This is the sequel to my recent Christmas oneshot "Oh, Come Let Me Adore Her". I hadn't been planning on continuing in that AU, but as tends to happen when reviews start asking questions like "I wonder what Steph's world is like in the universe" and making statements about how much they love when Frank is recognised for his time in the military, the muse started thinking. And coming up with intriguing alterations to canon. So here we are with a six-chapter-and-an-epilogue story to follow up.

Reading "Oh, Come Let Me Adore Her" first is highly recommended as events in the oneshot are referenced throughout this story.

Special thanks to Kandice for being my beta for this story.

TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter (and chapter 4 when it is eventually posted) mentions sexual assault.

Fast Away The Old Year Passes

Chapter 1

Steph's POV

Adjusting the six-pack of beer so it was balancing between my chest and my cast, I rang the doorbell and smiled when I heard Dad's voice call out over the sound of the TV that he was coming. His lumbering footsteps progressed from the living room to the front door, confirming his claims a moment before the door was flung open, and I was engulfed not only in the warmth that always flooded me when I came home but my father's burly arms as they wrapped around me.

"I missed you," he greeted quietly against the top of my head after several seconds of a good, hard squeeze.

I rolled my eyes. "It's only been three days," I pointed out, handing off the beer now that it wasn't half crushed between us. Since I wasn't allowed to drive with the cast on my arm, I'd called him to give me a lift to the grocery store. Not only had he readily agreed, but he insisted on pushing my cart, paying for my groceries, and lugging them into my apartment for me when he took me home again. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. It was just another way that Dad liked to show he loved me. "And I spoke to you this morning."

"Yes, but you were at your mother's for Christmas Day," he pointed out, accepting the beer and placing it on the table just inside the door. I followed him in and started taking off my coat as he continued explaining, "It was too quiet here. Christmas isn't Christmas without you here."

I had to agree with that.

Mom and Dad split up when I was sixteen, and I'm ninety-nine percent sure it was because of me, regardless of what Dad says. There's always been a certain amount of tension between them where I was concerned. Mom wanted to raise me to be a proper little lady and train me to be a good little Burg wife, just like my older sister Valerie, but I'd chafed under her tyranny. Dad could see that I wasn't meant to fit the mould Mom was trying to force me into and encouraged me to do the things I loved instead. While Mom was trying to keep me clean and well-mannered, Dad was teaching me to change the oil in his car and letting me taste his beer.

When I was twelve, Mom tried to ban me from reading "barbaric comics," claiming I needed to read real books. Dad flat-out opposed her, citing that there was nothing wrong with the content and that reading was reading. That had led to one of Mom's first real snaps. About a week after their argument, Dad was away in D.C. on a business trip, and Mom took the opportunity, while he wasn't there to defend me, to seize every single superhero comic I'd accumulated, throw them in a metal bucket and set fire to them. I was devastated. Weeks of pocket money went up in flames in seconds.

It was nothing compared to how Dad reacted when he came home and found out, though. The yelling was so bad I thought they were going to start getting violent. I'd sat curled in the corner of my bed, buried in pillows and soft toys and hugging my knees to my chest, praying for it to end.

And then suddenly, it stopped.

The silence that pressed in on all sides had been deafening. I held my breath, hoping it didn't mean something worse had taken the place of the yelling. And in the quiet, I heard mom's stupid little low-heels tapping through the downstairs hall. Keys jangling. The front door opening and closing. I craned my neck over the toys in time to watch through the window as Mom got into her car and drove away.

Dad entered my room a few minutes later, carefully extracted me from the pillow mountain and assured me that everything was all right. That the abrupt end to the argument had been because Mom needed to go pick up Valerie from the mall. He'd dried my tears, produced a chocolate bar from his back pocket, and declared that we were going to the comic book store to replace the comics Mom had burned and then some.

The argument and the open defiance must have sent a clear message because things simmered down for a while after that. Mom was less critical and didn't push me as hard to do the things she wanted me to do. But slowly, it crept back in, and Mom and Dad's fights became a regular thing.

