#yall i chose mislabelled this as “death island” at first so yeah im sorry for the confusion :')

[leonw4nter]

My Daddy Forever, You’ll Always Be

ID!Leon + GN!Child

Dad suffered a lot. Uncle Chris or Aunt Claire tells me just how much he suffered and how he continues to suffer. No one had to tell me that my dad pushed all the suffering back and didn’t feel into them just to take care of me, even when the scrape on my knee was nothing compared to the fracture in his collarbone or the swelling of his eye. I do my best to be there for him, reminding him to celebrate birthdays or find happiness in the mundane like coloring books but I guess even that isn’t enough to fill the mom-shaped hole she left in his heart. No one’s going to fit in there, not even me, and I don’t think dad wants anyone to fill it in and that’s okay because I have a mom-shaped hole in my heart too, even if I only know how mom looks based on pictures in the frames and photo albums dad loved to look at.

On every birthday he has, we always prepare two candles– one for him and one for mom, even if they don’t share a birthday (they’re six months apart). Dad always sadly sighs when he blows out her candle; I think he hates doing that. I hate observing that though they were born a few months apart, they’re even more apart now that one of them is still on Earth while the other is in heaven now. Despite the fact that I sort of killed mom by being born fussy, Dad still loves me and does his best to be present in my life. He knows which dresses to buy and doesn’t mind wearing make up, even when the lipstick is smeared or if some powder got into his eyes. Sometimes I think he’s trying to make up by treating me well because I look like the splitting image of my mom and he’s trying to suppress the guilt every time he sees me but I don’t mind; he lost a woman who’s been around in his life longer than I have been. He lets me sleep in his and mom’s room sometimes, letting me sleep in what he said was her side of the bed. If we both couldn’t sleep, he could talk about anything and everything but her. There was one time where I told him that my classmate’s mom remarried after her dad died in service and that she was happy and I asked him if that would make him happier.

“Marriage is how you know that your love persevered through tough times. A second marriage is proof of how you were willing to give yourself another chance to love. I don’t think I can marry again because I know I won’t be able to love someone else as much as I fiercely love your mother,” was all he said before I turned to face him, his chest shaking slightly and tears streamed down his stubbly cheek. I apologized to him and quietly promised that I won’t ever make dad cry again and that I would do my best to make sure dad stayed happy.

Dad isn’t very keen on writing; he’d much rather install a tile and get dirt underneath nails he maintained than write on several pieces of paper back to back but I notice that he began buying stationery in order to write letters but those letters were never sent. He keeps them in a womens’ shoe box and occasionally takes a letter out to read as he quietly cries to himself. On the night of what would be five years since mom left us, I woke up in the middle of the night to find dad’s side of the bed empty. I got up and saw him sitting on the floor as he hugged the shoe box close to his chest.

“Will we ever see each other again? How long until you’ll come back to me and our daughter?” was what I heard as he continued to cry. I have heard Dad cry but never as gut-wrenching as this. I continued to watch him cry, tears of my own spilling and I felt bad for him. Aunt Claire told me that dad never showed fear when he was at work, shooting and defeating the bad guys but whenever he looked at me, there would always be a small tinge of fear in his eyes. She said that he just didn’t want me to see the world the way he saw it, whatever that meant. I couldn’t take it and I ended up sobbing, maybe as hard as dad did. He heard me and got up, walking over to where I was hiding. He lifted me and hugged me tight, pressing kisses to my hair and repeatedly apologizing for being a little too loud when I was sleeping. If only Dad saw that he had nothing to apologize for but how could he see that when the splitting image of his wife is me and my face reminds him of what he gained and lost on that day?

I hope Dad doesn’t beat himself up for losing what he had left of mom. I hope he doesn’t feel sad whenever he sees another dad with his wife bonding with their daughter in a park. I hope he doesn’t cry whenever it’s his birthday and he pokes a third candle into his cake. I hope he doesn’t consider himself a bad father because I would rather live a short life with dad than a long life without him. It made me sad how dad would never see me in a wedding gown and would probably never walk me down the aisle or have our daddy-daughter dance; after we watched the movie Father of the Bride and seeing dad get all emotional about it, it kind of made me a little happy to image dad being so excited for me. I hope he will be kind to himself and let himself experience happiness. I hope that God would let me be reborn as dad’s best friend so I can help him get through what he went through. He would’ve been a pleasure to walk to school with. Hmm. Maybe he’d be the type to remind the teacher of homework.

NOTE - Sorry for dropping this short and mid ass fic, I just had to hop on my computer and write this one bc I came across this one wedding tiktok where the dad sees his daughter who's getting married for the first time and I cried then suddenly remembered I wrote an angsty fic where Leon's kid dies and I decided to add this as the kid's POV. I was too sad okay I just HAD to write one up but looking back at it, now that I'm not that sad, it's actually... ehh. A for effort, I guess. Anyways, that's it and thank you SOOOOOO much for reading my fics, it means a lot to me :) I <33333 UUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!

The dividers are from @saradika , the images are made by me (sourced from Pinterest).