Fic: Another Chance To Live 3/?

[agentamy47]

Author: Ames
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: [insert yet another long apology for the long waits between chapters] Happy Valentine's Day! As my gift to you, another angst-filled chapter!


Chapter Three

For the next two weeks, the Vaughn household was like a time bomb waiting to explode. Though Nadia’s behaviour improved just slightly for the first few days after Vaughn confronted her, a phone call from Julie was all it took to send her back to the edge. And this time, she was taking it out on everybody, except maybe Sienna. At first, Sydney and Vaughn tried to limit her contact with her little sister in order to punish her and make her realise her behaviour would have consequences, but it seemed to do little more than upset Sienna, and there was no point in punishing the only truly innocent party in all of this. When the two girls were playing, there was a temporary stalemate in the house, and for a few minutes, both parents could breathe again. It became their only refuge from the war of everyday life with an angry nine-year old, so despite their better judgment, they let it happen whenever the girls wanted it. As soon as Sienna went to bed, however, or whenever it was time for Nadia to go to her room to do her homework, the fighting started again.

As a consequence of her attitude and back-talking to her parents, Nadia was sent to her room on a Saturday afternoon when she was supposed to be going to a friend’s birthday party. They hated to do it, knowing she needed to lead something resembling a normal life with normal friends and outings, but they couldn’t ignore how ugly she acted all day towards them after repeated warnings that she would not be allowed to go to the party if it continued.

By dinner, she had yet to make an appearance or any attempts to apologise. “You want me to see if she’s coming down for dinner?” Vaughn asked his wife as she set the table.

“What’s the point?”

“Syd.”

“It happens every time, Vaughn. She’ll say no and she’ll either go to bed hungry or we’ll give in and take her food. Do you really think it’s going to be different this time?” she asked incredulously.

“Probably not,” he conceded. “But it doesn’t hurt to try.”

“Fine, go ahead,” she answered testily. She really wasn’t in any mood to deal with Nadia anymore tonight, but if he wanted to invite that upon himself, she wasn’t going to get in his way. He looked like he wanted to object to her tone, but he probably realised it was hopeless right now. The high tension in the house was wearing on them both, and even though they were trying their hardest not to let her come between them again, it was hard not to fight with one another when they were both so damn miserable. He retreated from the kitchen, and she heard his footsteps headed up the stairs towards Nadia’s room.

Less than a minute later, she heard Nadia’s raised voice as she yelled angrily at her father. Sydney tried to block it out, not wanting to hear what her older daughter had to say tonight, but it was impossible to ignore the hateful words. And if she could hear it, so could Sienna, who was sitting at the kitchen counter with crayons and a colouring book.

Here we go again, Sydney thought bitterly, abandoning the table she had been setting in favour of picking up her younger daughter and taking her back to her bedroom where she couldn’t hear Nadia’s yelling. As much as she hated this for herself and for her husband, it was tearing her up inside that Sienna took the brunt of it, too. Over the last two weeks, her crying in the middle of the night had all but disappeared, and though she hadn’t confirmed it yet, Sydney suspected it wasn’t because Sienna wasn’t waking up with nightmares anymore. There was no reason for the abrupt ending, but even at four, her youngest was smart and perceptive enough to understand at least some of what was going on around her. Every time Nadia picked a fight with her parents, Sienna retreated to her bedroom without even being asked. Sydney noticed, and it broke her heart that her four-year old was trying not to get in the way. It wasn’t fair, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could subject Sienna to this.

“Mommy, why is DeeDee mad at Daddy?” Sienna asked quietly as Sydney led her into her room.

The question pierced through the heart, and she wished she could just close her eyes and make all this go away. “She’s not, Sweetheart,” she managed, taking a seat on the bed and patting the spot next to her to invite Sienna up. Sienna decided that wasn’t good enough, however, and crawled right into her mother’s lap, somehow knowing that she needed the comfort. It brought tears to Sydney’s eyes, and she pressed a kiss to the top of her daughter’s head, holding her close and rocking her slowly back and forth. “She’s not mad at your daddy, Sea. She’s just really sad right now.”

“So why does she yell at him?” Sienna asked in confusion.

“Your sister misses Julie, Sweet Girl,” she tried to explain, knowing nothing was really going to make sense in her daughter’s four-year old mind. Even as smart as she was, her parents were just her parents. She loved them unconditionally, so it only followed that Nadia would, too. She couldn’t possibly grasp how Nadia also viewed Julie as a parental figure and wanted her there more than she wanted her mom and dad. That was something that would never even occur to her. “You know how sometimes Daddy goes to work and you want him to come home?” Sydney asked her daughter.

