Revelations (are only the beginning)

[take_mychances]

(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.

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[knowthenbreak]

"Sit," Nadine said, holding up her hand to the dog that ran to greet her and her husband when they came in. The retriever reluctantly obeyed, and Nadine eyed it carefully. "Good dog." She didn't go to pet it. She'd leave that to Harvey. Dogs still made her nervous-- a bad childhood experience coupled with the hallucinogens from the Scarecrow had left her unable to really like dogs. Still, Dalia had wanted one, begged for one, so... she had gotten one.

She draped her coat over a living room chair and smiled a bit at her husband. "See?" she murmured, chuckling a bit. "The house is still standing. No signs of a wild party. Everything's locked up, safe and sound." Nadine was teasing him more than anything. She was still disappointed that Dalia hadn't accepted Duela's invitation. Granted, she was never pleased to send her out with Jonathan Crane and his son, but she tried to pretend that didn't bother her for Duela's sake. Crane... had taken so much from her. She wouldn't let him take her daughter completely.

[gothams_dent]

Harvey greeted the dog with a grin and scratched him under his chin. "Good boy," he said as they went into the house. "I didn't think she'd have a wild party," he said to Nadine. "...I did think she'd at least be planted in front of the TV, though."

[knowthenbreak]

"She's probably in her room," Nadine pointed out, smiling at the sight of him with the dog. As long as it kept away from her, as it usually did, she'd at least gotten to the point of tolerating it being in the same room. She passed him, touching the back of his hand lightly before heading down the hall.

Just as she was about to knock on a closed door, Nadine noticed that the bedroom she and Harvey shared was open and a light was on inside. Dalia might have decided to help herself to the slightly larger TV and bed there. She went in, stopping in the doorway when she saw the spread of papers spilling out from the closet.

Slowly, she took a few more steps into the room, staring at the girl in the middle of the mess. "Dalia."

[take_mychances]

At her name, Dalia looked up, suddenly brought out of the trance she'd been in the last two or three hours as she'd gone over her family's history, in the form of newspaper clippings and confidential records. On her face was a mixture of guilt and confusion.

"You lied," was all she could immediately get out.

[knowthenbreak]

Nadine stood there for a moment, looking at her daughter. She knelt down near the papers, starting to gather them up with the utmost care. The woman did the best she could to hide the trembling of her hands from Dalia.

"We did," she replied. She paused, looking at a picture of a younger Jonathan Crane, at the police reports she'd photocopied so long ago. "It's..." She couldn't say it was for Dalia's good. Yes, they'd wanted to protect her, but that wasn't the whole reason. She spoke softly, more to herself, "Sometimes it's better to try and rewrite the past."

[take_mychances]

Dalia crossed her arms and turned away from her mother, angry that she seemed to be just picking it all up only to stash it away again, hide it once more behind silk blouses and suit jackets. "Why is she with him? Why--are you with Dad? Why--you guys are old! Is that why you had me--because she pissed you off?"

[knowthenbreak]

Nadine paused in collecting the files. She set them down and looked at Dalia. "She's with him because Jonathan Crane gets what he wants. I-- I don't know the details. I don't want to know the details. I just..." She knew how this would sound, but perhaps Dalia deserved the truth. "I just know that Jonathan--" she didn't even think before calling him that, "--got tired of me, so he decided to prey on Duela instead."

[take_mychances]

"Tired of you?" Dalia swallowed, trying not to cry. She wouldn't. "You're sick..." She got up. "It even says so in those papers." She took notice of the fact that her mother didn't address the questions about her birth.

Hearing what sounded like an argument, Harvey came down the hall, entering the bedroom at that moment. "What's going on?" he demanded.

[knowthenbreak]

Nadine raised a hand, gesturing for Dalia to keep her voice down. She needed time, needed to think things through. There were so many things that Dalia needed to know but so many other things she shouldn't have to hear. One question at a time, Nadine told herself. That was the only way to handle it.

Then Nadine heard her husband and she sighed. She waited a moment, composing herself. She didn't want him to hear how close to tears she was. He'd see the papers, know enough, but he didn't need to know what Dalia had just said. "The past didn't stay buried," she said, not looking over at him.

[take_mychances]

Harvey looked from his wife to his daughter to the papers scattered on the floor. "Dalia--" He looked back at his youngest daughter--his--no, their--second chance, and tried to remain composed. "--well," he finally said after a moment. "--I guess you're old enough." The Crane stuff he'd wanted her to know about, but if he thought about it, there was really no way she could know that without being told the whole story. Now she knew and he was only sorry they hadn't been the ones to tell her.

Dalia stared at her father, momentarily feeling like she hardly knew him. "You were the D.A. ...a good D.A....the-the 'White Knight' of Gotham. And then..."

"Things happen." Harvey's jaw clenched, but his voice was quiet. "Gotham changes people. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. I did both."

Dalia wasn't sure why this was the thing to make her start crying, but it did.

[knowthenbreak]

Nadine got up, going only so far as she needed to in order to kneel by her daughter, attempting to pull her close. "Sweetheart," she whispered, biting her lip briefly.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Gotham can do... terrible things to a person." Nadine opened her eyes, looking at Dalia now. "It twists and destroys everything, but sometimes... sometimes you get a second chance. Something completely unexpected happens, and you get to start over. You're a little beaten down from everything, but sometimes there's this... hope that just won't die."

She touched her daughter's cheek, if she'd be allowed to, and whispered, "You are that second chance. Just when everything-- everything fell apart, we got a little bit of hope. Something that made life worth living-- you."

[take_mychances]

Dalia pulled away. "You wanted a replacement. She got sick of you both, she saw what you were..." She knew it wasn't true, even as she said it, but she was hurt, felt lied to, and wanted to hurt her parents back. She made to leave the room but her father stopped her, grabbing hold of her arm.

"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

[knowthenbreak]

Nadine flinched but stayed where she was, looking back to the files on the ground. Again, they-- she'd failed. Why had she kept all of this? Why hadn't she locked it away? Of course young girls were curious. Dalia had been bound to find it. If she'd just told Dalia the truth-- But how to tell a young girl what they'd seen?

"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

[take_mychances]

"But you'd undo them," Dalia said quietly, trying to focus on a piece of sanity in the midst of the chaos that had erupted before them in the form of all the files. "The things you guys did...you wanted to be better..." She had to believe it--believe them. If she didn't, she had nothing. They were her parents.

"I'm sorry," her father told her, putting his arm around her. "So sorry."

[knowthenbreak]

"I hope you never go through it, but... Gotham has a way of giving you a bad situation-- sometimes of your own doing, sometimes not. And you have make the best of it." Even if the best-- until Crane had become otherwise occupied-- had been only slightly less of a nightmare.

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."

[take_mychances]

Dalia looked at her mother's frail face and her father's stooped shoulders and nodded. "...okay." She bit her lip. "Can I go to my room now?"

Harvey nodded. "If you want to ask us more questions later, you can," he said.