Archive of Our Own

“Truth is I love you,
More than I wanted to.
There’s no point in trying to pretend.
There’s been no one who makes me feel like you do,
Say we’ll be together till the end.”
- Genesis, “That’s All” (1983)

Damian sits by the edge of the sofa, watching Pops and Mom F sway with one another to the tune blaring from the family record player by the wall. They’d started about ten minutes ago and the entire time the Forgers had been in the middle of the living room, transformed into an impromptu dance floor, and he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off them. Pops, ever the consummate professional, does his best to guide Mom F as they sway, but, as Damian notices, he occasionally winces as she steps on a toe. It could charitably be called a waltz, but not one that would’ve ever pleased the upper crust circles that Pops had managed to climb his way into.

Yet even with the occasional bout of pain, it’s as if the rest of the crowd packed into the tiny apartment don’t even exist. The older man rests his head against his lover’s, murmuring something that Damian can’t hear, and she sighs into his chest as Pops envelopes her. Even though Anya’s parents wouldn’t scold him, or anyone else, glancing their way it still makes him feel like a voyeur. The two of them could effortlessly make anything seem intimate, no matter how small the act was. Damian brings his glass of wine to his lips, gulping down the smooth burgundy liquid within, as he looks away.

“Pretty cute together, aren’t they?” Blackbell says as she plops down onto the cushion next to him. He nearly swears as the alcohol in his glass threatens to fall onto the polished wooden floor beneath their feet from the sudden movement but restrains himself, opting to shoot her a glare. Just as he knew she would, though, it leaves the young socialite totally unphased, meeting his challenge coolly.

“Keep staring at them like that and everyone else might get the wrong idea though. You’re Anya’s boyfriend, remember? I’m not sure there’s any room for a third wheel.”

“Tch,” he responds, for lack of something cleverer. “I’m just paying respects to the host and hostess, that’s all.”

“Hm…” Blackbell says contemplatively, swishing the white wine in her own glass to and fro. “I think I’d almost believe that if you weren’t sitting there slack jawed before I sat down. If you’re going to ogle, at least be less obvious about it. People might start talking.” Damian doesn’t even bother to hide one of his eyes twitching.

“I hope there was an actual reason for you coming over to ruin my night.”

She leans against the cushion behind her with an elbow, crossing one leg over the other as she turns to face him. Part of him wants to rip the ridiculous, impossibly expensive beret she’s wearing from her head and toss it across the room, but he stops himself. Causing a scene at the Forgers’ residence, especially during Pops’ and Mom F’s big celebration, would be disastrous so he manages to find a sense of inner tranquility – and promptly takes another sip of alcohol in his grasp.

“You were looking a little lonely over here all by yourself and I thought, ‘not even Damian Desmond deserves to spend the holiday alone,’ so I figured I’d come over and bother you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he replies flatly, and gives a shrug that ends much heavier than it began. As soon as the words fall from his lips an awkwardness fills the air. Blackbell suddenly finds the ends of her long, black dress shirt much more interesting and says nothing at first, mouth turned into a frown.

“I didn’t mean it like…”

“It’s fine,” Damian says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it.” Part of him had wished, hoped, that as they grew older, they’d eventually find some way to communicate with each other that didn’t involve fighting but the two of them hadn’t found out how yet. For Anya’s sake, though, he wouldn’t get into a verbal scrap with Blackbell at a party if he could help it either.

The closest thing that can be called a companionable air settles amongst the pair as they turn their mutual attention towards the Forgers once more. Time had been kind to their hosts, even if Pops’ hair had become a bit thinner and more laugh lines had appeared on his face than Damian had ever thought possible. Mom F still looked much the same as when they’d first met albeit a bit heavier due to Pops’ cooking and ebony locks devolving to granite partway down her bangs.

“…Oh my God,” Blackbell suddenly whisper-shouts at him, pointing at them with a giggle. “Do you see what they’re wearing?”

With a frown, he gives them a once over. A simple pair of khaki-colored dress slacks for Pops and a dark red skirt for Mom F made up their bottoms while their tops were warm-looking, woolen garments.

“What difference does it make?”

“They knit sweaters for each other! That’s so cute!”

Despite himself, the corners of Damian’s lips twitch into a half-smile as he realizes she’s right. More than two decades later, they still find ways of surprising him. Luckily, as he quickly checks out of the corner of his eye, Blackbell’s utterly besotted, the hand not holding her wine glass balancing her head on its palm, letting out a long, wistful sigh and doesn’t spot his matching grin.

“I just hope my idiot, whomever he is, and I can be half as romantic someday.”

Damian hopes so too, albeit for entirely different reasons, but keeps the thought to himself.

“Speaking of that…” Blackbell says idly, lowering her glass to trace its rim with a finger. “Have anything special planned tonight? I figured what with Mr. and Mrs. Forger celebrating their wedding, you’d try something too.”

His mouth suddenly goes dry, and he drums his fingers against the brown fabric of his dress pants. He’d been avoiding it; the longer he sat on the couch, by himself, the more time he’d hoped to have to mentally prepare for the gauntlet he was going to be facing down. The claustrophobic nature of Anya’s tiny home certainly wasn’t helping his frayed nerves either.

“Promise me you won’t say anything to Anya.”

Interest piqued, Blackbell raises a finely manicured eyebrow, but nods regardless.

“I mean it. Don’t think about it either.”

That earns him an eyeroll, but he steadies his breath anyway, gulping nervously, and Damian lets the secret he’s been keeping ever since he’d stepped across the doorway escape.

“Tonight, I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

Regret immediately floods through him as he watches Blackbell’s expression change from confusion to scheming. Her glossy pink lips part in a Cheshire smirk.

“Oh, this is going to be so good.”

He doesn't like the sound of that, not at all. Entrusting Blackbell with a secret isn't the hard part; there was little she didn’t know about at Berlint University, after all, and to her credit she understood when to keep her mouth (and in this case, her mind) shut but the fact that Blackbell knew something that he didn’t put him on edge. What was more, he was certain she wouldn’t reveal it to him either. Ironclad promises not to tell went in both directions, after all. Ignoring what she had just said, he downs the last remaining droplets of his drink to give himself the needed liquid courage it provided.

“You’re fine with it, then?”

“I’ve been literally waiting for this moment since Anya punched you halfway across the room when we were six, so I suppose you can say that. It’s a miracle.”

“…Thanks, Becky,” he says after a moment’s hesitation, his voice small. It might be the first time he’s ever used a name for her other than her surname (or worse). Still, the unfamiliar sense of gratitude towards her is strange enough that he isn’t sure how to continue and he takes that as his cue to leave. It’s more bizarre still when Blackbell hops off the couch the moment he does and gives him a hug. Damian isn’t ashamed to admit that he stiffens at the foreign display of affection from her. A moment later, hesitantly, he pats the small of her back.

“Better get going,” she says as she pulls away. “I’m guessing I’m not the only one you want to tell that to tonight. Aside from her, of course.”

Damian flicks his gaze from one side of the room to the other. One of Anya’s uncles leans against the wall by the kitchen, running a hand through his messy brown hair, tie askew, as he cracks some joke to the bespectacled, redhaired aunt that he knows little about, earning the man a polite laugh from her. The Briars are at the kitchen table, the purple-headed wife looking dully at her companion as he in turn glowers at Pops and Mom F, hunched over like a gargoyle guarding a church. Anya is putting far too much eggnog into her cup as she glances around, desperate, he’s positive, to avoid a lecture.

It's going to be a long night, he thinks darkly to himself, watching the snowflakes hit the pane of the balcony window.

He’s halfway to the kitchen when the one person that he wants to avoid stops him.

“Are you okay?” Anya asks from behind her cup, slurping her beverage loudly, emerald eyes boring into his caramel-colored ones. “You’re looking pretty sweaty.”

“I’m fine,” Damian says quickly. Too quickly, he thinks to himself, sighing internally with indignation as he watches his girlfriend’s eyes narrow. She looks even more annoyed than he feels as he pushes away all thoughts of what he’s up to from his mind. He cares for her deeply, but sometimes he wonders what all their attempts at getting her to control her telepathy are for if she’s just going to use it anyway.

“Nah, I’m calling bull. You have the ‘I’ve got important stuff on my mind, Anya, so don’t bother me’ face you put on when you forget you’re s’posed to tell me stuff.”

“Guess I’ve lost my edge. Your terrible poker face must’ve rubbed off on me after all these years.”

