Harbor View Towers-

They were in the elevator together. Both were amazed at how long they had actually managed to stay at the Quatermaine Mansion, how long they were able to tolerate the smugness and superficiality of the family that they had chosen to remove themselves from. But they were also both, at least on some level, happy that they had made the choice that they did. Dillon still cared about his mother, and he had always cared about his brother and Emily and everyone else, seeing them made him feel good.

Jason, on the other hand, really only felt fully comfortable around Emily and Dillon, but he managed to get in a few moments with the various members of his family. They were all being cautious around him, he knew that. They were all afraid that if they said something wrong he would just leave them and never come back. He wished that he could say that it was true, but he knew that something would always pull him back. They were a part of him, no matter how much he tried to deny it.

As the elevator brought them both up to the penthouse level, Dillon turned to look at Jason, who was staring at the door, vacant blue eyes shielding any sort of thought. "So… did you have fun?" The teenager waited a few moments, but he never got an answer from his elder cousin. "Right… Jason Morgan doesn't have fun, I forgot."

"I'm glad that I went," Jason's monotone voice took Dillon by surprise. "Is that a good enough answer for you?"

"I've learned to take what I can get with you," Dillon leaned against the wall of the elevator. If he pissed Jason off while they were both in the elevator he really didn't have anywhere that he could run, and he knew that climbing through the top hatch of an elevator was never as easy as the movies made it seem. "But I'm happy that you didn't at least hate the time that you spent with the Quatermaine's. Brook and Lois coming really made Ned happy, I'm glad. I know how much he missed his daughter."

"He should have made an effort to see her more."

Slightly taken back by the coldness of Jason's response, Dillon went on the defense, "It's really not that simple, Jason. I mean, Lois…"

"If Ned really, truly loved his daughter, Dillon, then he would have done everything that he could to make sure that he saw her as much as he possibly could. Ned's got enough money to always be able to fly to wherever she was living, but he didn't. All I know is that… if our baby survived, the one that Courtney and I would have had… and if something happened between the two of us that made us split up and made her move away I would never let my child think that I was too busy or that I didn't care enough to be a constant in that child's life."

"Wow," Dillon felt extremely uncomfortable, he had a feeling that he had touched a nerve, something that finally made Jason Morgan… vulnerable. "I guess I never thought about it like that." He didn't fully believe Jason's reasoning. In fact, he knew that Ned really wanted to be in Brook's life, but there were always things that were keeping him away, but they could have been pushed back. Jason had some valid points.

"Ned might be getting a second chance at establishing a connection in Brook's life," the elevator stopped and the doors opened, "I just hope that he actually takes advantage of it."

Dillon nodded his head, "I hope so, too."

Jason saw someone else in the hallway, sitting on the ground. "What are you doing up?"

At first, Dillon was wondering who Jason was talking to, but he finally moved away from the corner of the elevator. "Damian?"

Without getting up, but tilting his head up, Damian saw the two, "Hey…"

Jason had a feeling that Damian was looking for some alone time with his friend. He knew what it was about, too. "I've got something I need to check up on." He lied, but he was a good liar. How were they to know that he had nothing that he needed to check up on? Unless they knew more about his life than they were willing to let on. "I'll probably be busy until the morning. Goodnight." He walked into his penthouse and closed the door.

Dillon felt the tension in the air, if his hair wasn't already spiked and pointed up then it would have been by that very tension. "Why are you up so late?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "Couldn't sleep." Damian knew that it was more than that, and he knew that Dillon had a right to know, "Guilty conscience."

"What are you talking about?" Dillon sat next to Damian. "Did you and Maxie have a fight or something?"

"No, Maxie and I are fine. This is about me… and about how I sometimes take away options from people when I think I'm trying to do the best thing for them, that I'm trying to help them out because I think I know better."

"Who do you do that to?"

"You…"

"You don't manipulate me." Dillon didn't think that he was ever being manipulated by his best friend. His mother most of the time, sometimes Georgie, maybe even a few times Mac, but never Damian.

"Yes, I do," Damian was happy that Dillon didn't think that he was being manipulated, but that didn't mean that he wasn't. "I told you that I was giving you a choice to go be with your family tonight, but I didn't really. I only told you that when you were right in front of their door and when I knew that there was no other way that you would say yes. Even if you said that you wanted to come back here, Dillon, I would have kept on talking to you and telling you that you needed to be with your family."

"Because you knew it was the right thing…"

"I still should have given you the choice," he cut in. "I'm your best friend… or at least I like to think that I am, but I'm not really acting like it most of the time, am I? I'm not a parent… and even if I were I don't have the right to force people to make decisions just because I think that they're the right ones. I shouldn't have imposed myself into the relationship that you have with your family, it's not my place to do so."

"Why are you doing this?" Dillon asked. "It's not like you to be so… hard on yourself."

