Reality is Different: Afterword

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He was a bit lightheaded, tipsy on the drive back home despite the brooding darkness in his thoughts - but it was a short trip, taken in this state on quite a few occasions, and no trouble interfered this time, deep into the evening on mostly-empty roads. The stars were shining watchfully upon him as on his second try he got the house key in the lock. But there was scarcely any feeling of surprise when he was interrupted from his efforts by the sound of footsteps pattering behind the door, shortly before it opened on its own.

Sarah there, of course. Although he had to pause a moment, blink a trifle blearily to recognize her. She had transformed herself again, dressed up, wearing now the same black dress she had put on when he had taken her out for her birthday, when he had first felt the oddity in her behavior - though he hardly then had guessed the cause. Long and silken, darkly gleaming, hanging lazily along the smooth and subtle hills and valleys of her form, echoing the invitation of her body's tender curves. Collected tight around her hips, loose and quietly revealing at her seemly little bust...makeup, more dramatic than before and not quite perfectly applied, a darkening of shadow at her eyes and vibrant crimson on her lips, a striking shade he'd scarcely ever seen on her before. Her hair meanwhile was sleek but mildly askew, as though it had been brushed into perfection before she had laid down somewhere and somewhat messed it up again. And such impossibly conflicted, tangled feeling quarreling inside of him to look at her like this. So lovely and enticing, so adult, this woman who had grown out of the girl who had been the very center of his life, and he loved and hated her right now for growing up, for being so appealing to his senses, for giving him a choice a father surely wasn't meant to have.

It took a few false starts before she spoke, to break the silence. A struggle in her eyes, of intended words collapsing on the way down to her tongue, until finally she offered up a simple "Hey, dad." Stepping hesitantly towards him, closer, faltering a little. Her stance was just the same as when he'd first returned the afternoon of her confession, beseeching his embrace - but this time his troubled, halfway hostile feeling offered little quarter. And though he wanted just as much to wrap his arms around her, hold her body close against his own, he only stood impassively as she drew near, expectant, waiting for a couple seconds until she awkwardly withdrew again. Intoning with a hint of injured humor, "I missed you."

"You missed me," he repeated, brushing past her heavily. A maestrom of feeling twisting in his heart, love and anger and despair. His voice came out facetious, laced with a distinctive drop of rancor, despite his own intent. "'ts only been, what's it been, six hours. I'm not sure that's long enough for anyone to miss me."

"Well, you know, um," she answered bravely, following him close behind after she diligently shut the door. Her lilt a little straining with the effort at complete, unblemished sweetness. "How long it takes a girl to miss someone depends on how much she loves him. So me, I can miss you pretty much the very moment that you leave."

And just like that, his own inebriated whirl of emotion flipped its face to maudlin sentiment, to bittersweet. He turned as well to look at her again, leaning back to rest a bit against the corner of the couch as his gaze held wistful on the soft edge of her cheek, her cutely pointed chin, her amber eyes engaging in that nervous dance he knew too well. Away, and back, and utterly enchanting when they touched to his. "I guess I missed you too, to tell the truth." A feeble smile, as he allowed himself another slow appraisal of her outfit. "Suppose you got yourself all dolled up like this for my sake, eh?"

"Of course." The corners of her lips tugged up in the direction of a tiny grin, relief amidst her tangling of worry and flirtation. And then a delicately deferential softness as she asked, "Do you like it...?" Spreading out her arms to offer him a better view, without quite committing far enough to turn a pirouette of demonstration. "I wore it out with you before. I don't know if you remember. But you said it made me look grown up, and I thought maybe..." Trailing off without conclusion, with just the implication of her hopes.

"I remember," he responded briefly. Looking quiet down at her a while, before he gave his head a shake. "Funny, I guess. I actually headed home just now so I could see my little girl. And then I get here and you're - like you said, you're looking all grown up, instead."

"...oh." Sarah murmured back, dismayed. "I guess I should have realized. I should have...I don't know." She tried another charming smile, but it was faint, embarrassed, thin with her uncertainty. "I can change to something better, then. I will. I think I've got, um, just this stripey skirt and t-shirt that I like, and my big rainbow socks..."