It wasn't until one fateful day when I was sixteen, though, that the beginning of the end came. I was closing up at the Tasty Pastry where I worked when one Joseph Morelli wandered in, that charming twinkle in his eye that I'd only ever mooned over from afar previously. Up close, it was lethal. When he leaned over the counter and murmured his offer in my ear, the thrill that set through me had me nodding, agreeing readily. A minute later, with my pants around my ankles and Morelli bearing down on me, his hands gripping my thighs forcefully, I changed my mind. I told him. I told him to stop. To get off me. To fuck off. I yelled. I clawed. I spat in his face. But he'd charged on like a man possessed, kissing me roughly to get me to shut up long enough for him to finish. And then he was gone.

I don't know how long I lay there, too stunned to move any more than to curl in on myself, body wracked with sobs. Eventually, I found the strength to get up, to return my clothes to their rightful positions, to lock up the bakery, and to walk home. All while in some kind of trance. Surely, I'd dreamed it. I fell asleep when I sat down for a brief break after mopping and had a nightmare. But the ache between my legs and the sick feeling in my gut told me otherwise.

Dad was in the kitchen when I stumbled in. "Hey, Pumpkin," he greeted over his shoulder. "I'm making cocoa. Do you want a– What's wrong?" His welcoming expression turned to concern in an instant, and when the tears burst forth once more, his strong arms engulfed me in a hug that could never be tight enough or long enough for my liking. Somehow, I managed to tell him what had happened through the pain, tears, and snot, and gulping, gasping breaths.

And then, we were at the hospital. Quiet, gentle nurses. Questions. Test kits. Police. More questions. Dad was there for me through it all, assuring me that everything would be all right, and that it wasn't my fault. That he loved me.

Mom, though? She thought I was overreacting. She tried to tell me that first experiences were always bad and that I needed to drop the charges and apologise to the Morellis for ruining Joe's life. She didn't care what the hospital or police said, I was just being an ungrateful little slut. A disgrace to the family.

Dad overheard this accusation when he returned home from work earlier than usual, entering the kitchen on feet as silent as a cat stalking its prey. He told me to go and pack my things. That we weren't staying in the same house as that woman a single night longer.

We got a motel room and never moved back. Instead, Dad filed for divorce, we rented an apartment and for five blissful years, we had almost nothing to do with Helen Plum. Until the day Val's appendix had burst, and we'd all run into each other at the hospital. It had been awkward sitting in the waiting room with my mother. I had a knot in my stomach winding tighter and tighter with every passing second. And then, suddenly, Mom sighed and started talking. Apologising.

She said she didn't mean to belittle my experience. Said she was just worried about how people would look at me knowing what had happened. "People talk," she'd reminded me. "And I just wanted to smooth things over, to head off the gossip that had started circulating."

We all ended up in therapy after that. Obviously, things were never going to go back to the way they were before the Tasty Pastry incident, but we at least managed something civil these days. I would stop by her house for dinner every now and then, and though I was an adult and could absolutely choose not to if I wanted, once a year, I felt obligated to spend a holiday with her. This year, it was Christmas. The first Christmas I'd spent with her since I was sixteen. Although, given what Mary Lou told me about Mom's reaction when she found out I was in the hospital, I'd seriously contemplated skipping.

"Believe me, Dad, I would much rather have been here," I told him now as he helped carefully ease the sleeve of my coat off the end of the cast on my right arm. "Just Carlos texted me in the middle of dessert, and I got a full interrogation and lecture about my dating life and how my time was running out to 'find a nice man and settle down.'" I shuddered at my mother's continued attempts to force her Burg ideals on me despite the fact that I hadn't been under her control for almost fifteen years.

"Sounds awful," Dad commiserated. "You're never too old to find love. Just look at Beth and me."

I smiled because Bethany Stewart was one hundred percent Dad's soul mate. They were a match made in heaven. She was warm and sweet and understood when Dad just needed to sit and be quiet in a way that Mom never had. She was happy enough to sit beside him and read or sew while he sorted through his thoughts, and when he emerged again, she was always ready to do whatever he needed.