Anya rolls her eyes and takes another sip, this time much quieter, as she turns to look out at the festivities; his mouth becomes dry. Without even meaning to she can take his breath away. Like now. The soft glow of the lights makes the sequins of her dark green skirt shimmer and shine and his eyes follow the thin lace of her beige blouse to the ghostly pale skin of her collarbone. How someone so naturally clumsy, so effortlessly airheaded, can still manage to look at times like she stepped off a film set is beyond him, especially when he least expects it. Delicate fingers reach up to give her short bangs a quick once over, running through her coral pink hair, before she casts another, disapproving glare. Damian tries not to focus on how badly he wants to reach out and hold that hand.

“I can go turn off the heater, if that’s what this is about.”

“Twenty degrees is more than enough.”

“Uncle Yuri didn’t scare you, did he? I swear if I’ve gotta go talk to him again…”

“We haven’t even spoken a word to each other since he and your aunt arrived.”

For a few moments, Anya doesn’t speak, like she’s mulling something that she almost doesn’t want to make manifest. She bites her lower lip, cocks her head to the side, and fixes Damian with a pang of sympathy written across her face.

“Is Demetrius not gonna come?”

Suddenly the floorboards seem like they’re the most interesting thing in the world as he focuses on the dark leather of his dress shoes. Truth be told, even if things are much better now than they were in the past, he doesn’t know where they stand with each other. Nothing can remove the fact that they’re strangers. Even the cramped building he’s in now at that very moment is more of a home to him, filled with people who’re more of a family than he’s ever had before. Besides, Damain has long since given up on ever finding any sort of closure either. That kind of thing is a fairy tale, meant for children, and he’s a few years shy of thirty.

“Not much point in getting my hopes up for something that wasn’t going to happen.”

“People can surprise you sometimes, Damian. You did.”

The moisture across his skin that Anya had observed feels all too real now, as his cheeks flush with warmth. Father had always told him that being moved by mere words was something for the weak and that true strength was demonstrated by one’s actions. It was maybe the only advice worth a damn he’d ever received from him.

“I didn’t want to end up alone,” he replies, the words filled with a concentrated acidity. “I’m not like them. Father was right after all. I’m just not Desmond material.”

Maybe that’s why he loves her, he thinks to himself, as he watches her eyes fill with concern. Even then, back when the two of them had first met, she didn’t see him as someone whose heritage mattered. They’d deserved all the scheming; he’d deserved it. No matter how much guilt had eaten away at Anya later, he’d accepted her litany of apologies without complaint, and had instead felt more annoyed with himself that he hadn’t put all the puzzle pieces together sooner.

“Stop it,” Anya says brusquely. “You’re worth more than that and you know it.”

“Really-”

“Yes, damnit.” It comes out in a hiss, as if she were a snake. “To mama and papa. Becky. Ewen. Emile. I could go on, but most of all, you matter to me.”

Damian’s stomach roils at the sight in front of him, his girlfriend with a hand on her hip, features fixed sternly on him. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run from one of the worst things he can think of she’d hit him with: disappointment. After several moments without a word being spoken, she spins on her heels, and begins to walk away with the eggnog still in hand when she stops one last time.

“Remember when I told you that you didn’t need to get me a present? I changed my mind. Have a little more faith in yourself.”

A beat.

“Papa’s also got deodorant in the bathroom. Put it on just in case, alright? Your pits are looking damp. Don’t argue; you need it. You get way sweatier than the average person. Kinda weird, honestly.”

“I’ve already got cologne on,” Damian mumbles lamely, but stops himself when he watches Anya’s back retreat, the tall woman retreating into the throng of partygoers. After a moment’s hesitation, he forces himself to look at his under arms and glowers when he notices that Anya had been right about that too.

After leaving his minor detour, Damian sheepishly closes the bathroom behind him, and makes his way back towards the hallway, looking for an in. The combinations of where everyone is and whom they’re mingling with may have changed but the sheer number of people present is still thick as ever. The thought of having to speak with two people (or more!) at a time about his plan makes his palms itchy but he does his best to shove his scattered thoughts as far away from the surface as possible. Anya is worth every nervous laugh, any inability to meet someone else’s gaze as he asked whether he would be allowed to take her hand in marriage, and even the queasiness that’s beginning to make him feel lightheaded.

But his awkward, stilted steps towards Mom F, now busy handwashing dishes in the sink, are interrupted by a sudden knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” he calls out, waving a hand at his fellow guests as he begins to make his way towards the source of the festivities’ brief interruption. His girlfriend’s mother flashes him a grateful smile as she picks up a drying towel and he stumbles down the hall past her.

“Who is it?” Damian calls out, reaching up to the lock to unchain it from its slot, giving whoever is on the other side a chance to answer before he undoes it anyway and opens the door. For a moment, he can see nothing but green as Damian stares into the fine nettles of… a fir tree. He’s about to call out once more when a few grunts fill the hall, the offending flora is moved aside, and Ewen and Emile greet him with broad grins.

“Elman and Egeburg Delivery, at your service!” the shorter, stockier young man calls out, giving a mock bow, and letting the massive scarf he’s wearing tumble to the floor.

“I thought we agreed it was Egeburg and Elman Delivery?” Ewen says with a sigh, brushing stray snow from his blonde pompadour.

“Mm… nope, don’t think I ever did,” Emile says, tapping a finger to his chin.

“I did most of the work lugging this up several flights of stairs! I should get top billing!” Ewen whined, gesturing dramatically at their pilfered tree.

“Yeah, and whose fault was that? Gotta work smarter, not harder, right?”

Damian looks, following the trail of debris from the threshold towards the stairwell, and sighs at the dirt, water droplets from melted snow, broken bark, and stray leaves.

“Couldn’t one of you have waited at the bottom and the other come up to ask for help? The neighbors could complain…”

Ewen and Emile blink at each other, grimacing.

“Well, I guess that’s why you’re the boss after all, boss man.”

Ewen shoots Emile a glare, before turning to look apologetically at him.

“Look, ah, sorry about that. It’s just that we knew we were late already and wanted to make up for lost time, Damian. I just hope the Forgers like what we picked out.”

Despite his annoyance, he must admit that it is one of the nicer ones he’s seen outside of the private forests that Jeeves took him to once or twice when he was young to search for one to put by their living room hearth. Almost touching the ceiling, it leans artfully against the wall beside them, its trunk thick but not unmanageable, cleanly cut without any jagged edges from what Damian can tell, with perfectly arranged limbs. Downright picturesque, really, if he were more sentimental.

“It’s a good tree,” he tells them. “I’m sure you two picked the best you could find.”

No matter how long it’s been since he met them, they light up like they’re kids again. Emile’s chest puffs out and Ewen gives him a broad grin, nodding vigorously. In a way, he’s always been envious of the two of them. Even if their own lives have seen their fair share of rough patches, they’ve never missed a chance to try and make his better. It’s why he’s so confident that they can help set in motion what he has planned and why he hopes to someday be able to make everything up to them, even if they’ll never ask for anything in return.

“Didn’t do it all on our own. Mr. Forger sure knows his stuff; he told us about the place to begin with. It’s only a few kilometers outside of Berlint, but I never would’ve thought to look at that little hamlet.” Ewen pauses, licking his lips, and furrows his brow as he glances at his compatriot. “You did remember to bring the change from the dalc he gave us, right?”

“C’mon, Ewen, lay off,” Emile says as he rolls his eyes. “You watched me put it into my wallet!”

“Well…” Damian ventures, rubbing the back of his neck. “…there was that one time we watched you buy a no. 2 pencil for the anatomy exam back in year seven and…”

“I thought we agreed to never discuss that ever again,” Emile whines.

He’s positive that Ewen is about to retort that he’s still not sure how he managed to get it taken by the particularly infamous squirrel living by that part of campus or that they’d had to effectively negotiate with it to return it to them by leaving a trail of candy bars towards a box on a string, but his friend is saved the embarrassment when a polite “hello” behind Damian causes him to whip around and see Mom F standing a few centimeters away. He’s gotten used to her being able to show up without so much as a sound, most of all when he least expects it, but she never fails at making him jump when she does it.

“It was taking you a moment to get back, so I came to see what was going on,” Mom F says, heading him off.

“Ah… well, Ewen and Emile brought the tree,” Damian says for want of a better explanation, gesturing at his best friends. “We were just catching up.”

“Oh!” Mom F exclaims, her ruby red eyes widening as she cranes past Damian to look out at his former schoolmates. “It looks absolutely lovely!”

“Thanks, ma’am,” Ewen says, beaming with pride. “We did our best. Sorry about being so late, though. Traffic was terrible and it took us a moment to lug it upstairs.”

