Live Like Legends (LIVING LEGEND #3)

Chapter 20

T here was this awkward silence that surrounded us and I almost feared swallowing down the lump in my throat, thinking it would be too loud. My father was dressed casually as if he and Daya were planning a night to just sit on the couch and talk about each other’s days. My eyes left my father to dart around the room quickly, seeing that nothing had changed and for some odd reason that had me breathing easier.

I heard the floor creak as my father took a step towards me and I didn’t know why, but I caught myself taking a small step backwards with a small shake of my head. I knew he wanted to hug me or even just take my arms within his grasp to look at me, but I didn’t want that right now. My father stood his ground, giving me a shallow nod as if he understood.

“Mom, do you still have my…” Alex, Daya’s daughter, asked trotting down the stairs. Her words ceased when I came into view. Her whiskey-colored eyes that were identical to her mother’s grew wider as she did a small jump of excitement, darting in my direction. “Thank the realms! Oh my god!” Her arms flung around me and the momentum at which her body met mine caused me to stumble backwards.

I let out a soft chuckle, hugging her back. “I missed you too.”

“Did you come here for the latest midnight snack in history?” She nodded over to the window that showcased how bleak and dark the sky was.

“Umm…no.” My eyes drifted to my father whose face remained neutral even though I knew he was anxious to speak with me.

Alex scrunched her mouth up in thought. “Why the fuck else would you come here so late? I mean we haven’t seen you for nearly a month, so all I’m saying is…”

“Alex, honey, why don’t you and I go upstairs?” Daya grabbed her daughter’s arm, casting an apologetic look over her shoulder at me.

Alex threw her mother a confused expression. “Upstairs, for what?”

Daya let out a long sigh, dragging her daughter behind her as they crossed the room. “Because I said so.” She stopped to kiss my father on the cheek, likely saying encouraging words in his ear before walking past him.

Alex looked from my father to me and then back again, her mouth forming into an ‘o’. She tugged her arm away from Daya and wagged her finger at her. “Why didn’t you just say they were going to have a father/son moment? Stop making things so dramatic, Mom.” Daya rolled her eyes, giving me a reassuring smile before she followed her daughter out of the room and up the stairs to the second floor.

“Would you like to sit down?” I jumped a little at the sound of my father’s voice. It was steady, but there was a small sense of hesitation in his tone. It was like I was a wounded animal and he didn’t want to startle me.

He waved his hand over at the couch and I nodded. My feet felt like they weighed a ton as I took the few steps over to the piece of furniture I was all too familiar with. I watched as my father took a seat on one end and I stood there, staring at the other. It took me a moment, but with a heavy breath I sat down, leaving a large gap between us. I leaned over, placing my hands on my knees and looked at him.

His body was turned so that I had his full attention and one of his arms was propped up along the back of the couch. He had this look of patience that I always admired and had tried to emulate my whole life, but he made it look effortless.

“It’s good to see you.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting those five words to affect me so much. It wasn’t the words themselves because he’d said them to me before. He was always happy to see me. This time when he said them, there was something about them that had an air of sadness but still somewhat happy. He was happy that I was here, in his presence, but clearly the circumstances of my visit were never going to be a good thing. I cleared my throat before responding. “It’s good to see you too, Dad.”

When neither of us said anything else, I rubbed my palms over the front of my thighs. “How are Daya and Alex?”

“Good, actually. They’re good.”

I nodded, not really knowing what to say next. This felt so off and uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to navigate this broken relationship with my father. I had every instinct to just up and leave but there was something that kept me planted on this couch. I caught him staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

He readjusted his legs, bending one and crossing it over the other. “Ask me whatever you want, Nicholas.”

I ran a hand over my face, feeling some kind of pressure that no one else but myself was instigating. “I want…” My voice sounded smaller than I would have liked. “I want to go back to a time when I didn’t know any of this.” I looked down at the floor, focusing on the rug underneath the coffee table.

“You asked me for the truth and that’s what I told you. I can’t take that back.”

I blinked over to him. “You waited years to tell me the truth. I practically had to back you into a corner for you to say anything.”

He rubbed at his eyes, thinking over his words. “I knew you would never like the answer. The truth would never be something that invoked happy memories.”

“Yes, I know. You made that abundantly clear, how you didn’t want to interrupt my happy life with this kind of information,” I said, my tone harsh. I ran a hand roughly through my hair. “Dad, does Daya know?”

His eyebrows pulled inward.

“About Mom, about all of it.”

My father pressed his lips together, turning his head towards the hallway that led to the stairs. “She does.”