“Mmhmm,” Sienna nodded solemnly.

“Well, that’s how Nadia feels about Julie, except Julie lives far away, so she can’t see her every day like you do with your daddy. So it makes her sad a lot. And sometimes when people are sad, they act mean. But they don’t really mean it, Sweet Girl,” she was careful to add, though in this case, she was pretty sure Nadia really did mean most of the things she said to her parents.

“Why does Julie live far away? She could come live with us!” Sienna suggested.

“That’s a very good idea, Sea,” Sydney praised, trying not to cry at her daughter’s sweetness. “But Julie has to stay where she is because that’s where her home is. Just like this is our home and we’re going to stay here forever.”

Sienna frowned, disappointed by her mom’s answer. “I don’t want DeeDee to be sad,” she lamented.

“I know, Little Bear. I don’t, either,” Sydney agreed, pressing another kiss to the top of Sienna’s head.

“Is DeeDee going to act mean to me?” Sienna asked worriedly.

Not if I can help it, Sydney thought immediately. The only thing worse than enduring this constant misery with Nadia was if Sienna bore the brunt of it anymore than she already was. Sienna had already suffered more than any four-year old should, and she had the nightmares and anxieties to prove it. There was no way in hell she was going to allow this precious little girl to get hurt anymore, even if it meant protecting her from her own sister. But it’s going to happen eventually, she realised. Sooner or later all this bitterness and hatred is going to spill over to Sienna, and it’s already affecting her more than it should. Are you really going to do whatever it takes to save her from that? she asked herself.

And her only answer was yes. It had to be. One daughter was no more important than the other, but there was still time to save Sienna from this fate. They spared Nadia from the life her little sister was forced to lead, and now maybe it was time to do the opposite. “No, Sweet Girl,” she said resolutely. “DeeDee won’t be mean to you. I promise. Now I need to go finish getting dinner ready. Why don’t we go put on a video for a few minutes?” she offered, guiding Sienna out to the living room and picking out a movie at random to stick in the DVD player. The yelling upstairs seemed to have stopped, and once Sienna was content on the couch, Sydney made her way not to the kitchen, but to the bedroom instead to get her laptop.

“What are you doing?” Vaughn asked a few minutes later as he walked into their bedroom.

Sydney didn’t answer at first, not knowing how he would react to what she had to say. It wasn’t something she ever expected to do, but they were simply running out of time before this got so far out of hand that there was nothing left to do at all. She could not let Nadia run their family into the ground. “I’m looking at flights,” she finally admitted.

“Flights?” he asked in surprise. “For what? Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. Yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Sydney abandoned her search for just a moment to turn around and face him. She saw the same weary resignation in his eyes as she found in her own, and she knew he was just as worn out as she. “We can’t do this much longer, Vaughn,” she said quietly. “And I know it’s a horrible thought, but maybe it’s time. Maybe we’ve tried hard enough. I just don’t know how much longer we can watch our family suffer without doing anything about it. She’s not happy here. She’s not, and she never has been. Maybe it’s time to just let her have what she wants. She did try for us. She tried, but she’s nine years old and she misses the woman who raised her for half of her life, the half she remembers.”

Vaughn slowly sank down onto the bed as he attempted to process what she just said. “You’re serious.”

“We have two daughters, Vaughn. We still have a chance to give Sienna the kind of life we wanted her to have. We can’t throw that away. And I hate to even think about sending her back to Julie, but if she’s miserable, and she’s making everyone else miserable, why keep trying?”

He opened his mouth as though to protest and then apparently thought better of it, dropping his head and staring down at the floor. “I want to say you’re wrong,” he admitted. “And I want to think it isn’t that bad, but I’ve done the same thing. When I can’t go to sleep at night, I look up flights and then look at houses in Oregon, just so we could see her on a regular basis.”

“It’s the only answer,” she agreed quietly. “I love her, and I want more than anything for this to work, but it’s just not fair to Sienna. She adores Nadia, and it’s not fair to put her through this. We have to do what’s best for both of them, and I just can’t stop thinking that what’s best for them is going to be hardest for us.”

“Do you really think we can do this?” he asked, looking up at her again with eyes filled with tears at the mere thought of giving up his daughter a second time. The first time was hard enough....how much worse would it be knowing that this was what she wanted? Their baby girl didn’t want them anymore. They were gone too long and lost their chance for forgiveness, and there was nothing now they could do.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I don’t know if we really have any choice.”

