rummaging in her backpack and just as I'm about to ask what she's looking for she makes a triumphant noise and emerges with a brush clutched in her hand. "Can you fix my braids now?" she asks.
"Alright, give me a second," I say and park my chair beside the bed. I'm aware of Destiny's curious gaze on me the whole time as I heave myself from the chair to the mattress, dragging my legs up after me. It makes me a little self-conscious, but when I've gotten my legs arranged and I look up, instead of commenting on my paralysis she just crawls over and hands me the brush. I can't help but feel a little relieved at this. Apparently Tina's explained my condition to her before, because she doesn't seem phased by it at all.
I'm a little out of practice, but I still manage to get her hair into two mostly even braids. She puts the brush back in the heap of things she pulled out of her backpack, and then scrambles up the bed to sit down beside me. I loop an arm around her as she snuggles against my side and gazes up at me.
"Daddy, I don't wanna go to bed yet," she complains and I smile. "Tell me about, uhm –" she stops, humming thoughtfully, and then her gaze lights up, "about your family. Mommy says you have a big family."
"Sort of," I agree. "Not really huge, but compared to your mom's I guess it is big." It feels really weird, telling my daughter all about my family, but the longer I'm talking the easier it gets. Destiny makes for a good audience and she asks a lot of questions. By the time I'm running out of things to tell, I think she might revere Lizzie. Not too strange, since they're a lot alike, really. "Why don't you tell me something now?" I suggest, mostly because my throat is dry from talking. Then my curiosity spikes suddenly and I add, "What about those stories your mom tells you? Tell me those."
"The stories about you and Mommy?" she asks and I nod. She wriggles out of my arm and sits up facing me, her expression getting about as serious as a four year old's can. "Well once there was a pretty girl named Tina. She wasn't a princess, Mommy says that a lot. She was just a girl, but she lived with an evil king and queen. And when she was little, there was time when a mean teacher made her talked all about the misery."
"You mean Missouri?" I ask in amusement.
Destiny shakes her head confidently. "No, misery," she corrects and I just nod in agreement. "Well the mean teacher was really a witch, and she didn't like what Mommy said about the misery so she put a cursed on her. It made her so she couldn't talk right. Mommy calls it a Sputter curse."
"Oh yeah, I've heard of that curse, it's a bad one," I agree, trying not to laugh. Leave it to Tina to turn her life story into an epic faerie tale.
"It was bad," Destiny says dramatically. "She didn't talk right, so people laughed at her and they didn't talk to her no more and she was really alone. But then she met a really nice guy that talked to her even though she didn't talk right, and he was her friend. He was named Artie. That's you," she informed me pointedly and I nodded my understanding. "Mommy says he was the nicest person in the world, and she falled in love with him.
"And then one day Artie and Tina kissed, just like the prince and princess are supposed to, and it was a magic kiss because it made the Sputter curse go away. Then she could talk right and it made them both really happy because they were in love." I blush self-consciously, because that's not exactly how it happened. In real life, the disappearance of Tina's "curse" had been anything but a happy moment between us. We patched things up eventually, but it had been tense for a while. Although I'm glad Tina blurred that detail in her story. I still feel guilty when I think about how I reacted that night, even if it was sort of warranted.
"Are you listening?" Destiny asks, patting my arm to get my attention again.
"Yeah, I'm listening, keep going," I say and she nods, pursing her lips thoughtfully until she apparently decides where to pick up the story.
"So they was in love and was gonna to grow up and get married," she continues, "but the evil king and queen didn't want them to. They didn't like Mommy and didn't want her to be happy. So they made a plan to have her taken far far away and lock her up where Artie could never ever find her. Artie found out and he went to see her. He didn't have time to save her, but before she went away he gave her a present – the secret one – and promised that if she keeped the present he would come find her. The present was a baby, and that was me."
Destiny watches me expectantly while I take in the details of the story. While I can tell most of it is fabrication, there are definitely places I can see where it parallels reality. The question is, how much of it is based on the truth? There's one question that this story has given a vague answer to, but at the same time I've come up with about a dozen more that I have no clue about.
"That's a good story," I say and Destiny smiles proudly. "Your mom tells you that one a lot?"
"She used to telled it to me every night, but she doesn't as much no more," she answers. "It makes her sad when she says it. She doesn't cry, but I can see she's sad. She gets those frowny lines right here." Destiny presses the tip of her pointer fingers against the inner corners of her eyes. I bite my lip and nod, and she lets her hands fall into her lap. "Do you get sad without Mommy?"
My heart plummets downward and my stomach jumps up into my throat at the same time, which is not a pleasant experience. How do I explain this to her? She's only five, she won't understand what's going on. Hell, I don't even understand what's going on right now. Finally I settle on the truth, or at least part of it. "Yeah, princess, I do," I admit, sighing heavily. "When your mom went away, it made me really sad."
Destiny curls up against my side again, nuzzling her face into my chest. "But now things will be okay again, right?" she asks hopefully, glancing upward and fixing me in that big blue stare. For a moment I wonder if my eyes ever have that serious of an effect on people, but I'm pretty sure they can't because if they did, I could own the world by now.
"We'll find a way," I say because I can't find it in myself to dash the hope in her gaze. "Your mom and I, we'll find a way to make everything okay for you."
She nods and there is nothing but complete trust in her eyes. It makes my chest tighten a little, because I realize just how much of a responsibility that much trust is. For the first time, it really hits me that as her father I have this power to either make or break her entire world depending on what I do with her trust. It's a mortally terrifying prospect that makes me even more afraid of saying something that can come back to bite me in the ass later.
"I think it's time for someone to go to sleep," I say and Destiny grumbles and shakes her head, even as she yawns. My gaze slips to the pile of things from her bag and something in it gives me an idea. "Is that a movie I see in your backpack?"
"My favorite," she says eagerly, crawling over to grab the case and handing it to me.
"The Little Mermaid," I read off the cover. "This is a good one. How about we settle down here on the bed and watch it together?" When she agrees, I lower myself back into my chair and roll over to the television on the stand across the room. It takes me a minute to figure out the set up, but eventually I get the movie in and grab the remotes before heading back to the bed.
We prop ourselves up on the pillows so we're laying down but can still see the tv. I manage to get her tucked in under the blankets by convincing her I'm cold, and she snuggles up against my side as I start the movie. She hums along with the music in the beginning, but hardly fifteen minutes into the movie her voice trails off and five minutes later she's fast asleep with her face buried in my side. I smile victoriously. Just like how I used to get Lizzie to go to sleep when she was little. Although her movie of preference was Aladdin.
I slide the arm that isn't around Destiny under my head, making myself comfortable. It's been a crazy evening, but I'm still happy with it. The whole suddenly being a father thing is still mind-boggling but I love Destiny and I'm feeling kind of confident that she loves me too. Either way, it feels right to be spending time with her and I'm determined that I will find a way to be able to keep spending time with her in the future. Somehow.
Now I just have to keep myself going until Tina gets done with work. It's been a long couple of days, and I realize I've been awake since seven o'clock yesterday morning. Thank God I still have the rest of the weekend to recover because I'm going to be a zombie. It's a miracle I'm still conscious and coherent.
I press a light kiss against Destiny's head and murmur, "G'night, Dee," before settling myself back to watch the movie through half-lidded eyes.