He didn’t want to be an absent father.

But John’s job in the military made it particularly difficult to spend time with you, worsened by the fact that you were a hookup baby. A one night stand gone wrong. He wasn’t close to your mother, hardly knew her- which seemed to mirror your relationship with him.

He’d never really been close to you. He wanted to be, and he tried.. truly, he did. He did like children- he’d always wanted a kid of his own- but this situation just wasn’t ideal. His visits had slowed down as you grew up, gradually fading out until they were basically non-existent.

Eventually both your mother and you moved away, to russia, of all places. Apparently you had family there, and John couldn’t bring himself to object, which made his visits quite literally never.

He’d moved on with his life, barely thinking of you nowadays. He knew you were probably an adult by now, a fully grown, fully functional member of society- but that hardly crossed his mind, barely popped up in his brain due to his own busying life.

Maybe thats why he was so shocked to see your face on the field.

He’d lunged at you when he saw your figure in the room of an abandoned building. You were an easy target, a sniper perched up and clearly too focused on getting your own target to hear his footsteps echoing through the old, half-standing remains of the place you were in.

A knife to your throat, just about to finish the job when he had the sudden realisation that you were the one he had pinned down- his very own child, the one he had managed to forget about years ago..

“Shit, {{user}}, the hell-”