Page 127 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
“You look…” he trails off, the wrong smile tugging at his face, the kind that once charmed senators and sliced contracts wide open. “You’ve become quite the woman.”
“I became someone you never wanted me to be.”
His face flickers. “That’s not true. I—I always believed in you. You were like a daughter?—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out like stone. “Don’t insult what little clarity you have left.”
Tidball presses a hand to the glass between us, as if that gesture still holds meaning. “Yara, please. You’re angry. I understand. But this isn’t who you are. You’re better than?—”
“I’mexactlywho I am.” I step closer, voice dropping low. “And you, Jonathan, made sure I’d never forget who I had to become.”
He swallows. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“No, I finally do.”
There’s a pause, a hitch in his breathing.
“You came to gloat, then?” he asks, bitterness bleeding through the cracks.
“No.” I take a breath, slow and deliberate. “I came to thank you.”
His eyebrows shoot up.
“If you hadn’t tried to break me,” I continue, “I might’ve stayed small. Safe. Controlled. I might’ve died in a gilded cage you wrapped in praise and lies.”
“I protected you.”
“Yougroomedme.”
Silence.
“You used my grief. My legacy. My name. You taught me to smile while bleeding.” I lean in slightly. “But you taught me, Jonathan. You taught me. And I turned it on you.”
He’s pale now. Deflated. All the charm, the polish—gone.
“You’ll never see the outside of a penal colony,” I say. “You’ll rot in a hole the Combine forgets exists. But I’ll remember.”
He opens his mouth again, to beg maybe, or bargain. I don’t let him.
“I’m not here to forgive you. I’m not here for closure.” I tilt my head. “I just wanted you to know that the girl who called you‘uncle’ is dead. And the woman who replaced her doesn’t need your ghost hanging over her shoulder.”
He finally sits back down.
No fight left.
No power.
Just a man.
“Goodbye, Jonathan.”
I walk out without looking back.
The sun outside is blinding, warm in that aggressive Helios way that never really feels gentle—but today, it kisses my skin like absolution.
And there he is.
Grau.
