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Jonathan doesn’t think much of it when he grabs Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day off the Blockbuster shelf. It’s A.A. Milne and Disney; surely, there’s nothing to worry about. Right?
Wrong.
Pooh is trapped in a terrifying funhouse of his worst nightmares and his three-year-old daughter shrinks into herself, though she can’t tear her eyes away from the screen.
He gently asks if she’d like him to turn it off.
“No,” she says, even as she’s choking the life out of her Kermit doll.
(And is she a carbon copy of her mother or what?)
“Let me know, okay?” he presses. He can’t help it.
Though — he doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
This is the same child who, when they took her to a live taping of Sesame Street on her second birthday, teetered right up to Oscar the Grouch, unperturbed by his grumbling.
(Then again, this is also the same child who hides behind his legs whenever anyone tries to say hi at the supermarket, so. Maybe it’s all relative.)
All he knows is that he just scarred his only child for life.
“You did not,” Nancy assures him that evening as she takes off her makeup. Jonathan sits on their bed, his right leg bouncing restlessly.
“Why didn’t I check the tape? I usually check the tape.”
“Jonathan.” Nancy comes to stand between his legs, placing a hand on his knee to stop the bouncing. “It’s Winnie the Pooh.”
He sighs. “You didn’t see her, Nance. It really bothered her.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Well, I can’t exactly tell her there’s no such thing as monsters, can I?”
As if on cue, a little shout of “Daddy!” carries down the hall. Jonathan buries his face in Nancy’s shoulder.
“C’mon.” She takes his hand and pulls him up from the bed. “We’re going monster hunting.”
…
Emmy eyes them expectantly as they enter her bedroom. Kermit the Frog stands sentry at her side, staring up at Jonathan as if to say how could you?
He winces, wilting under the scrutiny.
“Em? What’s wrong?” he asks, though he already knows the answer.
“Can I stay up?”
“Stay up? Why?”
“‘Cause Pooh fell ‘sleep and the heff’lumps and woozles came. And- and if I stay up, they won’t come.”
He thinks his heart might break.
“Don’t worry, baby. No heffalump or woozle stands a chance against us,” Nancy chimes in, threading her fingers through his.
God, he loves her so much.
“You know,” she continues, the ghost of a smile on her lips, “Daddy and I are the best monster hunters around.”
Emmy’s brows scrunch. “Daddy?”
“That’s right, Em,” Jonathan affirms, his throat still tight.
Their daughter blinks, then shakes her head. “No. Not Daddy.”
She says it with such conviction, such finality, that it throws him for a loop. Nancy doubles over in laughter.
Jonathan crouches down beside her. “Why not Daddy?” he teases, smoothing the flyaways from her forehead.
“‘Cause you’re too nice.”
Maybe if he were a different man — his father, he thinks grimly — this would offend him: a husband and father too soft to protect his own family. But he’s not that man, never has been, and never wants to be, because his little girl has no doubt in her mind that he loves her. That he will never be anything but kind, and gentle, and patient with her.
Jonathan can’t imagine being held in higher regard.
Nancy’s laughter has since subsided; she smiles down at him instead, fingers caressing the nape of his neck. Her delicate touch, coupled with his daughter’s simple words, warms him from the inside out.
“Well, buttercup,” Nancy says, dropping to her knees to join him on the floor. “That's just what the monsters fear the most.”
“Really?” Emmy asks, voice small.
“Really.” Nancy taps her chin. “Did you know that Daddy saved me from a monster?”
Emmy is wide-eyed. She looks to Jonathan for confirmation.
He nods, still stroking her forehead softly with the pad of his thumb. “I did.”
“Was it scary?” Emmy whispers, reaching out to touch Jonathan’s cheek. The gesture is so much like Will — you’re worried about my hand? — that his chest constricts.
“It was,” he whispers back. “But you don’t have to be scared, okay? Because Mommy and I will always protect you, no matter what.”
Emmy nods. “I know, Daddy.”
This kid. His kid. How did he ever get so lucky?
Her little face sets in determination — and that’s her mother, right there, the jut of her chin and the steel in her eyes — before settling back into bed. “Okay. I’m ready.”
They tuck her in, and kiss her goodnight, and leave her door cracked in case she needs to call for them.
Back in their bedroom, Nancy grabs his face and kisses him soundly, and he knows she’s thinking of the same thing — of that night on his mother’s couch, bandages wrapped around fresh wounds, the smell of gasoline and gunpowder and the slightest hint of vanilla from the girl across from him, the strongest person he’s ever known. The bond they forged in the dark, in the unknown, in the otherworldly; resolute in the knowledge that whatever happened, they’d fight it together.
The after. The before. The in-between.
And now — now, there is a little girl with her tenacity and his steadfast loyalty, quiet yet impossibly brave, who became his world the day she entered theirs.
And it’s good.
“You think we need the bat?” he jokes, feeling lighter.
Nancy smirks, swaying in his arms. “I think I can take ‘em.”
“No contest,” he agrees, kissing the corner of her mouth. She laughs, clear and bright.
Yeah. It’s very good.