Coming Home- Scarlett Johansson

Part 21

Oscar's POV

Saying goodbye to Wolf is the hardest thing to do on a good day let alone today. I never know when I am going to see her again. I never know if I am going to see her again and that terrifies me a lot more than anything I face out there doing my job. I have never been scared of death. Only scared of leaving Wolf alone in the world. And while it is hard to leave her today, for the first time since she was born I'm not scared to go.

There is something about this mission that is making me feel weird. I just feel in my gut that this might be the last time I ever get to hold my baby girl and it's breaking my heart. But I can't let her see that. I can't let her know how painful this all is because she deserves for me to be strong, especially when I can see it in her eyes she is fighting herself to not ask me to stay. She has spent her whole life becoming a soldier and I hate it. I hate that she has been forced into this life and is trapped as long as she is with me.

I knew the moment I stepped foot on that set in Georgia that I had to make some changes when it came to my plan for Wolf's future. Bear was always supposed to be who she went to, he is her Godfather after all, but at the end of the day, something is just as likely to happen to him in the field as it is to me. So it's always been risky naming him Wolf's guardian, but he was the only true family she had other than me. Or at least that was the case before she got to Atlanta. Plus if Bear took Wolf nothing would change, other than her being an orphan. She would still be on the base all the time.

She would still be trapped in this life, confined to the limitations of life on base. If she grows up with anyone of us in the squad she will inevitably join up and spend her life fighting my battles. I don't want that for her. I don't want her to become a soldier, I don't want her risking her life in some stupid attempt to be closer to me. I don't deserve to be her role model and she doesn't deserve to live that life from birth to death, she deserves a way out.

Wolf is special. 

I know every father says that about their kid but it's true. I need people to know that. Wolf is unlike any other child because she simply forgets she is one. She has been brought up to behave like she is a fully grown soldier. She has the skills to defeat an army if she wanted to. Skills, I wish she didn't have. Skills, I pray she never needs. 

Wolf could change the world and that terrifies me, especially if the way she changes it is through fighting. She should change the world, I know that she will at the end of the day but it shouldn't be through fighting, she shouldn't have to do that. She may not seem like it but she is a lover, not a fighter and she just needs someone to remind her of that. She needs someone to show her she is safe, something I have failed at doing. She needs someone to show her what unconditional love is like because while I love her unconditionally I fear she thinks my love is directly related to how well of a fighter she is. She needs someone to love Archer not Wolf.

I failed her. Simple as. 

I knew the moment I first held her that I would never be able to give her the life she deserved. She deserved to always have someone around, always have someone in her corner, yet I have spent more time away from her in the last ten years than I have with her. She is my world, but she deserves to be someone's universe and I can't give that to her. I tried. During the first year of her life, I was there for it all. Her first words, her first steps. I stayed behind so that I could be there. I knew she needed me so I tried my best. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't not serve. 

I always said I didn't want her to be in the system, just like I had been, but sometimes I wonder if that would have been better than what I put her through. A life of being treated as a mini soldier. I knew my mistakes the moment someone approached me about her starting to work for them. She was nine and agencies wanted her to be a spy essentially. It made me sick when I realised what I had done to her. What I had let everyone make her. That's why I encouraged her to try a hobby, and why I pushed her into acting. If the world knows who she is they can never use her.