you must believe in spring [Eden&Ambrose] blitz

As he did at the conclusion of every games, Ambrose was visiting the dempsey graveyard. It had become a personal tradition of his over the years since the sixty-second had claimed one of his daughters. It was the one day out of the year that he allowed himself to be upset, although in recent times the pain was less, far less than he usually felt.  He appreciated the quiet. What he didn't appreciate was the woman standing where he was supposed to. "Excuse me, might I ask what you're doing on my families plot? This is an area meant for Dempseys. I don't..." When he saw her eyes he nearly fell over, catching himself on his daughter's headstone with his free hand, just barely holding onto the bouquet with the other.

It was Siberia's eyes staring back at him, though perhaps the way she would have looked if she had grown to be a woman. I've gone and cracked, he thought idly to himself as his heart hammered in his chest. Ambrose looked around wildy, as if expecting Damien and Todd to spring up from the ground, Keira between them. When no other apparitions manifeste, he steadied himself, not quite willing to look the girl in the face. She was real, just bearing a resemblence to his daughter was all. Siberia had died a teenager. This wasn't her. "What,what are you doing here?" he struggled out, instead of what he wanted to say,which was, why are you wearing my dead daughters face?

Answers? She was the one looking for answers? A pang of guilt clutched at him, eroding his composure. The only people that might even desire looking for the gravestones of the dempseys were peacekeepers and perhaps the relatives of some of the people his nephew had murdered.But there was something else too, the timbre of her voice awakened a memory in him, sitting at the kitchen table with his daughters around him, imploring him to give up the answers to a sheet of schoolwork. He swallowed thickly, his hand shooting out and grabbing her arm. "Wait, please darling. I... Who are you?"

The resemblance was uncanny, and as the word answer swirled around in his head, he wondered if perhaps Todd had a daughter no one in the family knew about. It wouldn't be too hard to believe. Easier than believing that one of his daughters had come back from the dead. Quieting the little voice in the back of his mind that demanded him to recall that Siberia's body had never been found, he stared at her pleadingly. If he had a niece out there, that meant there was a dempsey out there all alone, and he was tired of his brothers sins affecting the next generation. 

She didn't know who she was? Was she being literal or was she philosophizing? She made to hold his gaze and he looked away as if she had slapped him.He wanted desperately to look at her, but he dared not to linger too long, for one it bothered him, and he also did not want to freak her out. Graveyards were not generally the best place to hold conversations. But since a name was not forthcoming he felt a desire to reveal his own. Perhaps it would make the young woman comfortable enough to tell him who she was. "I see. Well... I am Ambrose Dempsey, father to the twin girls whose graves you were seeking answers from. I suppose I seek answers every now and then myself."

He lowered his head slightly, the names engraved in the stones screaming at him to say something. Anything.  It was as if he could Todd and Damien staring holes in him."Do...do you have family buried in the cemetery? Why were seeking answers from my daughters, miss?" His heart was beating like the cannon that had signified Keira's death, and the roar in his ears was louder than the earthquake that had taken her sister, but he had to know more about this girl. He had to.

His heart stopped. If only for a second, before it chugged heedlessly forward like the train that had brought Keira's body home. She couldn't remember her life before the earthquake? There were plenty of reasons that she could have given that answer, and the empty grave screamed at him again, but he dared not hope. Not yet. That would be a miracle, and Ambrose heavily doubted that a family with hearts as black as the one he belonged to could ever hope for one of those. Their lot in life was the detention center. Early graves. Insanity. The mental instability that pervaded the family line. The Dempesys didn't catch breaks, they got broken and beaten down until it was a wonder any of them were still standing. 

"Surely you must remember something. he said cajolingly. "Sisters perhaps? Parents? Cousins?" The names stayed locked up behind his tongue."If I'm not being too forward, tell me, where have you been staying if you have no family? You look a tad old for the group home Miss...?" Ambrose wasn't sure where the questions were coming from, and he hoped dearly that he wasn't scaring her, but if there was even a infinitesimal chance that this was who he dared not hope it was, he owed it to the family to try and bring her home. The corners of his eyes watered at the thought and  he chided himself, internally berating his eyes for betraying his rising emotions.  

