Chapter Text
Anya had a feeling she couldn't shake.
Not a bad feeling, per se, just… she could tell there was something she didn't know.
Her uncle Franky would say it's her father rubbing off on her, the way she feels uneasy when she's in the dark.
Anya would say that's a bit unfair—she's a telepath, after all. Knowing things is her jam; it's not normal for her to be ignorant.
Franky would say that Twilight's the exact same—too used to knowing everything as a spy, that he overthinks things to the point of stress ulcers when he doesn't.
Anya would tell him to shut up before someone overhears them. Seriously! What's up with Scruffy and namedropping Papa when he absolutely shouldn't be?!
That being (un)said, no one said any of that, because Anya's not likely to open up about her anxieties to anyone anytime soon.
Luckily for you, the narration has no qualms baring her psyche open for all to see.
Anya was feeling anxious because today—Wednesday, June 19th, 1963—was the day of the new moon. From dawn until dusk, she was without her most critical sense.
In celebration of their last day in middle school (the previous Friday), Becky had decided the six of them were going to go out to have ice cream at Milky Wayne's. However, once they'd finished, Becky brought out a pack of cards and challenged them to some overly-competitive Old Maid, which Anya was now losing.
I should've known something was up when Becky suggested we celebrate today of all days. Ever since she learned about my telepathy, she's been dying to beat me at cards.
"You're off your game today, Anya."
Anya scowled as she pulled the joker from Alice's hand. Meg and Bill had already run out of cards, and through some form of cosmic bad luck, Connie had yet to discard a single pair, meaning that Anya's rivals when it came to placing third were Becky and Alice.
Alice, who promptly snagged a card from Connie, formed a pair, and was now out.
Connie drew a card from Becky, finally landing a pair, leaving her with 'only' eight cards left.
Connie has eight. Becky has four. I have five cards, including the old maid. There's sixteen matchable cards left, eight pairs. Meaning Connie has one of each pair. Because of the order we're pulling from each other, Becky's stuck pulling cards from my hand. But since Connie has the second half to both of our pairs…
Anya smiled to herself.
Becky can't complete a pair! Unlike me, who has a 50% chance to complete a pair off Connie. Suck it, Becks. It's just a matter of time until you get the old maid.
Final score:
First place, Meg (a master of controlling her poker face)
Second place, Bill (tall enough that he got a glimpse of everyone's cards before reminding them not to slouch so much)
Third place, Alice (expert in reverse psychology)
Fourth place, Anya (spy-in-training who couldn't read expressions as well as she could read minds)
Fifth place, Connie (had probably been cursed by an evil spirit at some point to have the worst luck imaginable)
Last place, Becky (bad at board games)
"How did even Connie beat me?" Becky lamented, holding a single joker in her hand.
Anya shrugged. "Not to be a sore loser, but I was hardly trying. I bet fifty Stella Bucks I can win the next round."
Without even reading minds! Papa keeps telling me my memory isn't good enough for a spy, so I've been practicing. I can memorize the cards people put down and work from there.
Becky raised an eyebrow. "I'll take that—especially since my reinforcements are on their way."
"Your what?" Bill and Anya asked in perfect sync.
Becky smirked. "The more players there are, the less the chances of me having the Old Maid, right? So…"
Anya put her head in her hands as she realized where this was going.
"I asked the guys to join us!"
Connie groaned as she realized she'd have to put up with relentless flirting from the two couples and infuriating amounts of romantic tension from the three couples-to-be-once-they-got-their-act-together.
Alice's mouth was halfway open when Becky added, "I know Tertius is in Septevia. Just Desmond and the E's. And Freddy. You're welcome, Meg."
Alice sighed in jealous relief of not having to put up with the prince's flirts towards Meg, who was blushing furiously at the prospect of being anywhere near Freddy outside of school.
"Just ask him out already?" Anya whispered to Meg, who shook her head in response.
Non-telepathic people confuse me.
The bell on the door of the ice cream parlor rang. "Hey Wayne! It cool if we push some tables together?" Freddy's voice shouted.
"Go right on ahead! What can I do ya fellas for?"
"Damian will take two scoops of Venusian Sunset, Eve will take a slab of freeze-dried Neapolitan, Freddy will take a scoop of vanilla because he's boring," Emile recited off, "and you can surprise me!"
"Comin' right up!"
Connie shuffled the cards (incorporating a second deck that she happened to have in her exorcism bag) with the flawless skill of someone who had been doing it with tarot for years. She only frowned slightly when the table shook under her hands because Damian and Evelyn had shoved another table against it. "If I drop these, you two are picking them up."
"Then don't drop them," Evelyn remarked. "Bending over hurts my back."
"Now how would you know that?" Bill said with a chuckle.
"Hm, I wonder…" Emile pulled a chair up next to Bill and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "Just kidding. I think we all know Becky tops."