“Nonsense,” she says, scooting past Damian to move out to the other two men. “We’ve been picking at appetizers all evening anyway, so you haven’t missed much. I think it’ll be fun to help put up decorations together, don’t you?”

“Uh, well,” Emile says uncertainly. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that myself…”

“Aw,” Mom F says sympathetically, reaching toward him to pat him on the shoulder. “But there’s a first time for everything! Anya loves to help, so I’m sure she can teach you. I’ll put the presents under it later. No weighing them, though. It’s meant to be a surprise.”

Then, before anyone can say another word, they collectively watch the older lady unceremoniously hoists Emile’s and Ewen’s prize upwards and heft the Christmas tree onto a shoulder with a nearly inaudible huff. Damian’s eyes involuntarily widen while the other two simply glance at each other slack jawed. When she wordlessly shoos them aside, the two blondes back up against the walls opposite from one another, and Damian takes a step back himself as Mom F brushes a loose strand behind an ear.

“Damian, be a dear, and hold the door open, please.”

Without another word, he reaches out to hold the wooden thing in place as she marches past him, leading to several gasps of shock and awe from within, leaking out from 128 Park Avenue into the stillness of the hall.

“Wha- what…” Emile starts, but his voice dies halfway in his throat before he can continue his line of questioning.

“Is she… a superhero or something?” Ewen asks Damian, utterly dumbfounded.

“No, she grew up in the countryside; they do things differently out there. You get used to it, though,” Damian says with as much of a nonchalant shrug as he can muster. Frankly, that’s a lie, since the cheerful raven-haired woman finds new and exciting ways of shocking him every time he’s over with her bizarre Amazonian strength, even if he’s accepted it as something that simply happens, but his best friends don’t need to know that.

For a few pregnant moments, he lets them try to process what they’d just witnessed as much as he thinks is fair before he snaps his fingers together, jostling them out of their stupor. “The reason I came to answer the door in the first place is that I hoped you two would be here,” Damian says, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “I’ve got something I wanted to ask.”

“Sure, boss man. Lay it on us.”

“Yeah, what’s up, Damian?” Ewen leans in conspiratorially, confusion having given way to curiosity.

“Tonight, ah…” Damian pauses, and he must fight down the urge to fidget that’s suddenly overtaken him. “…well, I… I want to… ask Anya to marry… me.”

There are few things he hates worse than being unable to convey his own feelings; he has ever since coming to terms with them. Intellectually, he understands they wouldn’t be anything but supportive and he’d suffered a worse possibility in Blackbell laughing in his face. Still, the thought of having to continuously say aloud what he’s trying to bring about like some kind of enchantment or incantation is making him sick to his stomach.

“I need you two to get everyone’s attention when I head into the middle of the living room later. You’ll know when it’s time. Can you… can you do that?” he finishes, voice stilted. When did he start sounding so small, so pathetic? His younger self would be disgusted at the fact Forger, of all people, was reducing him to a sniveling wreck. Just like he’s practiced ever since he was young, however, he forces himself to stuff down the dread threatening to overtake him and banish it to a distant corner of his mind.

“That’s it?” Emile wonders.

“…Yeah,” Damian replies at last. How can they be so calm when his mind is doing cartwheels all throughout the building? “I guess it is.”

A quick glance between the two of them occurs – how they manage to communicate without any words at all Damian isn’t sure he’ll ever know – before they nod, nearly in unison.

“Had us worried there for a minute,” Ewen says, trying not to let the grin Damian can see is tugging at the corners of his mouth to come out into the open. “Sure thing. No problem.”

“Yeah, I know just what to do too! Worked when my dad proposed to my mom again a few years ago!”

Ewen pauses before he glances at Emile suspiciously.

“Didn’t he end up breaking the glass he used to do that with the soup spoon?”

“Ugh, it’s not like I’m gonna make the same mistake, Ewen. You’ve gotta be gentle and he was nervous.”

“Piss drunk, don’t forget,” Damian gently reminds him.

The third man looks aghast, like Damian had just wronged him in the worst possible way.

“You always take Ewen’s side!”

Just as Damian is about to retort that he wouldn’t have to if Emile were a little more honest, the sound of commotion behind him causes him to swivel his head again, this time being greeted by Anya’s uncle Franky and Sylvia Sherwood walking towards them.

“’Scuse us, but we’ve been tasked with getting more booze by the head honcho and lovely lady of the house from whatever the vultures outside have left us,” the curly-haired man says by way of explanation, yanking at the edges of his tan leather gloves upwards.

“I’m going along to supervise,” the redhead murmurs, adjusting the plaid scarf around her neck. “Also, to make sure that there’s more food to go along with it,” she adds sardonically, glancing down at her compatriot.

Pretending not to hear the jibe, Franky waits expectantly at the entrance, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as the three Eden Academy graduates part for the pair, letting them slip past. After a moment’s hesitation, he turns to look back at his friends before gesturing towards the party. Wordlessly, Emile and Ewen give him mock salutes as they head in, exclamations of their arrival carrying outside of the Forger residence, and he makes a dash toward the retreating forms of his erstwhile family.

“Our… blessings?”

Franky is the first to speak, cocking his head at Damian, the light from the bulbs bouncing off his glasses and making his expression unreadable.

“Y-yeah,” Damian pants, trying to catch his breath. He hadn’t needed to barrel toward them at speeds nearing the latest fighter jet but he’d utterly failed at coming up with a better time when he was going to get the two alone like this later. Now or never. Do or die.

“Pops and Mom F’s anniversary’s tonight – the one they picked, anyway, and it made me start thinking about things. Put them into perspective, I guess,” he says, sounding as confidently as he can muster.

“You’re sure about this?” Sylvia asks him, peering down at him with such a stern look that Damian is reminded of Old Lady Tonitrus. Just how she’s connected to the Forgers is something he’s never been exactly clear on and if he were made of sterner stuff, he might call out the fact that her exact relation seems to change based on her whims but when a single look of hers is enough to put Pops in his place then the mere possibility of it being sent his way is more than capable of cowing Damian normally. As much as he would have liked to believe that all of this would get easier the longer it went on it doesn’t seem to. In fact, if anything, it’s gotten more daunting because now he’s out in the proverbial wilderness with wolves disguised as people.

Yet despite himself, he does his best to return her appraising look fiercely. Terrifying as she can be she’s not his father, not his mother. His knuckles crack, mouth an unyielding line as he stares back at Sherwood.

Damian Desmond will not bend; Damian Desmond will not break.

A rose-haired woman earlier that night told him he needs to have faith. It’s a tall order, and he isn’t sure if he can, but he knows she believes in him.

“When we were kids, Anya wanted to be my friend. Big deal, right? Lots of people who went to Eden felt the same way. Desmond and all that. That was after she punched me halfway across a room too. You don’t do something like that then try to suck up to someone after the fact.”

One of his hands goes up to the buttons at the front of his pullover, playing with the cream-colored wool as he gulps slowly.

“Couldn’t figure her out at first. She fell asleep almost every other day, could barely keep up with the rest of us academically, and no matter how many times I shoved her away she’d come crawling back like I hadn’t told her to go kick rocks the other day. I guess after a while I just felt sorry for her more than anything else and… maybe deluded myself too. More than little, that’s for sure.”

If nothing else, Damian knows that Franky and Sylvia are smart. He doesn’t have to spell it all out for them to understand.

“I eventually got an answer out of her. Cornered her about it after lunch when Blackbell wasn’t around to tell me off. That was in our sixth year, and I don’t remember much about the day other than how it made me feel. I’ve put up with a lot of shit from my family, but that was maybe the worst day of my life. Hers too, I think.”

Now, it’s as if his mouth is moving of its own accord, and since he’s started there’s no stopping any of it.

“’I just want to be your friend, Sy-on Boy. I need to come over to your house so your horrible dad and my dumb dad can talk so there’ll be world peace. Why won’t you let me do that?’ Said it in the most pathetic way you’ve ever heard in your life to boot. But she didn’t really care about me, you know? It was for Pops and Mom F, all for some spy mission like they have in the movies and on TV. For you two too, I’m sure, now that I’m standing here thinking about it, and most of the others back inside. She wanted to do it because she thought that’s how she could keep her family together. Hard to kill a teenage boy’s ego deader than that but she managed it.”

Damian’s never been this open with any of what occurred from decades ago now and he never, ever figured it’d be with anyone but Anya herself, reliving it if they felt particularly brave or devil-may-care enough to touch old scars together. The fact that he’s babbling about what he’s sure are highly classified secrets people far more important than him would kill and die for doesn’t even register other than the vague sense that he really should shut up right about now, but he shoves it aside. If people are going to challenge him, then he’ll explain himself, and they’ll listen.

