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Resplendent 12.5

I'd only been leaning against the wall of the blank, white corridor for a couple minutes when the door across from me opened. I straightened up as Amy emerged. "How is he?" I asked.

"As far as I can tell, Heartbreaker's removal of his influence worked perfectly," she said, her voice soft so as not to disturb any of the other patients. "He's been healed of his injuries, and I've pulled him out of the induced coma. He should wake up sometime in the next couple of hours."

I let out a breath, careful not to let it shudder as it emerged. "Thank you, Amy."

She considered me. Then, as if on a sudden impulse, she reached out and put her hands on my shoulders. "Taylor," she said seriously. "What do you think is going to happen in there?"

I grimaced. "Do you want the honest answer, or what I want to tell you?"

She frowned. "What's the difference?"

"What I want to say is that I don't know. That I'm nervous because I'm not sure what's going to happen, what's going to be said, what things will be like when I walk out again. But it's not true."

"Then what is true?" Amy asked, her brow furrowed as she stared at me.

"I'm going to go in there, and I'm going to wait for him to wake up," I said. "When he does, I'll wait for him to say the first word. It's going to be either my name, or 'I'm sorry.' Most likely both. I'm going to tell him I forgive him. Then, with his shame established, I'm going to proceed to give him an abridged version of what's happened in the past month, and he's not going to be able to call me out because he's still focused on what he did. Any accusation will feel too hypocritical for him to make it."

Amy's mouth was hanging open. "That's…" she seemed unable to find the words.

"Manipulative? Cynical? Yes." I swallowed. "That is what's bothering me, Amy. Not that I don't know how this conversation is going to happen, but that I do."

"But… do you have to lie to him?"

"It would be the truth, just—"

"It's lying, Taylor!"

"... I know. But what's the alternative?" I asked helplessly. "I can't—I don't want to lose him, Amy. I need to get things figured out before I can deal with that."

"Then why are you making me wake him up at all?" Amy asked, a hint of bitterness lending an edge to her voice. "Why not just leave him in that coma until you have the inclination to deal with him?"

"It's not that simple. He deserves better than—"

"He deserves better than you manipulating him! Haven't you done enough of that lately?"

I flinched. Amy took a step back, almost startled.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, putting a hand over her mouth. "I don't—I didn't mean that."

"No, you did. And you were right." I swallowed. "How did your dinner with Carol go?"

"…Well. I think—I really think we might be able to put together something like… like a real mother-daughter relationship. It'll never be what she and—and Vicky had. But it'll be something. Maybe."

"That's good. That's wonderful." Almost unbidden, a faint smile came to my lips. "I'm happy for you, Amy."

"Taylor." Amy's face hardened suddenly. "Having a family, having a decent relationship with their parents—it's not something that happens to other people."

I met her eyes. "It's different for me," I said, thinking of the white shores of Aman.

"Yeah?" Amy asked caustically. "Me too. Or were you also adopted by the hero who threw your biological father into the birdcage?"

"That's… not the same."

"Maybe not. I don't really understand your… situation. But really—if I can manage to wrangle a decent relationship with Carol, you can do the same." She reached out again and put both hands on my shoulders. "But you have to try. You'll never be able to connect with him if you don't let him connect with you."

I swallowed. "I'm…" I grimaced, trying to find the words. "…I don't know if I can think of Danny Hebert as my father anymore."

She considered me. "I… kinda want to ask why," she admitted. "But I won't. I'll just say that I don't think of Carol as my mom. That's not stopping me from trying to build something with her."

I met her eyes. I chewed my lip for a few seconds before sighing and nodding. "I guess you're right."

Her lips twitched. "Call it doctor's orders. Now get in there and talk to him—honestly. Dad or otherwise."

I smiled at her. "Okay. Thank you."

I passed her and slipped into the little room. Dad lay there in the bed, the white sheets draped over him. His chest rose and fell slowly. His face was a healthy, warm tone, but his brow was ever so slightly furrowed.

I sat in the little chair beside the bed, and watched him sleep.

There was a vase on the end table, filled with wilting flowers. They must have been sent by one of Dad's friends from the Dockworker's Union—I hadn't brought them. I wished I had. Not today—to bring flowers only now, only to be seen, would have been… vile. I wished I had been bringing flowers. I wished that this wasn't the first time I had seen my dad's face in a month.