"I'm always hard on myself, but I wasn't hard on myself for that… at least not until I had to face the truth about what type of person that I am."

"I don't think you did anything wrong," Dillon hated seeing his friend beating himself up for something that he didn't even understand. "In fact, I was going to thank you for nudging me in that direction."

"You would have reached your own conclusion…"

"Yeah, and it would have been me staying in the penthouse, alone, on Christmas Eve. If it weren't for you… I don't know, I wouldn't have had fun. See? Manipulating me helped me…"

"But it still wasn't right. I guess it's just because I didn't want to be the reason that you severed yourself from your family, especially your mom."

"You're not the reason…"

"I'm not?" Damian could only disagree. "If I wouldn't have gotten into that accident, gone to the hospital, been in that near-coma like state for that night, you would have never needed to make the choice that you did. I am the reason, at least partly, and if you just stopped being around your mother, Dillon, I would have never forgiven myself. So… from now on, I'm not going to try and make you see your family, or make you do anything else. You're my best friend, but I haven't exactly been treating you like I should have… it's going to stop, it needs to stop."

"I'm worried about you," Dillon admitted. "This… the way that you're acting…"

"I'll be fine," Damian reached over and grabbed a box, "catch."

Dillon caught the box as it was thrown towards him. "What is this?"

"Your Christmas present… but don't think that I'm giving it to you now as a bribe for forgiveness… its Christmas. If you don't want to take it, or even if you do and you don't want to forgive me, I'm fine with that. At least I didn't give it to you before I told you everything, right?"

"There's nothing for me to forgive."

"Then I guess everything is on me," Damian was thankful that Dillon didn't hold him at fault, it made his life a little easier, but it was still going to be hard for him to forgive himself. He was never good at the self-atonement. "Go ahead, open your present."

Dillon, who hadn't gotten any gifts from the Quatermaine's since they didn't really do the whole gift thing, went and tore at the wrapping with great anticipation. "Movies?"

"What else was I going to get you?" Damian asked. "I thought about getting you that board game with the movie clips on the DVD, but I knew that nobody would play against you since you would always beat them… if you have those movies we can return them… but I looked at all the movies you did have, didn't seem like they were on that list."

"They're… foreign films."

"Like the ones that you saw at those theaters when you were in Europe with your mother. Subtitles are your friend, Dillon."

"This is great, I mean it… thanks."

"No problem," Damian finally stood. "It's past two in the morning… I should really get some rest."

"Wait," Dillon requested. "I want you to know that I had a lot of fun at the party… I mean, Jason was there, but I want someone that I can talk to about it. You think you could hang with me just a little longer?"

"You want me to?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Dillon put the movies down, "You're the one who thinks that you did something wrong, I don't think that. You're still my best friend, and right now I need one of those to chat with. But, if you don't want to… I guess I wouldn't want to manipulate you into feeling obligated."

"You're going to use that against me for the rest of my life, aren't you?"

"Or at least until I'm too old and senile to remember," Dillon shrugged nonchalantly. "It was so cool, Damian. My ex-sister-in-law and my niece came around unexpectedly. She's almost my age… we've never met before. You should have seen her, though. She had this whole punk rock girl look going on, black eyeliner and the like. She even stood up to my mother."

"Well, that's probably because she doesn't know just how bad Tracy can be. Ignorance is bliss, as they say."

"You stand up to my mom."

"Only when I need to," Damian pointed out. "And even when I do, it takes a few days before I get the conversation out of my head and I can sleep without having a nightmare."

"Now you're just being sarcastic…"

"Maybe. Probably." A moment passed and he chuckled, "Yeah, I'm being sarcastic."

"The whole time we were there, she was coming back with the snappiest remarks to everything that my mom threw at her, it was amazing. Lois really must have prepared her for her first meeting with the Quatermaine's, because she didn't miss a beat."

"Sounds like you've got a role model… in your niece, who is younger than you. And I thought that having an Aunt who isn't even five years older than me was odd."

"I wonder how she'll adjust…"

"Is she staying?"

"I don't know," Dillon couldn't say. He wasn't a mind reader. Perhaps Lois and Brook would only stay for a few days and then they would leave again. He hoped not. He wanted to get to know his niece, she really did seem like a cool person. "If she does stick around, I'll introduce her to you."

"That would be great, Dillon, I'd be happy to meet your niece." He liked meeting new people, sometimes… he wasn't exactly a people person, but if Dillon's niece was as cool as Dillon was setting her up to be, then there really wasn't any problem that he had with seeing the girl, maybe hanging around with her for a few hours. "What else happened?"

"Just the usual Quatermaine drama," Dillon smirked. "I didn't even know how much I missed it until I was away from it and then I ended up getting back into it. But I'm still happy that I'm not living there anymore. See? I'm happy here, and that's a decision that I made all on my own."