“Could’ve gone with him.”

I stared at my dad, even as he looked down at his hands, idly fiddling with his fingers.

“What?” I asked, just to make sure I’d heard him correctly.

“I said you could’ve gone with him. Jamie,” he added at the end, like he could possibly be talking about anybody else.

“I thought that was the exact opposite of what you wanted,” I said.

“It is.”

I waited for him to continue, and frowned when he didn’t.

“That’s it?” I asked, not understanding what point he was trying to make.

“No,” he said quietly.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Spit it out.”

My dad looked up at me with a deep frown on his face that made me instantly regret getting angry at him like that. I looked away from him.

“Sorry,” I said, through gritted teeth. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just a little tired, I guess.”

“It’s fine to be upset, Lena. It’s perfectly understandable,” my dad said, his voice soft and careful, like he was afraid I would shatter if he spoke too loudly. It irritated me more than anything else, but I forced the feeling down.

“I’m fine,” I said, not wanting to risk snapping at him again if I spoke more than a few words.

My dad stared at me, disbelief clear on his face and his jaw shifting from side to side, like he was trying to physically organize the words in his mouth before he spoke. His face turned into a whirlwind of subtle shifts in emotion, before he finally settled on a frown.

“How was it?” he asked.

“How was what?” I asked back.

He raised his shoulders slightly, in an almost imperceptible shrug. “Everything,” he said. “I don’t know much about Otherworlders, and what I do know is horrifying. I’m sure I’ve mentioned the book written by one of the followers of the Plague King.”

I frowned at the mention of the Plague King. Even if Jamie was nowhere near the second coming of the Plague King, I didn’t want to even entertain the thought of comparing the two.

“You have,” I said. “You also never let me read it.”

“Only because you were too young at the time,” my dad said. “By the time you grew old enough that your mother might not have killed me for letting you read it, you didn’t care for reading.”

The joke and the chuckle that followed it was as painfully forced as his sudden shift in tone, and I doubted that he had any delusions that it sounded genuine in the slightest, but he pretended like it wasn’t obvious. I decided to do the same.

“I do like reading, dad,” I said, feeling more than a small amount of whiplash from the casual tone I was forcing on myself. I was glad I was far enough away from him that I didn’t feel compelled to playfully punch his shoulder to play along with the forced mood. “But I like reading fun books, not depressing autobiographies.”

“I’ve got to admit, you’ve got me there,” he said. “But it’s an interesting book, overall. I’ll lend it to you if you want, kiddo.”

He immediately winced for a split second before forcing a smile on his face. I was sure I did the same thing. My dad had never in his life called me ‘kiddo’ before and it was jarring to hear.

“Sure,” I said.

At the one word answer, the conversation died almost immediately. We both sat there with awkward smiles on our faces, before my dad’s smile dropped, his shoulders sinking down with it.

“I’ll be honest. The book is horrible. Interesting, but horrible.”

“As in, it’s poorly written?” I asked, still hanging on to the remnants of my smile for a bit longer, hoping he would take it as an invitation to go back to pretending everything was fine.

“No.” My dad almost seemed to shiver as he ignored my half-hearted attempt at a joke. “The things that the author went through were horrific. I just…” He frowned as he buried his head in his hands. “I just want to know you’re fine, Lena.”

My automatic reaction was to open my mouth and tell him I was fine, and that he could stop worrying, but the look on his face stopped me. Close to tears, a meltdown, or both, his hands were folded together in a white-knuckled grip as he stared down at the table, either because he didn’t want to be looking at me when I told him another half-hearted lie or because he didn’t want me to feel guilty when I did.

I considered lying to him anyways, and I had halfway managed to convince myself that it would be for the best, but my mouth opened without my permission.

“I’m not fine,” I said.

My dad’s reaction was mixed. Tension and relief both seemed to clash within him as he seemed to struggle whether he was upset to hear that or relieved that I was opening up to him.

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“Tell me about it,” he said.

And so I did. I told him everything, from the moment Ryuji Nightblade fell from the sky to the moment when Jamie Campbell broke down crying in my arms. I told him everything I could remember, every detail, and it was only until I finished my story that I realized I’d made a mistake.

“Don’t tell anyone I told you about the secret Mediator stuff, okay? Especially the stuff about the Guide.”

My dad had been entirely silent through my story, simply nodding along to show that he was still listening, which made sense that it took him a few seconds to realize I was asking him a question.

“I won’t,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to. It kind of just slipped out,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?” my dad asked, his voice gruff. “I’m the one who asked you to share.”

“This is serious, dad,” I said, shaking my head. “The Mediators would probably kill you if they knew you knew all the stuff they told me.”

