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Edward was not Esme's father.
In fact, when he had first recruited her three years prior, he had taken it upon himself to explicitly state that. He explained it was not his duty to coddle nor care for her, but that he would simply nurture her intellectual brilliance and try his best not to see her killed in some degrading and brutal fashion, although he couldn't really promise the latter, considering their line of work.
"You are most useful to me alive, so if you could try not to die, that would be greatly appreciated. That said, if you find yourself making reckless, stupid decisions that risk your life, I will not shield you from any consequences. This is your life. I can only suggest what you spend it on." He'd said that fateful night, gazing out at the refracted glimpses of neon and stars smeared down the cab window. "I am your employer and nothing more. You'll do well to remember that, Miss Tuesday."
And she did. Unwaveringly, until, somehow, even that line began to blur.
Now Miss Tuesday found herself picking at what appeared to be red, wrinkled sacks of oil over dinner with him.
"What is this supposed to be?" she asked childishly, scrunching her nose.
Either Edward didn't hear the disgust in her tone or simply chose to ignore it. "Sun-dried tomatoes," he replied calmly. "Freshly imported from Italy."
"I think I'll stick to the garlic bread," she mumbled, banishing the oleaginous little fruits to the corner of her plate.
He let it go without comment, which itself would have been unusual if this passive attitude hadn't become something of a regular occurrence. Ever since the docks, Edward had been far too quick to let things go. Ever since that job had nearly cost her everything and he'd had to sit with exactly how close "nearly" had been. He hadn't said sorry, Esme doubted she'd ever even heard Edward genuinely apologize to anyone, but there'd been more dinners since then, more evenings where she somehow ended up staying later than planned, and he never once told her to go home.
The meal wound down and, with little fanfare, Edward stood and began gathering the cutlery and dinnerware from the table, the china clinking together in that particular, unhurried rhythm of a man who lived alone and had made peace with it. As he carried the plates to the kitchen, he hummed under his breath, Ave Maria, of all things, half-remembered and slightly off-key.
Miss Tuesday decided he wasn't paying attention to her.
She slipped off her chair and padded into the living room, dropping onto the rug in front of his console. The one he owned but never touched, a relic from some phase of his life she'd never asked about. She played for a while, the soft blue light flickering across her face, until her eyelids grew heavy and she gave up trying to fight it, letting herself slump sideways against the arm of the couch.
It occurred to her, in that hazy, half-drowsy way thoughts arrive right before sleep, that this had happened before. More than once. She'd come here after a job, or after school, or after both, worn thin from being a student and a henchgirl and a teenager all in the same twenty-four hours, and somewhere in the space between one thought and the next she'd simply lose the fight and wake up the following morning in his guest room, under a quilted duvet, with no memory of how she'd gotten there.
She'd always wondered how. Tonight, she decided to find out.
Eyes shut and breathing slow, she waited, and kept waiting.
It took longer than she expected. She listened to him move through the apartment, the tap running, a cupboard closing, the particular creak of the floorboard by the hallway, long minutes of him puttering about his own home, seemingly in no rush at all, before his footsteps finally slowed and stopped beside her.
There was a pause. Then, in a voice pitched low, soft in a way he never allowed it to be when he thought she could hear him, he sighed.
"I am getting far too old for this," he muttered, "and you are getting far too big."
He said it like a complaint. He scooped her up anyway, one arm beneath her knees and the other bracing her back, careful in a way that contradicted every word he'd just said. She let her arms find their way around his shoulders, not entirely faking the sleepy, instinctive grip, and felt him falter for half a second, as if he hadn't planned for that part, before he adjusted his hold and kept walking.
He carried her to the guest room, kicked the door open the rest of the way with his foot and laid her down with more care than the sun-dried tomatoes had ever gotten, pulling the duvet up over her shoulder.
For a moment he just stood there, looking at her in the dark.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have gotten there sooner."
Then he was gone, moving as quietly as he'd come, gathering her stray belongings from the living room floor and straightening the mess she'd left behind like it was simply part of the routine now. The console light clicked off. The apartment settled into silence.
Edward was not Esme's father. At least not in terms of blood. But the position wasn't taken, and for now, he was quietly content in filling the role.