She is My Daughter Too
Title: She is My Daughter Too
Fandom: The Time Traveller's Wife
WC: 3124
Characters: Henry, Clare, Alba
Rating: PG
Summary: Alba makes sense of her life as Clare still struggles with the death of Henry. Clare tries to make sense of life with multiple Albas, and a life where Henry exists only in the shadows.
Notes: Written for Lily in the New Year Resolutions 2008 Challenge for Yuletide



Prelude

She is 12 and her father is 17. He doesn't know this moment, he doesn't know she's here, watching him move through the crowd. He's about to shoplift, get caught, and disappear inside the police car. He's told her this. She was seven, he was 29. He doesn't know yet that she's his- that she's just like him a time-traveller. But he is 17 now and she is 12 and she is standing with a group of girls who look at her curiously, but say nothing. She doesn't cross the street with them, waits, watches. There, there is the moment.


September 22, 1962 (Alba is seven years old)


ALBA: Mama's always scared when she looks at me. Scared and sad both at the same time. It isn't fair that I get to go and leave her behind- it wasn't fair of Daddy to do either. He died when I was five. I don't want to talk about it. I'm like him, I've seen myself in the future. My future self saw him one day, and hugged him real hard, like there was a hole in her heart where Daddy used to be. I think I have a hole in my heart now, where Daddy used to be. When I want to, I can go see him. I don't talk to him a lot, but I do go see him. It's funny to see my Daddy as a younger person, as someone fallible. As someone drunk with a woman who is not Mama, as someone who is a little boy, crying at the funeral of his mother, as someone who is just as confused as me, who doesn't have all the answers.

I want to go visit Mama when she was little, just like Daddy did, but he said it can't happen like that. There are times though, when I can go see Daddy, or try to go see Daddy. Sometimes I try to go see myself, or go see Mama in the future, to make sure that she's ok- to make sure that I'm ok.

The newspaper says that it's too early for Mama, and too early for Daddy. I wouldn't know where to start looking. I told Daddy, when I caught up with him and he knew me, that maybe he used up all his visits with Mama too early. Maybe I'm using up all my visits too early too. He just kissed me on the forehead and said he didn't think that was how it worked for me.

It's not cold today, too early for Mama and Daddy. But I don't have anything to do. Chicago isn't a scary place, I know it well, but this place? Selma, Alabama. I know this place. I know what's coming. The civil rights marches. Mama has a sculpture of four angels, it's my favourite one, and she says it's for them.

It's scary here, and there's no-one I know around- there's nothing even a little familiar and I'm scared.


November 04, 2012 (Henry is 36, Clare is 41)


CLARE: Where is he and why hasn't he come? I hold Alba close, we're sitting on the couch. She lets me cry and pretends not to notice. She's ten, and just seen her father. Why hasn't he come? She's ten, in this moment, and I have nothing to explain to her anymore, nothing she needs me for anymore.

"Mama?" Alba asks quietly and I have to take a deep breath to compose myself. "Mama?" she asks again. "I could go, I think, to the future, to make sure everything's ok."

"Oh, Alba, baby," I say, pulling her tighter to me. "And if you found something you didn't like, you'd have to live with it until it happened. Your Daddy told me that one. You can't fix the future. It's set. Let's both just try to get there at the same time."

I feel her warm little heart racing against mine and she falls asleep as her heart goes back down to normal. I smile. She isn't leaving anytime yet. I leave her on the couch to go for a walk, just a small one, to maybe come up with a way for her to need me.


HENRY: There's a little girl laying on the couch when I come in. She wakes up almost instantly and her eyes light up, "Daddy!" She's older than the last time I saw her, at least four years. She presses against me and giggles, "Let's find you something to wear. Mama threw out a few of your things, I think she was trying to move on. I'm sorry. But she's sculpting again, but you know that.

I don't know that. An older version of me must have run across a younger version of Alba.

"I'm 36," I tell her once the towel is wrapped tightly around my waist. She frowns, working it out in her head.

"Oh, then you don't know. But now you know." Alba doesn't seem too concerned about this. She is ten years old and acts so much older.

"Where is your mother?" My heart skips a beat at the possibility of seeing Clare again, but I know it will not happen, Clare has told me, Alba has told me, I've told me. I can't cross Clare again. Alba confirms it.

"I don't know. She goes out when I'm sleeping, sometimes. Maybe if you wait …" She sounds hopeful too, and in that instant, her resolve breaks.

"Alba?" She is my broken daughter and it is all my fault. I am torn between never wanting to have had children and the marvel that is Alba.

"Can't you try harder, Daddy? Please? She doesn't know how to love me without you!" Her face twists and she gasps. I can't run forward fast enough to catch any of her; she is gone and I know I will be shortly after.