“I can’t believe I’m even considering this,” he shook his head in disbelief. “Everytime I’ve looked at flights I’ve felt so guilty just for thinking about it. I feel like it’s giving up on her.”

“But it’s not, Vaughn. It’s giving her what she wants, what’s going to make her happy.”

“You sound like you’ve made up your mind,” he noted, his tone suddenly changing.

“No, Vaughn, of course not,” she shook her head. “This is our family. It’s not up to just me. I just...I don’t know what to do with her anymore. And I can’t stand seeing how it’s hurting Sienna. She’s just so little to be surrounded by this kind of fighting all the time. She already has so much to deal with. I don’t know any other way to help her.”

“I’ve thought about it, too, Syd, but this is her family,” he countered. “I want to make Nadia happy, and I want to do what’s going to help them both, but Sienna needs her family. She needs her parents and her sister.”

“Not like this,” she shook her head. “I know she loves Nadia, but if we did this, they could still see each other. We’re not going to keep them apart. It’s just a matter of Nadia not wanting to be here.”

“So you’re really serious about this,” he stated flatly. “I’ve considered it, but you actually want to go through with it.”

“No, I don’t,” she shook her head again. “The last thing I want is to have to give my daughter up for a second time. The first time nearly tore me apart. Do you really think I want to willingly give her back to another woman?”

“You seem pretty intent on doing just that!”

“I’m just trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to get through this, Vaughn,” she said honestly, rising from her seat at the desk and moving to sit beside him on the bed. “Sienna asked me if her sister is going to yell at her, too. She’s afraid Nadia is going to get mad at her like she does with you and me. What do you think that’s like for her? What do you think this is going to do to her? She’s only going to start understanding more and more, and it’s going to just hurt worse.”

“She just needs more time, Syd. We just have to give her more time to adjust and get used to this. It was her decision. She wanted to come home with us. Now she’s just struggling with being away from Julie. It will get easier.”

“And how much time do we give it?” she challenged. “How much longer do we let her go on like this? Her behaviour isn’t getting any better, and Sienna is suffering in the meantime. Neither of them are happy, Vaughn. We have to do something, and this has to be about them. Not us.”

He nodded and stared down at the floor, and she saw the tears glimmering in his eyes. He knew it was true, knew they couldn’t keep living like this much longer, but he didn’t want to believe it anymore than she did. It meant giving up their firstborn a second time. It meant admitting that someone else could make their daughter happier than they could. It meant abandoning all their dreams of being a whole family. After all those years apart, years they absolutely could not be together, they were going to just let their oldest go because she didn’t want to be here anymore. “I don’t know if I can do it, Syd. I’ve thought about it, and sometimes it seems like it would be better for everyone if we let her go back to Julie, but I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to let her go again.”

“But we have to be,” she reminded him gently, reaching over to take his hand. “We have no choice. This is our family. These are our kids, Vaughn. We did it once to keep her safe....now we might have to it again to make her happy.”

“Let me go talk to her again,” he suggested, unable to bear the thought any longer. “Let me just talk to her, tell her that we are considering it, and maybe she’ll realise we’re serious about her behaviour. We - I - let her get away with it for too long, and she still thinks if she pushes us, we’ll give in.”

She wanted to argue with him, but maybe she should let it go for a night. It would be stupid to do something so drastic without seriously talking about it and weighing their options first, and maybe he was right, maybe telling her they were thinking about it would force her to consider whether or not she was going to continue acting like this. “I’ll just go heat up dinner. Try to get her to come down and eat something if you can.”

“Yeah, I’ll try,” he agreed, squeezing her hand and rising to head back upstairs to Nadia’s room.

“Good luck.”

******************************************************************************

Vaughn slowly walked up the stairs, rehearsing in his head what he was going to say to his daughter. What he told Sydney was true - he had considered it, and in the middle of the night, when his worries about his family kept him from sleeping, he took the laptop out to the living room and looked at houses they could buy near Julie’s. He was desperately trying to figure out another way, but in those dark hours, he couldn’t think of anything that would help the situation. Nadia was completely miserable. She missed Julie, and she hated living here with them. She tried, but maybe it was too hard. Maybe it was just too big a decision for a girl her age. They allowed her to take on a huge responsibility and a great burden, and now they were reaping the consequences. They wanted to come home, so they heard what they wanted to hear, but she was, after all, only nine years old - eight when she made the decision to come back to California with them. She yearned for a normal life, and going home with them was the only answer she could find.