Becky was spared having to comment on the matter because Damian arrived at the table with a cone of strawberry-mint ice cream—er, Venusian Sunset—in his right hand, and one of peanut butter ice cream topped with chocolate covered peanuts and marshmallows—The Milky Way, rather—in his left, which he handed to Anya.
"Hey!" Alice whined. "Anya already had some before you got here! Why's she–"
"Cause Sy-on's feeling sappy," Anya said with a smile as she bit into the scoop (earning a visible cringe from everyone present). Don't need telepathy to know that.
"I am not!"
"Yes you are," nine voices responded all at once.
After sufficient shuffling of cards, rearranging of seats, and consumption of ice cream, the game was ready to begin.
Connie started dealing cards out. "We're going clockwise. Meg draws from me, Freddy from Meg, Alice from Freddy, Damian from Alice, Anya from Damian, Becky from Anya, Thing One from Becky, Thing Two from Thing One, Bill from Thing Two, and me from Bill. Alright?"
"I have a name, you know–" Emile started.
"Shut up, Thing Two."
"Shut up, Snacks."
"Shut up, E-Man."
"Shut up, Elmo."
Connie, Anya, Becky, and Alice all spoke in turn.
"Listen to them… uhhh…" Bill hummed as he struggled to come up with a nickname on the spot. "Hotcakes.” When he got a weird look, he added, “b–because you like them!"
Sure. Anya rolled her eyes. That's the reason.
"I hate all of you."
"No one asked, Emile," Meg signed.
"At least someone knows my name."
"The name-sign Meg gave you," Anya clarified. "Which if you weren't aware, is just the sign for a chipmunk.'
"I don't even have an overbite anym–"
"You should each have ten cards," Connie interrupted. "We got five left over, so, uh…" She passed them out to every second person. "There. Discard your pairs."
Meg had aces, sixes, and threes, Freddy had nines, twos, and queens, Evelyn had fours and jacks, Emile had aces, sevens, and jacks, and Bill had tens and queens. Alice had threes, sixes, jacks, and tens, leaving her with only three cards, which she seemed very pleased by—until Becky smirked at her and threw down nines, sevens, fours, and kings, leaving her with just two. As Damian put down a pair of threes and a pair of tens, Anya took a glance at her hand.
A pair of aces and a pair of twos, plus three eights, a seven, a queen, a king, and…
Anya groaned in an attempt to make the table think she was pretending to have the joker.
She did, in fact, have the joker, but she wanted people to think she didn't.
"Oh, lucky me." Connie didn't put down a single pair. "I got a straight! Ace through ten. Well, Meg?" She fanned her hand out. "Draw away."
Meg looked at the five cards in her hand, smiling to herself—she must have mostly cards below ten, or wants us to think that, Anya thought—and drew from Connie. She placed a pair of fives on the table, then fanned her cards for Freddy.
Freddy, having taken the bait to assume Meg had mostly low-number cards, looked at his own hand of four. "Well, I like my odds!" He then pulled a jack from Meg's hand and threw it on the table with a sob.
"Hey, Freddy. I can't draw until you get your cards all in your hand," Alice remarked. "But thanks for telling us you have a jack." She watched him place the jack back into his hand, snagged it from him, and paired it with her own jack—leaving her with just two cards. She shot a devilish grin at Becky.
Damian looked at the six cards in his hand, then set them on the table face down. He brought his hands into his lap where Anya could see them, bit his lip in pretend concentration, before rapidly flashing his fingers through a series of numbers. 2, 8, 5, 9, 4, 10.
Anya did not laugh, although she did find Damian telling her his hand to try and give her a leg up on the new moon to be extremely funny. He pulled a card from Alice and placed a pair of fives on the table.
"Your turn, Stubby."
Assuming that was in order, then the eight is the second card on the right. That's the only one that'll match with what I have, so…
Anya snatched the eight from him and placed the pair in front of her. As Damian smiled at her success, she leaned close to him and kissed him on the cheek, whispering as she did: "Don't help me cheat. Becky's betting."
Damian, his face burning red, immediately shuffled his hand as Anya sat back down.
Anya made a show of looking through her cards thoughtfully, while her mind was in full spy mode—on the topic of the cards that had already been paired. All four pairs of jacks, three pairs each of aces, threes, and tens, two pairs each of twos, fours, fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, and queens, and one pair of kings. I have a king, queen, and seven, while Sy-on has a two, four, nine, and ten. That means that out of the cards left unaccounted for, there's the most kings; then fives, sixes, and eights.
"Your turn." Anya fanned her four cards out for Becky. "I have a five, a six, an eight, and a king. Your choice."
"Hey!" Becky shouted. "You're not supposed to tell me that!"
"Yeah, but there's no rule that says I can't." Anya smirked. "But… based on your expressions while I said that, you have a five and a king."
