Villain & Violent, Infant & Innocent

Anya’s eyes widen as she looks down at the man before her. Though her father had often attempted to make her feel like she wasn’t, like she needed him to make decisions for her, she is smart and she knows it. She is smart enough to infer Pierce’s true meaning.

A father.

He knows.

She cannot be sure how she knows but he knows. Suddenly, several options flash through her mind. Anya could kill him but Luna had implied her father had a power that would trump theirs and she most certainly wasn’t looking to die or lose this hard won freedom now. She could run, but running means Luna wouldn’t know where to find her, unless she runs to Luna but then her father could just follow. She could run until she loses him and circle back. That seemed to be the smartest move so that’s what she does.

He can trust that he is safe with his twin watching over him. Leaning his head against his sisters shoulder, the boy briefly allows his eyes to flicker shut. He adjusts the large blanket (they'd stolen it from a local thrift shop, leaving a few coins that in no way would pay for it but was SOMETHING) over his frame, letting out a small whimper as the movement pulls at the stitches on his chest.

They would eventually come out. Frostbite, Phantom's second in command and head of his Council, had carefully stitched Danny up before they'd left. Danny wished they could stay forever, huddled up in the Far Frozen, never to leave the Infinite Realms. But Anya was only human and he couldn't let her go alone.

Danny’s pain hurts Anya too, only in a new way that she had yet to experience before him, and she doesn’t like it. Even that small whimper has something aching in her chest, a familiar guilt settling deep in her heart. His wounds are not her fault — this time, it had not been she who held the knife — but they feel like they are all the same. Because it was their her father that had hurt him. Because she hadn’t been able to protect him. Because she could not truly help him after, and she still could not help him now. After all, Anya had been made to hurt, not to heal.

It does not help when he says things like this either, when he is so much kinder to her than anyone should be. When he makes her feel things she had never felt for anyone else before. Like love. Like a deep, intense need to protect him that overrides even her own deep-seated instinct to survive.

They could not have been more different, but that was something Aslan could not know. After all, her plan relies on the fact that he does not suspect her, that he does not know what she is capable of.

Something about her fear felt wrong here. Something about it felt....well, not sinister but different than how normal fear should feel. It felt RAW, unfiltered. Like something BESIDES his anger had spurned her panic. Was she hiding something deeper? Maybe she worked for one of those groups that used kids. The thought made his stomach flip in anxiety.

He drew back from her for a second. Danny doesn't trust easily. He never trusted easily before the accident and even less so after the accident. There was a reason why he only trusted three people with his secret. After his parents vivisected him? He didn't trust anyone.

He saw what trust got him. He had trusted that his parents wouldn't hurt him, he had trusted that they would listen to him. And they hadn't.

If Anya didn’t know better, she would swear she could feel the suspicion coming off the boy in palpable waves and it instantly brings the weight of her own failure crashing down around her all the more. It’s all coming down now and she can see that so clearly. She had reacted wrong and now he doesn’t trust her. She is failing and she doesn’t know how to pick up the mess her own actions had wrought.

A hand finds her chest, fingers toying with the collar of her shirt. Though she pulls in breath after shallow breath, her lungs seem to ache for air.

“I just…you just…”

Her face flushes red with the heat of her power, warmth radiating from her. It doesn’t help. It only adds to the worry, to the fear of pain — both that she would receive and that she could inflict if she does not get herself under control.

Eyes squeeze shut, the heels of her hands pressing against closed eyelids. Colors blur in the blackness of her vision.

please prompts // always accepting

Stooping down, he wraps his arms tightly around his DAUGHTER, pulling her within his embrace as he lays down on the bed. Celeste told him that Anya had been panicked, refusing to sleep. When she had fallen into the depths of sleep, she'd been plagued with nightmares. That, at the very least, he had felt, even though he was hours away. The desperation he had felt in his blood had even transferred over to Reginald who'd been rather short with him the entire night.

"Anya." He gently kisses the top of her head. She should know that he cannot promise him that. He cannot abandon his duty to the Council, even though he despised nearly all of them. He says nothing for a long while, holding her against his small frame, soothing her worries and her anxieties with his blood.

Anya is quicker than ever before to melt into his embrace, gangly arms winding around her maker’s narrow frame, holding him to her as though he is her lifeline. And he is. They may not have known each other very long yet but already, she associates his presence with love and acceptance, comfort and protection, and tonight, she also learned what the lack of that presence feels like. How her fear had been so eager to take advantage of not just his absence but his inability to get to her.

She had not even been alone. Celeste had been here the whole time, but though she loves Celeste just as much, there is something truly special about Maurice. Somehow, for reasons she may never really know, he is able to comfort and calm her in a way no one else ever could. Maybe it is their maker / progeny bond — the strongest blood tie two vampires could have — or maybe it is just him. His quiet, gentle strength. His open affection.

