Authors Notes: Happy New Year to My Readers (Assuming I Have Any)!

Story-

"What Jason means is…" Sonny attempted to smooth things over. He didn't see why his son would have a problem with Jason making a claim about his life, but Sonny often let his dependency on Jason cloud his judgment. Jason was not the perfect person that he always appeared to be, and Damian seemed to be one of the only people around who realized he had his flaws, despite openly claiming that Uncle Jason was one of the best people that he had ever met. It was a true claim, but everyone had faults, why should Jason be any different?

"I'd really like to hear what Uncle Jason means by hearing him tell me himself, dad." Damian was quick to interject. Sonny had a way about him that would make everything seem like it was just a lot better. The apocalypse could come, but if Sonny Corinthos was the one that was explaining that they were going to face the end of everything, he'd find some way to make people accept it. He looked at Jason, the pain obvious in his eyes, even though he didn't really know what Jason was going to say, the fact that he was going to say something without saying it to Damian himself was hurtful. People did that, though. He did that, and only then, when he was the one who was on the receiving end of the hidden meanings, did he realize how bad it was for the person who was being talked about.

"You're innocent," Jason said, not missing a beat. "You're not the type of person that would go out and do what your father and I do, Damian. The fact that you forced yourself to do something that went against what you believed in hurt you, and you're not going to recover from that in a few months, if you ever do."

"You're right," Damian walked past the two of them and poured a cup of water. "There are times when I can ignore what happened, times when I can block it out of my mind… but it doesn't work all the time. I still have dreams about that night. I still remember the way that he looked at me when he said that he was going to kill everyone that I loved, and I still remember the way it felt when I put that piece of cold iron in my hand and pulled the trigger. But I didn't think that it would do this to me. My dreams… my mind, obviously, those things are going to remind me of that, but I can't even watch a movie with my best friend and not think about it." He paused for a moment, taking a drink of the water and looking up at the ceiling. "I'm afraid…"

Jason and Sonny exchanged glances in pure silence, but it was Sonny who broke the void of sound. "What are you afraid of?" It was an honest question, one that Sonny felt, as Damian's father, he had a right to know the answer to.

"Don't take this the wrong way, either of you, but I'm afraid of becoming like both of you. I know that you're not bad people, and I don't even have to tell myself that over and over to believe it anymore, but the fact that you can hold a gun and shoot people without even flinching… that's not something that I ever want to see myself doing, but that's how it starts, isn't it?" Damian looked at the both of them once more. "You start out, nervous about it. You feel bad about the first person that you killed, and slowly you just find a way to block it out, to ignore everything that happened. You find a way to cloud your mind."

"Lorenzo Alcazar had to die, son," Sonny said calmly, walking over and putting his hand on Damian's shoulder, there was a slight jerking feeling that came from his boy when the contact was made, but it stopped. "I know that you know that."

"I do… I just wish I hadn't have been the one to do it. I didn't even try to help him when he was dying three feet away from me. What kind of person does that? I want to be a doctor, I want to help people…"

"Help the people who deserve to be helped," Jason cut in. "You can't save everyone, you know that. You shouldn't go into the profession thinking that you're going to find some cure for everything. Do the best that you can and hope that it's enough."

Sonny sighed and decided that he needed to do something to help Damian. He was Damian's father, and his son was going through a crisis, one that he thought had been dealt with, at least for the most part, when Sonny talked Damian out of shooting himself after he shot Alcazar. But it was apparent now that Damian hadn't yet adjusted to what had happened, and while Sonny knew that Damian would never be okay with the decision that was made it shouldn't have caused his son to doubt his own life and his own sense of being. "You're afraid that you're losing your sense of morality, aren't you?"

"Among other things, yeah," Damian wished that he wouldn't have said anything. Now the two people that he didn't want to know about his problem knew about it. Did they think that he was less of a person because of the fact that he had such a trivial fear? Did they feel that he should have been able to deal with the consequences of his actions, deal with the fact that he had murdered someone and the whole thing had been covered up?

