La Figlia Del Fantasma

A/N: I couldn't resist. So here's the sequel, I only hope I can catch your interest once again. This title (should) mean: The Ghost's Daughter. I do not own DVC characters I'm simply borrowing them. As you can see Rose is all grown up, about 20 years old now and is setting out on a journey to find a certain Bishop we all love to hate. Possible romance if my research proves fruitful for characters. Along with new chapters I shall be adding the name of a song I was listening to help with inspiration. A soundtrack if you will. For instance this first song is: Feint by Epica

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I never knew my father.

At least not like a daughter should know her father. He hadn't known about me either, that I had even been conceived. My mother said he had found out one night, she didn't know how, just that she had been working on one of her projects, startled out of her concentration by a floorboard squeak. She had nearly stabbed him, thinking he was a robber.

I was four.

She told me how perceptive I had been, that even though I had never met the man before, I recognized him as my father. Some toddler sixth sense had allowed me to know who he was before anyone had told me.

Flashes of memory come back to me, when I really think about that time, so long ago. I see pale skin, hair whiter than snow but not from age, he and my mother holding one another for a moment. I think I remember his eyes the most, I say I think because I could look in a mirror and the eyes I remember stare back at me.

My mother says I look more like him. I'm inclined to agree. My mother has the look of the traditional Irish lass. Red hair, green eyes, freckles covering her skin like a blanket of constellations. If we were to stand next to one another, I doubt very many people would say we were related.

I don't suffer from Albinism as my father apparently did but I do have many traits similar to his. My hair is a very light gold blonde. It's hard to tell some days if it's gold, or if it's white like my father's was said to be. My skin is pale, much paler than my mother's and when I attempt to absorb sun to gain more color, I simply turn red and feel as though I've been cooked through. The only feature I've inherited from my mother are her freckles, even though they don't look like they belong on my face. I'm too pale. My eyes are the same color as my father's, even without a picture I know, having seen them in my mind's eye for years.

The closest thing I have to a photograph is a sketch my mother drew before I was born. According to her it was the catalyst for my parents ever knowing one another. It hangs in the hall of the apartment we've lived in for, God only knows how long. I remember sitting in that hallway, staring up at it and memorizing every detail. He had a long pointed face, everything ending in sharp lines and angles with him. I saw that in myself, feeling more and more as though a piece of my father hadn't died and was surviving in me.

I was truly my father's daughter.

That sketch had comforted me often, when I was scared, angry, orsad and my mother wasn't home to comfort me, I would sit in the hall and stare, pretending he would come to life. That his charcoal likeness would dissolve from the paper and he would become flesh and blood, standing in front of me, looking to gather me up in his arms and tell me he was there to be my father.

He never did.

I had been aware since I was little that my father had died. My mother said he had left this world fighting for something he had believed in. I asked her once if she had believed in it and she had shaken her head no. According to her, she and my father had looked at faith quite differently, something neither could come to terms with when my father had died.

I could remember that too.

I had woken up that morning, finding myself perturbed by yet another foul dream about angels insisting my strange looks would keep me from heaven. My mother hadn't been there to comfort me so I left in search of her. I had started to walk down the steps hunting her down, when I had heard her crying. I stopped in the middle of the staircase and peered around the railing to see my mother sitting in the hallway, arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the sketch I myself would find solace in. A glass had broken next to her, the contents long since dried.

At the time, I hadn't known that my father had just died but my four-year-old heart was afraid that my mother was going to die as she stared at that sketch. Her breathing was shallow, as though she had forgotten how to do such a simple task. Her skin had gone paler than my own, her freckles popping against her skin, mocking smudges of color. Her green eyes were dull from crying.

I had never been more afraid for my mother than I had been then.

I prayed every night until I was seventeen for my father to come back. I wanted to know who he had been and more than anything I wanted my mother happy. It took me a very long time to realize that not all prayers are answered, because my father never came and my mother became miserable whenever she thought of him.

I myself was a constant reminder of this man named Silas, the man who had fathered me. She had tried to tell me once, what had been so important to him that he would leave his family behind and risk his life but even she didn't know. All she could explain was that my father had been a steadfast follower of a Catholic Bishop, a man who had allowed his own zealotry to control my father, to let him die. I came to hate this man as I journeyed through my own life without the guidance of a father and felt the pangs of jealousy as I watched other daughters, complete with their father's supporting them in all of their endeavors.

I suppose I should tell you, that my name is Rose Conway and I am going to kill the man who led my father to his death.