I pick up the clothes, arrange them back on the sofa, cover them again with a blanket. There's no need to frighten Clare.


CLARE: I come home from the walk and Alba is missing, gone in her sleep. If she has gone back, it is not to see me. I never saw her at ten before ten. Maybe she did go forward, to try and see if everything is right.

There is a towel out of place upstairs, while I wait for Alba. In the bathroom, on the floor. I pick it up and instantly I know. Henry. Why am I not destined to see him again until later? How can he expect me not to wait? It is moments like these, when I realise that I've lost him, that I wish it had all been different.

Will Alba slowly shatter a heart? Has she already? Of course she has, if she has. Henry was firm on that- it cannot be changed.

I sit on the sofa and hold the towel, wrapping the blanket around me. Alba will be back. For now, Alba always comes home.


March 14 2009 (Clare is 38, Alba is 17 and 7)


ALBA: Even time-travelling teen-agers go through phases. Ma is in her funky art phase, sculpting nonsensical things and murmuring about falling in love. Which I get, I'm 17. She met Dad when she was 20. A lot can happen. For all I know, there's some guy (or girl) out there that I've been stalking for their whole lives. Still, Ma loves her art more than anything in the world, including me. I've gotten used to it, really, her being so wrapped up in her art that she doesn't have time for me.

I'm hard to love without Henry. I haven't seen him in four years. Ma keeps saying that's how it was with her for a while, and then she'll go off on another art kick. Whatever.

Right now I'm standing in the backyard of my childhood home, wondering when it is, and if it's ok to go up and knock on the door to ask for something to wear. There's no snow, but a thin layer of frost on the ground. I won't last long. I look for my old hiding places of clothes and find tiny ones, but yes- a blanket. I smile as I find the small clothes- ones that I labelled my 'favourite' at some point, if I was remembering being seven correctly. But I never met my seventeen-year old self. I must be time-travelling at seven then. Of course it works like that. So where's Ma?


CLARE: I'm scared to go out to her- she is my Alba, but she is older- I can't tell how old. Somewhere between 16 and 20. She is holding Alba's favourite shirt, the blue one, and I want to go tell her to put it back, that my daughter won't be happy to come home and find it not there, but she is my daughter too, and she is barefoot, and it is March.

"Alba?" I call from the house, tentatively. Her head snaps up and she pulls the blanket tighter around her.

"Ma?" She's trying not to be confused by me. I laugh.

"Maybe if I had you while I was a teenager. Come in, I'll make some tea."


ALBA: "Where's Alba? Your Alba?" I ask as I gratefully enter the home. It is exactly like it is supposed to be, with the linoleum that constantly needs washing in the kitchen, and the carpet peeling up in the dining room. It is home. I look at Ma and ask again.

The lines on Ma's face deepen. "Seven. Where did you go when you were seven?" She looks pained by something and I try to figure it out, try to remember. When I do, I shiver.

"I was here, at seven, when I was three."

"That's when I knew he was going to die," Ma says and I understand then. It hasn't been 12 years, it's barely been two, and here I am, showing up right after little Alba's disappeared to go see even littler Alba … it's enough to make everyone's head spin.

"I'm sorry," I offer, and mean it. I didn't mean to hurt her, but it was Daddy. And I was seven.

"I know baby," she says and it sounds like she means it, but the 17-year old in me wants to snap at her, wants to ask her how she sounds like she means it now, but won't in several years. She won't after I keep seeing Henry and she doesn't, not even once.

"You never explained it to me," I say softly. "Daddy, and falling in love with him, and being with him, and losing him, and having me." I can't say it without my voice breaking.

Ma looks at me, horrified, and I wince. What have I just done that can't be unchanged?


CLARE: I thought the worst thing would be Alba going to the future to find something she can't live with, but instead she comes to her past to tell me something I can't live with. It's a curse- the future can't be changed. Alba says I've never explained, then I never have- and never will.

Maybe I can explain now, make it a little better.

"Your father," I start, then shake my head. "Henry. Henry and I met when I was six. He was 36."

"He was 36 the day I told you I would go to the future to make sure it was ok, and I fell asleep in your arms while you cried." Alba says, all in a rush.

So 36 was magical for him, then? Oh Henry, where were you to explain it? Why couldn't you be 36 now and in the room with us?

I blink back the tears, "I knew him my whole life, Alba. And then, when I was 20, our timelines collided."

She laughs, "Yea, you're real big on that now, in my time, asking me about boyfriends or girlfriends, or just strange encounters."

"It'll happen," I counter, smiling. "Oh, Alba, he loved me so much- he loved you so much. I suppose he still loves you?" I am trying not to sound bitter, but Alba's face looks pained.

