Work Text:
Love isn't a choice
Isn't a way you decide
It deafens and blinds and
Pulls you into the void
And it ain't enough by design
I learnt this with time that
Love isn't a choice, but leaving is
- matt maltese, but leaving is
Simon didn't know where he was supposed to go from here. He supposed he could go home but he wasn't sure he had that anymore, wasn't quite sure where that was really. He thought he could go anywhere he wanted; no one was stopping him. He was probably presumed dead, anyway. No one would notice, he convinced himself, as his feet moved forward pushed by inertia. Home was with Betty, he mused, turning the block towards the 20th-century museum, dreaded thing. Home wasn't a thing for him, it was a privilege those like him weren't allowed.
He wondered if the freezer was still an option.
Reaching the old-looking house on the public street he wondered if that would just be another way to make a spectacle of himself. Really, he ended up settling on buying a tub of ice cream and maybe a bottle of alcohol, the cheapest in the store. He thought of locking the house and not letting anyone in, and crying. He thought of sobbing and wailing, in complete hysteria all alone like he'd always been before becoming a circus monkey again in the morning. Going back to his own life would be quiet and seamless, he reasoned. Circus monkeys were fed and Simon didn't have much more going on, anyway.
There was no home to return to but there was a life to, Betty had given him all that she could and he would not waste it. But first, he'd give himself a night, one night before returning to his life; quiet and subdued and maybe a bit lonely but a life nonetheless.
I was opening his house again snapping him out of the hazy daze, white fog covering his eyes. It felt like he could breathe again, if only for a minute. For a few seconds, he was real again; a person, not a monkey, not a one-man show. The sight before him was an eyesore at best. He wondered if he should be upset. Looking around, his apartment was clearly trashed, being tampered by someone unknown who he knows inevitably didn't find anything of value.
Just as he was about to lie down, close his eyes and deal with the problem tomorrow (“20th-century man deals with robbery!”), he hears rustling from the other room and with a cold chill realizes whoever robbed him could still be there, it was strange to still be scared of something so mundane after everything. How one can still fear death even after it has been sought out/actively seeking it. Even after actively looking God and Death in the eyes, he still finds it in him to tremble at a mere robber.
But before he took a step forward, the intruder was quicker, and the weight of a body was hurled against him, making his back crash against the nearest wall, ending in them tumbling onto the floor again. Simon braced himself for the impact, some kind of attack that never came. Instead, met with a demon's face, he screamed.
“Marcy!”
"Simon." She hissed, demon-face fully out in a way that would be scary if he wasn't talking to his baby girl.
When she didn’t say anything else, he settled on hugging her, slow and unsure of how he was supposed to proceed. "I missed you..." He tried tentatively.
"No," she yelled, not letting go but kicking his leg like a small child (he dreads to think he made her feel like that scared little girl again, all alone in the wastelands). "Don't give me that bullshit, Petrikov.”
Oh.
He felt his eyes tearing up again, as it really hit him that this was his little girl he almost left behind. He left her; this was her little girl and he had left her. Again. She'd only ever called him Petrikov one other time: when she was very tiny and very frail and stomped her feet to seem bigger, throwing big words "Petrikov" and "I hate you!" even if she didn’t quite know what they meant. She stopped when she saw it made him cry.
Marceline had always been kinder than him, softer, sweeter, and nicer: she always stopped when something upset him, always apologized with her big, round eyes glistening. She never made him cry. Yet Simon had made her cry more times than he’d made her laugh.
Suddenly, her weight on top of him was crushing, as his lungs closed, violently caving in on themselves.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She just cried harder, starting to shake, as he ran his hands through her hair, wondering if it was a good idea to offer to do it for her. His heart ached at the thought. “Oh, baby, I'm so sorry."
The girl just sobbed and trembled harder and one could almost forget she was a millennia old vampire slayer. In that instant, in Simon's arms, she was a little girl again.
"You left again." Even in her accusatory anger, she still held onto him gently, like she was afraid to poke the wrong wound, like she was searching for where it hurt. She held him like something precious even when he'd dropped her. He wondered if the shards left from the fall were what was piercing through his heart. He sniffled, burying himself in her hair and wondering how one brings up the topic of doing their daughter's hair after leaving.
"No, come on, Simon, don't cry." She looked like she was about to cry harder, all big eyes and bigger frown, like a child pleading with her father.
He was ashamed of how long it took him to realize that that's what they were: a child and a father, pleading for each other's forgiveness. I'm sorry I'm not the man you wanted me to be is met with I'm sorry not big enough to remember.
But Simon was tired of apologies and he was tired of being ripped away, pulled away from her. He didn't want Marceline to apologize for anything. Most certainly not for the crime of being a child. She was perfect. He was convinced he was made to be her father the moment he saw her. He was made to take care of her; he just wished God had done a gentler job in the crafting.
(He wish he could've stayed, wish he — they — didn't fall victim to it all.
Victim of circumstance and victim of how he was created. Victim of the life he led and the world he was born in.
Always a victim, never a father.
He wanted to be a father.)
Marcy, however, was much more forgiving and loved him with the blind adoration that only forgiveness could bring. Sometimes he wished he hadn't been forgiven. "Hey, it's okay, baby. I just missed you is all. I shouldn't have left."
She looks at him with wide, hurt eyes, and Simon is unsure how to proceed. He just runs his hands through her hair and comments on it getting long. "You should twist it."
She sniffled, looking away, but refusing to let go of her dad. "I don't know how."
Simon blinked. Once, twice, three times before it really sunk in. He'd always done her hair for her. She was too young to do it on her own. He left before he taught her how.
He wondered what else he'd have to make up for.
"I can do it for you."
She wiped away her tears with the back of her hands, sniffling and gasping the whole time. "What?"
"Marcy, I'm your father."
She looked like she was about to cry all over again. He wondered how he ever forgot about his girl; how he never thought about how he was leaving her behind and why he thought fatherhood ended. He wondered if his father was like that too but found there was only really Betty and Marcy before Ooo.
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Sure, I missed having my hair done anyway."
And so Simon sat her on a chair, and got out his supplies and wondered how he'd manage to find it so easily in the wreckage and wondered if his hands still remembered the motions and if his pulse would hold up and wondered and wondered and wondered all the way through parting the sections. That was the most tedious part. They had to be perfect. Simon usually took a few tries before perfect.
"I'm sorry I left."
"I just… I don't understand why you wouldn't tell me. I thought you weren't coming back." The last part was ushered out, like a whisper or a secret, catching in her throat and making her choke at the last second. "I thought you'd left me again."
"Oh no, baby, I would never." As he started the process, he suddenly remembered how long it was, and how even then it wouldn't be enough time for all the apologizing he had to do. He just hoped she had it in her heart to forgive him one last time. He wouldn't let her down this time.
"I forgive you, by the way." She said softly, like an afterthought. "You're my dad and you twist my hair for me even if no one else will and I forgive you."
"Oh, baby. I love you more than anything in the world."
"Yeah."
"I promise."
"Yeah?"
And this time, Simon was sure she wouldn't need much convincing. He wondered what he'd done to deserve such an angel child and thought maybe it was what would come next that made him deserving; he had time to make it up to her.
He squeezed her shoulder. "Yeah, more than anything in the multiverse, Marcy."