Sleepless Eve

"I don't need to go to sleep." Victor implored, "Why should I?"

Takeo twitched under the power of that sad gaze and was suddenly relived that the boys had their energies sealed. Feeling the waves of emotions would have been too much, as it was he barely clung to his resolve. "Do you want to celebrate Christmas?"

"Yes" Victor exclaimed with a large smile.

"Then you have to follow tradition and sleep or you can only receive coal. Do you remember why children get coal?"

Victor didn't reply not because he didn't know, the whole household knew after the lecture they were given December one. A consequence of removing all the decorations that appeared over night thinking Frankenstein would freak at the mess.

"Will you go to bed now?" Takeo asked with faint hopelessness seeing the stubborn set on Victor's face.

"No, I want to spy on Santa."

"... But he doesn't come if any ones awake."

"Yes he does. Do you recall 'I saw mommy kissing Santa Claws'?"

"I remember it." They were going to debate this? Perhaps Victor didn't listen to his parent after all. "That doesn't mean you can stay up."

"But I hate sleeping when I don't need to!" This was the main point then, Victor was very unhappy when he realised as a noble he didn't need to sleep as much as Frankenstein told him to. Except he wasn't fully noble and Frankenstein refused to risk his children.

"You're still expected to follow human customs in the human populations, and that means sleeping every night. Now go to bed."

"No,"

"You need to sleep, it's Christmas eve."

"No"

"So you wont go to bed?"

"Yes"

Dam why were these newborns so smart? Time to pull out the big guns. "Cadis!" Hurried footsteps herald the approach of Victor's brother and Takeo could see the dawning realisation in the child that he was cornered along with the pitiful gaze that asked why? Didn't Uncle Takeo think he was being unfair, this was between them.

Cadis came into the room already in his PJ's and sent Takeo a questioning glance. "Would you help your brother get ready for bed?"

Victor didn't even protest as Cadis grabbed his arm an led him away. Takeo wished he could be surprised that the boy was more inclined to listen to his brother than an adult but he knew that on the rare occasions they came into disagreement Cadis would always win; provided he hadn't been kept ignorant.

Now all Takeo needed to do was figure out how to keep Victor in bed even after Cadis fell asleep until he also nodded off.

Takeo hated to ask for it but the movement alarm Tao made was very effective for that. After waking his brother three time in one night while trying to sneak into the playroom Victor learnt better.

It was unfortunate that Frankenstein left very clear instructions not to ask Cadis how he did it.

Prompt 24, Hate. So this was written with Christmas eve in mind so I decided to post it now. Along with a handful of others because I'll be doning my own thing on the 25th so less time to post.

To my dear readers, Victor and Cadis are my OC children of Rai and Franken please find in [Children of our Souls].