“And would that be so bad?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

For a moment, I couldn’t understand what he had just said. The casual way he said it made me think that there was no way he could have suggested that he would be alright with being assassinated by the Mediators without batting an eye.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

My dad shrugged. “As long as Jamie’s around, he can just bring me back to life, no problem, right?”

“I-” My lips pursed subconsciously as I struggled to find a response to him. “No, dad. It’s not ‘no problem.’ You can’t just die and expect everything to be fine, even if you can come back. That’s not how that works.”

He looked up into my eyes, concern radiating from his own.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

I stared into his eyes for a few more seconds before turning away uncomfortably.

“I’m fine,” I said.

There was a long silence before my dad let out an equally long sigh.

We sat there for a while, staring at anywhere else but at each other. By the time I noticed we were stuck like the air of awkwardness that festered between us, it was too late to break it.

It would have been a convenient time for something to happen to break it for us, like my mom waking up, or someone knocking on our door, but nothing like that happened.

“What are you going to do next?” my dad asked.

The question was abrupt enough that the surprise I felt almost made me physically recoil.

“What?” I asked, if only to give me a moment to gather my thoughts.

“What are you going to do next?” my dad repeated.

“What do you mean?”

My dad sighed, though I wasn’t sure if it was out of frustration, despair, or something else.

“Jamie plans to leave,” he said. “Do you plan to go with him?”

“Yes,” I said, surprising myself with how easily I gave him my answer.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t have anyone else.”

My dad sighed.

“We’ve raised you too well,” he said, shaking his head. “I suppose it’s all a father could ask for, to know that his daughter grew up to be a good person, but I do wish you were a little more selfish. I wish I was more selfish too.”

I stayed silent, not knowing how to reply to that.

“Where do you plan to go first?” my dad asked.

“You’re fine with me going?” I asked, a little surprised that he was taking this so well.

He shook his head. “I’m not,” he said. “But I can’t stop you from making your own choices. As I’ve said already, you’re a grown woman. So where do you think you’ll go?”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m not sure. I don’t think Jamie had any specific ideas.”

My dad nodded, as if expecting the answer.

“If I could make a suggestion,” he said. “Jamie wants to mend the bad reputation that Otherworlders have in our society, right? It’s a noble idea, but before he can fix the image of his kind, I feel like he has to fix his own image first.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I mean that he has to make amends for the crimes he’s committed,” my dad said, his eyes shifting away from mine. “What was that caravan guard’s name? Medric?”

My eyes narrowed.

“You’re not being very subtle, dad,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to pretend like he had no idea what I was talking about. It wasn’t a very good attempt.

“I mean that it’s obvious what you’re trying to do,” I said, shaking my head and massaging my temples to stop the growing headache. “You want me to go to Medric so I can see how he’s traumatized by the experience of dying and being brought back to life. Then, once I start helping Medric process his trauma, I’ll realize that I’m actually just as traumatized, and that I just couldn’t process the fact that I literally died and came back to life until I saw someone else going through the same thing. I get it, dad, but it won’t work like that. Watching someone else going through the same thing that I did won’t help me realize I’m traumatized, dad. There’s nothing that I need to realize. I already know.”

I glared at my dad, lifting a finger to the corner of my eye to make sure I wasn’t crying.

It came away dry.

“I’m not fine, dad,” I said, calming my voice to a neutral tone. “Yeah, I admit it, okay? Is that what you wanted?”

My dad down at his hands again, his lips pressed into a thin line. He seemed determined not to look directly at me, though I wasn’t sure if it was because he was angry or afraid.

I sighed.

“Look. I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t afford to take the time to process it. If I break, and Jamie realizes that he’s hurt me, and that would destroy him. I’m not going to betray him like that, dad. I can’t.”

My dad’s only response was to place his face in his hands and let out a shaky breath. It seemed to be a struggle for him, with every breath catching on his throat multiple times.

I wanted to comfort him, but I couldn’t. I looked away, pretending I hadn’t noticed the clear liquid seeping out from between his fingers, not for his sake, but for mine.

“I-” When his words caught on his throat once again, he took a few more shaky breaths before he felt comfortable enough to try again. “I’m proud of the woman you’ve become. I wish I didn’t have to be.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’ll need to say goodbye to your mother too.”

“I know.”

“Promise me you’ll come back home one day?”

“I promise.”

“Promise me you’ll stay safe?”

A moment passed.

“I’ll try.”

I stayed for a while. I hated hearing my dad try and fail to stay quiet, to suppress his gasps, but it was the least I could do to stay by his side for a bit longer.