I wished I was a better person. I wished I was a better daughter. I wished I had been there for him, even half as much as these friends I didn't even know.

The curtains were pulled aside, and the midmorning light streamed in from the sky outside. I turned away, looking out the window. We were several stories up, but the surrounding buildings still obscured most of the skyline.

There was a shifting beside me. I looked back. Dad was stirring, his eyelids fluttering.

For a moment, profound dread crept over me. I was possessed of a desire to flee—whether by actually leaving the room, or by Singing the man in the bed back into slumber.

I resisted. I bit my tongue, and watched as, slowly, his eyes drifted open. They lingered on the ceiling for a moment, blinking blearily, before visibly sharpening. They turned to me, and our eyes met.

Dad licked his lips, his tongue sluggish. When he spoke, his voice was cracked and rough with disuse. "Taylor…?"

I wanted to say something but had nothing to say. I just watched him, mute and still, uncertain.

He struggled for a moment to sit up, but he was too weak after a month in bed. "Taylor—I'm so—"

"Stop." The word forced itself out from deep inside.

His mouth closed immediately. Our gazes remained locked. After a moment, I looked away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But—that's what you were going to say, isn't it?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes…?"

"I can't have another by-the-numbers conversation," I said, and in that moment it was true. "I can't go through this, knowing your every response, knowing exactly what to say to make things better. So forget everything you want to say. I know you're sorry. I know you didn't mean it, that you were mastered, that even as you took the Ring from my finger you hated yourself. I know. I knew even as it was happening."

He stared at me. His eyes were dampening slightly, glistening in the morning light, but he kept his composure. "Then what do you want to do?"

"What I need, right now," I said quietly, "is for you to listen. Listen, and don't speak. Don't make a sound. I need to explain—to explain as if I don't know how it'll affect you, to tell the story as if in confession. I need to explain what happened as I understand it, not in the form that'll be easiest for you to swallow. Because I need you to be more than a sockpuppet, regurgitating the ideas I've allowed you to take in. I need—I need us to be honest with each other. Can you do that for me? Just—just listen?"

"Okay," he promised. "Take your time. I'll listen."

"It's more than that," I said, shaking my head. "I need you not to say anything. Not a word, not even a sound. I'm not even going to look at you. Anything you say, anything you do, any reaction I pick up on—it's all a temptation. If I see that something's bothering you, I'm going to have to fight to keep going without trying to soften the blow. But I can't soften it, don't you see? I need to be honest this time. So, please—no words. Just listen."

For a moment, I thought he would speak, but he didn't. Whatever he wanted to say, he swallowed it down, and responded with only a mute nod.

"Thank you." I closed my eyes for a moment, letting my thoughts drift back. It took me a minute to wrench my head into place, but at last I began. "You've been in an induced coma for a month." As I spoke, I turned away from him, staring out the window. I couldn't see his reactions—couldn't see the disgust or the horror on his face. Not if I wanted to finish what I was now starting. "Not because you needed to be—we captured Heartbreaker in about a week, and I mastered him immediately and had him remove your programming. Amy had already healed you by then. You could have been woken up that day. But I wasn't ready to face you. I was angry, I was hurt—and I was ashamed. I still am all of those things, but mostly I'm ashamed now."

I talked for a long time. I told him about the attack on Heartbreaker, about the children I had killed, the women I had allowed to die. I told him about Dragon, and how I had twisted her into my devoted killer. I told him about Coil, and how I had permitted him to serve me even as the Ring eroded his mind. I told him about Valefor, and how Dragon and I had carved a path of merciless blood down into the Endbringer shelter and killed him as he begged for mercy. I told him how the ABB and the Empire had fallen silent after that, trying to wait out the storm.

I told him about Sophia's rebellion, and how I had sent Amy to quell it. I told him about Nilbog, and the expression of deep, horrified hopelessness on Polka's face as I had slaughtered every last creature in Ellisburg. I told him about the attack on Coil's base. I told him about the fight with Sophia.

"And I swung," I said, my voice cracking. "That should've been the end of it. I should have killed her then. But she was granted a miracle, and she brought Narsil up in time to block. The sword shattered, and the fragments struck me. And it was like—like the sun peeking out from behind the mountains, or like the first drop of rain in a thunderstorm. I remembered everything, even the parts I wanted to forget. I remembered every part of—of the person I used to be.