“But my father never cared about me. I was the spare, the person who got mentioned at the end by someone talking about us as an afterthought on a good day. She’d wasted years trying to do what she did and all that time it didn’t mean a goddamn thing. So… I lied to her, told her that I’d do it, but that I needed time to work things out and be the thing he wanted to mold me into back then. I guess that makes me an agent too, in the end, doesn’t it? Never telling anyone what I knew?”

A laugh escapes him even though there’s no humor behind it.

“I had no right to take away the family she found, even if I know you would’ve figured it all out with or without my help. But I never wanted to see her cry like that again, not if I could do something about it. I guess I’m just glad she felt I grew up enough to be someone worth a damn.”

Silence reigns at first. Damian’s amber-colored orbs never break contact with Sylvia’s own dark blue but after what seems like an eternity it’s Anya’s uncle Franky that breaks first, running a hand through his mop of disheveled, curly hair, crossing his arms over his chest.

“C’mon, lay off the poor kid, Sylv. I don’t think either of us expected him to bear his soul right in the middle of the hall like that, but what’s with the third degree? You really oughta lighten up.”

Franky coughs a little into his elbow and rolls his shoulders back, yawning in the process, throwing his arms up in the air. As much as Damian is trying to keep stone-faced, it really does feel as if this is an absurd good cop, bad cop routine.

“From one hopeless romantic to another, kid, you should take that same advice. I get your old man didn’t help knocking the idea out of you that you have to be a hard ass all the time, but trust me, you’re more of a terrier than a mastiff if you catch my drift.”

“I guess someone barely over 160 centimeters would be able to judge that,” Damian replies evenly.

The ‘tobacco salesman’ blinks for a moment and then snorts through his nose.

“Ah, see? That’s why Anya puts up with him. I knew she wouldn’t for anyone who couldn’t give as good as they’d get. You wanna play the chivalrous aristocrat after all? Be my guest. Sir Franklin Franklin gives his niece’s hand away in holy matrimony to the great and oh-so-noble house of Desmond,” he says with an overly dramatic bow.

“You make a good point,” Sylvia says at last, glancing down at the man in the black suit jacket. “I can’t say I disapprove of anyone wanting to marry Anya who isn’t afraid to put you in your place.”

A scowl comes over Franky’s face and he dramatically rolls his eyes and folds his arms across his chest.

“Sheesh, hard to believe that you’re almost good company when you show up to parties like this. Is alcohol a requirement for that or am I just missing something?”

Sylvia rolls her eyes, but the annoyance that briefly appears flickers and dies as she turns towards Damian again.

“I think, Mr. Desmond, if you can talk to her like you talked to us just a few minutes ago then getting her to say yes won’t be much of a problem. I have a feeling that even if I told you no that it wouldn’t matter, however, would it?”

Apart from what he’d done to help Anya he’s never been a rule breaker. If anything he’s always been a stickler to uphold the law. Whether that’s due to some innate conservatism or a byproduct of wanting to fit in with his so-called peers, Damian isn’t sure he’ll ever truly know. Anya’s always had enough energy to protest Ostanian injustice anyway and he’s more than content with letting her take that charge. But he is sure of one thing for certain.

“You’re right. It wouldn’t.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to leave it to him, won’t we?” the woman responds, turning toward her friend as she adjusts the wool cap sitting around her ears. Franky nods, giving Damian a thumbs up, and they turn away from him again toward the front door of the building. He pauses, holds up a finger, and turns around.

“Hey, Desmond. In case you two ever have a tyke or two running around, I’ll bill you after the fact if I need to sit them, got it? I don’t negotiate the rate either. Them’s the brakes hiring Great Uncle Scruffy for the job.” A moment later, before Damian can even protest, he’s shot down the hall to meet up with Sherwood.

Sylvia’s clacking designer heels, softened by the carpet beneath her as she sashays away, are one of the only things he can make out given the noise that filters out from every floor’s own holiday festivities coupled with their small talk, now turned toward far more interesting things Damian is certain than some lovelorn youngster. He counts himself lucky that he isn’t close enough to the outside when he sees the knob practically fly out of Franky’s grasp as they let themselves out into the night, muted curses escaping from them as they brave the winter wind. It’s only once they’re gone that Damian lets the breath escape from his lungs that he wasn’t even aware he was holding in.

Five down, four to go.

Given his nervousness, Damian hadn’t really stopped to appreciate the décor that the Forgers had put out for the party. Even though it was a celebration for the mister and missus of the household they hadn’t let anyone tell them to sit down while everyone else did the work. The wreath adorning the wall upon stepping inside was beautiful, its dark leaves full and vibrant, the bow attached to its base looking as if it were straight out of a postcard. Lights shaped like icicles were strewn around the walls, covering every surface, with stuffed snowmen perched against couch cushions, fragrant candy cane-scented candles letting the scent of peppermint wash over all of the guests – and now that Ewen and Emile had brought the magnificent centerpiece that was the Christmas tree, there would be innumerable presents for everyone sat at the base to unwrap before they left. Pops had even made gingerbread recreations of the building, along with Damian, himself, Mom F, and Anya standing out front (a dog in honor of Bond had been proposed but his girlfriend had eaten the memorial halfway through the frosting process and later tried to justify it with the idea that it’s what he would’ve wanted her to do).

It was beautiful, all of it. Somehow, even if most of it had been bought secondhand from the market down the street on weekends, it felt more magical than anything that the dreary Desmond mansion had ever put up. He didn’t believe in anything spiritual; his father had attended service on Sundays out of habit, not belief, and surely if there was an all-knowing, all-just creator he would’ve burst into flames the moment he sat down in a pew and he was certain no one had died to save his withered husk of a soul either. His mother had never bothered to instill her people’s faith in him either, which had suited him just fine since centuries of persecution and harassment only made him feel that being given apparent knowledge of the divine was more of a curse than anything else. For Damian, it was mere pageantry, but he loved every moment.

When he reenters the party, the chill he’d felt as he trudged back melts away almost instantaneously, and the sound of laughter filling the air makes him wish he could join in and put all of this off for another day, but he’s committed. As he rounds the corner, he’s greeted by the sight of several boxes strewn across the floor near where the new cathode ray tube set has been dragged aside to accommodate the fir, Ewen and Emile pulling out an assortment of multicolored bulbs while Blackbell lays gold tinsel across its boughs as if it were drapery. The sight that causes his heart to beat just a bit faster, however, is that Mom F has situated Anya on her shoulders, lifting her up ever so gently to allow her to place the star ornament she has clutched in her hands at the very top.

“Another death-defying mission aced with flying colors,” Anya announces smugly, placing her hands on her hips as the guests all around them politely clap at the display. “Agent Starlight couldn’t have done it without the Thorn Princess’ help, of course,” she says as she peers down at her mother beneath her, bending down to give her a quick peck on the crown of her mother’s head.

“Anya, I think I’d appreciate it if you came down now. I’m beginning to get a bit numb around my neck…”

Laughter, much more genuine than the clapping, ripples its way through the crowd of onlookers. Even Anya’s uncle Yuri’s mouth twitches slightly. Slowly, Mom F lowers herself to the ground and the cloth tarp set up to catch any falling refuse, and Anya hops off her mother, her skirt flowing with the motion as if it were a leaf caught in the wind, twirling around to face her as she gives her a bear hug.

“You’re better than any stool or ladder I know, mama.”

“Thank you, Anya,” the older woman beams at her, carmine-colored eyes half-lidded, the slight wrinkles tugging at the edges of her face contorting into a gentle, teasing smile. “You know how much that’s an award I covet.”

Damian doesn’t want to disturb the scene, but his anxiety has him in a chokehold, driving him forward as he clears his throat awkwardly, crossing the room. Her mom’s expression brightens even further, earning him an excited wave, beckoning him to the mother/daughter duo. He feels as if he’s walking with leaden footwear given the searching expression Anya isn’t even bothering to hide, still clutching Mom F.

“Sweetheart, I’ll need you to let me go. I’m going to need Damian’s help with something.”

Her daughter does so, reluctantly, as his (hopefully) future mother-in-law closes the gap and grips his shoulder firmly. “I’m glad you came back so soon! Did you need to step out to get a breath of fresh air?” she asks, tilting her head quizzically.

“Not exactly. Franky and Miss Sherwood were leaving to run an errand, so I figured I’d catch up with them a bit. Hadn’t talked with them the whole time I’ve been here.”

