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There are moments when the earth shakes, but no one else can feel it. They can only see the rumble on your face. There are moments when time comes to a horrific halt, like a train seeing the tracks taper off into ruins. Vi stood on the dirty stone pathway. Vi breathed the polluted, dense air around her. Vi stared at the metal face of her father.
Vi is familiar with chokeholds; the sensation of a fist cutting off breathing. The feeling of a hand on her throat. The feeling of a throat in her hand. Vi’s never liked dreaming, but she’s had a recurring dream for years now. It stokes the fire within her and leaves the despair unturned. She grabs Silco by the neck and says, “How does it feel, motherfucker?”
She stands unmoored now, and feels love and grief curl around her neck like a fist. Unable to find it within herself to put up that fight again.
She stares up at him instead. She traces his face with her eyes. The slope of his nose, his slicked hair, his broad shoulders, the square fingers deft around a pipe. Oh, she hated that pipe. The smell was lingering and suffocating. He always smelled like it; his clothes and breath were always smoky. Vander was one for rough, affectionate touches and gruff words. She remembers, though, the midnights spent puking her guts out after nightmares of open, empty eyes. She remembers the way he would pull her hair back, keeping it out of her face. She remembers the cold cups he would hand her, asking her in soft tones to drink a bit. She remembers his rough calloused hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing, before she set back off to her bunk. Falling asleep to the comforting, suffocating scent of pipe smoke.
Circling the statue, she laughed. Vander was already so damn tall, but the sculptor decided to size him up in width and height, making him larger than life. As if that was possible. She wonders if she ever could’ve looked him in the eye without craning her neck upwards. Probably not. Her small huff of amusement breaking the quiet of the early morning. But she thinks of the way Benzo seemed to only ever get smaller, and maybe that would’ve been Vander too. If he would have grown older, maybe one day she would’ve been able to look him straight in the eyes. Maybe if she had gotten to be younger she would’ve been able to tell him she loved him.
Vi only cries on burning bridges and under collapsed buildings. When people look up to you, you don’t get to be selfish. When you’re the leader, you don’t get to be weak. Vi is alone on an empty street standing in the first clothes she could find on the floor of her girlfriend's room, and the statue of Vander towers over her. Vi only cries on burning bridges, under collapsed buildings, and when she sits in bruising memories.
Vi hadn’t ever called Vander dad. Maybe she should have, because looking at the statue made in his image, she realizes she doesn’t remember what her actual father looked like. Anytime she tries to draw up memories of a father, she sees Vander.
When she was eleven or so, she was sitting at the bar. It was early in the morning, which meant it was empty. She sat there with her head resting against the worn wood and her arms around her head. She listened to Mylo and Claggor argue and the sounds of Vander washing dishes. Vi was exhausted. There’s only so many times you can wake up from the same nightmare in a night, before you decide to stop waking everyone else up with your screams. She slipped into sleep like a fire in oil. She woke up dazed in her bed with a blanket draped loosely around her. She drifted right back into sleep to the sound of heavy footsteps going up the stairs.
Vi stands on the stone of the fountain, feet dropping into the water slowly. She climbed up to the platform and stared up at him, neck all the way back to see the underside of his jaw. She knew she wouldn’t be able to reach his forehead, to knock hers against the rough metal of his. She settled for resting her head against his lower stomach.
She couldn’t ever really hug him. The only way it ever truly worked was him picking her up and her holding on around his neck, legs dangling like a little kid. She lets out a self deprecating laugh with her head against a metal man with the face of her father. The statue stands there unmoving and unresponsive with a daughter in limbo of fifteen and twenty two in tears against an unyielding stomach.
They called him the Hound of the Underground. They called her the Daughter of the Hound. She wonders what they call her now. She wonders what they called her when they thought she was dead. She wonders if she stayed the Daughter of the Hound. Isn’t she still Vander’s daughter? Even if she never called him dad? Even though he never called her daughter? Wasn’t it enough that he cut her hair when she asked? Wasn’t it enough that she rolled her eyes as he lectured her? Wasn’t it enough that he would call at her to stop roughhousing with Mylo? Wasn’t all of that enough? Even if they don’t call her the Daughter of the Hound anymore, isn’t that still her? Isn’t she still Pink and Prisoner 516? Is there any name that can be truly buried? It didn’t matter what name they called her in the Undercity. Vander was always a part of the moniker. One of Vander’s, Vander’s oldest, Vander’s kid.
She remembers talking to Benzo in the Last Drop a couple months before everything happened. Benzo burst out laughing at something she said, laughing harder watching her bristle up. He looked at her for a long moment before saying, “You sound just like your old man.”
She wonders now if when she talks in seedy bars they hear Vander’s words out of a twenty-something brawler. If guys look at her and think, easy target. She wonders if her grief is broadcasted on her face. She wonders if Tobias latched onto her seeing the little girl crying for her dad torn up by rubble. She wonders if she latched onto Tobias because he brought her an ice pack for her jaw.
She looks up at Vander and feels her body ache.
She wants a bar fight. She wants a chokehold. She wants to stoke that fire until it pops and screeches. She wants enough rage to power through the night. She wants her shoulder to stop hurting all of the damn time. She wants her hands to stop going numb. She wants enough alcohol to drive her into a ditch.
She steps down off the platform and into the water of the fountain. She pulls herself out like she’s got a ball and chain of rock instead of grief. She’s off to rediscover her old alleyways and see if they’re just like the Last Drop now.
She wants to see one of those regulars from before to look at her and say, “Your old man is looking for you.”
She wants Vander to pick her up and take the breath out of her with a hug. She wants him to mutter in her ear, “That’s my girl.”
She passes a man. He whistles. She turns around and readies her fist. She can’t feel her fingers. She’s never seen him before. It doesn’t matter.