But an eight-year old could not think this far in advance. She couldn’t consider how hard it might be. She reacted on emotion, on desire to have a normal family with two parents and a sister. Here they presented this new life, this new little sister, this exciting adventure, and she thought she would be happy. But it didn’t happen that way. She couldn’t remember them, and coming back to California didn’t really jog her memory. She did remember a little about her parents and their house and her grandparents, but not enough to make the pain worth it. Not enough to feel like she belonged here.

He reached the top of the stairs and started to knock on the door, but just as he raised his hand, he heard a quiet voice coming from within her room. He pressed his ear to the door and realised she was talking on the phone, tears in her voice.

“I know, Jules,” she was saying as she cried quietly. “I know, but I hate it here. I hate it. I don’t want to stay anymore. I don’t want to be here. I want to come home with you.”

She might as well have stabbed him in the heart. She had said things to him like that before, and to Sydney, but always in anger, always in the middle of an argument. But now she was saying the same thing to Julie, probably begging her to come and get her and take her away from this nightmare she was living.

“Please, Julie,” she continued through her tears. “I miss you. I miss our house. I don’t like it here. I wish I had never left. Why didn’t you make them leave me? Why couldn’t you just tell them that they couldn’t have me back?”

He imagined Julie on the other line, crying herself and trying to sound strong for Nadia, attempting to rationalise why she let her go, and he wondered how many times Nadia called her and said these exact same words.

So Sydney was right. Nadia wanted to go home. She hated it here. She hated them. She wanted Julie. He sank down to the floor outside of Nadia’s room, the tears falling from his eyes and rolling mournfully down his cheeks. He was going to have to let his baby go. That little girl he adored for so long. The princess who used to cry for him when she was sick, who got so upset every time he left her. Nadia had always been daddy’s little girl, but that was no longer the case. She would always be his baby girl in his eyes, but she didn’t even want to live here anymore. She didn’t want him in her life.

After a few minutes, he heard Nadia manage a tearful goodbye before hanging up the phone. Worried she might emerge from her bedroom and find him here crying, he jumped up and quickly wiped away the tears. There was no reason to let her know he had heard what she said, so he waited a moment and then knocked quietly on the door. “Hey Nady, can I come in again?” he requested.

She sniffled a little before answering and allowing him to come in. He slowly pushed the door open and found her laying on the bed, the tears still staining her lightly freckled cheeks. “What do you want?” she asked, staring up at the ceiling and refusing to look him in the eye.

“I need to talk to you,” he announced, walking over to her bed and sitting down beside her. “About something serious,” he added.

She finally looked over at him, completely nonplussed, waiting for him to continue. “And?” she asked smartly.

He tried to ignore the sting and took a deep breath, preparing to speak the hardest words of his life. “Listen, Nadia, your mom and I were just talking about something,” he began. “And we haven’t made any plans or really talked about what would happen, but we’re thinking....we’re considering....” he stopped, trying not to choke on his own words. “You want to go back to Julie,” he finally managed. “And we’re not going to make you stay here if this isn’t where you want to be. You made this decision, and it was what we wanted you to say, so maybe....maybe we let you make the wrong decision,” he admitted. “If you want to go back to Julie, we don’t want to keep you away from her. You’re unhappy, and you need to understand that’s the last thing your mom and I want. We just....we love you so much, Nady. We want you to have the best life you can possibly have, and we wanted you with us. But that’s not what you want, and....” he stopped again, the tears running freely down his cheeks now.

Nadia just stared at home in absolute shock, obviously never expecting him to say that. “Y-you’ll send me back?” she asked in surprise, her eyes growing wide and actually a little fearful.

“Yes,” he nodded, his heart feeling as though his daughter was crushing it in her tiny little hands. “Yes, Nadia. If that’s what you really want, your mom and I will send you back.”

“What about you?” his daughter asked uncertainly, wiping at her cheeks and sitting up in the bed to look at him with green eyes full of curiosity.

“It depends,” he answered honestly. “If you decide you want to leave soon, then we’ll have to stay here for a while. But we would move to Oregon, too. You could go on ahead and go back to Julie’s, and then we’ll start packing and find a house not too far away.”

“But you...you’ll move?” Nadia stammered. “To Orgeon?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “We told you before, Nadia. We don’t have to be in California. You can go back home and live with Julie, but we at least want to be able to see you. We’ll do what we have to do. We just want to be able to see you and know you’re okay. Please, let us do that much.”

Again, Nadia just stared at him, apparently at a loss for words - a rare thing for his spirited daughter.

“Nadia?” he prodded. “What do you think?”

“I, um, well, okay,” she shrugged. “I thought I had to stay here. I thought....”

