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Maybe he was too blind to see it at the time, too guilty for the long periods of time he had to be away, too tamed by his own words "you'll always be my little girl" that the prison door just seemed to open, key hanging limply in his hands. It was only a moment when he saw her eyes meet his own. She was in the cage but there was no fear in her eyes, just a cold stare as he fell back, and in that moment he knew, he had lost her forever and that fear wretched so deep in his heart gave way to the onslaught of shadows.
He should have noticed, would have noticed how she changed those nights before that moment-- weary with a burden far beyond her years. The night before, he had come home to her barely awake in her bed, weaved from the finest cloths and veils of dreamsand, a gift from a dear friend for good dreams. He sat there at her bed side, hand pressed to her cheek, the other brushing away her dark hair so similar to his but her eyes were that of her mother's, there were no words but she knew this father loved his little girl. She kept her eyes closed and breathing even, less she betrayed herself to the selfish wants of a child. Of a child that wanted her father to never leave. Neither let go until the morning light peeked in from the window.
She refused to cry, not once letting herself blink less she miss one moment of this scene before her, the piles of shadows writhing, squirming into the form of what was once was the general of the Golden Army, the champion of the Constellations, defender of the young Guardians, her... father. Her defender. Her beloved. The only man she would ever love in a way only a child can. He was the warm hand that stroked her hair gently and touched her face as she slept. The light in the darkest, cruelest nights when she cried for her mother.
But she was no longer a child. She chanted. No longer innocent. She chanted. No longer with the right to be selfish. She chanted. It was necessary. She chanted. She believed.
People have believed in lesser things.
"You are cruel Man in the Moon." She uttered the moment she walked out of the underground city she had always called home. Her form was still very much a child but a child entrusted with a grown-up task and overnight her eyes seemed to have aged decades. He did not answer and instead shimmered brightly, casting the light of change upon her-- the earth becoming ever more clear to her, the winds whispered to her and all living things reached out to her. She closed her eyes and sighed, curling her hands closer to her as if craddling something and in her mind's eye, a juxtaposition of images, it was now her, the earth that craddled her father through what would be one of the darkest and cruelest nights in history. The one night where they were to lose each other forever, at least lose what they once were, for the greater cause of balance in all creation.
She would become the life of the earth and he would be it's shadow, the fear that existed with everything that lived. Always mutually together but never touching and each would watch the other from a distance, he with a vague recognition of a far away dream and she with a memory, a longing, she chose to bear in his place.