PREVIOUSLY

She opened her eyes and ran to her room. As if in a whirlwind, she threw whatever she could get her hands on into a bag as fast as she could. Then she turned on her heel and bolted for the door. She stopped for a second at the entrance to Starr's room and slowly wandered in. She smiled with affection at the big white bunny that Starr had tucked into the bed before she left for the day. She picked him up and gazed into his soulful rabbit eyes, knowing he held all of Starr's secrets in there. They were so sympathetic….

"Oh God, help me get my family back." She sank to the bed and sobbed into his soft white fur for all that was lost and all that was still out there to find.

I am worthless sounds compared to all your perfect words

~Jann Arden

Todd looked down at Starr, who was clinging to his hand so tightly that he was beginning to lose feeling in several of his fingers. He was not used to anyone holding his hand like that, but since it was Starr, it was okay. Starr…and Delgado. He was brought back to a time when he held on to Tea like that, a night when his demons were so powerful that he alone did not have the strength to drive them away. The connection of his hand with hers let him draw the strength he needed from her…from them…and he had slept that night, more than he had slept in a decade.
He squeezed Starr's hand lightly as he wondered what demons were plaguing her. He wouldn't let anything haunt his daughter's soul, her life, or her dreams. He promised her that the first time he ever held her in his arms. Now, she walked so close beside him through the park, he had to be careful not to step on her.
"Hey Shorty, look, the Monkey Bars. Want to go ape? I know you can't pass them up without climbing like a gorilla."
"Gorillas don't climb Daddy," she said solemnly.
"Sure they do…how else do you think they reach the bananas on the top branch?" He smiled down at her, but she continued to look weary and unconvinced.

"Whatever," she said softly, causing him to stop in his tracks.
Starr felt a change come over her father. She wondered why it would bother him to copy something she heard him say all the time. Whatever she had done, she didn't want to make Daddy unhappy, so she did some frantic six year old backpedaling. Like father, like daughter. Just what Todd feared most.
"If it's okay daddy, I'll skip the bars today. Mommy doesn't like me to hang upside down anyway. She always says it gives her goose bumbles to see me like that."
Todd made a face. Sometimes, Blair could be no fun at all.
"It's okay, Starr, Mommy isn't here now."
"I know," she said sadly. "Hardly any Mommy and no Tee at all. Mom's do a lot of disappearing, huh?"
Realizing the source of her pain, Todd felt as though he had been stabbed through the heart. He had always been so sure that when all was said and done, he could serve as Father and Mother, all rolled into one, and Starr would not be missing a thing. Tea tried to tell him once that it didn't work that way. Okay, he thought, more than once. When she thought she was right, which was always, she could be very persistent. Why did he bother to fight with her anyway? The lawyer in her could make a case for anything. Trying to fight Tea…it was like a losing battle before it even began. She just had that special something…he could never turn away, whether it was from her eyes, her words, her laugh, her smile…Now, they were fighting the biggest battle of all, and it killed him to think that his daughter could be the biggest loss of all.
He rubbed his temple trying to dull the pain there, and he struggled to find the words to tell his daughter that everything would be okay. He would make it okay.
"Hey, look Starr! The statue of the horse. Wanna go see it?"
"It's not a horse," she whispered softly. "It's a unicorn who lost his horn because people lost faith in his magic. So each time we go by him we have to touch him and make a wish, so that he knows we believe again. That's what Tee told me anyway. She said that each time I petted the unicorn, I would get good luck, and dreams and stuff would get a little stronger and come true again." She paused and looked up at him with those big somber eyes of hers, and then she turned away, muttering in a low voice.
"Tee makes lots of promises and tells lots of stories. That's all they are though--stories--big fat lies even."
"Shorty, hey kid, come here a second." He led her to a bench and after a second of sizing him up, she sat down beside him. "Listen, sometimes grown-ups…or big people like me…we mess up big time. And the kids we love, they get stuck in the middle, kind of like that crème stuff in the center of the Oreo…"
Starr interrupted him with a quizzical look.
"Okay, forget the Oreo part," he said, shrugging his shoulders in answer to her silent look of 'what's with the oreo?'. He regrouped and tried again. "Here we go. Okay. You know how you've got those little necklace doodad things that you put on a string…"
"They are beads, Daddy," she interrupted with an air of six year old importance.
"Yeah, okay, whatever, beads then…Anyway, when you put some of them together, they fit, but then sometimes the red one is too pretty to be with the lime green one, so you take the red one off, even though the red one fit really cool with the purple one…" Starr seemed to be concentrating very hard, and he was congratulating himself on his cool analogy. She seemed to get what he was trying to explain.
"No, I wouldn't do that. I think that red and lime green are real pretty together…"
Todd put his head in his hands in mock exasperation which wasn't even so "mock", and looked up when he heard Starr start to giggle.
"That's why daddies don't play with beads. You don't know which ones fit together perfectly. Actually, all of em could fit together, but sometimes there's two that you just can't separate because once you've seen them on a necklace together, there is no other place for them." Now it was Todd's turn to have no idea what she was talking about.
"Starr…Shorty…forget the beads, okay? I'll leave the beads to you."
"What about the Oreo?" Starr asked, genuinely confused.
"Forget the Oreo and the beads, kid. Words don't work for me that good, but what I mean is that I love you, and that will never change. Your Mom, much as I…yeah, well…she loves you. And Tea…Starr, Tea loves you very much. None of this is about you."
He noticed she was avoiding his eyes deliberately, but he thought she must be considering it.
"Can I go play on the swings by myself for a couple of minutes?"
"Yeah, but don't disappear on me, okay?" His voice rang with pain that he couldn't cover. "Don't you disappear on me," he repeated again, softly.