I clucked my tongue, scoffing. “Of course, she does.”

“Nicholas—”

“I get it okay. You needed someone to vent to who wasn’t your son. Your son , who also happens to be the person you were lying to.” I lifted my hands in frustration. “Oh, I’m sorry, I guess you were omitting things since you never seemed to give me a clear answer on anything at all. I didn’t ask the right questions since I had no idea where to start and literally all I ever fucking did was just let you keep me in the dark because I don’t know, maybe I thought it was better that way.” I had never been so harsh with Maurice Cassial before, but I was just done with tip toeing around anything.

“You’re right you never pushed with your questions. It was almost as if you inherently wanted to keep your life in order, no outliers in sight. You wanted to do things your way and so I let you…”

I shot up from the couch, looming over him. “I’m really not in the mood for excuses!”

“You were seven years old, Nicholas!” His brown eyes bore into mine when he matched my stance as he got up from the couch. “For one second please consider that I did not want to look my child in the face and tell him that his mother was…” His words cut off and he let out a low breath.

“You let me believe that she left,” I accused, my voice shaky. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair to me ! I didn’t ask questions about her or damn near anything else because something would cast over your eyes anytime she got brought up. I wanted to make you happy, Dad. I didn’t want to cause problems, because well, I thought anything having to do with her was simple. Fuck, it’s not simple!”

My father took the few steps left to get to me and braced his hands on my biceps. “You’re right, it isn’t fair. I am sorry , Nicholas. I told Daya about a year or so ago because I felt like the time for telling you had passed. I thought she would help me try to bring it up somehow, but then I kept putting it off again. This is my fault, not hers.”

I shrugged my shoulders to get his hands off me for a moment. My eyes stung from trying to hold back the tears I wanted to conceal. I looked up at the ceiling. “There was never going to be a perfect moment, Dad.” I closed my eyes tightly; I felt the tears starting to slip through. “There was never going to be a perfect moment to tell your son that his mother didn’t leave her family, she didn’t abandon us. She didn’t abandon me !”

My father took a step toward me, but I pointed my finger at him causing him to stop and I felt my cheeks getting damp from the slow-moving tears I’d tried to keep at bay. “You told me she…she died loving me, when I have spent my entire life thinking that she didn’t care about me. I know you didn’t mean to, but you had me resenting a woman who loved me. And you can tell me that story a million times, but I will…I w-will…” I stuttered on my words because they didn’t sound right in my head, but I didn’t know how else to put it.

“Tell me what you want to say, Nicholas.” My father looked defeated, but ready for whatever else I had to say to him.

I took a deep breath, wiping my tears away with my fingertips. “I will never know what being loved by her even meant, what it felt like. You are the only person who knows what that’s like. Even fucking Jonah knew what it was like to be around her and love her in his own way. And I get that she asked you to take away my memories and give me a happy life, but fuck , it hurts knowing that everyone had a say in something about my life. You, Mom, Moira, everyone but fucking me!”

I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes. “You get all these memories whether they are good or bad, while I have nothing , Dad! All I have is this power that I have no fucking idea how to handle. It served its purpose when I needed it, so do I just say thank you so much mom for providing me with the power to resurrect my dead girlfriend, but now it will have to go dormant in my mind again. Is this the only thing I’ll have from Mom? A power that I’ll have to keep hidden from angels like Ariel because for some reason she thought I was the most viable option for an outlawed magic skill.

“I went from resenting someone I don’t remember ever knowing to resenting you and I don’t know how to deal with that Dad. Fuck, fuck , I am so angry at you.” I wanted my voice to be louder, but I heard it soften. My body vibrated with anger and hurt, but my voice sounded like it was the opposite. “And what’s worse is that I’m angry at her. I’m angry at a dead woman for making you promise to lie to me. I am angry that you went along with it. I’m a-angry that J-Jonah knew about things and hid it from me. I-I’m a-angry that y-you let me r-resent her f-for fucking years .”

He licked his lips, taking a step closer to me, tentatively reaching out to touch me again. When I didn’t flinch away, he reached up and placed his palm on my cheek, letting his thumb remove some of the tears. A rush of déjà vu hit me, remembering his tender touch whenever I would come to him crying when I was younger, hiccuping from my incessant crying. Back then my problems were so small and trivial, yet he always spoke to me like they mattered. “You have deserved to know for a very, very long time. Your mother and I, we had this entire plan for how we wanted you to grow up and the kind of person we wanted you to be. I could see tiny pieces of what we envisioned as you got older and I was…I was selfish.” His voice started to crack. “I wanted to keep you in this bubble where the only bad things that happened were just normal everyday problems, things you knew how to fight against. That’s on me; that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my existence.”

