miracle | tayley

things are looking up, oh finally

     Rowan Sage Williams. 

     Not York. 

     He'd expected as much, given the circumstances, but still he'd hoped. He can feel his jaw clenching, and he tries to reign in his temper. His eyes flick to Hayley's face and he can see trepidation creeping into her eyes.

     It's been three years, but he knows her in a way that doesn't just cease to exist when some time passes. This is the look she gets when she's nervous and dreading what's about to come. It's the same one he'd witnessed countless times over the years. Seeing that look on her face now, knowing she's dreading his next action, his next words, has him feeling like shit.

     This situation is not her fault, he knows, and it really pisses him off that either of them have been put in this position.

     He'd missed the first two-and-a-half years of his daughter's life, not to mention the past three years of Hayley's. The two of them had rarely spent a week apart in the years they'd known each other before all of this happened and now they have a gulf between them the size of a small country. 

     He'll admit they weren't in a good place at the end, but they would have never fallen this far apart on their own. He knows himself too well, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he couldn't have shut Hayley out forever. He might have tried, but he would have failed, and Hayley would have forgiven him, he knows because that's just who she is. Even now, she's sitting here, quietly staring at him with solemn eyes, waiting for him to say whatever awful thing he needs to say to her to blow off steam. 

     In the past, he would have, too. He would have said whatever heat-of-the-moment thing he needed to say, and she would have listened. She would have listened, taken it into herself until it was a part of her, like all of the other parts in the deep, dark ocean that is Hayley Williams's heart.

     Then she would have said something brilliant and maybe a little sharp (just to let him know he wasn't totally getting away with being an ass) and definitely witty, and then she would have bumped his shoulder with her smaller one until his mouth quirked up at one corner because fuck if he could ever stay truly mad at her... And that would've been that.

     That's not who he is anymore though. If the years without her had taught him nothing else, they'd taught him all the ways he'd failed her in the past. It was a lesson he'd learned well as he'd gone over and over and over memories of their partnership/friendship(/relationship?) after she'd disappeared. 

     So, instead of irrationally attacking her for not giving their daughter his name when she'd been under the false impression that he had no interest in her, he says, "It's beautiful, Hayley." And he means it.

     He can tell by the look on her face that this is not the response she was expecting, and he's a little proud of himself for rising above his basic instinct to lash out like a child. He is still angry, just not at Hayley. It's more that he's angry at the situation... And also at some half-forgotten woman from his past whom he's positive would be fully-forgotten if not for her unbelievable and inexcusable actions. 

     Suddenly something he'd wondered about since his conversation with Hayley yesterday comes back to him, and before he can censor his words, he asks, "What did she say to you that night?"

     She watches him rise suddenly to his feet and shove both hands through his hair, roughly, the movement fraught with tension. For a moment, Hayley is tempted to pretend she doesn't know what he's asking about.

     But, even though though she might have been surprised by his very mature reaction to finding out his only child doesn't share his surname, she knows Taylor in a way she's realizing did not fade with time. Being in his presence, even for this brief period of time, she can tell that she's still connected to him in some way, besides the obvious connection that Rowan now provides.