Never Ever

The light from the fire casts strange shadows on her face, and makes her hair glow like the embers. Curled up on the end of the sofa, knees tucked under chin, a cushion clutched to her shins like a brightly embroidered shield, she looks small and vulnerable and very much like the child she once was, still is, won't be for much longer. It hurts to watch her twisting that old green hair ribbon between her fingers so he pretends not to see, and she watches him from nervous eyes.

The silence is stretched so taunt it's screaming.

The words on the page of his book become blurred and pointless, her eyes, her presence, are all he is aware of; he wonders if she's aware that she's breaking his hearts, he wonders if perhaps his silence is breaking hers. She speaks first, of course, she always has, no matter how chatty the regeneration she has always managed to get the first - and the last - word in every conversation they've ever had, certainly seems that way at least, and he wonders if he has purposefully let her; if those first words had stunned him into life-long deference. He hears the same words now and something catches in his throat.

My Daddy.

She's not pleading, or laughing, or sobbing, it's a simple statement of fact: he is her daddy, just as she is his little girl, and he really shouldn't be feeling so miserable. All that runs through his head, though, when he finally looks her in the eye are the memories of scraped-knees; hysterical giggle-fits; pigtails dipped in engine oil; quantum physics lessons; spectacular errors of judgement; and he tries to reconcile them with the truth that's shining from her teary eyes, and reflected in the tenuous smile that has replaced her usual beaming grin.

She's not his little girl anymore, and tomorrow she'll be gone.