He cupped my face in both his hands, a small twinkle in his eye appearing. “That power she gave you is something big and overwhelming to have, but no Nicholas, that is not the only thing you have of hers. You have her nose, her smile, you both have this laugh that always told me when something was truly funny and,” he placed his hand at my chest, “you have her heart. Despite your feelings towards her, please know that you loved her with every fiber of your being. Every time I tried to tell you I only ever saw her looking back at me and breaking a promise to her was not something I wanted to do, whether she was alive or not.”

I placed my hand over his, whispering, “I deserved to know.”

He nodded solemnly. “You did.”

“You told me I died, Dad. Mom saved me and you think that’s something I wouldn’t want to know. Moira took my memories. All of these people that were involved in my past and I can’t ever ask them anything. I won’t get to know any of them.” I was talking more to myself than to him.

My father lowered himself onto the couch, putting his head in his hands. “I should have thought about the repercussions of the choices we were making, but Nicholas, I didn’t know what to do. And I know, I know this sounds like an excuse, but I promise it isn’t. I’m just trying to get you to understand that I wasn’t a forty-year-old man with time to think clearly.” He lifted his face to look at me and that’s when I noticed that while my father looked like he always did—a mirrored version of myself—there were tells that he hadn’t been sleeping, his eyes lacked their normal Maurice Cassial shine. Dani had mentioned once before that she could feel like something was missing when it came to me, when it came to my heart, since that day in the infirmary and maybe the same went for my father. There was a piece of him that was missing that was always meant for me and I’d removed myself from that spot for the time being.

He rubbed the back of his neck, giving me a hard look as if this was something he wanted me to understand. I remained standing, not quite ready to sit down. “I was not that much older than you with a son I had nearly lost and a wife I was about to have taken away from me. I didn’t mind the power transfer part, but I want you to know that I wasn’t fully supportive of Moira taking your memories. Your mother looked me in my eyes and begged me to do it before they took her away, there was no discussion, no pros and cons. The choices were I forget what she said and listen to you cry another night until you threw up over those sentries taking her away or I take you to Moira like she asked.

“And son, until you have children of your own, you will never understand what it’s like to have your child screaming and pleading for someone who is never coming back. I did what I thought was best for you. Not for me . For you . I know you don’t see it that way, but at the start of everything it was just me and you. You had no more bad dreams, no more crying until your throat was sore. Moira had offered to take some memories from me too, but I knew one day I would tell you everything so I kept them. I wanted to handle all the baggage for you, so you could go on and be the person standing in front of me. I pushed through the tears and my own nightmares so that everything your mother wanted for you could be achieved. You deserved the truth and answers Nicholas. You deserved to know what an incredible person your mother was and I have a million stories I could tell you if you’d like, but if your trust is something that is no longer on the table any longer then I will leave you be but know I’m always here. I’ll always be your father, even if you hate me.”

Elise’s words came back to me, but I realized something about them was off.

Your mother made the decision she did. He was honoring what she wanted because he LOVED her Nick. Take pride that you came from a fucking man who honors his word even at the expense of his son’s trust.

He did love my mother but despite doing what she asked because of his love for her, Maurice Cassial did what he did because he loved… me . We both had fractured hearts from the same series of events but in different ways. I felt my eyes start to fill with tears again, but these weren’t the kind of tears that came from rage and hurt, these were from the overwhelming realization that I could understand where my father was coming from, but also be angry at the situation. There wasn’t a wrong or right way to feel about it.

I moved some of the items on the coffee table to the side, sitting down on the wooden surface. I pressed my lips together as I watched him wipe his hand over his eyes. “Are you leaving anything out?”

My father tilted his head to the side, running the back of his hand under his nose.

“Anything about the past, my mother, Jonah, anybody or anything?”

He ran a finger across his mustache. “I don’t know all that much about the man your mother was with before, the one who transferred his powers to her. Saving your life was the one and only time Scarlett had ever used those powers and we didn’t really discuss it further than that.”

I hummed, leaning back a bit. “What about…” I stopped myself before I could finish.

My father leaned in, placing a hand on my knee. The amount of comfort I felt from that one touch was profound. “No, what is it? From this point forward, I’m an open book. No more secrets.”

I gave him a small smile, but then it faded. “What about what happened to her?”

“Your mother? You mean how she died?”

I nodded, slowly. Did I really want to know all of this? Something in my gut told me I did, but then again, maybe some things really were better just left unsaid.

