0302

[witticaster]

I asked for prompts, and then I wrote something completely different. Oops.

Later, Julius could explain away his behavior--he was exhausted and at wit's end, and he certainly didn't mean it--but at that moment, seeing Philippa tense, startled, and begin to move away, he would have given anything to go back in time fifteen seconds and give himself a slap. His father had never truly shouted at him that he could recall, certainly never over something so trivial and inescapable as nightmares. However tired he might be, his daughter oughtn't suffer for his own short temper.

"I'm sorry, Philippa, darling, Daddy didn't mean to yell," he began, reaching a hand out to gather her close and kiss her head, but she shook her head, eyes shutting tight. "Pip, please--"

"I--I--I want Mummy," she sobbed, breath hitching between each word, and pulled her bedsheets up to her chin.

"I'll go and wake her," he promised, suspecting that in this din, Kay could not possibly be asleep.

Before he could stand, though, Philippa propelled herself forward, into his lap, her wet face pressed into his pyjama shirt. He felt as much as heard the muffled command, "Don't leave me!"

Kay appeared in the doorway of Philippa's bedroom then, confirming Julius' suspicions that, between a crying five year old and her father's yelling, no one in the flat was going to get much sleep that night. Her brows furrowed as she took in the scene. "Did she have another nightmare, Jules?"

"The same, I believe," Julius answered, feeling all the more a cad now that his wife was present to bear witness to his inability to quiet a child. "I'm not sure she's slept a wink since the last time I tucked her in."

"Mummy!" Philippa cried, abandoning Julius' lap to go and curl up in Kay's. Julius tried to ignore the twinge of jealousy that touched him then, watching Kay soothe Philippa's cries as though it were easy.

"It's all right," Kay shushed her, rubbing her back until Philippa's sobs grew a bit quieter, then asked, "Now, what's wrong?"

"It's Cuh--Cthulhu," she sniffled, her face half-hidden against Kay's chest. "He's gonna eat me."

Kay closed her eyes, dipping her head down to press her cheek against Philippa's tangled hair. Silently, Julius moved closer, putting an arm around Kay; sitting at the edge of the bed, watching them, he felt like an intruder, but perhaps if he could give some comfort to one of them, he might be of use. After a moment or two, Kay said, her voice quiet and even, "Cthulhu isn't real, honey. He's only make-believe."

Philippa shook her head violently. "Is so."

"Why do you think so?" Kay asked.

With something of a hiccup, Philippa answered, "Because."

"Well, that's a silly reason to believe something." Kissing their daughter's head, Kay drew herself back up--still holding Philippa close, but no longer with the air of a mother bird with a chick hidden close beneath her wing. "If Daddy and I promise that Cthulhu is never, ever going to come near you, will you believe us?"

There was a long pause, during which Julius hardly dared breathe, for fear of seeming insincere, while Philippa considered. After several long moments, she looked up at both of them with dark, wet eyes and answered, "Okay."

"All right," Julius said, feeling certain that he could not possibly bollocks this up. "I promise that I will never let Cthulhu ever come near you."

"I promise, too," Kay added, and they both looked down expectantly at Philippa.

She looked slightly less apt to fall back into piercing wails, but they hadn't managed to coax anything like a smile from her face. In a voice that still trembled slightly, she said, "But what if I have another bad dream?"

"Maybe you should think about nice things before you go to sleep," Julius offered, giving her a smile. "Going to the park and playing with your doll and--"

"And kittens?" Philippa asked, looking so hopeful that Kay gave a little laugh.

He grinned, nodding. "And kittens. You're sure to have nice dreams then."

After that, it was no trouble to get her to wriggle back down under her covers and give each of them another kiss good night. As they trudged back to their own bed, Julius sighed. "Twenty years from now, when she's being psychoanalyzed, they'll say 'tell me about your father,' and she'll say 'my father shouted at me because he told me stories about Dread Cthulhu and didn't understand why they scared me.'"

"Five might be a bit young for the Great Old Ones," Kay said, very kindly allowing him to lean on her as they walked. He felt absurdly tired, ready entirely to fall back into bed, pull Kay close, and sleep for days. "I'm not blameless here, though--we both told her stories from the Mythos, whether we should've or not."

"I suppose so," he said, though at the moment, it seemed quite preferable to lay the blame squarely on his own shoulders. Kay proved only a few minutes ago how much more adept she was with Philippa--surely it was primarily his fault. "I wish we hadn't frightened her so."

Her voice was quiet when she spoke again, and had a heaviness to it that suggested that perhaps he bore as little of the weight of responsibility in her mind as she did in his. "I do, too. It wasn't a problem until tonight..." And then she sighed, closing the bedroom door and shrugging out of her dressing gown.

Julius went to do the same, hanging his up on its hook before crawling back into bed. His body sank into the mattress so comfortably that he could hardly keep his eyes open. "We'll just have to--" and he yawned out the rest of his words--"keep an eye on the situation."

Kay tucked herself into his side, pecking him on the cheek. "Starting tomorrow morning. Until then, I think we ought to get our sleep while we can."

"Capital idea," he mumbled, curling an arm around her. "Positively smashing."