Alexa says you can call me Al (runawaygirl) wrote in mnhttnprjct, @ 2010-06-22 15:29:00 |
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Alex had been at the shop for more than ten minutes now. The moment she’d closed her I-Holo after speaking to the man she thought might be her father, she’d thrown all her belongings back in her bag, scribbled a note to Jameson thanking him for letting her stay and telling him she’d talk to him later, and headed out the door. She thought she might not be back. Unless it wasn’t her Dad or maybe he didn’t want her to stay with him she wouldn’t. Not that it had been meant to be long term in any case. The thought that her Dad might not want her tickled at the back of her mind but she pushed it away. Of course he had to. If he felt nearly as she did just now, excited and awed and terrified, he would have to. For a long time she had told herself maybe he was alive, but eventually, when he didn’t come for her and she couldn’t find him, she had to assume he was gone. And now... well, he was here. He was in New York. And if she hadn’t come here, maybe she never would have found him. It was fate, she thought, as she waited outside the shop for him. She’d thought of going in and sitting down, but she couldn’t. It was too hard to sit or do anything just now, so instead she bounced on the toes of her sneakers, hands in her pockets as she waited, wondering if he looked the same, wondering what she would do if it wasn’t him or if he didn’t show up or a million other things. Wondering what she would do if he did. It had never really occurred to her she would find him now. It had been something she’d pretty much given up on. And now she was faced with him again. She wondered if he’d still love her now that she was grown. Charlie felt like he couldn't get to the coffee shop fast enough. After pulling on clean clothes, he tore out of the apartment, his thoughts racing a mile a minute. What if it wasn't her? Who would pull that elaborate of a prank? Could it be coincidence? Was it completely insane of him to doubt his daughter for even a second? Maybe it was, but Charlie couldn't help it. He'd been waiting for this day for years, and he'd been told so many times that he should just move on. That after so many years, the chances that he would find her were slim to none. That she was most likely dead. He'd only just started to believe that maybe those people were right, and now she was there. Charlie didn't know if he believed in destiny or fate, but it seemed to him that someone was trying to send him some sort of message: don't give up, not yet. His footsteps slowed to a walk as he approached the block that the coffee shop was on. He could see a girl standing outside, but he didn't think anything of it until he was closer to the door and could get a better look at her. She looked like she was waiting for someone, and Charlie's heart leapt into his throat. She was older and she looked different than he last remembered, but he knew that face. "Ah... Alexa?" She had been facing the wrong way and at the sound of her name she turned around sharply, eyes going to his face for a long moment, her memory stuttering like an i-holo on pause. His face was part of her earliest recollections, the little lines around his eyes, his smile. There was grey in his hair now a little and the lines in his face were deeper, but it was him. “Daddy.” It came out before she could stop it and then she started forward to hug him, stopped, because this was terrifying, because she was nearly as tall as he was now, because it had been so long and so much had happened. Everything in her told her to just stay there, to not hug him because what if this wasn’t real, but she pushed it aside and stretched her arms around him and held on tight. “Dad. Oh God.” Because the hope had been so slim that he would actually find her, Charlie had never tried to picture Alexa grown up. He'd never tried to imagine the sort of young woman she'd grow into, never tried to imagine how a teenaged Alexa would want to style her hair, never tried to imagine the sort of clothes she'd wear. He hadn't wanted to build up an image of her that he would never see. Trying not to imagine it meant he wasn't at all prepared for the young woman in front of him. She was all grown up, but when she called him 'Daddy', Charlie felt like no time had passed at all. The second her arms were around him, tears sprung to his eyes. He eased his own arms around her shoulders, holding on just as tightly. Up until she replied to his blog, he'd spent the day moping -- and he'd planned to do that all evening too. Now, he'd be lucky if he managed to keep himself from bursting into tears. "I missed you so much," he whispered. That was when he lost his resolve, and when he closed his eyes, he couldn't stop the tears from trickling down his face. Even before she’d run away from the foster home, Alexa had felt like she’d not stood still for the past four and a half years. First Arizona and then the refugee camps, then one foster home after another. She’d never really found anyplace that was home, she’d just drifted wherever the authorities or her own will took her. Until now. Now she felt like she was finally coming home as she buried her face in his shirt, her eyes closed tight as she tried to remember to breathe. “Missed you too.” He smelled the same. Like soap and something distinctly him, a scent like outside that she would catch ever so often and be sharply and painfully reminded of him. When finally she pulled back to look at him again he was crying, and she felt the tears she’d tried to hold back starting to well up. “Oh don’t cry.” She reached up with her fingers and brushed them away, before hugging him again. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” "Sorry," he mumbled, suddenly embarrassed that he'd let his emotions get the best of him. It was his daughter, he reminded himself. Surely hugging her for the first time in years was an acceptable time to become emotional. He smiled sheepishly and bent his head as she hugged him again, leaning his against hers for a moment. He didn't think he'd see her ever again either. He thought that what happened to her would remain a mystery, but instead he'd been given the best Father's Day present in the entire world. Though he didn't want to, Charlie pulled back and put his hands on his daughter's shoulders so he could get a good look at her. "You're taller," he told her, shaking his head a little in disbelief. His little girl had grown up, and he'd missed all of it. "I can't believe this is really happening. I don't... sorry, I have no idea what to say. This is insane. All these years and it's like you just showed up on my doorstep." Alexa couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah. I grew,” she said. She kept looking up at him, the shock of seeing him fading into just stunned disbelief. She had no idea what they did now, what this meant for them or her, but it was a start at least. “I knew I had to come to New York,” she said. “I just didn’t think it was for this.” She shook her head and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “You look the same. I mean... How I remembered you.” She had let her hands rest on his shirt front, but when her own tears started to fall she let go so she could scrub at them with her hands, looking abashed. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “What do we do? I mean... I don’t even know where we start.” Somewhere deep inside him, Charlie had to wonder if she was the reason he came to New York too. Not because he thought it'd be easier to find information in a city full of people, but because he knew that if there was anywhere she'd go that wasn't back home, it would be New York City. "I'm glad you came," he told her, his voice cracking, barely more than a whisper. If she hadn't, if she'd gone somewhere else instead, there was no telling how much longer it would have taken. They might have both given up. Charlie rubbed her shoulders gently before letting his hands fall to rest at his sides. He shrugged. He didn't know any better than she did. They had missed years of each others' lives, and he already had so many questions. "Now, we..." Charlie glanced towards the windows of the coffee shop. "We go inside, I buy you whatever you want and we talk?" he suggested, a hopeful smile on his face. Somehow the fact that this was real, that he wanted to be part of her life again really hit her. A smile spread across her face, and she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek before threading her hand through his arm and letting him lead the way into the shop. “I think that sounds like a very good start.” |