“Well,” Mom F says, steering him away from the rest of his friends with the force of a bulldozer, “I think you can make up all of that by helping me put together the remaining presents. You won’t even have to wrap anything. I’ll let you work on some of the stockings.”

Craning his neck desperately to get one last look at Anya, he’s sure he looks panicked, stressed, and altogether not the person she mentioned she wanted to see earlier. It doesn’t help that he might be roped into doing much more than his currently assigned task and making him miss his midnight deadline. When he does so, though, he happens to look up at the flora, causing his eyes to widen in recognition of just what it is she’s placed on the tree. There, in all its sad, misshapen paper mâché glory is the star that Anya had haphazardly thrown together and turned in to Master Henderson after he rejected it out of hand, with Fröhliche Weihnachten, Sy-on Boy! written in Anya’s trademark nearly illegible scrawl.

He remembers how proud she was of it. Damian recalls even more vividly how he called it stupid, ugly, and not fit for even a charity donation. A lump forms in Damian’s mouth, slowly swallowed as he flicks his gaze from the star, back to her, and then to it again. How lucky he is to be loved, how truly spoiled he is, even voluntarily separated from the remaining family fortune. Frankly, it’s ridiculous that she kept such a thing after all this time; there’s no point at all to hanging onto what’s effectively arts and crafts from before she’d even hit double digits.

But of course, Anya would keep it and put it on the tallest thing that they’d managed to stuff into the tiny living space, something that reminded her of them, even if that memory was tainted. He meets her eyes again, this time his heart calming for the next few milliseconds, as he smiles as warmly as he can, mouthing out his message.

“I love you, Stubby Legs.”

The girlish blush that’s painted across her cheeks is darker than her hair, but it does cause her to smile. A nonsensical nickname, especially now given that she shot up past his height to her delight and to his dismay years ago, but it serves its intended purpose. It’s been a long road to get here but he’ll say it again, and again, and again – and for as many tomorrows as he’s able to until there are none left to share together.

A split-second later Anya falls out of his earshot and for once he wishes Mom F wasn’t trying to be so inclusive of his presence.

Mom F flips on the light switch to her and Pops’ bedroom, casting shadows along the wall that somehow seem even darker in their contrast with the silvery light of the moon shining through the window by the wall, and the thick snow clouds interspersing the Berlint city skyline and allows him to step inside. The single queen-sized mattress sits up against the wall, pristine in its presentation, with not even the baby blue pillows leaning against the rich mahogany backboard seeming out of place and an enormous, snug looking quilt with a red-and-black checker pattern sits on top of the mattress. Damian gestures at it and looks back at his host.

“Your handiwork?”

“Oh,” Mom F says, briefly pausing to look over at where he’s pointing. “That thing? I took up knitting a little while ago. Muscle memory, you know, and it feels good to hold something sometimes. Even Loid has gotten in on it. Our gifts to each other were these,” she gestures down at herself, a white cotton sweater with a fat old man sporting a thick, hoary beard in a red overcoat with tan coveralls, and most impressively of all a green and white striped shirt just beneath. The needlework is measured, precise, and without a thread out of place. Damian can tell almost instantly from looking at it that Pops’ proverbial signature is written all over it.

“It looks very nice,” he says, finding it difficult to resist the smile in his tone and Mom F beams back at him.

“Doesn’t it? I always loved looking at festive paintings when I was younger. He reminds me a bit of my grandfather…. I think. I can’t remember much of my childhood anymore, but I know that he had a beard. I think he let me play with his when he and my grandmother visited.”

“What’s Pops’ like? I didn’t get a good look at it earlier.”

“Oh, just a snowman. I’m a lot better at colors and things like that than figures, but that’s what he wanted.”

“I’m sure it looks great,” Damian says reassuringly.

“Well, Anya agrees with you, at least. She wanted to have her own, actually…”

Mom F frowns suddenly, moving past him to go toward the closet, and bends down to pull out an old department store box. Moments later, she removes the lid, and lifts the handmade gift within, turning back to face him. The sweater, a fiery red, is emblazoned with a googly-eyed demon, its long tongue hanging from its mouth, brandishing a pitchfork, its skin black as pitch.

“Is that… Krampus?” Damian asks after a moment’s hesitation.

“This is the end result of not limiting what sort of request she could ask for.”

Shaking her head, she goes to put it back, but Damian knows without Mom F ever saying so that it isn’t as if she’d have been denied it either. He may have grown up filthy rich, but Anya was wealthy in all the ways that truly mattered. He’ll indulge her much the same if she lets him.

A moment later, an immense shopping bag is stuffed towards him, and he’s met with Mom F’s purposeful gaze as she holds in her other, outstretched hand a mass of stockings with names stitched onto them.

“Alright, Damian. You’re going to get some discretion on who gets what but there should be enough things to divide them all evenly for everyone. It won’t matter if you peek over when I’m working since your gifts were already taken care of.”

The two of them get to work in near silence, with the occasional murmur of asking for tape shared as Mom F delicately but expertly lines up wrapping paper cuts it with her scissors to just so sizes, puts it into a container, if need be, and then within a few moments she tapes it up. Then, a bow is applied, along with a name tag in her impossibly neat handwriting. Damian, meanwhile, is much less graceful and often takes a moment or two to pick out who should have this or that. It’s even more difficult for people he doesn’t really know, like the Briars. He’s also avoiding speaking up about what he really wants from Mom F, but every time he tries to, what he wants to say dies in his throat.

Pledging themselves to one another isn’t the only reason that December 25^th is their christened anniversary after all.

But the tenseness in his body language must be plain for her to see since he catches her giving him concerned stares every so often as they work. It seems that Mom F doesn’t know how to approach the situation either, but he feels like an idiot for thinking he could act subtle around her. Ditzy as she could be at times, her emotional intelligence every now and again manages to cut through any façade without warning. Damian knows that Mom F knows there’s a problem.

“Is everything alright?” she eventually asks, as much to fill the room with something, anything, other than the previous absence of small talk as it is to satisfy her curiosity. “Between you and Anya?”

“We’re fine,” Damian tells her. She clucks her tongue in a way that he suspects mothers – the good ones, anyway – do when they don’t fully believe something but are trying to be supportive. When no follow-up immediately comes, he begins to sweat again, a bead beginning to form on his forehead. Even though she doesn’t mean it he doesn’t like withholding information from her if he can help it.

“Just because she’s my peanut doesn’t mean that your feelings don’t matter to me either, Damian.”

Her voice is soft like a sigh, and he can feel her watchful eye on him even as he stuffs a few pieces of dark chocolate into Emile’s stocking without turning to face her. He doesn’t understand them sometimes, the Forgers. As much as he’s grateful towards them he can’t fathom them not also hating him. Their morally dubious past occupations aside, he cannot think of a moment when they tried not to be courteous, kind, and supportive.

“I was planning something tonight. It’s my gift to you and Pops but… I guess it’s more for both of us now that I think about it. It’s hard to talk about; I’m nervous, honestly, and I know she can tell but I can’t explain why yet.”

“Hm, I see.” When not even a murmur comes after the simple exclamation, he takes it as a sign to press onward. He shuts his eyes tight, gritting his teeth, and his shoulders slump forward. No, if he’s to show that this is the right thing for the two of them to agree to, he needs to be as convincing as he can.

“I… I’d like to marry Anya. Getting her family to agree to it before I ask for her hand, well, I guess old habits die hard.”

He trembles on his side of the room, shaking involuntarily, as he waits for the response. It surprises him, then, when he feels Mom F practically launching herself at him and scooping him in her arms. A wheeze manages to escape him as he feels his eyes begin to bulge out of their sockets. Joints Damian wasn’t even sure he could identify cracked as she shook him in place.

“Oh, sweetheart… of course I’ll say yes to that!”

His stomach lurches, though he’s unsure if that’s due to being manhandled or the volume at which Mom F has exclaimed herself, but a moment later she realizes what she’s done and settles down. “Has Loid-”

“I haven’t asked Pops yet,” he manages to cough out, and as he’s released from her grasp as quickly as he’d found himself in it, he still takes a moment to let air enter his lungs normally before he continues. “This is pretty nerve-wracking stuff, so it’s been slow going.”

“That- that does make sense,” Mom F says apologetically, clearly recognizing the harm she’d inadvertently dealt him. She takes a moment to brush the edges of his pullover until it’s even again, before giving his arms a far gentler squeeze than she’d just applied.

