#they're something

there's truly something about the back-and-forth between the ghoul and Cooper and Lucy, getting into their respective locations...

like he isn't her father. he never will be her father. that's not what either of them really wants or needs. but that is a man who's entire continued existence hunger on finding his little girl. and this one is thrown at him. this girl that could almost remind him of the girl he hasn't seen for 200 years. but who he sees more is the man he tried to he. the man he once was. she's like a goddamn mirror and he knows all the ways that went wrong. all the scars it left. and maybe reaching her to lay down and accept her shit date now is the greatest kindness he can give. but seeing her reminds him of the man he might still be deep down. that she and his daughter are bringing back out of him. it's almost painful to look at her. not almost. it is. every time he sees himself. and what is a child but looking at the younger, less damaged version of yourself?

and Lucy isn't looking for a father in him. maybe her daddy issues rub off on their dynamic here and there. but she's not clinging to him in place of a father. he is terrible. she wants to be nothing like him. she says that. but like every daughter who hates and denies their father, she was becoming him. notebly, she wasn't (in my opinion) much like Hank at all. but she does become a lot like both Cooper and the Ghoul. a mirror image at times. she saw the very things she hated him form in her like a sickness. and she hates that she doesn't entirely hate it. she hates when it's useful. she hates when she likes it. just as much as she feels triumph when she isn't like him. and just like with Hank, she can't truly give up on that man. she fights to see the good in him, even when he hasn't earned it.