They met eight years ago at a tailgate party before some major football game at the local high school. Dad had been there to support our alma mater. Beth had been there to support her son, an offensive guard. They ended up next to each other in line for hotdogs and started talking. By the time they reached the front of the line, Dad had asked her on a date, and the rest, as they say, is history.

And speaking of her son… "Where's your brother?" Dad asked, peering out the still-open door as he hung my coat on a hook.

"Still in the car," I explained. "He got a call as we were pulling up. Mindy, I think. Told me to go ahead."

Dad nodded and closed the door, shuffling me back down the hall to the living room where Beth sat on the sofa, hand-stitching the hem of a pair of trousers. Whether she'd made them from scratch or she was just mending, I couldn't tell from this or any distance, no matter how many times she attempted to show me the differences between her homemade garments and the store-bought ones. She was incredibly talented and refused to believe so, but I still bragged about her every time I got compliments on the blazer she made me when I wore it to the office. It was navy blue and fitted me better than any blazer I'd ever owned before it, but the best bit was on the inside. She'd chosen a colourful fabric covered in stylised donuts for the lining and even used it for small trim details on the outside.

"There she is!" she exclaimed excitedly, setting aside the sewing and leaping to her feet to seize me in a hug almost as all-consuming as Dad's had been. The little invisible battery in my chest that rested right beside my heart charged up to full now that I'd received both my parents' reaffirmation that they loved me. It was a relief because it had been running low after the incident on Christmas Eve that left me in the hospital overnight and the visit to Mom's house Christmas day that I couldn't even drink to get myself through, thanks to the painkillers I was on.

"How's the wing?" Beth asked, cradling the cast gently and peering from it to me like she had x-ray vision or could sense by the weight of it if my arm was healing properly. I had no doubt this was a technique she used on her students when she checked in on them, making them believe that she could tell if there was anything wrong just through touch or sight alone, but I couldn't be mad at it. I liked how caring she was to everyone she met, but especially to Dad. He deserved all the love and affection she wielded in his direction times a thousand after everything he'd done for me in my life.

"It's not too bad," I assured her. "I'm back to regular old painkillers, so no more loopy phone conversations for the moment."

'That's good," she agreed. "As amusing as it was, I like knowing that you're not in enough pain to warrant them a lot better than your story about the ketchup bottle dancing on the bench."

"Me too."

"Me three," Dad added from behind us.

Beth bustled into the kitchen to check on dinner and Dad and I trailed in behind her to keep her company. I sat on a stool at the breakfast bar while Dad grabbed me a bottle of water from the fridge. A heavenly aroma filled the room as Beth opened the oven and peered in, and I couldn't help the little moan that tumbled from my lips. "Smells so good," I said as she transferred the foil tray from the oven to the trivet Dad set out for her. "Your secret lasagne recipe, right?"

She and Dad both snorted. "Top secret," she agreed, winking and going along with my joke. "So secret that only the best supermarkets in the country know it." Like with sewing, Beth was excellent in the kitchen, but unlike my Mom, who insisted that if it wasn't homemade, it wasn't worth her time, Beth wasn't ashamed to cut corners and throw a frozen meal in the oven to share if it meant she could focus more on the people she would be sharing it with. "And I've got a blueberry pie for dessert," she announced.

"I hope it's Sara Lee's," a voice called out, announcing his arrival just before he stepped into the kitchen from the hall.

"My Cuddlebug!" Beth exclaimed with exactly the same amount of enthusiasm as she greeted me earlier. She was around the island bench in a flash and pulling her son into a loving embrace.

At six feet tall and seemingly just as wide with the amount of muscle he'd packed on in the time I'd known him, Harold Stewart–Hal–dwarfed his mother's petite frame, holding her as tight as he dared without causing accidental injury. His blonde hair was still cut in that military-style despite the fact that he'd retired from the army two years ago, and the smile on his face was as soft as ever as he leaned down to peck Beth's cheek and let her examine him closely for any changes.