“You make her very, very happy. If you don’t believe what else anyone says tonight, then take that with you. She loves you and so do we.”

The word ‘why’ sits at the tip of his tongue, but he forces it down, and instead opts for the much safer strategy: being grateful. “Th-thanks…” a pause before he nods in resolution. “…mom.” Such a simple omission, of only a single letter, but one that feels heavy as it leaves him. She raises a hand to her mouth, smiling between her fingers, and giggles to herself.

“Is there a ring yet?”

“Actually,” Damian admits, reaching into his pocket. “I think you’re going to… like…”

His blood runs cold, his eyes dart toward his pants pocket. Suddenly, the absence of a certain polished wood container against his thigh becomes a haunting portent of what he’s sure now he won’t find. Limply, his hand slides into his pocket to rummage, but recedes and its twin does the same on his other side. As if in slow motion, his mind plays back the events of the day, and to his horror he remembers that it still must be sitting at his bedside dresser back at his dorm.

“I left it at home,” he whispers, eyes wide and staring at Mom F in horror, skin made more and more ashen by the second. “It’s on my damn nightstand.”

“Oh no,” is all she can reply.

“I can’t ask my roommate to get it; he’s out for the night at his own party. Jeeves wouldn’t be allowed at the dorm. I could go over myself but that’s half an hour across town. I’d… I’d never make it back in time.”

Mom F looks deep in thought for a moment, empathy written across her features, before her eyes suddenly widen and she practically bounds across the room toward a dresser against the corner, throwing its drawers open one by one as she begins to rifle through them. He tries to look away as some lingerie makes it onto the floor but the triumphant “ah-ha!” from her forces him to return his attention. Her mouth stretches broadly as she waves a small object between her pointer finger and thumb for him to see, but it takes Damian several seconds to register just what it is that she’s grabbed.

“Uh, is that a grenade pin?”

“Yes!”

“O… kay…” Damian says, his despair giving way to confusion.

“The first night that your father-in-law and I met, we only ended up married by chance. I’d only intended him to be my boyfriend at a party, but he’d mixed up his mission with mine. It may be the best mistake he’s ever made,” Mom F says, suddenly looking distant for a moment.

“Criminals were chasing him that night since he and Franky had to return some things they wanted to sell on the black market, and we got attacked by them when we left. They didn’t put up much of a fight, which wasn’t fun, but the experience made him propose then and there. We had no ring, but we said our vows anyway, and Loid slipped the pin onto my finger, even if nowadays it's different,” Mom F holds up her free hand to him and shows him the wedding ring that she’s worn for as long as he can recall.

“I know it must seem silly to you, but this means a lot to me, and I’m sure by now Anya knows how much this means to us too. I want you to take it and give it to her, Damian.”

The absurdity of the proposed ritual is so Forger that it almost hurts, but his heart hammers against his chest anyway as he holds his own hand out, palm upwards, to accept her spur of the moment gift. It plops gently down against his flesh, lukewarm from its brief grasp by its former owner, and he looks at the industrially made, mass produced tab.

“Mom… I can’t…”

“You can,” she reaffirms, her voice that of a velvet glove cast in iron. “It’s given me everything I never knew I wanted. She deserves that, Damian, and so do you.”

He finally understands what it means to have a mother.

Mom F offers to help him talk with the Briars after they get all the presents taken care of, but Damian decides to take the plunge and do things on his own. In fact, they’re still sitting right where he’d left them earlier at the table once he and the hostess came forward to bring out their hard work to lay beneath the tree. Oohs and ahs are exchanged by the majority of the crowd as they admire the tasteful mix of reds, greens, and whites that have been picked for their exteriors and the bulging stockings are cheered for once he goes to hang them up nearby on the temporary shelf that Pops set up for the occasion. But as he chats once more with some of the guests, trying to substitute the concern gnawing in his stomach with much needed bravery, he isn’t sure how to get the pair alone so that he can talk with them too.

His saviors, it turns out, are the choir. Even though they’re up on the third floor, the carolers can be heard out on the street outside, their hymns reverberating through the concrete, wood, and glass in dulcet unison. It’s Anya’s aunt Sylvia, who glances at him with a mischievous glint in her eye, who suggests that they go give them an audience which many readily agree to. Perhaps Damian looked more pathetic than he’d thought circling around the dining room table, but he mentally notes to thank her at Christmas Day’s dinner.

As everyone begins to filter outside, he awkwardly sidesteps over to the married couple, and gives them a wave.

“Uh, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Briar, I’d really like to talk with you two about something before we go downstairs. It’s personal so I’d rather the others not listen in.”

It’s always fascinated him how the same red eyes that are so are so bright and inviting on Mom F can appear like dying embers on Mr. Briar’s, cool and unmoved by most of the world around him (except for his sister and niece, he reminds himself). For Mrs. Briar, he’s never seen someone look so deadpan about… anything before he met her. She’s just like that, Anya had told him. Aunt Fiona’s not depressed – well, not depressed anymore since she and uncle Yuri found each other. Gossip was never something Damian had actively enjoyed engaging in but in the very moment he was standing there in front of him he’d wished he’d asked her how an ex-SSS officer and a Westalian spy had gotten together. The two of them exchange a look and Mr. Briar gestures to him to take a seat.

He and Anya’s uncle had never truly gotten along. Out of all the people in her life to play the part of the angry relative he wouldn’t have pegged him to be it, but the other man had done so with gusto. Fiona and Damian had been on better terms, but her apathetic demeanor made it nearly impossible to tell where exactly they stood with one another.

“I realize we don’t normally do things like this,” Damian says, gesturing between the three of them, “but this is time sensitive.”

“Go on,” Fiona says unblinkingly.

“Anya and I, we’ve been together quite a long time, and it felt right to take things a step further between us. It’s a gift for Po – uh, Mr. and Mrs. Forger. Today’s their anniversary and I wanted to… ah, well, I know we haven’t always been on the best of terms with each other, but I’d like to change that. I figured this could be a fresh start between us too.”

Damian straightens his posture, looks at them with determination, and manages to bring himself to ask the question.

“May I have your blessing in asking your niece to marry me?”

For a moment, neither of them says anything. Yuri Briar leans back in the chair, his face a complete mask, and drums a hand against the tabletop. Just as Damian expected of a man who’d once put on a uniform every day, the gray suit he’s in looks pristine, his long dark hair combed, and it almost feels like he’s sitting in front of a mob boss as if he were a lowly underling asking to marry the don’s daughter. Fiona Briar doesn’t help matters either, her expensive, low cut violet dress being a brand he recognizes that his mother once favored but now is far, far outside of his price range and appearing like the spitting image of a moll he’s seen in older movies.

“A new beginning, huh?” Yuri says, more to himself Damian thinks than him. “Hmph… it is Christmas, I guess, and New Year’s is almost here. Soon there won’t be an Ostania anymore. We’ll all be one big, happy family again, won’t we?”

“The reunification talks do seem like they won’t break down,” Damian agrees cautiously. “I just hope all the people who’ve been forced apart by the separation will do alright.”

Whatever blood has stained anyone’s hands will be washed away, as if Mr. Briar hadn’t been the caretaker of a brutal authoritarian regime, like Mrs. Briar hadn’t committed treason against half of their old-new nation for years. It’s left unsaid, but it doesn’t have to be for it to be present in the conversation. Besides, Damian is more than aware from years of experience of when to keep his mouth shut.

“What do you think, sugar plum?” Yuri asks Fiona. She pauses for a moment, flicking her dull eyes towards Damian, and then back to him. “We should give him a chance, sweetie pie.” She couldn’t be more unromantic if she tried with her flat affect.

“Alright, then. Let’s go over some things. That shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

“Yeah,” Damian says, a sinking feeling beginning to drop into his stomach, “yeah, sure. Of course. I just want to make Anya happy, like you do.” Playing twenty questions with a man who knew the best ways to pry sensitive state secrets out of would-be defectors is like going over to one of the lit candles and touching the flame, but everything suddenly feels as if it’s an out-of-body experience for him.

“One. What sort of job do you plan on studying for?”

“Archiving,” Damian says immediately. “I’m studying for it right now at Berlint University. It might take a few more years, but I think history deserves to be preserved so future generations can learn from it. Especially, like you said, going forward.”

“Book work, huh? Hm… what would you say that makes a year?”

“Well,” Damian says, frowning slightly. “Assuming that I can find a job somewhere with a decent reputation, I’d say about 60,000 dalc – or whatever we end up calling the currency – a year.”

“If you can’t?” Fiona cuts in. In a way, her seeming impassivity is just as unnerving as Yuri’s stare.

