Peter's Flame

Part 45

"How could you not recognize your own father?"

In this situation, the daughter might have started to cry and hug her long lost father. She might have started pounding her hands against his chest and demand answers. Then again, she might also just be stunned and mute until this fact could sink in.

A sane person would ask questions. A sane person would demand to know why they weren't found any sooner. A sane person might cry and feel the warmth of their father's touch before it went away.

There are many things a sane person and a daughter would do in this situation but I was neither.

I did the only thing that felt natural to me.

I got up and still old a few steps away before I looked up towards the sky and began to chuckle.

Time froze as my chuckle turned into a crazed laugh that match my feelings at the moment.

I was empty. I didn't believe Hook when he declared to the entire world that I was supposedly his daughter.

But some part of me wished for him to be my father, or any of them to be my long lost parent that I had been searching for for years.

I couldn't help it.

Even as the sky began to cloud, even as they became thick with rain, they did not fall.

Not until my own fell.

Tears dropped down my cheeks as my voice continued to ring with crazed laughter.

I was a mess, that I knew.

But I couldn't help it.

I had left the only place that I had called my home only to end up being kidnapped and captured, before escaping and learning some shocking truth.

If this was normal, then the people who reacted by crying and hugging, demanding and interrogating, were boring and savages.

I looked down at Captain Hook, who's eyes were wide when he saw my damp cheeks and puffy red eyes.

"Alina," he asked, cautiously.

My laughter froze, the shocked and panicked look stalling on my face.

"Why," I asked, my voice a whisper but still loud over the raging silence on the boat.

"What," he replied, confused eminent on his face.

"If you are truly my father, why," I asked, not wanting to repeat myself one more time. I might scream if I did.

"Why what," he asked. "What did I do?"

I screamed, "YOU LEFT ME!! YOU SENT ME TO LIVE WITH MY UNCLE!! YOU ABANDONED ME!! YOU GAVE ME UP!! WHY?!"

He laughed. This puny, pathetic, monster of a man, had the gall to laugh.

I was going to kill him.

I was going to carve out his heart and watch him die as I crushed it.

"I didn't have a choice," he answered. His voice was pained and straining to make every word not sound like a hoarse.

"Everyone has choices. You just didn't realize them," I said. I turned away, too ashamed to see the pitiful thing that called itself my father.

"I did."

I stopped but did not turn around.

"I did know of my choices. I did choose to send you away. I did know. And I would choose differently now. But I can't, and I can only hope that you'll give me another chance."