Max knows Mouse likes (muchness) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-16 12:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | dormouse |
Who: Max
What: Father's Day: A narrative
Where: The Wynn
When: Today
Warnings/Rating: Nope
Max called the General early in the morning. She knew her father still woke up before dawn in order to run, and she liked to get Father's Day over with as quickly as humanly possible.
It had always been an awkward day during her childhood, where it had always been ushered in on a base in some foreign country, and where the little girl she'd been hadn't known how to show appreciation for a man that didn't permit weakness or affection. She'd figured out, around the age of eight, that if she did something impressive on Father's Day it was well received, and it was easier after that. Father's Day became a tradition of waking her father up early in order to show him how quickly she could load and unload her firearm, or to show him how the bullet she'd shot at the target had found its mark in the dead center, or to tell him about the boy she'd demolished during sparring. As she'd gotten older, it had gotten harder again. As a teenager, she'd been emotional and angry, and that hadn't translated very well to a holiday where the man she blamed for all her angst was the center of attention. Those years had been thrown doors and 500 push-ups as punishment, before late night apologies that always fell on deaf ears. Then, when the Army years came, they settled into something comfortable. A quiet dinner, discussion about operations and the front lines. She'd been a good soldier, and those had been easy days.
But now? Now it was a mixed bag. She'd had a child with a man that her father respected, but that hadn't wanted to marry her. And she was in a profession he could be proud of, but the injury and the failed job in Bangladesh had put strain between them again. After all, the General had wanted to leave her as collateral damage, and he'd been forced into action by someone else. The General never took it well when he was forced into anything. And now? Now she was useless. Her father knew her well enough to know that she was no strategist, no thinker. She killed people without batting an eyelash; she was good at that. She was fearless in a fight; she was good at that. But she would never have the kind of job title that would make him proud, not with limited mobility; she wasn't smart enough for it, and they both knew that. It made conversations harder these days, but she still called. Once a week, without fail, she called.
The conversation was brief, as they always were. "Happy Father's Day, General. Report? The name sale is still priority. Yes, we're closing in. It should be done by the end of summer without fatalities. Mobility? Improved. Should be back to 100% by July." It was wishful thinking, but she'd learned to promise the stars when it came to her father; anything else was considered failure. "Amanda's arriving today. I'll have her call you once the bird lands. Have a good run." And that was it.
She'd always run off those phone calls. She'd push her body for 20 miles at a stretch, and the aching hurt that always along with the physical exertion had made her feel better. But physical exertion was limited these days, and two walks around the townhouse's perimeter left her feeling the same kind of bone-weary ache that a marathon would have left her feeling last year.
She slept and, at six pm, she left a note for Laura: Gone to get the kids. I'll be at the Wynn for the next week. She got in her chair, called a cab and headed for the airport.
Amanda had just turned six, and Max could swear she'd grown a foot since she'd seen her at Christmas. The evening was spent in a comfortable chair, ignoring the aches and pains of pushing herself too far that morning. She watched Amanda and Gus playing with some strategy game that Amanda was wonderful at, but that only made Gus want to eat the playing pieces, and she broke down and called Brandon once the kids were showered and in bed.
"Happy Father's Day, Brandon," and that call went longer. It ended with Amanda crawling out of bed to complain to her father about Gus' bad behavior during gameplay. After the topic was exhausted, and the little girl put to bed again, Max rolled her chair into the suite's bedroom and crawled into bed.
She wasn't asleep when the door creaked open, and she smiled when Amanda stepped into the room and warily eyed the bed for a second. "Permission granted," she said, before the little girl could ask, and she folded back the covers and patted the mattress in invitation. She was gifted with a happy smile that was missing a few teeth, before the tall, skinny little girl jumped up on the bed repeatedly, as if she was jumping on a trampoline. The bed bounced, and it took a few long minutes of intentionally drawn-out tickling to get Amanda under the covers and laughed-out.
Max didn't fall asleep until the sky was already going lighter outside the hotel room window, her fingers trailing through Amanda's sleep-sweat damp hair, and the blankets completely stolen by the tiny body sleeping in a peaceful sprawl against her stomach.