Summary: Someone tries to find out about the past. Set twenty or so years
in the future.
Spoilers: All of them.
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine, no matter how much I wish they
were. < sigh > They belong to Joss Whedon and the WB I have to
live with borrowing them for my stories.
Rating: You watch the show, this is fine. A little angsty, but hey, when
has the show not been angsty?
by: Amy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I walked into the study of our large home on the beach to find my father sitting on the couch and staring into the lit fireplace. He was holding a drink as he stared; not lifting it to his lips, just... holding it. I sighed.
I've always loved my father in the way that every little girl does, I suppose. He was a knight in shining armor, the most fun person to be around; He spoiled me and I loved it. I love him. He's a wonderful man. I guess that's why, at seventeen years of age, I have never called him anything but Daddy. He's my whole world. I never knew my mother.
I don't even know her name, as odd as that sounds.
When I was younger, I would look at the other kids as they left school and miss having that-- I missed being able to say "My mom wants me home soon," or "My mom is making dinner tonight." I tried to broach the subject to my father quite a few times, but to no avail. I don't like the expression that sweeps over his face when I ask about her; a hollow, almost dead look in his eyes that scares me and makes me want to bite off my clumsy, stuttering tongue.
But I have to know. As much as I fear hurting him or causing him more grief than he's already felt in his life, I also fear not knowing anything about the woman who must have loved me as much as he does. That sounds impossible to me because I can see how much he cares for me in everything he does, but she must have; *must* have. I need to believe that. I know she was good and kind, I know she was. The only thing I really know about her is that; and what she looked like. My aunt has been sworn to secrecy by my father, but once, after I could no longer hold in my tears and not knowing a thing, she told me that my mom was a great person with a wonderful smile.
I've seen that smile.
My father has an old album that he keeps under his bed. When I was twelve and going through my intrusive phase, I found it, along with a strange assortment of stakes and weapons. Passing those by with hardly a glance, I opened the album to find pictures of her staring back at me. There were dozens of the two of them, all bound together in the leather of the book, as well of some of my aunts and uncles. I smiled as I flipped through the pages, marveling at how young my father had been, and how much I already looked like my mother. I still sneak into his room sometimes when he's not home to look at those pictures. In fact, the only clue I've been able to find concerning her name is the inscription which my father wrote all those years ago. "To My Queen C."
My dad looked up from the sofa and smiled faintly at me, patting the cushion next to him in invitation. I returned his gentle smile with one of my own and sat down next to him. He patted my knee affectionately. "What are you doing up so late, honey?" he asked.
I shrugged and leaned against him, letting him wrap an arm around my back, slipping into the comfort I had known all my life as we stared into the crackling fire. "There are some things that were on my mind," I said softly.
"What things?"
I took a deep breath and looked up at him. His face, the dear face that I loved so much, was looking down at me with a confused smile. None of my friends had fathers like mine. None were as close, either. And I hated the thought that I was going to hurt him with my selfish needs, but I had to know. Had to...
"Daddy..." My voice came out cracked and strained and I lifted myself so that I was sitting upright and looked at him. "Daddy, I hate hurting you... You know I hate hurting you, but there are some things I have to know..." I trailed off, certain by then that I couldn't go through with asking him-- at least not yet-- but he sighed heavily and turned to face me with tears in his eyes.
"I know, honey. I've been avoiding this for a long time. It's not right that you don't even... That you don't even know her name. And that I forbid your Aunt Willow and Aunt Buffy to talk about it, well, that was wrong of me too. But I wanted to be the one to tell you when you learned it. And I guess I just haven't been able to until you came to me just now, with eyes that hurt so much that it made me want to cry. I'm so sorry about that, I really am." He stopped, spent, and I just stared at him in shock. I had never seen my father cry. I had seen him angry and hurt and with that scary look in his eyes, but I had never seen him cry. I summoned my courage and plunged in.
"What was her name, Daddy?"
There was a long silence before he looked at me again.
"Cordelia Rose," he said.
He spoke the word as though it were a prayer, with an extraordinary resonance which seemed to make the four syllables tremble on the air for a moment, like an echo.