Trying not to completely break down and sob, Vaughn took another deep breath and allowed himself a moment to gather his composure. “You have to understand, Nadia, all your mom and I have wanted for a long time is to have our whole family together again. We always wanted you and our sister together. We wanted you to be with us. We love you so much, and we always just wanted you back. But if we can’t make you happy here....if you don’t want to be here anymore....we’re not going to make you stay.”

“So what about Sienna? I mean, would I still get to see her?” she asked nervously. “If I leave, can I still see her sometimes?”

It hurt that her sister was all she was really worried about, but he should have expected that anyway. Sienna was the real reason she came here in the first place. She wanted a little sister, and Sienna represented everything she could have - a real family - if she just moved back to California. “Of course you can still see her,” he assured her. “We still want you to be a part of our lives, Nadia. A big part of our lives. If there was any way to make you happy here, we would do it, but I’m just....I’m not sure this is really what you want anymore.”

“Daddy, I....” she began uncertainly.

“You don’t have to explain, Nadia,” he cut her off, unable to bear her reasoning and her excuses. It would only hurt him more to hear her explain why she didn’t love him as much as he wanted her to. “Your mom and I....we understand how hard this is for you. We know you miss Julie, and you tried, Sweetheart. You really did. We’re not mad at you.”

“Mom is,” she said quietly.

“No,” he shook his head. “No, your mom isn’t mad at you, Nadia.”

“Yes, she is,” she insisted. “She wants to send me away so she doesn’t have to deal with me anymore.”

He frowned, trying to figure out where in the world she would get an idea like that. And why just Sydney? “Nadia, I don’t know why you think that, but it’s not true.”

“I bet she thought of it, didn’t she?” she asked accusingly.

“No, Nadia,” he shook his head again. “We both talked about what we could do to make you happy, and this is the only thing we can think of. This wasn’t just your mom, and I promise you, Princess, she doesn’t want you to go. That’s the last thing she wants. It’s the last thing both of us want.”

“She does,” Nadia countered again. “She wants me gone.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting this, Nadia, but it’s so untrue. Your mom loves you so much. I can’t even explain to you how much you mean to both of us.”

“Just get out,” she demanded testily.

“Nadia,” he scolded.

“How soon can I leave?” she asked, the tears and the uncertainty suddenly vanishing from her eyes, replaced instead by stubborn determination. He had seen that look many times in Sydney’s eyes, and he wondered if either of them knew just how similar they really were. Maybe that was why Nadia took out so much of her aggression on her mom.

“We’ll see,” he answered, trying to sound calm and collected. “Why don’t you come down to dinner with us, and then we’ll talk about it after Sienna goes to bed.”

“I don’t want anything to eat. I’m not hungry,” she answered automatically.

“This isn’t license for you to act however you want, Nadia,” he warned her. “You are still under our roof, and that means you have to follow our rules. If you want us to talk about you going back to Julie, you need to clean up your attitude and come down to dinner with us.”

“No,” she refused, shaking her head vehemently. “I don’t want to eat with you.”

“Then I’m sorry, Nadia, but we’re not going to discuss any of this. I know you don’t want to be here anymore, but we’re going to be in your life, and you need to be able to respect us. We’re still your parents, even if you decide you don’t want to live with us anymore,” he said evenly.

“I’m not coming down, and you can’t make me.”

Well, she was right about that. He certainly couldn’t force her to join them. And why would he even want to? She made it clear she wasn’t interested in being a part of this family anymore. He had hoped coming up here and talking to her would make her realise she needed to change her behaviour, but instead, she only acted worse. He had just opened a door for her, given her a way out. She didn’t even have to try anymore because she knew now that they would just give in. But what more could he do? She was miserable. She didn’t want to live here. He couldn’t make her stay. “No, I guess I can’t,” he agreed sadly. “But we do have to talk about this, Nadia, so why don’t you just come downstairs and find us when you decide you’re ready for that.”

“Fine,” she retorted sharply.

“We’ll save you some dinner,” he offered. “But bedtime is nine tonight. No exceptions.”

“But it’s a weekend,” she protested. “You said 9:30 on weekends.”

“Not tonight,” he shook his head.

“Fine,” she said again.

He rose and glanced down at her for a moment, trying to read the expression on her face. She turned away, staring out the window overlooking their backyard. “Goodnight, Nadia,” he said quietly, leaning over to kiss her softly on the forehead, knowing she wouldn’t be making an appearance anytime tonight.

But Nadia said nothing, flipping over and burying herself beneath the covers. He felt tears stinging his eyes once more, but he refused to let her see that and forced himself to turn away and walk out of her room.