This fic is an imagined sequel inspired by "play pretend" by thatdustybunny on AO3. I highly recommend you read it first: a) because it is excellent and adorable b) because this story is directly inspired, and takes place immediately after the end of her story.
Although, you may be able to get the context just from reading this fic alone, in which case I would recommend her fic anyway just so that you read it at some point
dustybunny, this one is for you, for your beautiful writing that makes me laugh and for being such a lovely person, and friendđź’–
Thank you to SatisfiedImmoralist for your input
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With only a few minutes left before lunchtime would end, Anya turned her back to Damian, bounding her way to George, who looked almost startled as she appeared in front of him.
"Thanks for your help, George!" she said quickly, and gave him what she hoped was a confident smile, trying to shake off her annoyance from earlier in the day. "Method acting was pretty fun, but I think I've got it now. I don't need to pretend to be your wife anymore."
She had told Damian the truth earlier - that she was glad that he stopped their fake wedding in the school courtyard, because pretending to be George's wife was all his idea and she didn't want to do it anymore. In fact, if being someone's wife was that exhausting, she wasn't sure that she ever wanted to do it again!
Suddenly, and very much without warning, an image filled her mind:
A beautiful woman in a glowing white dress, with a gossamer veil and candyfloss hair cascading down over bare shoulders, and a radiant smile.
It took a moment for Anya to recognise it as an older version of her. And that she was in a wedding dress.
If there was one thing that Anya had learned from Becky's stupid TV show, it was that women wore white because they were getting married, and there was always a kiss and then the camera would pan out into the distance showing the sunsets and the car driving off into the distance and the couple living happily ever after and -
Anya touched her cheeks, feeling them become quite hot beneath her palms.
I do, said the beautiful version of Anya, and then she leaned forwards, and -
Anya half-wanted to close her eyes, to put the image away and out of her head, but at the same time, her curiosity scorched her, and she lifted her scarlet face from her hands, and turned to see none other than Damian Desmond staring at her, his face just as red as hers.
Their eyes met, and he stopped breathing, horrified, because he knew that she had seen it, and she knew that he knew, and he knew that she knew that he knew -
Silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring, until he gasped like his lungs were on fire, and ran past her.
"Uhh, just forget what you saw!" he wheezed, quickly pushing past her and George and disappearing into the nearest corridor as fast as humanly possible.
Meanwhile, Anya was frozen to the spot, completely stunned by the vision that had taken over them both.
It was brief, but it was so potent, and…
Anya's breath caught in her chest.
That was… serious … wasn't it?
"What's he talking about?" Becky's demanding voice broke her from her trance. "See what? What's there to see? We were all here. What did you see?!"
"Uh…" Anya stared at Becky's wide, inquisitive eyes, and in the quest to find a made-up excuse, her mind completely blanked. "Sy-on's fly was down. He had to fix his zipper."
A beat.
"That's disgusting," Becky gagged. "You poor thing, having to witness Desmond's complete lack of etiquette! I have half a mind to give him a lecture on how to properly act around a lady…"
Becky's voice faded out, as Anya's mind returned to Damian's vivid imagination.
It wasn't… the first time that she had seen a glowy version of herself in his mind. Somehow, Anya always looked a little glowy in his mind. It was just a fact that Damian's thoughts were glowy, just like her mama's thoughts were sometimes a little bloody, and her papa's thoughts went as fast as a lightning bolt.
But, she had never seen herself like… that. Like a real grown-up. Somehow, it felt different in his mind, and the fact that he knew that she had seen it made his reaction even more confusing, because people thought about weird stuff all the time, but it didn't always mean that it was true, and it also didn't mean that people wanted that stuff…
The bell rang, signalling the end of lunchtime, and Anya did her best to put it in the back of her mind while she finished the day's classes with Becky.
"Oops," Anya muttered to herself as she accidentally overpoured Bond's dog bowl. The extra pieces of dog food peppered their way onto the floor, and Anya lifted a piece to sniff it.
She licked it.
Yep. Still the same as before. "Not the best, and not the worst," she concluded, carefully putting the piece back into Bond's bowl, and making a note to update her Bond Kibble Research notebook.
A few years ago, an episode of Spy Wars showed a man living so hungry and desperate that he was eating cans of dog food. Since then, Anya always thought it would be a good idea to build her tolerance to the smell and taste of it, in case she ever had to stay home alone and she couldn't reach the cupboards to make food and all she had were Bond's packets of dry dog food pellets.
