darker_london | Amends (Deirdre, Liam) (Reply)

It surprised Deirdre sometimes, the places she ended up. Going back to Paris to try to find Mara despite everything that had been done to her there, and ending up in bed with Flynn. Touring the US with Spectre as part of his popular band. Treading the boards with amazing actors like David and Thomas in the London theatre she herself owned. And now, she was standing on her father's doorstep, alone, and perhaps that was the most surprising of them all.

With a tentative hand, Deirdre knocked lightly, and then she blew warm air across her knuckles because the cold was bitter and even the slight contact with the door caused her pain. Liam pulled the door open and he blinked in surprise when he saw his daughter standing there. Rather than mumble like a shocked idiot, Liam stepped aside at once because he could see that his daughter was cold. Once Deirdre was safely inside and the door was closed, then Liam took the chance to express his confusion.

"Deirdre...you're...here?" It wasn't the most intelligent question he had ever posed, but this was the first time she'd come to see him alone. In fact it was the first time he had been alone in a room with her since she was sixteen, which had been four years ago now. "Is everything alright? Is...is Caitlin alright?"

Deirdre looked into Liam's pale blue eyes and she saw worry lurking behind them. It hurt her a little more than she would like that she cared about how much he missed her mother. She felt sorry for him. For Liam Gallagher. The man she had once thought to be the most horrible man on the planet. Liam wasn't that man and she knew that now. He was just as lost and confused as any other person trying to make their way through life without breaking anything. Not that he had succeeded there. Not in the least. "Mam's fine." Deirdre said softly, her Irish lilt much more noticeable, as it always was when she was speaking to her family. "I just wanted to see you."

Liam smiled, though it still weirded Deirdre out to see any sort of pleasant expression on his face. It always looked like someone had tried to paint it on, and lost interest when the piece was only halfway done. There was just something not right about it. Something was missing. Probably happiness. "I'm glad you came." Liam said, at any rate. "Would you like something warm to drink?"

"You better not be offering me blood again." Deirdre said, her face wrinkling in disgust.

"That was one time!" Liam protested. "And it was on accident! The mugs were all confusing and cow shaped because you give weird Christmas presents..."

"Whatever, Big Daddy." Deirdre stuck her tongue out at him. "I'll make a drink myself. You want?"

"Blood please." Liam winked.

"Pfft. Vampires. So predictable." Deirdre moved into the kitchen and she set about making herself a coffee. The blood she wasn't so sure what to do with. Vampires were weird... And kind of gross.

"So." Liam took a seat at the small table in his kitchen and he watched his daughter bustle about, preparing her drink, and then his. The scene was familiar to him, as Deirdre had always been like this. Taking control in the kitchen, and over the household. His little girl was something else. "How was your day?" Small talk was not something Liam Gallagher was good at.

"It was fine." Deirdre said, wishing she could make this easier on him. He looked about as comfortable as someone sitting on a big pile of glass. "Did you see the review of Les Miserables in the paper?" Talking about Deirdre was always a safe topic with Deirdre!

"I did!" Liam jumped up then and he dashed off without an explanation.

Deirdre looked confused. "Dad! The review was good! Why are you scampering?"

Liam walked back into the kitchen and he gave her an inquiring look. "What? I know it was good. And I don't scamper. I put the review in this." Liam set a heavy album down on the table and he opened it to a point about midway through. There, he pointed to the review which had been cut out of the paper and pasted to the middle of the page. "See? And the one from today will go on this page."

"Dad...what is that?" Deirdre was stunned. Why did her father have an article of her in a scrapbook?

"It's..." Liam looked up at Deirdre uncomfortably. He was worse at affection than he was at small talk. "Sometimes I find an article about you and I put it in here." He said, turning red.

"Holy crap." Deirdre pulled the book away from him and she flipped through it in awe. "Dad! This is from Glasgow. And...hey, this is the review of Spectre from when we played in California!"

Liam shrugged. "I got them from the internet."

"Oh my god, you're totally stalking me!" Deirdre grinned and she poked him in the arm.

"No...no, I'm not."

"Yes you are! Daddy stalker!"

"Deirdre." Liam looked like he was about to run from the room if she teased him again. Or if there was more poking. "I'm just...I'm proud of you."

Deirdre froze. She absolutely froze, and her jaw dropped. The kettle took that inopportune moment to whistle that it was quite done warming up the contents within, shattering the otherwise awkward silence but having the unfortunate side effect of looking like the sound was indeed coming from Deirdre's gaping mouth. "Say it again."

Liam shook his head and he looked down at his hands. "Deirdre, I-"

"Say it again." Deirdre demanded, crossing the room so she was standing right in front of him. She had spent her entire childhood waiting to hear that from him. She had pushed herself in school, become a perfectionist that degraded herself for getting a 99% on an exam because it wasn't 100%. She had beat herself up inside because she wasn't first chair flute in the band. She hated being second best. She had done it all to gain Liam Gallagher's approval. But the Liam Gallagher of Deirdre's childhood was an icy bastard of a man who didn't give approval to anyone who wasn't offering him a million dollar merger. And now he was actually saying the words she had been waiting for twenty years to hear and she wanted to savour the moment.

"I'm proud of you, Deirdre."

