new ds story

[schmerica]

Um, so ... it's weird. And it's kidfic. And weird.

Dude, I blame the girls in #discourse for encouraging it; you know who you are. Anyway.

Title: How Many Ways
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PGish
Summary: "She tries to imagine their lives before her, but it's difficult."
Thank you to nifra_idril and lynnmonster for beta.

Read at my site or here.

*****

One. Reasons Why Carrie Has Hated Her Parents.

I.

When she was eight years old, Dief got sick. He was already old, really old even for a half-wolf, and as time passed he began getting even more tired and slow and awkward. And Carrie understood, almost, what her parents were saying when they told her about how much pain Dief was in and how unhappy he was, but one afternoon she came home from school and Dief was gone and then her parents told her that Dad had shot him.

Carrie stopped talking to Dad. It was a couple days into it when Daddy asked her at supper what was going on with her, and she answered by glaring at Dad and mentioning the word "murderer."

That got Daddy mad, *really* mad; he began yelling at her, practically close to exploding, but Dad kept saying his name over and over, till Daddy turned to him and yelled "What?"

They looked at each other and didn't say anything. Carrie waited until she was sure she wasn't about to burst into tears before she asked if she could be excused. Daddy said "Fine," and Carrie walked to her room slowly and closed her door extra-carefully and then smacked her pillow really hard and threw her teddy bear against the wall.

She started talking to him again a few days later, but it was a long time before she actually understood enough to forgive him.

II.

When she was twelve years old, she got her first period. At first she tried to keep it to herself, just use toilet paper, wash all her underwear on her own. Eventually, though, she braced herself enough to mention it to Daddy. Daddy's eyes went wide and he stared at her for a moment, and then stammered something out and disappeared.

Later, Dad came to her room and gave her a long, involved and sincere talk about the wonders, science and cultural history of menstruation, blushing faintly all the while.

Sitting speechless on the edge of her bed, clutching a pillow against her stomach, Carrie was more mortified than she'd ever been.

At the end of it, Dad kissed her on the forehead and dragged her to the kitchen for a slice of pie to celebrate her menarche. "It's not strictly traditional," Dad said, "but I think it works." He smiled at her, and Carrie stared at him.

The next time they visited Aunt Maggie, *she* gave Carrie the sex talk. This was probably her parents' idea, but Carrie approved of it anyway.

III.

When she was fourteen, Dad disappeared. Daddy spent the entire time he was missing ranting and raving and going crazy, and Carrie had the feeling if it wasn't for her, he'd be out there going after him -- it was her keeping him here, stuck doing nothing.

Dad appeared again after four days. He'd tracked a dangerous fugitive miles and miles in the wilderness, and caught him and brought him back in.

"You *idiot*," Daddy said. "What the hell is wrong with you? If you ever do anything like that again, Fraser, I swear to god I'll kill you myself."

They hugged for a long time while Carrie stood to the side with her arms folded across her chest. Then Dad hugged her, too, just as long; Carrie was tempted not to hug back, to prove her point, but she folded immediately as his arms came around her.

He'd missed her birthday, too.

IV.

When she was seventeen, Daddy punched her date in the jaw while Carrie was in the bathroom. She should have known better than to leave them alone.

Two. Results of the Scientific Method, Conducted at Age Eleven.

Problem. Carrie's parents are not like other people's parents.

Question. Are her parents really in love?

Hypothesis. They're doomed.

Observations.

Supporting:

a) They argue quite a lot.
b) They don't kiss in front of her, or do mushy things, or anything like that.
c) They don't call each other 'dear' or 'honey' or anything like some of Carrie's friends. Daddy doesn't even use Dad's first name.
d) They're not romantic like people in movies in any way, in fact.
e) Daddy's been married before and it didn't work out. (To Dad's friend Ray's wife, weirdly enough. When they went on vacation to Florida to visit them Carrie had stared at Stella for a long time and tried to imagine her married to Daddy and doing all those things in Daddy's stories of when he was a kid. But eventually she'd been forced to give it up, just like most of her imaginings of her parents' pasts.)