My father swallowed and shook his head, more to himself then at me as if the thought was too much for him. “I don’t know exactly what happened. No one ever really knew what happened to angels who disobeyed Jonah’s father or what he did with them afterwards. Only the guards at the Ethereal Bastille could hear screams and there was always apparently massive amounts of clean up. Jonah is the one who made those rooms soundproof after a while.” He bit his bottom lip, taking a deep breath. “The only thing I do know is that Isaac Zuriel apparently had a thing for angelic wings. I’d been told that he would have them ripped out, the open wounds burned closed so that healing would be obstructed.” He tilted his head down, squeezing my knee. “I wasn’t allowed anywhere near The Skies, but I tried. I had so many broken bones and bruises from trying to fight my way in. Jonah had no real pull when it came to his father, especially when it came to me. He tried to talk to him but it was too late.”

I held down the bile that wanted to erupt from my throat thinking about that. I felt a phantom pain in my back from the very thought of having my own wings ripped out. I collected myself, removing the imagery from my mind. “And the person who outed Mom…did they ever tell the truth?”

My father opened and closed his mouth, mulling over his next words. “In a way.”

I raised an eyebrow, not really interested in any more evasiveness.

“Do you really want to know this?” He furrowed his dark eyebrows, but a look of concern fell over his eyes.

I ignored his question. “Did Jonah have something to do with it?”

My father looked off to the side, like he was remembering something. He blinked away from the distant memory and looked back over at me. “No, but from the way I’ve talked about him and the strain you’ve witnessed on our relationship, I can see how you would think that.”

I wanted to just be upfront and ask who it was, because the need to know was gnawing at me. Of course it was. I was realizing that some things were so far in the past that staying there might be best. If I had the information what would I do with it? I was quite the expert at spiraling and I was trying to work on that. “I guess I just want to know if this person was brought to justice?”

My fathers hand moved to my shoulder and something about the way he looked at me told me that he knew I would respond like that. “Yes, Nicholas. Maybe not in the most violent form, which is what I would have liked, but justice nonetheless.”

My chest felt heavy, as I took a deep breath out. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until the weight of it started to dissipate. I opened my mouth to say something else, but then a sharp ringing erupted in my ears. I shoved my palms against them, closing my eyes and clamping my teeth together. There was a whooshing sound and then the ringing again, they interchanged as if one wasn’t enough.

“Nicholas!” I heard my father say, but it sounded so far away. He started to reach out to grab my hands, but once his skin touched mine it felt like my flesh was on fire. I hissed, leaping off the coffee table and backing away from him.

“Nicholas, what’s going on!” He yelled, reaching for me again.

“No, stop! Stop!” I screamed, backing up against the wall near the fireplace. I rapidly opened and closed my eyes, seeing images behind my closed lids. The pictures changed each time, starting out distorted and fuzzy but eventually clearing up. The colors and imagery were more vibrant and distinct. The high-pitched sound rang in my ears again.

I saw a flash of Dimitri’s face and his hand so tightly wound around Dani’s neck. She was up against a wall, the look on her face told me she was holding in her own screams. The image painted itself red with blood and body, after body, littered my vision. I didn’t recognize who I was seeing, but there was a pull in my chest that made me think it was my fault and I couldn’t make myself think otherwise.

Every single piece of darkness I tried to keep at bay, all the time I’d spent working on myself felt useless as I tried to push the overwhelming feeling of dread away from me. My chest felt tight from my increased breathing pattern. My skin felt hot as if it were a million degrees in my house.

There were hands surrounding the sides of my face and they stung when they hit my skin. The haunting images repeated over and over again, but my father’s face became more vivid and his voice echoed out, almost past the insane ringing I was forced to hear.

“Nicholas! Please look at me!” My father shouted.

I was being crowded now by Daya and Alex, but my father pushed them back, telling them to give me some room. My father pulled one of my hands away from my ear and placed it on my chest. He didn’t let go when he said with pure conviction and honesty. “Look at me, Nicholas. Whatever this is, fight it.”

I tried to think of all the good things I had, all the good things I would have. I thought about how I was still a good person despite everything. I thought about how much better I felt that I could have my father back in my life, as different as it would be now.

I thought about the darkness that threatened to ruin me, but in reality, I accepted it for what it was and lived with it, rather than hide from it. Rather than fear it.

I thought about how I loved a girl who made me want to explore the darkness just to know that there was light on the other side.

The ringing simmered until it was gone. The temperature around me cooled to an acceptable degree. My vision was slightly blurred from the tears I didn’t know I’d let fall and I looked down, noticing that my father’s hand was holding onto mine for dear life. I caught my breath, leaning my head back against the wall. My eyes caught the look of concern on Daya and Alex’s faces. They remained a few feet away from me, likely not wanting to do anything to startle me or set me off.