"The new job is agreeing with you," she announced, stepping back and pointing to the fridge in a silent command, which he followed without a word, retrieving the large bowl of salad and setting it on the counter next to the lasagne. "You're happier there. Are they treating you well?"

"They're great, Mom," he said firmly, a genuine smile on his face that was so good to see after his last job ran him down so much. "I keep telling you they're great."

"And we keep believing you, Hal," Dad assured him with a clap on the shoulder. "Your Mom's right. You're much more happy and relaxed there than you were at the other place." There was a hint of pride behind Dad's words that he never tried to hide. Despite only coming into Hal's life in the later part of his high school years, Dad had taken him under his wing, showing him as much love and attention as Hal was willing to accept from the new man in his Mom's life. And quicker than I would have expected, they'd formed a bond. It was Dad's presence and support, I'm sure, that had led to Hal joining the army when he was eighteen.

And Dad was pleased as punch about it, too. He never would have expected or wanted Val or me to follow in his footsteps, especially since it wasn't something either of us showed an interest in beyond me playing soldier in the backyard as a kid, but having a son to continue his legacy sat well with him. And in all ways other than DNA and name, Hal was my father's son, just like I'd accepted Beth as my mom.

It took a little longer for me to warm up to Beth than for Hal to accept Dad, but my therapist and I chalk that up to lingering childhood trauma and a deep-seated distrust of women trying to assume a mothering role in my life. My mom had done a number on me, and while I'd worked through a lot of my issues in therapy, I'd still found it hard to open myself up to Beth's attempts to bond in the beginning. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen that would cause her to snap and admonish me for being unladylike or try to tell Dad that I shouldn't be doing something. It took a full six months and a hazy afternoon of talking on my couch when I was sick, and she'd brought me soup before I started to accept her.

My relationship with Hal was a little different, but I'd guess we got along as well as adult step-siblings could in any situation. Especially when Dad and Beth first got together. I was twenty-two and a Daddy's girl. He was sixteen and took an almost instant liking to my dad, gazing at him with starry eyes and talking about him like he was the greatest man in the universe. Of course, I knew Dad was the greatest man in the universe, but I didn't think Hal had the right to think so after knowing him for five seconds.

Eventually, though, I came to realise that Hal's opinion of my dad was a compliment, not a threat and that Dad had plenty of himself to share around. I mean, I was a grown adult, a college graduate with a steady job, and Hal was a high school junior who hadn't had a father figure of any significance since he was six. I almost owed it to the kid to let him bask in the honour of my Dad's attention.

After I made peace with that (and covered for him when I caught him out at a party after curfew, drinking with some of his football buddies), we became friends. What can I say? He was a good kid. He needed a sister like me to teach him how to do these things wisely and not get caught.

Unfortunately (or, I suppose, fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), he proved much too nice a kid for me to corrupt with my sneaky tactics, and we went on to become a good soldier for Uncle Sam. But I couldn't hold it against him. He was a better sibling to me than Valerie ever had been.

We sat at the kitchen table for dinner, the conversation flowing freely in a way it never did when I was at my mother's house, and when dessert rolled around, Beth served the pie and ice cream into bowls and shuffled us off to the living room to be comfortable. Mom never allowed us to eat in the living room, even as kids, but Beth didn't care about a few crumbs on the cushions. The living room was for living in, after all, and what was living if not eating sweets in good company?

Dad and I each took an armchair while Beth and Hal sat together on the sofa, and we clicked on the TV as background noise while we ate to see what was happening in the world of televised New Year's Eve celebrations.

"You're going out tonight?" Dad asked after a few minutes when the host cut to a live music performance. He looked from me to Hal and back, knowing that we'd already told him our plans for the evening. Most of Hal's friends were interstate, and Mary Lou was flat out making it to nine-thirty these days, so Hal and I decided to do New Year's Eve together, the same as we did most years lately when Hal wasn't working.

"Yep," I said simply, waiting for Dad's safety lecture to kick in. I'd be annoyed if I didn't know he was just trying to keep me safe.