It is her sixteenth birthday, and she begs him for a drawing of ink on her skin. He attempts to get her to hold off until she is eighteen, but he has never been good at saying no to his daughters. Siberia selects the parlor, the artist and the art, Ambrose pays, knowing that it will set his pocketbook back for a few weeks, but focuses on the fact that she'll only turn sixteen once. In the present, Ambrose nearly embraced her, but managed to stop himself short. It was her. By all that was still good in the messed up world he lived in it was her. Putting his fist up to his mouth to stifle a gasp, Ambrose's mind raced as he tried to sort through the implications. Siberia had not died in the earthquake. She had been living in the city by herself for the past five years with no idea who she was. Immediately his mind was at war with itself.

How to tell her that she was his? That it was her own grave she had stood in front of? But should he even tell her? Was her life better without the Dempsey taint hanging over her head? Was she happy? Would he ruin that if she learned the truth? He sat down heavily on the bench, feeling decades older than he was. Perhaps she was better off. But...she had been drawn to the Dempsey graveyard. She felt something, even if she didn't know what it was, she wanted to know. Rubbing a hand over rapidly misting eyes, Ambrose steadied himself and focused on the headstones which were still visible from the bench. "My daughter had tattoos. One of them, that is. I have..I had six. Moira, Cora, Aurora, Keira, Siberia, and Blair. My twins are buried on that plot. Keira was a...tribute a few years ago. You might recall seeing that televised. Siberia died in the earthquake. Or...so we believe. We never found a body." His voice cracked a little on the last word, but he tried to cover it with a cough. 

She knows. he thought in agitation. Or she suspects at the very least. He had thought himself to be more vague than he had wound up being, but if she suspected, perhaps there was something of Siberia in there after all. Even so, he wasn't sure how to go about remembering the tattoos. She had gone back for multiple sessions to get them all done and it all sort of blurred together for him. Especially when he had spent the week after she had been declared dead torturing his imagination with the image of her colorful skin shriveling up under the rubble left behind by the disaster. Cursing the peacekeepers that convinced him to give up the search, and himself for letting them, he wondered how long she had been in one of the hospitals marked as a Jane Doe. Wondering how long she had been unconscious, and despairing at the time that had been lost.

Silence reigned for a handful of minutes as he wracked his brain for what she had. Weapons. Animals. Words. It was an abstract painting in his head that defied description. Think damn you!. Think!"She...forgive me. It's been so long since..."His head fell into his hands, covered by the bouquet and hiding his eyes."There was a...sword. A phrase in a dead language. Another that spoke of a crusader's heart." With every fiber of his being he wished he could remember more, but the pleasant memories had taken a back seat in his psyche with all of the things he had to deal with, even the more recent ones, like the day he had taken up painting again and felt free from the grief of losing his twins had fallen by the way side with one daughter in the hospital and two that had run away. Grip tightening on the flowers stems he let out a sigh and tried again to sieve through his thoughts for anything that might bring the girl on the bench next to him home.

He heard the sleeves being rolled up, but couldn't bring himself to look at her. It had to be her. It had to. If the tattoos were something different he didn't want to see; if they were different he wanted this specter to leave him on the bench in solitude. But he knew it was her. A father could not forget his child. Even if he had given up on her ever coming back. But then her voice cut through the fog of disappointment and letdowns that had held his head in its clammy embrace. "Now and always have the blessing of the father,""...and remain blameless until the end."he joined in as she trailed off, leaving the bench wreathed in unspoken words, a heavy yet soft quiet that settled itself around them.  Slowly, excruciatingly, he lifted himself up and turned his head, the flowers sliding out of his hand and tapping lightly on the ground.

His eyes darted to the words etched on her arms, to the moisture gathering in her tear ducts. A tidal wave of emotion swept over him as his mouth struggled to say something. Anything. "Siberia?"  he whispered to the dead girl, now alive again, now alive for him. There was a tightness in his chest that for once was born of joy instead of pain."Siberia!" he said with enough force to crack the ground in twain again, wrapping her in his arms while telling himself that he would never let go again, no longer caring if his actions frightened her, if they were wrong then he had no desire to be right. The tears started then, droplets of a cleansing rain that ran down his cheeks in rivulets. "Siberia..."he muttered into her hair as he kissed the top of her forehead."Siberia its me. Your father? Do you remember? Do you see?"