"Here," Sonny pulled out his gun, turning the handle towards his son.

"What are you doing?" Damian asked, looking at the gun, baffled at the idea that his father was just going to hand a gun out to him.

Jason was also puzzled. He didn't know what was going on in Sonny's head, and when that happened, Jason Morgan came into connection with something that he rarely thought about or felt, fear.

"Take it."

"I can't…"

"It's a test, son," Sonny said simply. "A test to see if you're going down the path that you don't want to travel. If you can take the gun in your hand and you can point it at me, then what? What does that prove? That you're not afraid of using this for it's intended affect, no matter who gets hurt. Look at yourself, Damian. You're shaking. But why are you shaking? Are you shaking because you're trying to resist the urge to grab the gun, or because you're afraid of even touching the thing?"

Damian looked at the gun. It was so close to him, he could feel the handle brushing against his skin. He brought his hand up and clutched the hilt of the gun with his fingers. Sonny let his hand release the gun, leaving it in Damian's shaking hand. They all looked at the hand, holding the gun as if it were a sign. Then, the gun dropped, Damian's hand went limp. The sound of the gun plummeting to the wooden floor echoed through the small room. Damian looked down at the gun. When he felt the iron on his hand again he couldn't keep it there. He couldn't touch the gun and just leave it in his hand. "I can't…"

"See?" Sonny got on his knees and picked the gun up, putting it away safely from the sight of all parties involved. "You're not losing your humanity, Damian. You did what needed to be done for the sake of everyone. That doesn't mean that you don't feel something over what happened, but you don't have to let it drive you like you have been. Alcazar is dead, you killed him, you saved me and you saved yourself. Do you want to see how your grandfather would have acted if it had been him in the position? Think about how Elias is now, Damian. He raised you, he was the father figure that you had growing up." It pained Sonny to admit that, to know that he had a son who he didn't get to help grow up, see become the young man that was standing before him. "And there was a time that he did exactly what Jason and I do, you know that. He's not doing it anymore because he made the choice to stop. He made the choice to get on with his life, you can do the exact same thing, son. You can keep on living your life the way you're used to. Nobody here is going to judge you for what you did, and you shouldn't even judge yourself."

Damian knew that Sonny was right. Sonny tended to be right more often than not, it was what made Sonny who he was. But accepting that what he did was the only thing he could have done wasn't the problem, it was accepting how it changed him, but the only one who thought that he had changed was himself. Why was that? Because he was just automatically the type of person who judged himself too much, just like Dillon had said? Probably, but knowing that he had that problem and dealing with that problem weren't the same thing. He didn't even know if he could deal with it. But he had to try. He couldn't let his life be turned upside down because of one act, one act of protection. He had to be strong for the people that he cared about, and he had to be strong for himself.

"I'll leave the two of you alone," Jason said as he headed for the door.

"Uncle Jason, wait," Damian called out, looking at Jason as he stopped his departure, hand on the doorknob. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like I was accusing you of saying something bad about me. It's just… it's harder on me when you and dad are the type of people that you are. I didn't think that I could confide in you with this because of what you do, I should have known better."

"Even when I don't understand what you're going through, if you need me to listen I will," Jason said calmly as he walked out, shutting the door behind him.

"Do you feel better?" Sonny wondered.

"Kind of, I guess," Damian sat down on the couch, physically exhausted. "I just need to stop thinking that I'm becoming like you, don't I?"

"Nobody could be like me, I'm one of a kind."

"That's the closest thing to the truth I've ever heard. Uncle Ric was right…"

"What about Ric?" Sonny's tone shifted from light and calm to a little darker, a little fiercer. Ric would always bring that side out of him, no matter what. He hated that his son had taken such a liking to Ric because of the past that they had, but he knew that if he tried to keep Damian away from Ric he would just fight harder to be around. Family was important to Damian, and the two did seem to have a good relationship, one that wasn't built on Ric trying to use his son against Damian. Sonny just hoped that Damian was smart enough tell that Ric was using him in the chance that he finally decided to strike at Sonny through one of his weakest points, if not his weakest point. Michael and Morgan were his sons and they were used to him being their father. For Damian, the fact that he had a father in Sonny was something that was still fresh in the mind.

