I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
He knows what it’s like to hate.
For hadn’t it been his hate that had driven him in the beginning?
His hate and his desperate want to be loved.
He had hated his father and his mother and sought out anyone who might bring him back to life, help him to believe himself worth anything at all. But he’d never found them and he’d been made to grow up believing that he was not worth the effort it took to instill some sense of purpose in him. He’d been made to grow up believing that he wasn’t worth anything at all.
But he looks at their daughter now, curled neatly at her mother’s feet, and he knows that he loves her. And she might hate him. She might gnash her teeth and hiss and spit venom at him. She might sink her teeth into his flesh, but he will make sure that she knows her loves her, too. Because he will now allow his daughter to grow up thinking that she is worthless, too. He will not allow her to believe that she means nothing at all to him.
He laughs then, a deep rumble at the center of him. He’s certain she can feel it in her bones, with how closely she is pressed to him. “I think you were pretty good at it,” he counters in that same low tone, lifting his head as she lifts hers. She drags her mouth down the length of his neck and his smile is secret and plain when her mouth finally comes to rest against the hard edge of his jaw.
“I’ve been right here,” he murmurs. “I’ll be right here.”
And maybe he’ll keep this promise. Despite the way their daughter so clearly loathes him. “Do you think she’ll grow out of it?” he asks after one quiet moment. “Hating me,” he clarifies, the words catching in his throat.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
