Alessa slowly unfurled from her ball and lay down next to Tony, pillowing her head on her hands and staring at him.

"I'd like to think so. I don't know. I don't even know if I was what she wanted. I never met my dad." The room was warm, but not unpleasantly so. The sort of warm that came with sunlight on one's back. "I don't know if he left because he didn't want me, or Mommy killed him, or if he was a demon or a person... I like to think that she didn't mean to have me, though. Then maybe they liked each other and it wasn't always about power."

She hoped that somewhere, at some point, her mother loved someone else. That would mean she was capable of loving Alessa, too.

Alessa had never really felt loved by any of he adults in her life before.

"Tony..." She averted her eyes, looking towards the red spots that might be strawberries on the canopy. Too pretty for her. "Why do you want me?"

He didn't have to keep her. He could adopt a child without her baggage and capacity to hurt. He could have all the benefits of of children with none of hardship that would come with living with her. Why, then?