"Nooooo! Don't say it like I'm dragging it out of you!" Deirdre shook her head. "Dad. I came over here because...for fuck's sake!" Deirdre darted over to the kettle and she switched it off. "Bastard thing screeching through my speech. Anyway..." She turned back to Liam, using the kitchen bench for support. "My friend Joasia...her husband left her and they just had this baby. They seemed really close and everything and he just left." Deirdre took a deep breath, because this wasn't easy for her either. Relating to Liam like a person was taking some getting used to.

"And I keep remembering that Mam left. She just left. And I was five and I never thought about how that must have been for you because all I cared about was how much it sucked for me. I didn't see her again until I was twelve and even then I didn't forgive her. I saw her what...twice a year when she deigned to grace me with her presence. She went off and had this other family. And we're good now. I've forgiven her. I love her. She changed so much. She came back. She wanted to be in my life again. And I forgave her then without thinking twice about it." Deirdre ran her fingers through her thick red hair in an attempt to stall the inevitable. But she had to say it sometime. "And yet again, I didn't think about you."

"What do you mean, Deirdre?" Liam glanced at her, politely confused.

"I mean...you never left." Deirdre took a deep breath and then she managed to take a step towards him, despite the fact that, currently, leaving behind the support of the kitchen bench seemed like the scariest thing in the world. "Mam told me once that you didn't want a baby. You told her you didn't want me when you found out she was pregnant."

Liam took that moment to look incredibly ashamed. "Deirdre, I was different then. I was a demon."

"Hush, because I know!" Deirdre flapped her hands about and then she held one slender finger to her lips to illustrate the silence she dearly needed. "My point is exactly that. You were a demon. A demon who never wanted a kid. And you didn't leave. You weren't...pleasant. Okay? No one's going to ever say you were. You were harsh and controlling and mean and-"

"Deirdre? Hush, because I know?" Liam begged.

"Oh! Right. Anyway, blahblahblah you were kind of a dick. But you stayed. You let me stay with you. And I never thought about how much that mattered until now. Flynn's parents kicked him out. He lived on the streets for six years. Spectre ran away from his and he was homeless too. And Thomas' dad left and they were poor for like totally ever. Mam left you with something you never really wanted anyway and you stayed. So...thank you."

Liam bit his lip and he shook his head. "Deirdre..." He closed his eyes, but it hurt him that his daughter actually believed she hadn't been wanted. "Look." Liam flipped to the front of the book. It was a birth announcement, small and unremarkable, dwarfed by the empty space around it. But it was pasted there on the middle of the page anyway. Proud parents Liam and Caitlin Gallagher welcome their daughter Deirdre-Rose Ionúin Gallagher to the world. Liam skipped and few pages and there was an article from Deirdre's primary school newsletter that showed her grinning from the front page with her front teeth missing.

"Dad...where did you find those?"

Liam smiled looking slightly embarrassed. "I...I cut them out when you were born and when you brought that ridiculous newsletter home, screaming 'I'm famous, I'm famous!' And look at you now." Liam said with a smile.

Deirdre didn't focus on the fact that her father had just called her famous, even if it did make her all thrilled inside. "You've had this my entire life?" Deirdre's voice was incredulous.

"Yes." Liam nodded. "Deirdre. Once I had you, you were never not wanted. I...I just didn't know how to show you that. I'm sorry."

Deirdre didn't care. She crossed the kitchen again and she wrapped her arms around her father. "I love you." She whispered over his shoulder.

Liam didn't say it back, but he did return the hug, which was more affection than he was used to giving in an entire year.

Deirdre pulled away and she smiled up at him. "Dad. It really did hurt you when Mam left, didn't it?"

Liam shrugged. "I wasn't really surprised by that point. Things were bad and she was hardly ever home anyway."

"But it made you afraid. To show affection. Because you could get hurt again."

Liam stared at Deirdre. "You have got to stop taking those psychology classes."

Deirdre snorted. "But I'm right though."

"Probably. You have this...incredibly frustrating habit of doing that quite often." Liam reached out and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm sick of talking about the past. Can we...forget it ever happened?"

"No." Deirdre said, shaking her head firmly. You couldn't forget someone had once slammed you into a wall with their briefcase. You couldn't forget cold eyes and harsh words and even harsher silences. But with a lot of work, therapy, grim determination, and one loss of a demonic spirit thanks to some jail time, you could move past it. "I don't want to forget. But I forgive you." Deirdre smiled. "Like you said. You've changed." What had once made him so utterly terrifying...it was gone. All that was left was the man who had been there before, with a lot more years of experience and wisdom under his belt. "To moving on." Deirdre poured water into her coffee mug and then she raised it for a toast.

Liam looked around for a moment and then he raised his glass of blood, questioningly.

"Oh my god, you are so gross!" Deirdre swatted him. "Toasting with blood!"

"What about you and your stimulants!" Liam pointed to her coffee. "At least mine is life sustaining."

"Like coffee is not!? Puritan weirdo." Deirdre stuck out her tongue again.

"Drug-induced hyperactive...something or other." Liam countered lamely.

"You lose at this game." Deirdre grinned triumphantly.

"I guess Peter plays it better, huh?" Liam looked annoyed. Peter was the man Deirdre saw as her father. And he had to face it, Peter had been a better one to Deirdre in the three years of knowing her than Liam ever had.

"But I'd rather play it with you, Daddy." Deirdre smiled lightly then. "I'd rather it was you."

Liam knew what she was getting at. And he smiled right back. He would rather it was him too.