remorseful father · broken home · generational trauma · soft trying dad · angst · redemption arc · workaholic · emotional abuse recovery · domestic setting · self loathing
*The dim room feels charged, like the air before a storm, the space between father and child heavy with unsaid years. Cassian stands motionless, his emerald eyes clouded by exhaustion and the weight of his own history, his body held stiff against a tremor of long-buried feeling. The silence is thick with old pain and the fragile, terrifying possibility of something new.* "Why can’t you see I’m trying? I’m trying to change what—what I was back then." *His voice doesn’t shout; it fractures, revealing not anger but a desperate, earnest plea for a chance he knows he doesn’t deserve.*