“Probably closer to 50,000, give or take.”

“That’s a pretty big gap, Desmond,” Yuri says evenly. “The better neighborhoods in the city, assuming you two could manage to buy something rather than just rent, has your first income bracket as its start. There’s a reason sis had to lean on Loi-Loi-” he pauses, thinks about it, and then smoothly continues, “Loid for so long.”

“Anya is studying to be a psychiatrist herself. You know that. I’m sure between the two of us we can-”

“We’d like our niece to live well and with someone who won’t need to lean on her for money. Know how much someone who goes into mental health makes in a year?”

Damian’s face falters slightly, but he makes his mouth a thin line, waiting for his interrogators to continue.

“I can guess.”

“I don’t think it’s much to ask that Anya be financially comfortable,” Fiona cuts in. “Do you?”

“Of course not,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’d never want her to resent wherever it’d be we’d end up.”

“Question two since we’re on the topic. How much of your family’s wealth is left? I’d hope it’d be enough to put away for a rainy day but I’m sure your brother’s already made rounds in the bank vaults. You’ll have to think about investments, retirement, things like that.”

At that, he tries not to squirm, but at the unimpressed look that both seem to be looking at him he can tell it’s a lost battle before he even tries to defend himself.

“If it wasn’t seized by the state, then Demetrius’ lawyers are handling it.”

“You’re involved with that?” Fiona asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Not… not exactly.”

They wait. Are they really going to make him say it, word for word? He drums his fingers on the edge of the smooth wood grain.

“After everything I’ve been through with my family, I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. Getting married would allow me to wash part of it away for good.”

“You’re not taking any of it? At all?”

Suddenly, Damian feels very small, and he does his best not to physically wince even before Briar starts.

“Let it never be said that coming from a long line of aristocrats means anything,” Yuri snorts. “My sister and I would’ve killed – hell, did kill – to get a fraction of what you grew up with and you’re just gonna toss it all away? Why? Because your dad-”

“Yuri,” Fiona warns.

“I was on the NUP’s payroll once and he doesn’t sign the checks.”

“Stop,” Fiona turns to look at him sharply. “This is about Anya, isn’t it?”

“About her terrible taste too. They’ll come crawling back here a year from now, begging for help, and both Yor and Loid will regret this if they’ve given them the go ahead.”

“…”

Fiona Briar pauses. There are a handful of times in his life when simple quietude was worse than screaming or shouting and Damian is sure this is one of them. As much as he appreciates her attempt at giving him the benefit of the doubt it won’t put food on the table or a roof over their heads. To willingly not accept even a meager portion of what’s left must seem like he’s gone mad, even with her being sympathetic.

“We only want what’s best for her,” she says at last.

“You think I don’t?” Damian whispers, voice cracking.

“Maybe it would be better if you thought about this and put together something more… tangible.”

His jaw clenches, his vision swims before him, and he looks down at the surface of the table. It’s a ridiculous ritual anyway, he thinks. I don’t need them; I could just ask Anya to marry me and that’d be that. This is just a relic from a time when Desmonds got knocked off horses and skewered in the Holy Land. Yet as he sits there, the more their poking and prodding at his future isn’t something he can simply dismiss. It looms over him now – like his father – and no matter how hard he tries it won’t simply let go of him now that it’s wrapped itself around his psyche.

“Honestly, you might be right. Maybe this is half-assed. After all, I fell for her when I hit a wall in our first year at Eden. Something’s probably loose and I’ve just been unable to come to terms that someone put me in my place back then.”

Damian licks his dry lips, shaking his head as he does so.

“She saved me, though, even if you don’t believe it. Really, I don’t care if you do. If she hadn’t done what she did, left me alone, I don’t know the kind of person I’d be. Just… just another copy of my father, I guess. But I’m fine with not having everything all figured out and I think she would be too. I was planning on trying to pay her back somehow for the rest of my life anyway.”

Then, and it takes all his courage to do so, he pushes himself away from the table and up onto his feet. He looks down at them, expression pained.

“I love her, and I know she loves you. I…was just hoping we could celebrate that, but I guess my father was right after all. No matter what you do, sometimes people just won’t be able to understand each other. You’ve got no idea how much it sucks to say that.”

He retreats towards the balcony, opening the door, shutting it, and then stepping out to look down at the cityscape, gleaming beneath him like it were his own personal lightshow. Eventually, he stops feeling the gazes of the two Briars inside and doesn’t bother to turn around when he hears the vibration of the front door close. It is cold, of course; he has nothing other than his party clothes on and even the thick material of his shirt can’t protect against the falling snow.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t matter because his memories of this same night all those years ago and the hatred he feels towards Donovan Desmond keep him warm.

“Damian?” he hears from behind him. Pops’ authoritative bass rises above the beating wind, but he doesn’t turn around to look at him. “We were all getting a little worried when Yuri and Fiona came downstairs, and you stayed behind. Is everything…”

The older man halts, clearly taking in the thing layer of white that’s coating him. He hears Pops swearing under his breath and suddenly Damian feels warmth wrapped around him as the older man’s favorite navy scarf is placed on his shoulders.

“What’s gotten into you? You’ll get sick. Worse, Anya won’t let me hear the end of it if you do.” His laugh, as always, comes easy; it should, of course, given that the west’s once greatest spy can seemingly turn almost any situation to his advantage. Not this time, though, because Damian doesn’t respond. After several moments, Pops places a hand on his shoulder, and just stands beside him.

“I understand wanting to be away from Yuri for a while. I can tolerate him now in small doses but he’s still a handful, isn’t he? Don’t tell Yor I said that, please. Or Fiona. Or him.”

Words for whatever reason have fled him and it has nothing to do with the temperature. Pops tries again.

“I interrupted something, I hope,” he eventually says at last. “After the holidays are done, we can find someone at the hospital. I just need you to hang on a bit longer. It really shouldn’t be done, given our relationship, but if you need to talk then Loid Forger is, on paper, a licensed professional.”

He looks over at Pops and simply shakes his head. No sense in making him worry that much. He opens his mouth, his teeth threatening to clack together, but he pulls himself together to speak.

“Don’t worry.”

“It’s a relief that it isn’t a worst-case scenario, but you’re going to have to eventually explain to me why you’re standing outside when it’s only a few degrees above zero.”

The snowplows on the road beneath them look like toy cars as they move along the streets, pushing drifts aside. It reminds him of the miniature sets he loved so much when he was younger, pieces being able to be moved but given total freedom on where to go and what to do.

“I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately,” he says at last. “It’s almost… you know.”

“Ah.”

His companion has nothing to say to that at first, letting the explanation percolate the space between them. Despite how consequential that Christmas Day was so many years ago none of them have dared to touch on it since. But now that Damian is thinking about his father, he can’t help it, and he just wishes he could find the words to apologize to Pops for even broaching the subject altogether.

“Was there a particular reason he came up?”

“Just thinking about him, that’s all.”

Sometimes he thinks about more than that. For Damian, there’s the scent of gunpowder heavy in the air, the dying groans of pain from SSS officers and personal bodyguards in rooms he remembers living in, copper-scented liquid running down steps. At other times, he watches a spy methodically plan the best route to turn his father into a corpse. Still afterwards he can remember cowering in fear from an assassin, begging her not to hurt him too, even if she looks at him with pitying eyes. It gets hushed up with money trading hands, the powers that be agreeing this is a clean, necessary break with the past, and the blame placed squarely on the criminal underworld. No mercy; no survivors.

All except Damian Desmond, Demetrius Desmond, and the ghosts that occasionally visit.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t think that’s the whole story.”

Damian looks over at the blond-haired man. They’re both older now, nearly unrecognizable from when everything changed. He, with much thinner blond hair, clothes befitting someone into his 50s, with a thick leather jacket and newsboy cap instead of the smart green suit he’d worn. Damian nearing his third decade, trading the casual clothes of a bourgeoisie youth for a far more muted color palette to the party, clean shaven today but with stubble on most. Yet Pops’ charming smile is still the same – the very same that told him he had nothing to worry about and that it would all be over soon and to please stop kicking the woman he loved because it was making everything so very inconvenient.

“I wanted to surprise you and Mom F tonight. The plan was to go around and ask everyone if they were okay with Anya and I getting married. Most people said yes. I meant to come talk to you about it but…” he absentmindedly pushes a small pile of snow from the railing and out into the open air, watching it get carried away.

“Well, it didn’t happen.”

“Fiona gave me enough to go off and you don’t have to be able to break multiple cyphers as to why.”

