They are cut from the same cloth, and they breathe the same poison. He can feel the toxic nature of her own self-doubt and self-loathing rolling off her flesh, and he hates himself for instilling it in her—for handing off the worst of himself to his child. He hates himself even more for perpetuating the same vicious cycle. Sighing, he drops his head in exhaustion against her and just focuses on breathing, even as she denies him the same story she had just harpooned him for ignoring. It was nothing he didn’t deserve.
Still, he notices the subtly in her choice of language.
“Please,” he says again quietly, his cheek resting along her back, his bones thawing from her warmth and nearness of his family. She was, perhaps, the only one of them who would come near him, this he knew. Not that he blamed the other children. He was a horrendous father. Flashing in and out of their lives like a comet—appearing and disappearing on a whim. Sometimes, he had no choice (when death was on his lips and rattling in his lungs), but other times it was his own fear that drove him away. Just weakness.
“I love you too, Malis,” his voice is broken and his eyes close, breathing in deeply, feeling his own demons stretch through him to tear at his lungs. “You don’t have to tell me,” he knows that he can’t force her to say anything, to give him anything that he had never once earned, but he can’t stop himself from wanting to help, for wanting to do something right in his godforsaken life—especially for her. “But I wish that you would.”
MAKAI
I'm a dead man walking here,
but that's the least of all my fears