Absorbed in planning out her outfit, she had already started to retreat when he grabbed hold of her wrist to pull her back, hauling her up close before him. "No." Near enough to feel her presence as a prickle on his skin, enough that he could enfold her in his arms, if he desired, could squeeze her slender body tight against his own and keep her there forever. "No, need for that. You look fine, princess. You look..." It was a thought without conclusion, regarding her as she hesitantly met his eyes with her own honeyed hazel gaze, a look that shimmered only brighter in its contrast with the shadow there surrounding it. Her lips below were anxious, velvet red and softly parted...but here his own tugged barely toward a frown, before he murmured, "'ts just that lipstick, really. I don't like it. It doesn't fit you, doesn't look like you."

"Well, then I can..." Sarah stumbled, breathless, eyes a little widening at the uncharacteristic complaint. "I can take it off for you." A flash across her features once she'd spoken it, a quiver of those painted lips, realizing only afterward the obvious suggestiveness the words could carry. But she offered nothing more.

He didn't want her to depart, even for the little while that would take. Didn't want to let her go. "No," another muttering denial as he fished inside an outer pocket of his coat, pulled out a simple paper napkin from the bar that he'd stuffed absently inside. Folded it over in his hand - and it was perhaps a testament to Sarah's understanding that she needed nothing further of instruction, holding herself dutifully frozen as he began to wipe the oily color from around her mouth. Slowly, gingerly, so that the roughness of the napkin wouldn't scrape too badly on that tender, vulnerable skin. Taking care of her, the way he was supposed to do, the way a father should. After a little while there, her eyelids even fluttered softly shut, and he couldn't help the thought from drifting to his mind of his indulgences in putting her to bed, her nightly ministrations at his thumb. The expression in her features now was so much alike to then. The utter trust, devotion there beneath his gaze, the mild blush of heat that radiated from her flesh, the willingness that he could almost feel as he touched her. The satin softness of those very lips at which he worked, compressing pliantly beneath his fingers, yielding to the touch...

So like the rest of her, in that regard. The recognition ached through him, a shiver of unspeakable desire as he reluctantly decided that she was as clean as he could get her with a single napkin. Pliant. Willing, supple, eager for a chance to please, to make her daddy happy. He let his hand drift over to her cheek, to cradle it within his grasp. And why should he resist it, why should he fight? If that was what she wanted, if it would make her happy too, if she would take pleasure from the fact of being his, belonging to him, fulfilling all the fantasies that had been creeping to his mind of late. Wasn't that the most important thing, to make his little girl happy?

And god, she looked so beautiful like this, an angel in his grasp. Even with the remnants of her lipstick faintly smeared around her mouth. Especially with that - the subtle imperfections only added to her beauty, to the allure of this girl who held her cheek so trustingly against his palm, heated with its flush of feeling, who only stirred her eyes to open when at last he spoke. A straining husk within his throat. "You really would do anything for me, wouldn't you, princess?"

"Of course." Murmured urgent and sincere - her own tones were pitched a little upward, tightened by the crush of longing at her chest, but spoken with a certainty as though this were the only answer she could give. The most natural in all the world. Her amber eyes were soulful on his own, beseeching, shimmered with a liquid reverence that overwhelmed the normal shyness of her gaze. "You're my daddy. You're my dad. And I'm..." She paused to breathe, to think a moment what to say, and just the whisper of her inhalation was about the sweetest sound he could conceive. "I love you more than anybody else, more than I ever could love someone else. Because of who we are to one another, because I'm...a part of you, it's your blood here inside me. And because I know you love me too, you care about me more than any other man that I'd run into ever will." She flashed a slender smile then, quixotic, wry. "And I think I said all that before, or most of it. But even then, until today I didn't - I still had a little bit of doubt, you know. I thought, well, I'm just daydreaming, I'm imagining, and maybe if something really happened like that between us then I wouldn't like it after all. But now it has, it happened, even if it was kinda just a little taste of it, and it was just as crazy and exciting and amazing as I thought."

