Revelations (are only the beginning)
(RP thread for gothams_dent and knowthenbreak)
“Do I have to go?” Dalia asked. She was staring glumly at an invitation to the opening of an exhibit at the Gotham Museum of Modern Art. Her older sister, Duela, had sent it to her. The teenager couldn’t think of a duller way to spend an evening.( Read More... )
“Do I have to go?” Dalia asked. She was staring glumly at an invitation to the opening of an exhibit at the Gotham Museum of Modern Art. Her older sister, Duela, had sent it to her. The teenager couldn’t think of a duller way to spend an evening.( Read More... )
"We tried, Dalia. We wanted to be better for you...learn from our mistakes."
"So Duela was a mistake?" Dalia glared. "What're you going to do now that I know all your secrets? Have another one?"
"That's not what I meant," Harvey tightened his grip on her arm. He'd never hurt either of his children before, but he felt his anger rise a bit, even as he wanted to break down. "I want you to think about everything you read in those files." He took a breath. "Not just from the perspective of it being about your family. I want you to think of what you might have done in our situations...if there're any gaps you want us to fill in or questions you want answered, we'll answer you..." He loosened his grip on her arm and as he watched her reaction, he looked older than usual, a bit haggard.
Dalia wiped her face with her free hand. "It was all so perfect...and then it just fell apart." It was hard to know if she was talking about their present life, or Harvey and Nadine's past ones. She looked at them both.
"Nothing's perfect," Harvey said quietly. "Even...when I was the D.A...even...when everyone had that idealistic view of me, of what we were going to do to turn Gotham around...nothing's perfect."
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"We wanted to be better," Nadine repeated, not looking toward her husband or her daughter. She had to stay strong, had to not cry. Dalia was already upset. That needed to be tended to first. "We didn't want you to know about the past." She shook her head. That wasn't true. "I didn't want you to know about the past." The woman paused. "There are things there that still terrify me, things I've done that I'd undo if I could. I didn't want them to keep you awake like they did me. I didn't want you to know--" Nadine bit her lip. There was no use denying it, and it wasn't like Harvey hadn't heard Dalia use the same words. "I didn't want you to know how..." she struggled with the word, "how sick I was-- am-- whichever. I don't hardly know anymore."
She gave a quiet laugh. "I know. It's horribly selfish. Hearing myself say it, I get that, but I always told myself I was trying to protect you from it all."
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"I'm sorry," her father told her, putting his arm around her. "So sorry."
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She stood slowly, glancing over at her daughter with the faintest of smiles, though it was weak and unsteady. "We were trying to do what was best for you. We... might not have... but that's what we wanted."
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Harvey nodded. "If you want to ask us more questions later, you can," he said.
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Nadine almost laughed at herself at the thought.
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It was okay. This was okay. They were only trying to be good parents. They were sorry. She repeated those things to herself, reminding herself of the looks on their faces as she closed her bedroom door behind her. It was only when she was away from them that she really let go, and really started to cry, for herself, for them, for her sister, for the things she now understood and the things she would never fully know.
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