Hi, can I please request a ficlet, reader is Henry Creel's child, they know their dad has powers but they don't know he's a villain. Henry cares about them but feels like his mission is too important to stop it "just for them" and instead does his best to pretend being a completely normal father.
A/N: Last post from the Stranger Things marathon, returning to my normal ST priority posting tomorrow! (ST fics every other day until the priority line runs out)
Also a reminder: fics where reader is canon character's relative, reader is always adopted in my newer fics! (Post-2022) It isn't usually explicitly stated, but in this I did state it.
PERFECT WORLD
When Henry was a teenager, he didn’t believe he could love someone ever again. Ever since touching that cursed stone, he had changed so much and did things he didn’t know he’d be able to do. Torturing animals, bullying his family, tormenting the neighbourhood — only doing things for his own entertainment or benefit, he was no longer able to care about anyone else.
But then, you came along.
Born from a nurse who Henry had liked to flirt with to get some advantages when he was just known as One, whose father was a deadbeat, probably drunk in a gutter on this very moment too. And when your mother died, Henry took you in and raised you as his own.
He still didn’t really know what exactly prompted him to take you from that crib, and especially why did you stop crying after seeing him. He’d think a stranger taking you into his arms would just make you cry harder, but instead you just cocked your head at him, before you smiled and reached up towards his face.
You didn’t remember any of it, of course. You believed what your father told you without a question, that he had adopted you from an agency. You had pretty much a dream life, every toy you could dream about would appear at your door whenever your father would be away. He spoiled you rotten, but you weren’t some entitled brat.
In this world, you grew fast. Faster than a normal child would, because Henry could make time pass differently here. Where in real world you were asleep and still a toddler, here you were already knocking your teenage years.
And Henry was a perfect father, working hard to keep you happy, fed and warm. You never questioned why the weather was always perfect, sun never burned too hot, rain never poured too heavy, thunder was never heavy enough to scare you. Not that you knew any better of course, but life was perfect in the little bubble you lived in.
You knew your father had powers, but he had always used them to do good. He had spun you a story that when he left the house, he was called to work, to help those in need. You asked to go with him sometimes, but he always avoided the question.
“Maybe some day,” he’d just say, and steer clear from the topic, asking about your day instead. The days had melted together for you, the perfect string that wouldn’t break.
At night, when he peeked into your room and saw you sleeping before leaving for “work” again, he watched your chest rise and fall, your brains working in perfect dreams he had spun for you — and he told himself he did it all for you. He couldn’t stop fixing the world from humans that had broken it, even when you were born from the exact kind of humans he sought to destroy.
You were the only pure thing in this world, but even you weren’t enough to make him stop, retreat, leave humans alone and just disappear into the perfect life with you, and eternally live in this house, happy. He had worked too hard to achieve the world he had promised Mind Flayer to achieve, but until then… he would enjoy these moments with you, and just wish you wouldn’t hate him too much when you would get old enough to realise the veil of lies Henry had constructed around this perfect bubble of a world.
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