“You’d be okay with it?”

“Of course. Anya’s her own woman. Besides, you’ve been around so long, Damian, that sometimes it’s easy to forget that you aren’t officially a Forger yourself yet.”

Pops means it to be lighthearted, an end to the discussion to move on to more pleasant climes, but Damian is having none of it, not now. He whirls around to face him, fists trembling at his sides, and looks him directly in the eye.

“Why?”

Clear confusion is all over Pops’ face, but he allows him to continue. A pity, because Damian was really wishing that he’d stop him from having everything crash down around him in a matter of moments.

“We ruined everything. Ostania, Westalis, your life, mom’s. All that fighting, all that misery – and for what? The National Unity Party’s gone. Donovan Desmond’s in an unmarked grave. Strix is done. But…” the tears threaten to freeze even as they exit their ducts. “…but that doesn’t matter because it’s not going to undo what they did to Anya or any of those other people. You saw all those machines the scientists had, saw what sort of ‘tests’ they ran. The victims will have to live like that for the rest of their lives. How can… can...”

It doesn’t matter how much they burn as he stands there, grinding his teeth together, kicking at the snow beneath his feet as he begins to weep.

“…can you forgive me? How can mom? Anya?”

“Damian-”

“We helped build that, Pops. Not all of it, but most of it. That’s always how it’s been too. Desmonds being dragged into the current war or going to look for the next one.”

“Please listen-”

“I told you earlier that I didn’t have any intention of leaping over the railing, and I meant it, but sometimes, I wish you or mom would’ve finished me off at the mansion that day. I shouldn’t be here. Not with people who still have some good left in them.”

His chest heaves, his eyes wild, as gold stares back at lapis lazuli. Neither of them moves an inch at first but slowly, steadily, he watches Pops reach forward and like Blackbell earlier that night pulls him into a hug. It’s a surprising thing; he’s never known him to be a particularly physically affectionate man, even with Mom F or Anya and yet the two of them stand in the embrace together, a rhythmic, reassuring pat against his back.

“You’re not Donovan Desmond,” Pops says, and even though it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world Damian listens as if he’s telling him about some new groundbreaking scientific discovery with rapt attention. “You’re Damian. No matter what he did, the important thing is that he’s gone. He can’t hurt us or anyone else ever again. That includes you too.”

Pops, somehow, doesn’t feel like the frail man he’s slowly becoming. In that second, it’s as if he can hold up the entire world on his shoulders, and Damian knows why Anya wanted so badly to impress him more than half a lifetime ago. He truly does have that effect on people.

“Donovan Desmond may not have cared about you, but we do. It’s taken us a while to get here, but I’m glad I’ll be able to call you my son.”

For the first time in Damian’s life, he understands what it means to have a father.

Eventually, everyone filters back into the apartment, Damian and Pops included. He feels lucky that the cold air outside manages to explain away at least some of the splotchiness against his cheeks and as for the rest he just hopes that no one is going to ask why his eyes look so puffy. If anyone does think something is amiss, he simply laughs it off, stating that he wanted to get away from being in a crowd and the chaotic merriment continues without further incident, with Damian all the while watching the clock by the kitchen like a hawk.

 When both hands hit twelve, and the hourly alarm goes off, Ewen and Emile turn to him expectantly and he gives an affirming nod. Picking up his own glass of alcohol, Emile proceeds to tap his spoon against it, turning everyone’s attention towards him and for the room to fall silent. Or at least until he manages to crack it on the third hit, causing the thing to shatter to pieces, sending shards and champagne all over the floor. “…Goddamnit” is all he can muster in response to following in his dad’s footsteps.

“Uh, well, what Emile was going to tell you all there,” Ewen steps in smoothly, pointing at him, “is that Damian’s got an announcement to make. It’s important, so we ask that you hold all your objections, outpourings of emotion, et cetera until he’s done, alright?”

Pushing himself off the wall he’d been leaning against, he makes his way toward the middle of the room, not even caring that he’s getting a disapproving glare from Yuri Briar, now sitting on a couch, his side noticeably absent one Fiona Briar, who’d moved to its twin by the tree.

“First of all, I think we should all thank mom and dad for letting us come out here tonight, huh?” he says, gesturing at the older couple. Applause breaks out around the room, some more enthusiastic than others’, but all cheering. “Very kind of them to host when they should be doing something fun, like not cleaning up after all of us.”

“What you don’t know,” Pops says with a smirk, “is that you’ll all have to help before you leave.”

A chorus of boos breaks out, with Franky tossing a napkin halfway across the room before it lands on the floor. Once it dies down, Damian resumes.

“It’s been a privilege to know them all these years. I think I speak for everyone when I say that. If they weren’t so loved, I don’t think this place would feel like we’re practically on top of each other.”

“It… would be nice if someone else were to offer hosting next time,” Mom F says, her tone somewhere between hopeful and humbled. A sigh escapes her when no immediate volunteers are forthcoming.

“But part of that affection for them, I think, stems from the fact that it’s easy to see how they care about one another and how freely they give that affection too. Their marriage, a ‘fake’ one at that when it all started, has lasted over twenty years so they’re obviously doing something right. Same can be said about the family they’ve raised.”

His heartbeat is practically a jackhammer as he walks over to Anya, sitting at the table now, and stands next to her.

“Three is a recurring pattern in nature. I’m sure there’s an explanation for why that is, but I’m too nervous right now to remember it. For better, and for worse, Anya has touched everyone’s lives; as their child, she’s a manifestation of their bond and an extension of it.”

Anya’s face has gone as red as beet, and he hears something mumbled about knocking it off, but he presses onwards anyway.

“She means a lot to all of you, and I’d agree with however you’d describe her. Vivacious, cheerful, thoughtful, bright – ah, well, maybe not that last one.”

That earns Damian a smack against his leg.

“Anya also means a great deal to me. More than I can put into words, but I’m going to try.”

“About time,” Blackbell says with an eyeroll, earning her a few snickers around the room. Anya’s big emerald eyes are looking at him in wonder, but he denies her the opportunity to read his thoughts, mind totally blank. Damian swallows hard and tries to calm himself.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. No offense to the others here, of course,” he says with a nervous laugh. “When you offer advice, it always comes from a place of generosity, of kindness, and there’s certainly not enough of that in the world. Empathy is a weapon, not a weakness, and for that reason it makes me happy you chose me, who offered you none of that at first.”

Much as everyone ribs on Anya for her lack of book smarts, he’s sure she knows what’s coming. Speeches like this are probably a dime a dozen in Blackbell’s Berlint in Love reruns but this is much different – or so he hopes, at least. Judging by the fact she’s beginning to tear up, though, he knows that she knows where this is all headed. He feels the pin in his pocket and bends down so that she’s practically towering over him.

“It’d mean the world to me to be able to get up every morning and listen to your bad jokes – and they’re always bad, I’m sorry – for the rest of my life.” He shuts his eyes, pulls the metal piece out of his pocket, and is shaking so badly that he’s sure he looks like he’s vibrating. “Would you do the honor, Anya Forger, of marrying-”

“-me?”

Damian blinks and opens his eyes. There, in front of him, is a gold wedding band in his girlfriend’s hand and Anya looks at him meekly. The pin he’s clutching in his outstretched palm nearly drops to the floor as he stares at her while she does the same to him.

”Er…”

From her seat on the floor, Blackbell doubles over, laughing as Damian and Anya continue to awkwardly hold their offerings in front of one another. He tries not to pay attention to the fact that she’s got tears in her eyes.

“Anya,” he whispers, “what are you doing?”

“I- I wanted to propose too, okay?! You said all that cool stuff and I got so caught up in the moment that what I had prepared wasn’t half as good, so I just decided to go ahead and springboard off you!”

“Prepared? Wait…” Damian turns to stare daggers at Blackbell, rolling side to side, as her laughter begins to spread around the room. Even Pops and Mom F are trying, and failing, not to snicker.

“You knew.”

“Hell yeah I did! You never bothered to ask clarifying questions! I totally would’ve spilled the details.”

The urge to curl up into a ball threatens to overwhelm him. Damian isn’t sure it’s possible to die from embarrassment, but he might be the first recorded case if it is. Dutifully, he mechanically takes the band Anya’s holding, and slips it onto a finger while he takes the pin and puts it on Anya’s. For a moment, he wonders if it’s wise to move, but given that the room has slowly come apart at the seams with everyone giggling at their expense at the dual proposals he simply presses his face into Anya’s shoulder and sighs in exasperation against the fabric.

“I’ll marry you, Stubby Legs. Every time.”