Whatever relief comes over her as she settles into him, though, is quick to go again. Two weeks. That’s it? That’s all she gets until she has to do this again? The unrelenting panic, the slowness of every minute of the day, the merciless nightmares so much worse than the ones that usually plagued her. Anya was exhausted in just about every way a person could be and the idea of going through it all again, let alone so soon, is heartbreaking.

Amber eyes squeeze tight against the blood-tears that instantly well in them, shoulders shaking with a cry that a hand slipped beneath her is quick to stifle, chest heaving with the attempt to pull herself together. She tired of crying tonight too, tired of feeling weak, like she’s failing…someone. She doesn’t even know who anymore. No one here seems to mind the tears but surely there’s a threshold. Surely they will tire of having to care for her like this. Surely they wouldn’t want to keep housing someone so pathetic.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

He contemplates her question for a moment, biting his lower lip for a second. He was so tired. He had hardly slept the day before and had spent most of the night tinkering on his ghost portal. Now, he was awake again with Anya. He had dismissed Celeste's worry that morning, telling her he would sleep as soon as he finished with the base of the portal. HIS STOMACH WOULD NOT STOP GROWLING FROM THE LACK OF ECTOPLASM IN HIS DIET.

“Then how do we do it?”

Anya tries so hard to be helpful, to be useful, to not make things any worse for anyone at the very least. Up until she had met Maurice, she had only even been worth what she could do for her father. She only received his praise when she performed perfectly according to his standards, and love was something never given, only implied to be earned after a yet unknown number of tests to prove her obedience, her devotion, her loyalty. Up until Maurice, Anya had never existed for herself, and though she has learned through him that — here at least — love is not earned but freely given, she cannot shake the sense of inadequacy and unworthiness that comes from failing to benefit her family, a fear that comes from not being easy and useful and perfect.

At first, she only wanted to be this for Danny because she saw him not as a brother but as an extension of Celeste, who was sort of like an extension of Maurice. Rocking the boat with one meant rocking the boat with them all and that seemed to threaten abandonment. At this point, she wasn’t sure how she would live without them, a feeling no longer based on survival but a deep love for both her adoptive parents, and she didn’t want to risk finding out. Not even a little. Now, though…Now that they’ve begun to form a bond of their own, feeble as it still is, she wants to help him for him too. She wants to ease the pain in Danny’s eyes the way Maurice and Celeste have so often done for her.

Secrets are concepts she grasps well, and ones that unlike those that began this, don’t feel wrong. After all, she had kept many secrets in her life, most of them from her father but still. A small finger presses against her lips.

The Chief Justice hands the Bible to Anya and Tamsin adjusts the height that Anya holds it at, a low shaky sigh escaping her lips. This was always a possibility but this process had been happening for DECADES and nothing had happened. She never could have been prepared for this, any of this.

"Ma'am, please place your hand on the Bible." the Justice says shakily. Tamsin feels like everything is happening so quickly. One moment, she's the Secretary of Veteran Affairs and the next? The President. Biscuit whines from beside Tamsin, nudging Anya in the arm, sensing her distress. Out of all the people that needed Biscuit right now, Tamsin was not the one.

As soon as the oath is finished, she crouches, adjusting Anya's jacket once more. "Fred here is going to take you to the Residency now. You can play the Switch if you'd like." Screen time WAS limited in her house and this was an exigent circumstance. "You're going to take Biscuit too, okay? Biscuit will keep you safe. Trust me." She clumsily pats her cheek, handing the leash off to Anya to take.

"I will come tuck you in as soon as I have a free minute, alright? I promise." Before she can say anything else, she's swept away in a crowd of agents to the working section of the plane, to the Presidents office, leaving Fred standing with Anya.

Little hands clutch the leash in two tightfisted grips, knuckles blanching white with the effort, not because Biscuit is at any risk of wandering off ( the service dog had such extensive training that Anya could handle her with ease despite the way the dog easily outweighs her ) but because she so desperately needs something to hold onto. With Tamsin gone, Biscuit becomes her lifeline, a familiar presence in the wake of so much change and uncertainty.

She doesn’t move from her spot until Fred addresses her and even then, Anya turns towards him slowly. Eyes lift to his face and then fall to his hands. Her chest heaves with a steading breath, lower lip wobbling for a moment before she bites down on it.

She can be strong. She trusts her momma. She trusts Biscuit. Even if she doesn’t trust anything else, that can be enough…right?

Still worrying at her lip, her head bobs in a nod, her one free hand moving to scrub at her eyes before she reaches out towards him. Her voice shakes when she speaks.

“Yay!” Anya cheers, pumping both little fists into the air. “I want the strawberry kind and the kind that tastes like birthday cake and I want to put the chocolate sauce on it.”

Her gaze finds Fred, eyes widening in the way she has learned gets her what she wants a little more effectively than anything else.