Against:

a) Sometimes she suspects they *enjoy* fighting like that.
b) They both seem pretty happy, anyway, most of the time.
c) They're not like people in movies, but they still have stories of other stuff they did, stuff that's cool in its own ways. Saving each others' lives and putting away bad guys and moving away to a whole different country. That's kind of neat.
d) Sometimes Carrie wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water and catches them slow dancing in the living room. She always walks back to bed without bothering them.

Conclusion. Safe, for now.

Three. Pictures Kept on the Walls of Her Parents' Cabin.

I.

Carrie, aged perhaps three, standing in the snow, bundled up to within an inch of her life; almost nothing is visible of her except her small, pink face. Dad is crouching beside her, his face turned half-away from the camera. He looks happy and vaguely stunned.

II.

Both of her parents, looking frighteningly younger, standing with Dief before a dogsled, squinting into the sun.

III.

Three figures, one small and two larger, all bundled up tightly, vaguely blurry in black and white; if you didn't already know who they were, they could be anybody.

IV.

A light charcoal sketch: Daddy, reclining in a chair at the kitchen table. His head is thrown back, showing the stubble covering his chin and cheeks, shadow framing his face on one side. His eyes are closed, and he is smiling faintly. (This picture embarrasses Carrie a little, though she doesn't know why; it is just as well it hangs in their bedroom, and not out in the open.)

V.

Pop-pop and Grandma, standing in front of the RV. Daddy is between them, his arms around either their shoulders, all of them posing and smiling carefully for the camera. They all look shiny, like they're sweating in the heat. Off to the side of the frame is a sleek black car, the shine of the glare so bright it's almost painful to look at. On the other side you can see the very tip of Carrie's thumb, but it's almost invisible if you're not looking for it.

VI.

Carrie, in her early teens, seated across a small table from Daddy. Neither of them is paying any attention to the camera; the chessboard set out between them is the focus of their fierce and single-minded attention. A large section of Carrie's ponytail has fallen forward over her face, and she appears to be frowning and chewing her lip as she stares at the board. Daddy is wearing his glasses and leaning forward on the edge of his seat, grinning and smiling but still intense on the match. It's impossible to tell who is winning.

Four. The Limitations of Immortality.

Later she figures out she must have been right in the middle of Intro to Anthropology when the call came. She had French after that, though, and then she went to lunch, so it was a few hours before she got back to her dorm room and the message on her answering machine.

It was complicated, trying to get home that far and that quick; she was exhausted and confused and worn-out by the time her last plane touched down.

Daddy met her there. He looked even more tired and worn than she felt. Every time she saw her parents after a little while away she was surprised by how much older they looked compared to how she thought of them. But this was more dramatic than usual.

Daddy drove them to the motel, and she dropped her bag and crashed onto one of the ugly queen beds and slept for hours. When she woke up they got something to eat, and then they headed to the hospital.

It was scary, seeing Dad in the hospital bed, and wrong, but somehow it was still less disturbing than seeing Daddy.

During the surgery she and Daddy sat in the waiting room. She'd brought a book to read. Daddy had, too, but he set it down in the first five minutes and didn't touch it again. He paced the room and kicked the walls and sat down and then got up again. He grunted when she talked to him, but eventually he sat down again beside her and she reached out and took his hand. It was still warm, still bigger than hers, though nothing like when she was little and he used to swamp her fists in his.

Daddy squeezed her hand and she felt a little angry, suddenly, that she was forced to comfort *him* -- not the other way around -- and then angry at Dad, even, for doing this to all of them in the first place, for suddenly being *breakable* after all these years. But both of those thoughts were awful things to think, completely inexcusable, so she pushed them back out of her mind.

Five. Three Conversations.

I.

Dad said, "Did you brush your teeth?"

Carrie nodded and opened her mouth wide. Dad leaned over to peer inside, then straightened up and nodded.