Her left hand came up quietly, clasped above his own upon her cheek, where his thumb was stroking absently across a tiny patch of warm and silken skin. "So now I know." Whispered fervently into the tiny space between them. "I know it's real, all these feelings, all these dreams. I know that more than anything I want to be a good girl for you, the kind that all those stories talked about, who does anything she can to earn her daddy's love. And I think that it makes sense, besides." He could feel the urgency, the emphasis with which she said it, see the fire of it tremble up her spine. "We're already so, so close, aren't we? We already love each other, care about each other more than anybody else, more than most girls and their dads. We don't need anybody else. We can...you're the only man I need, and you can teach me how to make you happy, how to do everything the way your perfect woman would."

A touch of wildness in her features, intensity in her soft voice far past her normal hesitation. "We already live together here, alone, so there wouldn't have to be a change, nobody would know. I wouldn't have to go away to college. I could stay and help you with your business, be your secretary, make that website that you talked about. Or even your assistant, your apprentice, you could maybe even teach me how to do the job with you. It would work. It would let me stay with you, because a girl should be with her daddy, with the man she loves most, shouldn't she?" He felt her fingers tremble, tighten there around his own. "I'd be your little princess, and your toy, and anything you wanted me to be, and every morning I'd wake up beside you, in your arms, and I'd be happy 'cause I'd know my daddy kept me safe." A glimmering within those prayerful, angelic eyes, moisture gleaming in their corners. "And if you'd want that, if it sounds good to you at all..."

If. He squeezed unconscious at her cheek, softly, felt the warmth of it within his grasp. Oh, if...there was no question whatsoever, could be no dream more lovely than what she'd pleaded, what she'd sketched out for him in hesitantly fervent whispers, now and in the days before. The flood of sudden yearning twisted almost painful in his stomach, in his heart, clutching desperately upon that dream. Imagining how it would be to simply take her in his arms right now, this silly girl of his, sublime, and promise her what both of them so ardently desired. That he would never let her go, that she was his alone to hold, to love and cherish and protect. His to cradle in his arms at night, to gaze upon with soft, possessive tenderness. His to snatch up when the craving struck him, to throw onto his bed and sate himself upon her slender, tempting curves, upon the womanhood that she would share with no one else. She would be his little girl and his woman and his angel evermore, and the notion of it was a tidal wave, a great catastrophe of passion aimed against the battered dam of his restraint. Colliding like a thunderclap as she gazed silent up at him, expectantly, the shimmering of heaven in her eyes...

...and still somehow that wall survived. Damnably. Hatefully - he felt sickened almost, savage, furious to feel the prohibition that yet lodged inside his mind, insisting stubborn repetitions that he couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, not his daughter, that it wasn't right, whatever that might even mean. He couldn't bring himself to do it. For all of her temptations, all his hunger for her company, all the silent lusts and fantasies that her innocent insinuations had awakened in his soul...no bodily desire could be stronger that the core of certainty inside his chest of who he was supposed to be. Nothing could defeat the image that he'd branded to his soul, that he was her father first, before, above all other things.

Almost nothing. Or perhaps it wouldn't even be defeat, that wouldn't be the proper term - but still he felt a quaver in his throat as he released her, pulled his hand reluctantly away from her exquisite, gently freckled cheek. A roughness to his voice, forcing out a question that he didn't want to ask, to which he didn't want an answer. "And what will you do if I tell you this can never happen? Nothing that you've talked about, none of these fantasies of yours?"

She already looked a little disappointed, worried, hurt at his withdrawal - now her features slackened underneath the weight of sudden misery, of heartbreak, an almost accusation of betrayal in her eyes. But when she spoke, her voice was just an injured whisper, pleading. "You don't have to decide that right now, do you? I mean, you can - we can take time, we can-"

"I didn't say that I decided anything," he interrupted heavily. Firm again. He had to be. "I just asked what you would do."

"...well, then I don't understand," she stammered back, unhappily. "What would I do? I don't know. I'd be sad. I'd feel like - like I missed my chance, like I wasn't good enough, or I wasn't pretty enough for you." An anguished breath. "And I'd worry that I maybe messed up my our relationship for nothing, for a dream that I...I really wanted, that I really want, but..."

