Price, early in his career, rescuing a girl who goes on to develop a pseudo-electra complex with him. or even gets adopted by him (and the then Mrs Price), and grows up through the evolution of knowing this man isn't her dad, but also is, and despite that weird, blurred line, she wants him anyway.
and Price grappling with the same nebulous shift from protector, provider, stand-in father figure, actual father (for all intents and purposes), to idealised lover—going numb with the shock that this person they raised wants him. this idea of a complete family fracturing as he realises that the lines of parental affection are being twisted and smeared; from agape and storge to eros. dad—fond, exasperated, drenched in anger; to dad—wanting and needy. desperate. carved with yearning for something he can't begin to understand.
(for something he understands too much.)
the guilt, eating him alive, as he wonders if he did it on purpose; questioning where in, the entire symbiosis of your relationship, did he go wrong. did he hold you too much? not enough? what part—from childhood innocence, hand-drawn father's day cards, to bratty teenager rolling her eyes at him, calling him lame; to the slow coalescence of an almost adult taking shape in his eyes—did it start? or were you both doomed from the beginning.
but the problem is: he's been wrapped around your finger from the moment he saw you in the middle of carnage. ensnared. and so when you crawl into his lap with a little "c'mon, daddy, please" that guts him in the worst (and best) way, he knows, however awful it is, that he's not going to push you away even though he should.
(and the guilt, then, when he realises that the choice comes as quickly as his next breath. and that he's been wanting, hungry for something he didn't understand until now from the start.)
