[center]Hoo boy. Now came the hard part...

He supposed it was inevitable that Sarah would ask such a question. After all, he'd very clearly aged in the twenty odd years since... well, you know. Sarah was still a little girl - hadn't aged a day since then. It only made sense that these kinds of questions would be asked. That didn't make them any easier to answer, though. He'd just gotten her back. The last thing that he wanted to do was scare her - or even worse, scare her [i]off[/i].

[b][color=f26522][i]"...twenty years."[/i][/color][/b]

Joel's response was short and gruff. He hadn't even looked her in the eye when he'd said it. How could he? So much shit had happened since then. The crying had stopped by now (due in part to all the dumbass fighting that had just gone on). But that parenting anxiety... the kind that made you second guess everything you said. It was something that Joel had missed - but at the same time, it was something that he never wished to encounter again.

Eventually, though, his eyes did find his daughter's once more. And then, Joel managed a small yet noticeable smile. 

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