She was suddenly alone with her father. And he recognised her, and the Garbage Doll.

She wasn't quite sure why she knew that, but she did. She wasn't just assuming, out of nervousness or out of fear. She just knew when he looked at her, when a spark of recognition flared in his eyes.

It wasn't another Daddy, like the Ushio of this world wasn't hear. It was the same spirit that had lived within the Garbage Doll, that had given her companionship, warmth…and hope. That had collected junk with her so they could build the way to the other world together. Who had run with her, chasing those warm yellow lights that contained all the happiness in the world.

And now he had a flesh and blood body, like her.

The Two Bays
Chapter 4

Tomoya hesitated a little when Nagisa left, but patience had never been a strong suit of his and so he came out and said it anyway. 'You're…that girl – the Ushio from the snow!'

The girl clutched her robot tighter. It really was the robot he'd brought the Ushio from that first world: her first present from a father that had abandoned her to her grandparents for the first five years of her life. The robot she'd lost in the fields up North, near the grandparents Tomoya had forgotten all about until that that. His grandparents: the parents of a father he'd tried to cut out of his life, just like he'd tried to cut himself out of that Ushio's.

And when he'd tried to rectify that mistake, it had ended with his baby girl dying in the snow. And that's where his dream world had ended as well: that white-clad girl he'd only then identified at his daughter, years older, dying in the snow as his voice in the Garbage Doll finally reached her, too late.

And now she was sitting in front of him, drawing her robot to her chest and staring at him.

Tomoya couldn't even say it was impossible, because then it was also impossible for Nagisa to be alive, for Ushio – the Ushio of this world – to be alive. Because both of them had died in his memories. But he could accept that, because it was another dream – the dream that had always been far out of reach. This though – the Ushio from the other world being here…

He'd thought the dream had ended long ago. But... 'How..?'

'I don't know.' The girl looked nervously towards the door, then back at him. 'You…you're my Daddy, right? My Daddy – '

Tomoya hesitated, then nodded. He remembered that thin stretch of time as the Garbage Doll. 'Unless that was just a dream…'

'It wasn't!' The girl stood, then wavered and, with a gentle guiding hand on her shoulder, sat back down. Still, her eyes were brimming with tears and certainty, the hesitation from before absent from her gaze, 'It wasn't a dream! Daddy was the Garbage Doll, but he vanished with the yellow lights – and then – and then – ' She gulped, then dropped the robot in her lap and burst into full-fledged tears.

Tomoya hesitated again, before embracing her loosely. She clung to his shirt and pulled him closer with more strength than he thought she had. 'You are!' the girl sobbed into his chest. 'You are my Daddy! I fell in the snow and went to that world where it only snowed…and I was so alone, until I made the Garbage Doll from scraps, and somehow you were inside it.'

He remembered that. In his dreams the nameless girl had told him all of that, in those days that had followed after his soul had slipped into the Garbage Doll and given it life. And he remembered what happened afterwards as well.

'And then we walked through all that snow together, chasing those yellow lights and trying to build something that would get us out of that world! But it was so cold – and I couldn't walk anymore – ' She stumbled in her words, then picked herself up and continued: 'And then you spoke to me and I knew – I knew it was you Daddy!'

The door slid open behind them and Ushio – the young Ushio that had been born to that world and hadn't lain in the snow – came out with the cup of water refilled. 'Daddy?'

The girl in Tomoya's arms stiffened. So did Tomoya, who wondered how much his…daughter had heard. But if the girl from the other world was the same Ushio that had died in the snow at five, before time had been rewound and diverged, then she was his daughter as well, Ushio as well.

But she still wasn't the Ushio staring at the both of them with confused eyes, coming closer with the glass. 'Here,' she offered, a little tentatively to the girl who clutched his shirt still. 'You must have lost a lot of water crying.'

The girl's hold loosened on Tomoya's shirt, until one hand dropped off and accepted the cup. Ushio beamed. The girl from the other world clutched the cup like she'd, before that, clutched the Garbage Doll in her lap. Tomoya wondered what was going through her head. She'd longed for this world almost as deeply as he'd – less so only because she'd never seen it like him, never lived in it to feel true happiness and despair. But now they had both come to this world: of happiness and light – but he had Ushio in this world, an Ushio that wasn't the Ushio that had lived on after falling in the snow.

He'd never thought, never considered, that that the Ushio of the past had actually lived in that dream world – that it was a real world, and not just a world between worlds. He'd put all that behind him, like all of it was just a nightmare and he was living happily with Nagisa and Ushio and that was it…

But the girl from the other world being in front of him proved it all wrong. And Nagisa and Ushio knew nothing of it. On top of that, they'd offered her a futon – which, in all good conscience, they couldn't have not done because she was thin and pale and dizzy and had nowhere to go. But that meant he couldn't just ignore the issue. The Ushio from the other world would ask questions – or ask for answers again. And he'd have to ask for answers too because there was no place to run away.

The Ushio from the other world had finished half her second glass by the time Nagisa came back. 'The guest room's ready,' she said. She offered a hand to the girl, who looked at her glass and then at the woman.

'I'll take the glass,' little Ushio chirped, and plucked it easily from slack hands.

The Ushio from the other world, her hands now freed, grasped the Garbage Doll again with one hand, and Nagisa took the other. 'Come on,' she said gently, helping the other up. 'It's okay; I've got you.' Though the girl seemed fine walking with on her own; it was direction shellacked, direction to a destination she didn't know. She knew nothing about their house; Tomoya hadn't moved from the apartment he'd taken with Ryou's help in the first world. He'd never had the chance to build a house with his family, because his time with them had fled too quickly.

She was as lost now as he'd been in his dream world, meekly following Nagisa after she'd cried herself out into Tomoya's chest. It was still moist with those tears, and clung to him along with the weight of something he'd been running away from for so many years, that he'd buried in his heart thinking it would never rise again.

'Daddy?' Ushio – the young, unknowing Ushio – tugged at his sleeve. At some point she'd set the glass down on the table so both hands were free. 'Are you okay?'

Tomoya shook his head. Wondering was getting him nowhere. Questioning himself was getting him nowhere. He smiled at his daughter: the Ushio born in this world they lived together happily in.

Then the possibility hit him. Did the appearance of the Ushio of the other world mean his second chance with his family was over?

'Daddy?' Ushio's insistent voice crept in to his thoughts. 'Daddy?'

'I'm fine Ushio.' Tomoya shook his head again, as though to shake out those insisting thoughts. Their home, their family – it was all still there. He scooped Ushio up and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. 'Let's go follow your mother.'

'Yay,' Ushio trilled. 'Piggy back!'

They left the porch together.