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Starr walked over to the swings with her hands clenched into such tight little fists that her nails were nearly cutting her palms.
Tee loves me. What a crock!
She had heard daddy say that sometimes, and it sounded funny. Still, she didn't feel much like laughing now. How could anything ever be funny again with Daddy being so sad all the time. Tee made him sad. He loved her, and now she was gone. That's all she knew, and it made her mad.
She was so mad, she stomped up to her favorites swing and scowled at the occupant, who ran off in search of his mother to tell on the little girl with the nasty look on her face.
"Darn it anyway," she griped out loud. She forgot that either the swing was too high or she was too low to the ground. Tee usually gave her a boost. She never mentioned it, or made fun or anything. She had always been really careful about feelings like that.
"I don't know what made her change now. But she hurt Daddy, and I don't need her anymore. Not for anything."
With a look of determination, she grabbed the chains of the swing, one in each hand, and used all of her strength to pull herself up. She started to smile…she could do it on her own. She was a big girl, and she didn't need anybody. Especially not Tee. Twisting herself on to the seat, she suddenly lost her grip and let out a small cry as she fell hard to the ground. Pain coursed through her small body as she bit her lip and tried not to cry. She was about to call out for her dad, when two comforting arms encircled her in a protective hug. She knew that hug well. It was the same hug that held her tight when she fell off her bike, when she failed her spelling test, and when the bad things scared her at night and Daddy wasn't there. Starr looked up into the concerned face of Tea, who was trying hard to mask the fear and the pain in her eyes that she felt whenever Starr hurt herself.
"It's okay, sweetheart, I'm here. Everything is going to be okay." She gently swept the hair back from Starr's tearstained face, full of the overwhelming depth of maternal love that was something she thought she would never know in her life. She felt as if she had received a physical blow as Starr's eyes grew cold…in a frighteningly familiar way, and her stepdaughter shrank from her hug.
"Starr? What is it?"
"YOU are not my Mommy. You aren't anything. Leave me alone. Go like you always go…"
Tea's heart twisted painfully inside her as she was transported back to the past. She took a step backwards, at a loss, and she bumped into someone who reached out and held her with strong hands to steady her. Tea looked up into Todd's face, filled with concern for his daughter, and the woman he loved.