"Good. Now into bed."

Carrie climbed up into the bed, burrowing beneath the covers. Dad looked down at her for a second, and then began tucking the sheets and blankets around her, tighter and tighter. "Snug as a bug in a rug," he said, when he was finally done. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Where were we?"

"The princess."

"Ah, right you are. The ballerina princess."

From the foot of the bed, Dief made a noise. Dad turned toward him. "I don't see why not. She's obviously very hard-working and dedicated."

Dief made another noise, and Dad said "Hmmph" and turned back to Carrie.

"The ballerina princess had just escaped from the ice maiden last night, I believe."

"Yeah."

"Well, then," Dad said. He licked his lips thoughtfully. "The ballerina princess had escaped from her icy clutches, but not without injury to herself. She had been forced to leave her belongings behind at the ice maiden's cave, so she wasn't able to even dress her wounds with her bandages and ointment.

"She trudged on regardless, looking for some sort of oasis to rest in, but found nothing. Finally she began to wonder if she could go on even one more step. But that was when she suddenly came across--"

"A dragon!" Carrie breathed.

Dad smiled down at her. "Yes," he agreed, "a dragon. But you have to remember -- some dragons can turn out to be very kind indeed."

II.

Dad said, "I first came to Chicago on the trails of the killers of my father."

Carrie continued to stare out the taxi's window, trying to absorb each and every exotic sight. "And you stayed here?"

"For several years, yes."

"How come?" Carrie tried, with some effort, to imagine her father -- her strange and contrary and perfectly singular father -- living *here*, in this huge and exciting and crowded place. It was difficult.

"Well, at first, I was in exile," Dad said. "The RCMP assigned me here as a sort of punishment. After a while, though, it did become homelike for me, if not actually home."

Carrie glanced over to him as she settled back down into her seat. "But Daddy grew up here. It was home for him."

"Mmmm," Dad said noncommittally; he was looking out the other window himself.

"So how did he end up going from *here* to *there*?"

Carrie couldn't read the expression on Dad's face, quite, but he shook his head and said, "You'd have to ask him that. Here, we've almost reached the hotel now."

III.

Dad said, "Good morning."

"Good morning," said Carrie. She sat down in the chair beside his, yawning quietly. "What are you reading?"

Dad had looked up from the book he was reading when she came outside. He held it now in one hand, his index finger marking his place, and he looked back down at it as if surprised to see it there. "Ah. This one of the volumes of my father's journals."

Carrie nodded and folded her feet up underneath her. The morning chill was still in the air, but it was pleasant, brisk. Everything felt quiet and still this early -- as if it all existed just for her, and for Dad, for being up to see it.

"Carrie," Dad said slowly, and Carrie had to blink to bring herself back to him. He was staring down at the journal, still, a frown on his face. "You know, my father was -- he was a very good man. And certainly, an exemplary officer. But he wasn't, according to any way of thinking, a very good father. I resented that -- him -- for a very long time."

Dad paused there, rubbing lightly at his eyebrow, and Carrie waited for him to go on.

"I suppose what I'm trying to do is apologize, in a way," he finished, finally.

"Dad," said Carrie, "you don't--"

Dad stood up and kissed her gently on the top of the head. "I'm going to put the coffee on. It's getting late," he said, and disappeared back inside.

Six. First Things First.

It can't be an actual memory. It's much too far back, for one thing, and for another, it's much too clear and detailed. It must be something she made up, but how much of it is from stories and ideas they've given her and how much is completely her own invention is impossible to say.

Still, it feels like a memory: the snow falling light and flaky all around as she clomps through it; she falls down often, even more when Dief tries to help her, but that's part of the fun, part of the play, and she shrieks and shrieks with laughter as they run around.

And then, beyond, her parents standing there, watching, and one of them says "What the *hell* do we think we're doing?" and the other just laughs, and then she is being scooped in arms that are warm and good-smelling and strong.

It can't be a real memory, she realizes, but that's all right.