In the meantime, she knew that feeding Bond every day was her responsibility, because she was Bond's best friend, and he was hungry all the time.
"Come on, Bond! It's time to feast!"
Bond borfed just before he started to dig in, and Anya stayed kneeling on the ground, watching him closely while he ate, and her mind started to wander back to the events earlier in the day.
Again, she had seen strange things in the minds of other people before, but Damian's vision looked so real.
The thought came to her then: What if it wasn't his imagination?
What if…
Anya lowered her head to be level to Bond's, trying (and failing) to stare into his eyes.
"Tell me your secrets," she whispered.
"Borf!" Bond nudged her with his nose. Apparently she was getting too close to his food.
She shuffled back, but didn't take her stare off of him.
"Did you give Sy-on boy a vision of the future?" She leaned closer. "Did he touch an electric wire and steal your power?"
She must have whispered too loud, because then her Papa leaned his head over, tearing his eyes away from the book in his hand.
He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicious. "What are you plotting?"
"We're planning a coup to overthrow the government," she said without missing a beat, not breaking eye contact with Bond.
"Oh, really?" Loid relaxed. "Well good luck then. Hope it goes well."
Anya nodded a wordless affirmation, and stared at Bond for another half minute, trying to understand Damian's vision once again, but she soon became bored. Clearly, she wasn't going to get any answers from her dog. She would have to gather intel from a more reliable source.
"Hey Papa, why do people get married?"
Loid frowned in that funny way where he scrunched his brows together (usually whenever Anya had done something wrong, or had gotten into trouble at school), and then he put his book down. He even slid his bookmark in to mark the place, to show Anya that he was really listening.
"Why do you ask?"
"Well…" Anya began, trying to think back to the events of the day. "Sy-on boy crashed my wedding at lunchtime. He was all like "I object!", and he looked really mad about it."
"Anya," said Loid patiently. "I think I might need a little more explanation than that. What happened?"
"Eurrgh, well," she crossed her arms, trying to remember. It was so long ago now! "I got stuck with George in the play, and then he said we should try method acting, and then we pretended to be married, and then we were having our wedding at lunchtime but Sy-on crashed it and argued a bit, then I realised that I didn't even want to get married anyway so I walked off, but then…"
Then she saw Damian's vision of her in a wedding dress, of kissing at the altar together.
Yeah. As if she would tell her Papa that.
"Then I think he was upset," she said thoughtfully, thinking that was probably the most accurate way to describe it.
"And why did this make you think about why people get married?"
"Well…" Anya hesitated. "In Becky's TV shows, there's lots of kissing and driving into the sunset. But you and Mama don't do any of that stuff."
"You know that Yor and I have a special arrangement," he said quietly, appearing for the first time to reflect on how Anya might have viewed it all this time. "But it doesn't mean we don't care about each other."
Hmm, Anya thought to herself, thinking back to the words that she had said to Damian earlier that day:
I didn't realise you cared so much.
It was a realisation that had so taken her by surprise, that she didn't even register that she meant it seriously until she heard herself say it out loud.
"So you get married when you… care about someone?"
Loid shrugged. "It's different for everyone, but at the core of it, yes. Some people call that 'love', but at the end of the day, Yor and I make a good team, because all we want is to make sure that you're happy and safe."
"You and Mama are the best team!" Anya exclaimed earnestly, her green eyes lighting up immediately, and she finally left her spot by Bond's dog bowl to run to her father on the sofa.
"We're pretty good, aren't we?" Loid grinned, and scooped Anya into his arms as she ran to him.
"When I get married, I want to be the best team like you!"
"Ah, but that's years away," Loid chuckled. "I'm glad you had fun today, but you know that only adults can get married, right?"
"I have to be an adult before I get my own teammate?" Anya groaned. "That's not fair!"
At that, Loid burst into laughter. "I think it's time to say goodnight to Bond. Come on…"
Anya knew that she would have to face Damian again sooner or later, and she couldn't help but wonder how he would react, especially since he ran away the last time that he saw her.
The bus rolled up to the gates of Eden Academy, and Anya did her best to collect her things, even making sure that her precious keychain of friendship hadn't fallen between the seats again, before she hopped off onto the pavement.
Anya had a plan in her mind. As much as she loved Becky and appreciated her wisdom in the realm of things like social dynamics and weddings, only Damian actually knew about her powers, and knew what she had seen in her mind. Talking about it with her Papa was hard enough, and she didn't want to have to explain it all again.