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* Todd had heard Starr cry out, and he had come running as fast as he could. As he approached, he had been stopped in his tracks by the sight of Tea, cradling his daughter protectively in her arms.
His first impulse had been to wrap them both in his arms…his family…and he wuld have been content to stay like that forever. And then, he remembered. He could protect them from the world, but who would protect them from him, what he was and what he could become?
He had watched Tea stiffen visibly, and then rise as if in slow motion as the pain of Starr's words ripped through her. When he held her arms to steady her, he didn't want to let her go. The second she turned to face him, he was lost in her eyes. It was all written there, all that she was, everything that touched her and everything that broke her heart. Now he saw a war waging there as a slew of emotions battled each other, the past clashing with the present.
"I was just…ah…Starr, she fell, and I thought she might be hurt…" She couldn't seem to focus her words and her thoughts under the intensity of his gaze and with all that was going on inside her. If he didn't love her, why did she see so much behind his eyes? "I think she'll be okay.
Especially….well…since you are here now and all. I'll go…I didn't know that you were here." She moved to leave, and he stopped her with a tentative hand on her shoulder.
"No, wait…if you want, I mean…just hang out for a second…whatever." He turned his attention to Starr. "Shorty, you okay?" He picked her up gently in his arms, and she hid her face in his shoulder.
"Daddy, I want to go home." Tea reached out to stroke her back, and she started to cry. "Daddy, let's go HOME NOW!"
"Starr, I just wanted to help, honey. I wanted a chance to talk to you, too. I miss my favorite girl, you know?" She tried again, more tentatively.
"I'm not yours, and I want to go home!!!"
"Starr…" Todd started in. He was uncomfortable letting Tea take the blame, when it wasn't hers to begin with, in his daughter's eyes. He knew Starr's hurt and anger would likely turn on him, but he had to tell her how things were. It was time to tell her that it was he who kept destroying her family…first Blair…now Tea. He wanted to tell her that in a perfect world, his perfect world, he could love her and Tea as he wanted to, completely and without reservation, and that he could live the rest of his life with Tea by his side and his daughter growing up as a witness to and part of that love, with the guarantee that he could always love them as they deserved to be. He couldn't watch Tea break in two like that. Until now, he had kept Starr from having any doubts about who her father really was…and he'd kept her safe from what he could be. But at Tea's expense? No…he couldn't go on pretending. He would have to tell Starr that he had sent Tea away, because that was just the kind of person he was.
To confirm his opinion of himself, his father's words from long ago rang in his ears.
"You are nothing but a loser and a screw-up. You are pathetic, and nothing will ever change that. You destroy everything you touch, and you are your own special brand of evil. One day you will look in the mirror and see someone who will make me proud, because you will be just like your old man." He figured the time had come to admit to Starr that he had spent his lifetime proving his father right, and that he had to send Tea away, just like one day, he feared he'd have to send her away too, to protect her from himself. He didn't know how to tell that to a child…how to reveal horrors that he never wanted her to know. Not just any child…his daughter, who he loved with such a strength it hurt.
Not Starr…I'll never hurt Starr. And not Tea either. I'm cursed, but it doesn't have to touch them. It WILL NEVER touch them!
"Starr, look, you need to know that Tea…"
Tea put her hand lightly on his arm, to stop him, and closed her eyes against the connection she felt whenever they came in contact, even in the most innocent manner. She continued for him. She knew what he had planned to do, and she couldn't let him.
"I messed up, Starr. I always said, 'not with you', that I would never follow a path set for me by someone else. But…but I did. Plain and simple.
And I know how that hurts, and I am so sorry…and you have to know that I love you…"
"No you don't! You don't know how it feels, and you don't know anything, Tea." She pronounced her name very carefully, very deliberately, taking away the pet name she had for her since she was much younger.
Until the moment, Tea never realized how much she loved that special version of her name. It was as special to her as 'Delgado' had become.
She glanced down at her watch, in an attempt to hide the tears that threatened. Todd knew that avoidance tactic.
"I …ah…have to go. My lunch break is almost up…"
Todd knew that avoidance tactic. He just stood by awkwardly. He wanted to tell her not to go. He wanted all of their demons, those they held apart and those they had made their own, to just return to Hell so that they could finally be all that they wanted to be to each other. He wished that there was a way to heal. He didn't know how to say any of that. Instead, he did the best he could do.
"Do you need a ride…somewhere…or anything? Will you be…you know…good getting home?" he wanted to know where she was staying, but didn't want to come out and ask.
One word hung in the air…Home. She didn't trust her voice, so she just nodded, staring hard at the ground, in an attempt to collect herself, Delgado-style.
"Carlotta…she'll be looking for me…I can walk…" She started to walk away slowly.
Though he had to fight every instinct in his body, he could only stand there, and watch her leave.
She felt his eyes on her, as she retreated.
Head up, shoulders back, you can do it.
Both could only wonder if they would spend the rest of their lives feeling so alone, so lost…missing a part of themselves, giving up all that could be because of all that they feared.

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Jann Arden's "Demolition Love"

Can you see my heart beating in my mouth
Thank God the bones will keep it beating there inside
And you won't have to see
This latest casualty
And you can get yourself away from all my Demolition Love
Can you hear my laugh?
Dazed and scared to death?
Thank God my thoughts aren't drifting through the air
Cause you would catch me there
Bound so tightly to your knees
The dirt beneath your feet is all I need to be completely mad
Can you picture me
Here in Calvary?
Thank God the voices screaming in my head
Would sooner wish instead than face the bitterness of loss
I can take it now I know myself in Demolition Love
Can you see my heart?
To Be Continued...