Disharmony

Knight in Shining Armor

She paced.

If the current situation had taken place a year ago, by now she would be halfway through a bottle of Jack Daniels and on the prowl for a male to screw as a distraction.

But she was reformed. Or at least, she was attempting to be better, so instead of beginning the sprint down the path of self-destruction, she paced the length of her dressing room, shoving peanut M&Ms into her mouth as she did and wondering what the hell to do next.

Generally speaking, Kasia had no idea what she was doing, but this was a whole new level of unknown territory. This was her father; a man she hadn't spoken to in five years. A man she hadn't ever expected to have to speak to again.

Ashamed of how their last interaction had gone down, he had disappeared after her first headline show without so much as a goodbye message. Maybe she could have put more effort into tracking him down, but the truth was that at first, she had thought the separation was for the best.

After all, it wasn't as though she needed any more inspiration as she began her nights of alcohol and drug induced debauchery. Knowing Rocky Stevens, he would have completely supported her as she drank herself into oblivion and nearly destroyed her career. So it was probably better that he'd fucked off for half a decade because it gave her a chance to realize that the life he lived wasn't the life she wanted for herself.

He had once had a promising career of his own as the lead singer of a rock band that was on its way to the top until his excessive partying and disregard for the feelings of his bandmates caused them to kick him out and sent him into an even more destructive downward spiral. Ever since his fall from grace, which culminated in him very publically denouncing the president of his record label at a release party, he'd never been able to find himself again.

Lord knows he tried. Finding himself was his excuse for never being around as Kasia grew up. The first time he left, she had been four and told that he was going on a business trip. It wasn't until he missed her fifth birthday six months later that she started to wonder if he was ever going to come back. He did, eventually, a few weeks after she turned five, only to leave again when she was seven and eight and ten, for what she deemed to be the final time. By the time she hit her teenage years, she had begun to think of him less as a parental figure and more of an acquaintance who just made an appearance in her life every so often.

Not that she really cared. Sure, maybe she would have liked the kind of father who would watch her practice her dance routines and push her on the swings at the park, but that's not what she had and she accepted it, until his sudden arrivals and departures began to affect her plans to get out of the hellhole of a town she grew up in.

She'd gotten the record deal entirely on her own and although Kasia's mother didn't approve of her daughter's aspirations, she didn't stop her either, so Kasia dropped out of school to go on the road as the opening act for an up and coming boyband and a year later, she was finally standing backstage at her very first headline show. An event which her father had left his own mark on by drinking entirely too much and then upchucking the contents of his stomach onto her just minutes before she was supposed to go on stage.

From that day forward, Kasia had decided that she wanted nothing to do with her father. It was one thing for her to enter her own downward spiral, but she refused to let someone else jeopardize her career.

He had been gone when she got off stage and she didn't bother to figure out where he went and he didn't contact her again. Until now, apparently.

Though, she supposed that it wasn't her father reaching out in this case. This disaster was all Xavier's fault.