"When he's a kid, not so much the grown-up stuff anymore. The last time was on the playground when he was eight." Alba says it softly, like she regrets it. "I told him I was the new playground supervisor. He shrugged it off. Probably never thought to remember it."

I am crying by this point, and unable to stop. She still gets to see him, to see Henry, even if he is just a little boy. He saw me as just a little girl. Why, then, can't he come find me? Has he? As an eight-year old boy, unsure of when it was, or what he was seeing?

Alba's arms are around me and I'm shaking from the emotion of it all. "Ma," she says, softly, over and over again. "Ma, I love you, you know that? Always."

There's something more in her voice and I panic, grab at her tightly, "Does someone else die, Alba?" Do I die? Was Henry lying to try to get me to live what was left of my life? But it is Alba who has taken over the crying.

"Ma," she says, she repeats, like it is a mantra that she must say so many times to unlock some secret code. "Ma, you have to let him go, you have to." She is rocking back and forth and before I can reply, she is gone.

I am terrified of what has just happened.


ALBA: "Mama!" I run excitedly into the house. "Mama, Mama!" I'm too excited for clothing! "Mama, I just saw Daddy! And little Alba! And you! I saw you, Mama!"

She is crying and I have to slow down, have to remind myself that it happens in exact order for her and all out of order for me. I have to remember that she can't see Daddy, not ever. That she wasn't in Selma, Alabama, then in her own backyard, but in the wrong time. It's all so linear for her, and all so jumbled up for me. I frown, reach over, take her hand. "Mama? It's ok. He loves you. I love you."


July 01 2019 (Clare is 48, Alba is 17)


ALBA: I am still crying when I appear back at the house. "Ma?" She's around, in the studio, throwing wire around like mad. She's mad I disappeared again. "Ma?"

"Where did you go today, Alba?"

"Do you remember, Ma? The day I showed up at 17 when my 7 year-old self was gone?"

She turns, she does remember, "You had me scared someone died. Is it over, then? That visit? No-one's died?"

I shake my head, "No, Ma, no-one's died. It's over."

She twists the wire as she talks, "What then, Alba, had you that worked up at seeing me?"

"You were so broken," I say softly. "And it all led to this- and it never went away, it never could. And I had to learn to be the stronger of the two growing up- I had to wake up and figure out which you was you and- I saw you, broken, because it was that moment. It was the memory of the seven-year old me walking up to the three-year old me and you knew Dad was going to-"

"You were gone for half of your childhood! You always existed in some other time!" She is angry, and I don't want this to be what it is, what is was, what Ma had been living with for ten years, that knowledge, that it wasn't ok, and that it couldn't be ok. That she didn't get over Henry, that she still wasn't, that she couldn't.

"You showed me your wire sculptures after," I whisper. "The seven-year old me. I remember that now- I didn't until just now, until going back ten years and seeing you, and leaving you crying and coming back just after that to still see you crying. I didn't know I was the one who made you cry."


CLARE: It's true, she didn't, she couldn't have known. And while I loved her- love her, I wanted so badly to throttle that 17-year old, snarky at a Clare that hadn't been me, yet. We existed on different planes, Alba and I.

Trying to be a parent to someone who knows what's coming, who knows what mistakes you've made, isn't easy. Trying to give a time-traveller any sense of innocence, is an impossibility.

"I tried, Alba. I tried for your childhood, what you had of it. But you still see him now. You saw him at eight and you haven't told me."

Alba looks pained, like it's never occurred to her that I've been living with that for ten years, waiting for her to come home and tell me. What else hasn't she told me? How many other times has she seen Henry?

"I can't fix it," she says softly. "The past happened. The future, it's happened to. Ma, I don't know what I tell you and what I don't."

"Fuck fate!" I snap at her. "Tell me of Henry!"


ALBA: No-one's visited me, told me of this day, of coming back from a visit and fighting with my mother. Does that mean it's not fated? That it's up in the air? Or has my future self already felt the ramifications of it? Has my future self not told me of it because a certain outcome happens?

I've seen Ma in the future, I know things look up. I know that we become best of friends. But I exist in the past and the future, and not so very well in the present. I don't know how this moment goes. I just know what has led up to it, and what might follow from it.

From that I have to make a choice- a choice that's already been made.

I finger her newest sculpture with delicate fingers, "He plays soccer with his friends, knows how to read the goalie's eyes, left or right. Kicks it the right way. A goal. His teammates cheer, bury him under a pile of little boys. I disappear before seeing him emerge from the pile."

I pause, decide to tag her. I can come back to this moment, I can go forward from this moment; what's happened has happened- will always have happened. But right now, there is the faintest smile on her face, of imagining Henry underneath a pile of boys from playing soccer.

"Tell me of Henry," I say softly, and hope that it is the right choice.