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Sometimes it was easy to forget that children only knew as much of the world as you allowed them. Sometimes it was easy to forget that they were always still so uninformed of the cruelties that the world had to offer. Sometimes it was easy to forget that even adults will never know everything no matter how old they got. Sometimes ignorance was indeed bliss.
“Daddy, why do you have so many stripes?”
That was one of the few things Kieran White had little to no idea how to answer.
He put the book he had held in one hand down on the corner table beside him, and rolled down the sleeves of his top thus hiding the aforementioned stripes on his skin, before peering down at his daughter. Her little legs dangled a few inches above the floor as she perched onto his lap, his own blue eyes staring back at him with so much innocence and wonder—an innocence and wonder that he had forgotten could exist in the world they lived in until she had come into the world to remind him that such good still prevailed.
Kieran pursed his lips in thought at her question, lower lip poking out, as he hummed exaggeratedly. Hm. Hummm. Hm. Hm. Hum. Little Sophia giggled at the sound.
“You’re so silly,” she tittered, poking at his cheek with her tiny forefinger.
Kieran chuckled. “What if I said it’s because I’m actually a tiger in disguise?” He playfully lunged at her stomach with wiggling fingers. Sophia’s high-pitched screeches of laughter echoed in the air at the onslaught of tiny tickles and pokes, doing her best to shield her tummy and sides with the flails of her arms.
“No you’re not,” she squealed in between giggles. “Tigers are orange!”
“And that’s why you have red hair. Because you’re part tiger just like Daddy.”
Sophia blinked up at him, face contorting in deep thought, a crease appearing between her brows. Goodness, Kieran thought, she really is her mother’s child.
“Is that why Mommy has stripes, too?” Sophia asked. “She has them here.” She poked at the small lump of baby fat protruding just a smidge from underneath her pajama top.
Kieran could already see with visual clarity his wife’s furrowed brows, her voice roaring incredulously, You told her she’s a what?
He laughed softly in response to his daughter’s inquiry. “No, Mommy has stripes because of when she had you”—he gently tapped her button nose with the pad of his finger—“in her belly. Speaking of which.” He picked Sophia up from her place on his lap, and sat her against his forearm before getting up from his seat on the couch. “Mommy won’t be happy to see you still awake when she comes home, so it’s bedtime for you now, young lady.”
“But…” Sophia yawned. “I’m not sleepy yet.”
“Uh-huh. And now Mommy will be even more unhappy that you’re learning to lie,” her father replied, carrying her down the hall towards the open door of her bedroom.
Sophia pouted at that, looking down towards the floor, her arms crossed indignantly. “But you lied to me, too,” she mumbled, the words spoken so softly that they almost didn’t reach Kieran’s ears. Sophia looked up at his face through her long lashes, her eyes wide and bright and pleading. It was moments like these that Kieran was grateful his child didn’t inherit her mother’s aureate eyes, knowing he’d never be able to deny Sophia anything with Lauren’s eyes gazing up at him.
He sighed. “Okay, so maybe we aren’t tigers, but”—he sat her on her bed, lifting the blanket to help her crawl and settle within its warmth “—that’ll be a story for another time.” He sat at the edge of the mattress, leaning over to give her a chaste peck to her forehead.
“Let me guess,” Sophia started to say before another yawn escaped through her lips. “You’ll tell me when I’m older.”
Kieran could practically hear the roll of her eyes in her voice without needing to see her face. He wondered vaguely if there would even be a part of him she’d inherit, or if she would prove Kym right and end up just like her mother (not that he’d complain though).
He pulled back and attempted to give Sophia a small smile, the look not quite reaching his eyes.
I don’t ever want to keep secrets from her, Lauren had said when Sophia had been born, their bundle of joy so small and red. I never want her to grow up like I had.
Kieran had understood without needing further explanation, had agreed when she refused to ever keep any information about their past to their children, but he was sure neither of them had expected it to be as difficult as it was to be so open about all they’d been through.
“They’re just scars, Sophie. You have one, too, remember? When you fell off your bike?” he tapped at her knee where the forenamed blemish would be present, small and barely visible, already fading now on her skin.
“But why do you have so many?”
Kieran considered carefully how to respond. How he was expected to prevent keeping secrets from her while maintaining her innocence and purity, he still had yet to learn how to manage that. “Well, there were these bad people—” he tried to say.
“The Phantom Scythe?” Sophia cut in. Kieran winced at the name coming out so casually from his daughter’s mouth like she was stating something as simple as water is wet, and not a terrorist organization that had ruined so many lives including his, but he nodded nonetheless.
“Exactly. And, well, let’s just say that they put your Mommy and me through a lot...” his voice trailed off, unsure of how to continue explaining something so dark and harrowing to a seven year-old.
Sophia’s eyes trailed downwards to where her hands sat over the fluff of her blanket, fingers fidgeting with one another. There was a sense of what he could only identify either as guilt or regret on her face, as though she was realizing the boundaries she may have overstepped. “Okay,” she said with a surprising amount of finality.
“Okay,” Kieran echoed quietly, a tension he hadn’t realized he’d had in his shoulders easing at the one word. He squeezed her hand, murmuring a good night and an I love you to which she reciprocated as simply, before he stood up and shut off her lights, closing her bedroom door behind him.
Walking back into the living room, he mindlessly picked up discarded toys and books around the room, placing them in their proper boxes or shelves, his thoughts elsewhere in another room in another time with another red-haired love.
I know our partnership is a match made in Hell, but I’m glad that it was you.
Years ago, Kieran could have explained with excruciating detail and ease the list of regrets he’d possessed, all the things he would wish he’d done differently, and the changes he would make to his life if only given the chance to do so. He’d explain how in this alternate world, he’d never have been involved with the Scythe, and more-so would have never become the notorious monster he’d always feared he would become. He’d never be bound and chained—both literally and figuratively—to a life and job he had no power to escape, instead being free to live as he desired.
But now… The details and list would be shorter, the ink of this would-be page only barely scraping the margins rather than overflowing with a waterfall of black words and lettering. He still had his regrets—he wasn’t a fool. He knew he would be perpetually haunted by the blood on his hands, unable to wash them off no matter how much he tried—but life or fate or even some higher being that he never believed in seemingly had a remarkable—if not maybe slightly perturbing—way of placing you where you needed to be instead of where you wanted to be. At least, that’s what Kieran had come to realize. Because had it not been for everything he’d lived through, had it not been for that one fateful encounter he knew he’d never had been in if had he not been assigned to eradicate two individuals on Whiteriver Street all those years ago, had it not been for a certain then-police officer chasing him down and incapacitating him, he would never be where he was now—happy.
Kieran White had his regrets, but perhaps even those held some silver linings he would never exchange for anything else in the world.