"I'm not human. I never have been, really. I was reborn as one, but who I am—what I am—is older. We were called Maia, and I was—well, I had a lot of names. I was Mairon, once. The Admirable. Then I was Annatar—the Lord of Gifts. But in the end I was Sauron, The Abhorred. The enemy of all free peoples, the Lord of the Land of Shadow.

"And in the end, in that old world, it was Narsil that brought me low. And it played out the old story again. But this time there was no One Ring to cut from my finger, there was no great weakness to exploit—and wonderful as she is, Sophia is just one woman. Isildur had Elendil and Gil-galad beside him, and was the only one of those three to survive the fight.

"So she was left without a weapon, and I was left with a choice. Carry on, knowingly—remembering everything I had once been, everything I was becoming again, and knowing where that road had once led—or turn aside, and face the unknown.

"I chose right. But it wasn't that easy."

I told him about Noelle, about how redemption wasn't as easy as just wanting to be better. I told him about how Sophia had held me, there in the van, even as I railed and screamed at the injustice, at the horror. I told him about how she alone had managed to steer me back onto the path.

"I owe her everything," I admitted. "Maybe everyone owes her everything. I can't even imagine what kind of horrors I might have inflicted on the world, if she hadn't stopped me. But no—that's a lie. I can imagine it." Images of a land choked by fire and ash filled my vision for a moment.

"And that's where we are now," I said at last. "I've reforged Narsil as Amauril, the Flame of the East, and returned it into Sophia's keeping. And—and I knew I had to face what I'd done to you. I've been keeping you here, helpless, for a month. Just because I didn't want to face you. Even once I decided to wake you up, I didn't want to have this conversation. But I have to. I can't just go halfway on this. I need to be honest. With you and with myself."

I swallowed. "And… that's all I have. That's me. In the past month I've gone from hero to monster, and then to… whatever I am now. And you've been gone for all of it, just because I was scared.

"Do you understand now why I didn't want to hear you tell me you're sorry? It'd be meaningless. You're sorry for what you did to a little girl who doesn't exist—maybe never existed. I'm what you've got now, and you didn't even see me come into my own. And that's not your fault. It's mine. So—so I'm sorry. For leaving you here like this for so long. And I'm sorry for what's happened to your daughter."

At long last, I allowed myself to look back at him. His eyes were red, his cheeks stained with tears which had tracked down them. I had been talking for almost an hour, and the sun which had only begun to approach its zenith when I began was now reaching into the early afternoon.

I swallowed. "You can speak now," I said. "If you want."

He raised a shaking hand. I didn't know whether it shook because of his frailty, or because of my story. "Taylor," he murmured. "Do you—am I still your father?"

Of all the things he could have said, somehow that one never crossed my mind. The question struck me like a club to the belly. It practically knocked the wind out of me, and for a moment I couldn't breathe. "I don't…" I swallowed. For a moment I stared at him. "I remember being brought into existence at the beginning of time," I said quietly. "The last person—if He is a person—I called Father drowned an entire continent in order to destroy my body. You're—you're not Him. You're nothing like Him."

"It's God, isn't it? You're an—you're an angel."

"…In a manner of speaking, yes."

Dad looked away, his red eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. "How could I ever be… be a father to you?" he wondered, as if to himself. "I was a terrible father even when you were just… just Taylor."

Even when you were just Taylor. But that was my name. I was still Taylor. I certainly wasn't Mairon, and I was trying very, very hard not to be Sauron.

Danny Hebert might not be my Father… but maybe he could be my father. Maybe he could be my dad.

I reached out and took his hand. "You weren't so bad," I said.

His eyes met mine. Tears welled up in them. "You think?"

I leaned down and took him in my arms. He was stick-thin, and I was sure I could break him accidentally if I shifted too quickly. I was careful not to do that. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I think—I think I'd like it, if you—if I could keep calling you 'Dad.' If that's okay with you."

His arms gingerly stretched around me. Though he was too weak to do it properly, I knew he was trying to squeeze me tight. "It's okay with me," he said, and there was a damp laugh in his voice. "I love you, Taylor."

I smiled, and found suddenly that I was crying too. "I love you too, Dad."