So, she walked through the imposing school gates and down the courtyard, keeping an eye out for him, but without her best friend by her side, suddenly the school grounds seemed more like something that was empty and haunted.
Didn't the boarders usually have breakfast together in the mornings…?
Anya adjusted her course for the refectory where, just as she predicted, Damian emerged with Ewen and Emile in tow.
And, just as she predicted, Damian noticed her straightaway, and after a half-second of being frozen to the spot, he bolted away from her, leaving his confused friends behind.
"Bossman!" Emile called helplessly. "Where are you going?"
Damian screamed something incoherent back, but he kept going without looking behind him, and Anya decided that enough was enough.
"Sy-on boy!" Anya called to him as she ran, insistent at first, but she only became angrier as he kept running full-pelt away from her, and she was forced into the unenviable position of chasing after him with all of her strength.
He couldn't outrun her, they both knew that much, but what made her so angry was that he was running away from her in the first place when they could just be talking instead and she wouldn't have to be all red and sweaty in the corridor -
"DAMIAN!" She yelled full force, and it must have startled him beyond reason, because then Damian inexplicably tripped over his own shoe, and face planted onto the immaculately clean floor.
And then Damian turned to her, his face red from exertion, or the impact, or both.
"Why'd you have to yell like that?" he screeched.
"Because!" Anya yelled back.
Anya slowed down as she arrived where he was, and offered her hand to help him up, but Damian batted it away and pushed himself up from the floor, before dusting himself off. All the while, his mind fizzed and popped and screeched, incoherent and instinctive.
She gathered herself, knowing that Damian would probably start running again as soon as he got another chance.
"You were right about what you said before," she said quietly, and just as she predicted, Damian went utterly still, and his face reddened.
"Uhh… was I? What did I say?"
Please don't talk about yesterday! I can't stand it! I can't! I can't even bear to think about it!
His body had stilled, but his mind was a mess, and Anya tried to pull herself away from it before it gave her a headache. She did agree that she wouldn't read his mind all the time, even though there were some things that were too difficult to ignore…
"I can't rely on you to object to every sham wedding."
Damian reddened, possibly out of embarrassment for reminding him about his mortifying mistake the day before.
"Uh, right," he said noncommittally, his eyes flitting in every direction except hers, trying to find another way to escape, but Anya held her ground.
"And Papa said that I'm too young to marry anyway."
"Hmm."
"But I was thinking…"
Anya paused. What exactly was she thinking? The last thing she remembered, there was that thought that having her own teammate could be pretty fun. She thought of how her Mama and Papa had each other's back, how they encouraged each other and cheered each other on, and reassured the other when they were down.
That was like what real friends did, right? In which case, Anya knew that she and Damian were already teammates, in their own way. Anya had protected Damian from getting into trouble and getting Tonitrus Bolts, and he had her back against all the jealous students that hated her just for being friends with him. Anya already went to all of Damian's football games with her handmade signs to cheer him on. (He always yelled at her for embarrassing him, but she knew that he was secretly thrilled, so she kept doing it). In return, Damian cheered for her in races. And finally, Damian always tried to reassure her when she got bad test results, and always offered to help her study, while she tried to calm him whenever he was tense, or anxious, or scared.
Anya was suddenly conscious that she had been staring at Damian for a few seconds too long, and he looked ready to run from her again.
She gave him her best reassuring smile.
"I was thinking that if it's you, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad!"
He turned completely red, and Anya couldn't help but laugh.
"Come on!" she slapped his shoulder on her way past, shocking him into the present. "We're gonna be late for first class!"
Out of a rare moment of mercy, Anya chose not to linger by him in case he would combust from embarrassment, and she let her legs carry her forwards, into the length of the corridor.
"Race ya!" she squealed, and behind her, she heard him swing his satchel, imagining the way he would duck his head beneath the strap to secure it across his shoulders.
"Who said I'd wanna marry you?!" Damian spluttered, followed immediately by the tell-tale slap of his soles on the floorboards as he tried to catch up to her.
She kept smiling, understanding her Sy-on boy well enough at this point to know that despite his scornful words, the lightness in his heart told her a different story.
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Apologies, I really wanted to get this out earlier but I've decided to be happy with it as it is!
I hope you enjoyed this small fic! Writing these kids is so fun. They make me smile