She wasn't getting it, no. He had to prod her in the right direction. "Would you find somebody else?"

"...oh." Comprehension dawned with dull reluctance, resignation. Slow to answer, quiet, looking downward at the corner of the couch. "I mean, I wouldn't want to. I don't think I could forget about all this. About the way I feel, I don't really think that it would - go away. And I kinda wanna say that...that even if you told me, even if I knew for sure it was impossible, that I'd still stay devoted to you, I'd wait in case you ever changed your mind." Her lips quivered feebly towards a smile, unsuccessfully, her arms rising up to pitiably hug about her chest. And even though she must have thought her next words were the answer that he wanted, she still spoke them like confession, as though she were asking his forgiveness. "But I'm not actually that crazy, not quite. I don't think I am. I'd have to move on, I know that. Even if I'd rather be with you, I guess I'd have to try to find someone who...I could be with. Who maybe made me feel at least a little bit like you do."

"Someone your own age?" He prompted, interrogatory. A little crawling in his nerves already, the kind he'd always felt in contemplation of the thought that anyone should lay their filthy hands upon his little girl.

"God, dad, I don't know!" Frustration finally burst out of her, a keening to her voice as she turned half away from him. "What do you want me to say? That'd be the normal thing, but I, I...I don't know. Right now I can't even really picture being interested to anybody else." A sideways glance, thick with injured longing, before she answered softer. "So maybe not, actually. Maybe someone more your age, who could remind me of you, who I could - I could try to look at the same way. I mean, I know some people kinda just pretend with this stuff, role-play, I saw a lot of that when I was looking at it. And that wasn't what I wanted, it's not the same, but if I'm not good enough for you then...maybe it would be a second-best."

He let the phrasing slide again, the suggestion that she wasn't good enough. Attention focused to the loathsome fact that she'd admitted, the image that it conjured of his daughter with a man two decades older, of her cheaply touched and stripped and used. The wrongness of it poison in his gullet, a bitter sickness eclipsed only by her other implication, what he inquired now through briefly gritted teeth. "So if there was some older man who liked the look of you, who started treating you like you've been going on about? If he started touching you, and giving you commands, and calling you his princess or his baby girl?"

"Well, I don't really know for sure," she whispered weakly, hedged, still facing half away. Eying him but warily, skittish at his evident unrest. "But that's...it might be something that would make me happy, yeah."

"And you, you'd play that role for him?" A final question. "Would you call him 'daddy,' if he told you to?" The words as hard as iron.

"I mean..." Ghostly. Slow. "If we were doing all the rest of that, then...yeah. I guess I would."

There it was. The answer he'd expected, that he'd known with sickly certainty would come. The unendurable idea that coiled like a serpent round his heart, venom in his veins - and in the sight and sound of it, the jealousy that had been simmering inside him flared into an open boil, a searing tide that rose up furious, possessive in his chest. That he should lose her too, his daughter, that she would sacrifice the very name, this symbol of the bond between them, give it to another...he made no effort to suppress the frenzy of emotion that the thought inspired. He nurtured it instead, submerged himself within the madness of it, permitted it to saturate his soul, to raise his arms, to grab hold of Sarah's shoulders as he bore her backward hard against the wall and snarled, "I am your father, Sarah. Me Your dad, your daddy, all of that is mine, nobody else's. And if you can't understand that, if you'd just pass it out to any man who comes along and tells you what to do, anyone who puts his hands on you..."

He hesitated, breathed, a whispering of sanity remaining in his mind. His own hands clutched tight upon the soft flesh of her shoulders. Near, so near she was, this tempting girl of his, wide-eyed with surprise and apprehension at his abrupt, unnatural brutality. Those lovely, luminous, intoxicating eyes, and desperation in his soul, paternal instincts crossed and digging into one another. The only way. The only way that he could stay her father, that he could keep it for himself, the name, the role, the special place inside her heart he wanted no one else to share. The only way...and almost physically inside himself he felt something tear free, and shuddered as an agony of smothered dreams found space again to flow. The press of words upon his tongue. "...maybe I should be the only man who does."