“Hey, Nicholas. Hey, look at me.” My father patted my chest and I glanced over at him. I was breathing heavily and words were hard for me to get out at the moment. “What was that, hmm?”

I licked my lips, pulling my hand away from my head. Tiny specks of blood came back on my palm. I swallowed a few times before I spoke. “Dimitri.”

“The Son of Hell?” Alex chimed in, getting a stern look from her mother. I nodded over at her.

“What about him?” My father asked, running his knuckle along my ear to remove some of the blood.

“He has her, Dad.”

His eyes widened at my words. “He took Dani? When?”

“Earlier tonight. She’s not okay. I have to get to her. I can’t let Purgatory or Hell get to me like it did before.”

My father grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. “Like it did before? I know you’ve had your dealings with this Dimitri fellow before, but what was this, Nicholas?”

I removed his hand from my chest and slowly walked over to the couch, collapsing on the cushions that were never truly comfortable to begin with, yet right now they felt like the best piece of furniture in the realms. “I didn’t have the easiest time in Purgatory.”

I flinched at the look my father gave me as if anything that hurt me, hurt him. “I’m not okay, Dad, but I’m working on it, I promise. I wasn’t okay when I went there and it just got worse as time went on. Dimitri is very aware of that.” I flashed him my arm and his eyes went straight to the faint scars there. The three lines left by Dimitri’s extremely sharp demonic fingernails.

“I thought you’d just had a fight with him. I thought it was a battle scar and that was it. I didn’t know you…I should have known that you…” Maurice Cassial looked truly the most defeated I’d ever seen him. It was his turn to sit on the coffee table, folding his hands together and placing them in front of him. Daya sat on the arm of the couch, while Alex leaned her body over the back.

“It is in the past, Dad.” I explained to him about my time in Purgatory, not skipping the rough parts that I knew he hated hearing. I told him how I finally opened myself up to the help that was around me, despite my incessant harping that I was fine. “I haven’t blamed myself for Jonah or anyone else in a good while, so progress, I guess. Dimitri is holding onto the little piece of darkness that’s still left, but I’m working on it.” I eyed my father, curiously. “How did you handle that so well?”

My father huffed out a small, short laugh, which was odd given the situation. “Nicholas, your mother used to have panic attacks as well. They weren’t as hostile especially given your situation, but they could be pretty bad. She learned to manage them and also accept that they were something she had to work to get through when they happened,” He ran his knuckles over my cheek. “Just like you.”

I had the strongest instinct to hug him then and that’s just what I did. I’d hugged my father so many times before, but this time felt different. I didn’t have to like what he did to ultimately accept the past. I could wish for a different outcome but not let it fester away at me. He had lost someone the same as me and beyond whatever time had passed, that kind of pain still hurt. He needed me just as much as I needed him; I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted to hug my own father until right now.

When we let go he whispered I love you to me, which I whispered back, seeing a tiny glaze form over his eyes as he held back tears. Fuck I missed him.

“Are you going to be okay to even rescue her?” Alex inquired, taking in my mildly sweaty appearance and sudden breakdown that happened only minutes ago.

I let out a slight chuckle, shocking myself with the happy sound of it as I sat back down. “Yeah. I needed this.” I snuck a look over at my dad, the twinkle that was missing from his eyes was back—where it belonged. “Now I just need to find her. I know where she is, just not where she is, if that makes any sense at all.”

“You’ll find her son.”

“Always the optimist.”

“When it comes to you, always,” Daya added, her nose ring twinkling in the little lights around the living room.

My father tapped on my chest with his index finger. “Optimism, yes. It’s also because you love her.”

“ Fucking finally .” I heard Alex muttered, tugging at a blue strand of her newly dyed hair, getting a slap on the shoulder by her mother.

I sighed, knowing my heart was a lost cause. “I do.”

My father clasped both my hands in his. He looked as if he was in awe of me. “Somewhere between all the pain, blood and sacrifice, you fell in love.”

Daya got up from the couch, leaning down to kiss me on my temple before doing the same for my father. “We’ll be right here when you bring her home.”

Home. That’s exactly where I was and it’s exactly where I wanted her to be.

“I know what that kind of love feels like. This love you have for her, the love that makes you fight without a single thought, the love that makes you worried and nervous, the love that lets you know that she is worth everything you’ve put yourself through— that is how you know you’ll find her. That’s how you know you’ll win.”