Chimera Fields your hands can heal, your hands can bruise

He had expected white-hot rage, because that's what had come from Blueberry, but Vesper wasn't like that. Laying there waiting for her to say something to him, to berate him, to let him know in every intricate tiny way that he had fucked up as her parent, and — at the same time, knowing his daughter.

She isn't your daughter. The voice in the back of his mind corrected, but still Mou held on to that word.

Daughter.

Vesper wasn't going to rage at him in some open way. She wasn't anything like him. The boy who raged at everything all the time. Who ran his mouth at the slightest inconvenience, or held fast to hurts. She would let her feelings simmer until she could understand them, accept the taste of them.

And when she spoke it was a hush; an acceptance, a defeat. Mou did not know how to take that singular word, okay.

This wasn't okay. It wasn't okay that he had abandoned her to the Redhawks, or that Maegi had been overtaken by something sinister. It was all his fault, and it wasn't okay.

But he couldn't speak. His tongue felt weighted and for the first time in a while, the noose of scar tissue around his throat felt tight. The rest of Mou was numb save for his chest, which was heavy with the burden of his failure — and there he sat, waiting for the snow to swallow him up while Vesper left.