Becky's jaw hung, confirming Anya's suspicions.
"Well?"
"I can't just– you're going to read my face and try to reverse-psychology me into not grabbing either of the ones I want!"
"Yep."
"Well then, I won't let you do that!" Becky closed her eyes and reached out. "If I can't see your face, you can't make me think you want me to grab a specific card!"
Anya—as shameless as ever—placed the joker into Becky's waiting hand.
Becky opened her eyes to see the card she was now holding.
"You dirty cheat! Liar! You're a lying liar who lies!"
"You betcha, Becks! Have fun with the joker!"
Becky crossed her arms with a grunt, then turned to give Evelyn a chance to snag a card. "One in three chance. I like those odds."
Evelyn took one look at Becky's face and deduced that her middle card was the joker (correct). She snagged the five and placed the pair on the table.
Becky let out another grumble.
"Your turn, Em." Evelyn spread her six cards out.
As the game continued—Emile pulled a queen from Evelyn and placed the pair down, leaving him with just three cards—Damian tapped Anya on the knee to get her attention, then used his fingers to spell in their private code, "THANK YOU FOR THE BIRTHDAY SURPRISE"
(Bill snagged a king from Emile and put down his pair.)
Anya smiled at him, spelling out "NP" in return.
(Connie took a card from Bill, and despite still having ten cards, didn't manage to complete a pair with it.)
Saturday had been Damian's birthday, and Anya hadn't had any clue what to give him. After all, what do you give your boyfriend, when he’s among the richest teenagers in the country? The answer had come to her on Friday night, when she and Twilight had been assigned a mission to steal the knife that Brutus had used to kill Julius Caesar.
(Meg drew from Connie to little success.)
The reason for the heist being that the knife had been donated to the Berlint Museum of History anonymously; WISE intercepted intel that the anonymous donor was in fact a terrorist group and the knife's scabbard had been packed with explosives in an attempt to destroy the museum.
(Freddy pulled a card from Meg, discarding a pair of fours.)
When WISE had recovered the artifact and removed the explosives, they were left trying to work out what to do with it. It was obvious that the terrorists had an in with the museum—how they were able to get the bomb through screening—and since intel on the group suggested they had limited funds, once they realized the knife was missing, it was likely they would attempt to recover it with the bomb included, rather than purchase a new bomb. Thus, returning the knife was not an option Handler was eager to pursue, as it would tell the terrorists that the bomb was long gone sooner rather than later.
(Alice drew a card from Freddy, which Damian quickly retrieved from her, then spelled "K" with his hand. Anya rolled her eyes at his blatant attempts to cheat for her, but took the king from him nonetheless, discarding a pair.)
So, what did Anya do with this historically significant knife that couldn't go back to the museum? She gave it to Damian as a birthday present. Good luck beating that with your endless money.
(Becky pouted as she drew a seven from Anya—decidedly not one of the cards she had claimed to have last round—and then turned to Evelyn, who drew the seven and completed a pair once more.)
Damian had vowed to return with an even better gift when it came time for her birthday, but Anya highly doubted he would be able to.
(Emile drew a card from his fellow E. Bill drew from him, completing a pair of eights. Connie drew a nine from him, sighing in relief as she finally finished a pair of her own.)
What Anya didn't know, however, was that he had a foolproof plan to one-up her. All he needed was the help of one Becky Blackbell.
(Meg drew from Connie, Freddy from Meg, and Alice from Freddy, all without any pairs. Although they didn't realize it, they had just passed the same card along.)
The plan was simple at heart. Utilize Anya's lack of telepathy to surprise her. To evade Anya's uncanny bullshit-detector, Becky pretended to be determined to beat her at Old Maid (true) so that she would assume that was what Becky was planning when organizing this hang out.
Damian snagged the previously-passed-along card, adding it to his hand. He knocked his knee against Anya's, and made the sign for "Q" on his lap.
Anya looked at the single queen in her hand. Huh.
She took the queen from Damian, and was halfway to discarding the pair when she realized he'd taped a note to the front of it.
Jeeves is picking you up at 6.
We're going stargazing.
Anya's jaw hung slightly.
"What's the occasion?"
"For your birthday, of course." Damian said with a smile.
Anya sighed.
Ever since Damian had learned that Anya didn't actually know her birthday (having been born in a lab and escaped with no records of her birth) he'd taken to celebrating it any day he felt like it "because it could be, you never know for sure!"
It was blatantly obvious he just liked buying things for Anya, but she let him keep up the ruse. As far as their friends were concerned, it was just a running joke of theirs—that every day was Anya's birthday.
"Sure, you silly Sy-on. Let's go stargazing. For my birthday."
"Poor, poor, Anya," Becky mock-lamented. "Damian must really suck as a boyfriend if she thinks there needs to be an occasion to go on a date."