"He said that I don't have to worry about people thinking that I'm turning into the miniature version of you anytime soon, because of what I do, but what if I did become like you, dad? What if something happened to me that made me walk down that path in life? Would you try and stop me?"

"Not if it was what you really wanted to do," Sonny admitted, but he didn't like the question. Damian needed to be a doctor, needed to do something that helped people instead of hurt them. "But I would keep you from making the same self-destructive mistakes that I made when I was your age. And the mistakes that I made when I was even younger than you are right now."

"You're talking about what happened with my mom, aren't you?" Damian asked. It was no secret that Sonny regretted the fact that he had been forced upon Ana-Maria. Maybe if it had been a relationship that both of them wanted it would have been different, but there was no chance of them reliving that moment and changing it. He was the product of a loveless sexual act.

"Among other things," Sonny sulked. "Do you… are you mad at me for what I just did? Was the gun too much?"

"It helped put things into perspective for me, dad. I could never use that unless it was the last thing that I could use. I don't ever see myself depending on one the way that you do."

"Neither do I."

"Good," Sonny believed the words that were coming from Damian. He was an honest kid. Brutally honest at times, and the type of honest that could be manipulated if someone tried hard enough. Carly had tried in the beginning, Sonny was amazed at the fact that she didn't manage to scare the boy away right away. If it were anyone else, she probably would have gotten her wish. "Can we change the subject, please?"

"You don't like talking about my near-metal breakdowns and the brandishing of weapons to kill people?" Damian didn't want to talk about that topic any longer either. He'd rather it never come up at all, but he had a feeling that it would. He would wake up in the morning, a cold sweat all over the bed, because he was dreaming about what he had done. That was how he had woken up every morning since that day. The days when he was happy started out the exact same way from the days that he was sad.

"I can honestly say that it is one of the few topics that I don't like talking with you about. I'd sooner talk about religion with you." Sonny remembered the decorations that were safely in the room of the boy upstairs. "Speaking of which… you know it's our first Christmas together, and we all really want to make you feel welcome."

"I'm not going to have to go through some hazing ritual that involves drinking excess amounts of eggnog, am I?"

"No…"

"And you're not going to expect me to take a picture sitting on some Mall Santa's lap, right?"

"Well that takes care of one of the items on my agenda," Sonny smirked. He didn't expect such things, but it would have been funny. Then again, Damian was a bit older than Santa's usual clientele. "But, what I really wanted to know was if there was anything that you wanted to do… any traditions that your family had back in Los Angeles that we could try and do here, to make you feel better."

"Christmas at the Zuniga household was… chaos, to say the least," Damian didn't have fond memories of his Christmases. Watching his cousins raid the presents like moths to a flame. Even when he was at the age where Christmas was this great thing, he wasn't the type who got overly excited about it. Maybe because he would see his cousins with his aunts… and his uncles. A complete family at Christmas, something that he could never have, even now that he found his father. "But there isn't anything that we did that was some Christmas tradition. They still went to church on Christmas Eve, but I stopped… after…"

"Yeah, I know why you stopped." When Sonny lost his mother he didn't go through the same loss of hope in religion. In fact he clung to it even more than he had before, but Damian took a different approach. In taking his mother away from him, God failed in his eyes. "We decorate the tree together as a family… you should be here."

"I will be, promise," Damian got up. "I'll be back later, dad…"

"But you just got back from going out…"

"I know, but there's something that I need to check up on, so I'll be back when I finish doing that. Bye." Damian shut the door behind him. He knew where he needed to go. Maybe he'd be going back there and staying.