"One of my bosses throws a party in one of the large conference rooms every year," Hal explained preemptively (again). "It's invitation only, plenty of security–"

"I should hope so," I interrupted with a snort. "Given that it's a security company."

Hal continued like I hadn't said anything, "And there'll be a decent view of the fireworks from the roof."

Dad nodded, accepting the information. "Text me the location?" he asked. And when Hal confirmed that he already had, he pointed his spoon first at me, then my brother. "And you'll both text me when you're home safe?"

"You'll be asleep, Frank," Beth pointed out.

"I'll be dozing at best until I hear from them," he grumbled because we all knew he'd be snoring heavily on the sofa in front of the television while Beth read quietly beside him.

"We'll text you both when we're home," I assured them with a roll of my eyes. "And before you ask, yes, I have my pepper spray and a panic button in case something happens. I even have my stun gun in my purse." At the tail end of my statement, I slid my gaze over to Hal, who let out a pained groan. I was never going to let him forget the time I zapped him with it. He'd gotten it for me for my birthday a couple of years ago, and while he was trying to explain to me how it worked, I hit the button and pressed it to his arm. He went down like a tonne of bricks and I'd graciously decided not to draw a moustache on his face in Sharpie while he was out.

"And you'll watch each other's backs," Dad said, more of an order this time than a question, but I didn't blink an eye. He'd always taken my safety seriously and always worried when he knew I was going out and would be drinking. He worried about Hal the same way, but to a lesser degree since he was a) male, b) usually the designated driver when we went out, c) military trained, and d) to my knowledge, hadn't been raped behind a case of chocolate eclairs when he was sixteen.

It didn't stop me from deliberately misplacing Dad's worry, though.

"Relax, Dad," I said, standing and crossing the space to drop a kiss on the top of his head. "Hal's safe with me." Grabbing his empty bowl from his hands, I continued on to the kitchen, chuckling lightly to myself when he called after me that it wasn't Hal he was worried about.

I know, Dad. I know.

"I'll keep her safe," Hal promised, standing and following me out with his and Beth's bowls, dumping them in the sink where I'd started running hot, soapy water to wash the dishes. He hip-checked me out of the way, steadying me with one massive hand when I stumbled, then started stacking more dishes into the sink. "What were you planning to do when your cast disintegrated in the water?" he asked, handing me a tea towel instead.

"Make a sculpture?" I guessed. Honestly, I'd been on autopilot, so it was a good thing he'd followed to take over.

He snorted, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater and plunging his hands into the water. "So, tell me about this Just Carlos?" he asked, shooting me a knowing smile while he used his foot to drag one of the stools over for me to sit on. "Dad was telling Mom and me that you met a guy at the hospital?"

"I met him while I was carolling with Mary Lou on Christmas Eve," I corrected him. "Dad met him at the hospital after the attack and my surgery." I waved my cast around to indicate what I meant. "He pulled the attacker off me, and his friend apparently sat on him or something until the police turned up. Then he followed my ambulance to the hospital and refused to leave until he knew I'd be okay."

"And he'd asked you on a date," Hal added with another grin, proving just how much Dad had disclosed while I'd been enduring my mother's lectures across town. "How'd that go?"

I shook my head, whipping him lightly with the tea towel in the lull between dishes. "Hasn't happened yet," I told him. "He's been busy with work. We've been texting, though. And we're going to dinner on Friday."

He hummed a soft, contemplative sound like he wasn't sure how much he liked the thought of me going out with a guy I'd met while carolling on the street, one who'd followed me to the hospital, so I decided to give him a break in my annoying older sister routine and give him some assurances rather than needling him. "Dad had already spoken to him before I woke up from the drugs," I explained. "He doesn't seem to have any problems with me going on a date with Just Carlos. In fact, he seemed to genuinely like the guy. And you know how scarce the General is with his approval of my potential suitors."

Hal nodded, his hum sounding more affirmative this time. "To be fair, though, the last guy you dated was a dropkick."

I laughed. "You're not wrong!" Dickie had definitely lived up to his name.