Chapter 251: Chapter 253: Recovering
"I think you manage things reflexively," she said. "And I’m telling you in advance that I’ll notice and I’ll say something and I’d rather we establish it now than have the conversation after."
Something shifted in Alexander’s face. Not offense. Something more honest than offense.
"Your mother says the same thing," he said quietly.
"She’s known you longer."
"Yes." He looked at his hands briefly. "She has."
Morrison came at ten. The assessment was thorough and Aria submitted to it with the patience she’d been practicing, answering questions honestly instead of optimistically, which was a habit Dr. Reeves had specifically asked her to work on.
Afterward, Morrison pulled Damien into the corridor for a separate conversation...protocol, he said, glancing at Alexander in a way that suggested it was not entirely protocol....and Alexander and Aria were left alone for the first time in several days.
The silence between them was different from the silence between her and Damien. Less settled. Still finding its shape.
"Can I ask you something?" Aria said.
"Yes."
"When you were looking for me...the twenty five years....what did you think it would be like? When you found me?"
Alexander was quiet for a moment. He looked at the window. "I had a very specific image," he said finally. "In my head. For years. A version of you that I’d constructed from...from nothing, really. From the two months I knew you existed. From what I knew of Mei at that age."
"What did she look like? The version in your head?"
"Like Mei," he said. "With my eyes." A pause. "Quieter than you. Less....less formed, somehow. Someone I could.... " He stopped.
"Someone you could shape," Aria finished.
He looked at her. Not denying it. "Yes," he said. "I think that’s honest."
"And instead you got me."
"Instead I got you." And the way he said it.....the fullness of it, the complicated wonder underneath....made her chest tighten unexpectedly. "Someone who was entirely herself before I arrived. Who didn’t need anything from me. Who was...." He searched for the word. "Complete. Already complete."
Aria looked at him for a long moment.
"I do need things from you," she said. "I just don’t need you to fix me."
He absorbed that. "What do you need?"
"I’m still figuring that out," she said honestly. "I’ve never lack the love of a father because my father, the man i grew up to know as my father loved me and showed me with love. But you are my biological father, I don’t entirely know what the role looks like." She held his gaze. "But I know it’s not Singapore. And it’s not lawyers. And it’s not another therapist."
"What is it?"
She thought about it properly. About what she’d actually wanted, in the quiet honest part of herself, since the first day Mei had told her who Alexander Wei was.
"Just.....show up," she said. "Regularly. Without an agenda. Let me get used to you."
Something moved across his face. Clean and simple and entirely unguarded.
"I can do that," he said.
Damien came back in twenty minutes later. He looked at the two of them....Aria in the bed, Alexander in the chair, a different quality of quiet between them than there’d ever been before....and said nothing. Just settled on the edge of the bed and handed Aria a second cup of tea because hers had gone completely cold.
She took it. Bumped her shoulder against his arm briefly in the way she did when she wanted to say something without saying it.
He bumped back. Small. Private.
Alexander watched this exchange with an expression that had stopped trying to be neutral.
"Morrison says discharge is confirmed," Damien said. "Day after tomorrow. Seven AM."
"Good," Aria said.
"He also says you’re supposed to sleep tonight. Actual sleep. He’s recommending a mild sedative if the nightmares continue."
"I know. He told me." She looked at her tea. "I told him I’d think about it."
"Aria...."
"I said I’d think about it." She looked up at him. "I will actually think about it. That’s not a deflection."
He studied her face. "Okay."
"I’m getting better at asking for help," she said. "I’m not fully there yet. But I’m getting better."
"I know you are."
"So give me the space to do it at my own pace." She said it gently but clearly. "Both of you. That’s all I’m asking."
The room was quiet.
Then Alexander stood, picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
"I’ll come back this evening," he said. "With dinner. From the Thai place your mother mentioned."
"She’ll love that," Aria said.
He nodded. Looked at Damien briefly....something passing between them that wasn’t warmth exactly but was something more functional than hostility. Then he left.
The room felt different with just the two of them in it. Easier. More oxygen.
Damien lay down beside her carefully, the narrow hospital bed barely accommodating both of them, and she turned into his chest and let him wrap around her and felt the nightmare from 3 AM finally, fully, release its grip.
"I’m not going to be okay overnight," she said into his shirt.
"I know."
"It’s going to take time. Real time. And it’s going to be messy and nonlinear and there are going to be bad days."
"I know that too."
"And I need you to not look at me like I’m broken when it happens."
He pulled back just enough to look at her face. "You are the least broken person I have ever met," he said. "That is never what I see when I look at you."
She held his gaze. "What do you see?"
"Someone who has been through things that would have destroyed most people," he said simply. "And is still here. Still herself. Still making everyone around her better than they were before she arrived." He brushed her hair back from her face. "That’s what I see. Every time."
She didn’t answer. Just pressed her face back against his chest and closed her eyes.
Outside, the hospital went about its ordinary business.
Inside, Aria let herself be held, and didn’t manage it, and didn’t deflect it, and didn’t perform being okay.
Just let it be what it was.
For now, that was enough.