"What a pretty name!" I exclaimed with involuntary envy. I wanted to hear him say it again, but something about the way he looked made me change my mind quickly. A dull, buzzing sound seemed to throb through my veins, as though my entire body was echoing the rhythm of my frantic heart. Instead, I said it, camouflaging it in a question, but really just testing the sound out on my tongue. "Cordelia and Alex?"
He turned to me with a sardonic grin. "No one called me Alex for the first twenty years of my life."
I drew my eyebrows together, confused. "But..."
"Oh," he murmured casually, taking a sip from his drink, "My name is Alexander. But for as long as I can remember, my nickname was... Xander." I smiled at the images that conjured. I had always privately thought that Alex wasn't a name that fit the smiling face of my father in pictures of his younger years. Xander was perfect.
He went on. "Your Aunt Willow started calling me that when we were just little kids; she was my best friend for a long time. But, after.." he paused and gulped, "Your mother died, I didn't want to hear that name anymore. The-- The last word she said was my name." He shuddered and I laid a hand on his arm.
"Well.. I mean... Daddy, how..." I faltered, unsure if it was fair of me to ask anymore. My father sat up straight and looked at me, taking a deep breath.
"Ask me anything you want, Nicole," he said evenly, resigned. He looked almost grateful that I was starting to learn, but that didn't make any of it easier.
"Well, how did you meet? How did you fall in love? Why don't we ever go visit Aunt Willow and Uncle Oz and Aunt Buffy and Angel and Giles? Why do they have to come visit us? Is it because of the bad memories there?" I let out my questions in a rush, all in one breath and watched as my dad sat back against the couch again, dazed.
"Um, we met... Wow, I guess it was the same day I met your Aunt Willow. She was a terrible snob," this said with an affectionate, remembering smile, "and had been teasing Willow. I think... I think I put sand down her shirt." I laughed and so did he, his rich warm laugh that both soothed me and seemed to clear my head. "Willow and I were friends after that. Your mother hated us both."
Again he paused before speaking again. He took my hand and squeezed it, almost seeming to take strength from my palm in his. "We fell in love in high school. A lot of things happened in high school. You know how I came about meeting Buffy-- It was a pretty topsy turvy time." I nodded; I had known about Aunt Buffy's and Giles's destiny for the last four years. When I was really little, before I understood, his memories had been a wealth of fun bedtime stories to hear.
"Well," he continued, "One day we had been trapped in Buffy's basement by an assassin who was after Buffy and there we were, spouting off insults to each other, yelling and screaming so loud that I thought it was a wonder no one had found us by then, and all of the sudden, she was in my arms and I was in hers and we were kissing." His eyes took on a distant look, almost as if he could see it happening before his face, and his mouth quirked up in a happy grin. "We broke apart almost as soon as we realized what we had been doing, me the class geek and her, the reigning queen of Sunnydale, but the die had been cast."
"Queen C," I whispered. He looked at me with a crooked smile.
"Yes." I opened my mouth to explain, but he cut me off. "I've known that you've been looking at that photo album for years now. I always intended on giving it to you, but I just.. never did."
"Anyway, your mother had some horrible friends, spawns, I'm sure, of the Hellmouth. They told her to break up with me and she did. Which was the first of the four times we broke up. ...But it didn't matter. She and I both knew that we loved each other. We got married right after her twentieth birthday." I squeezed his hand again, touched by the trail of tears that had found its way down his cheek.
"We don't go there because I can't stand to pass the street where she died," he volunteered suddenly, speaking in short, sharp bursts. "But it's one of the more inevitable streets, Sunnydale being so small. And... And I hate that town. It took her away from..." he started to sob. "It took her away from me. I loved her so much."
I let my own tears go as I gathered my father, my funny, smart, wonderful father in my arms as he wept. Tears fell onto our joined hands and he drew me closer. I let him, offering him all my strength, everything I had. He had given me so much. And I was sure that everytime he looked at my face and saw her there, it was a little harder for him to not let his heart break. But he had always kept strong for me. And I was going to be strong for him.
At length he pulled away, wiping his tears away with the back of his hand and looking at me through veiled eyes as though he knew what I was wondering.
"It was a vampire."
And then he turned, still holding tightly onto my hand as he stared into the fireplace, watching it as though it held the answers in its orange heat.
I leaned my head on his shoulder in a sad thanks and did the only thing I could do.
I watched with him.
The End
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