Work Text:
Philza has experienced a lot of loss.
That was what his therapist said after his first son died protecting his youngest in a stupid, stupid convenience store when a customer went crazy.
That was what she said when his youngest drowned in the sea six months later, pulled out by a stupid, stupid riptide.
That was what she said when his last child was born and he was terrified that he’d be the next to die in a stupid, stupid accident.
That was what she said again when his beautiful wife died in a car crash when she was run off the road by a stupid, stupid drunk driver.
That was what she repeated, over and over and over, when his mum died from a stupid illness and his dad right after from a stupid heart attack, when his stupid eldest disappeared one night with some poor boy, leaving his daughter with Phil, when he became so paranoid that he moved out to the middle of nowhere so no one so stupid could ever hurt his children again, what she said in their very last meeting.
Philza has experienced a lot of loss.
It replayed in his head, over and over, as he pulled up to the little cottage in a faintly familiar area, far away from the ocean and convenience stores and the potential for drunk drivers. As he led Tallulah and Chayanne up to the house that had been his adoptive parents’, now covered in dust and cobwebs from years and years of disuse.
As he stalked around the cottage, checking for anything that could take his last two away from him. As he noted the small river running along a dirt path and the looming trees a mile away.
“It’s a nice house,” he said aloud, as if he hadn’t spent every summer of his childhood making that path and climbing those trees.
Tallulah had always been perceptive. She stared up at him with her big unreadable eyes and replied, “It is,” before tugging on her big brother’s hand to go explore the house.
Phil carried box after box into the house, into the kitchen he’d learned to cook in and the Japanese-style bath house that had reminded his mother of her childhood home, the rooms Tallulah and Chayanne had claimed as their own, side-by-side, that he’d alternated sleeping in as a kid because he just couldn’t pick.
His kids wove in between his feet, running throughout the house and laughing as they fought with brooms they’d found in the attic. Every step brought up a puff of dust that swirled around and gleamed in the light. Phil laughed and shut the door behind him as he brought in the last box, setting it down on the old couch, sagging in the middle and grey with time.
It was a nice house.