Two minutes and thirty three seconds.
Anya couldn't stop thinking about it.
She ran her conversation with Demetrius Desmond over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of it, but it was too confusing to understand everything clearly.
Two minutes and thirty three seconds.
What could that possibly mean? What was Demetrius talking about? Why those numbers?
Not only that but he had said: You'll have to do better than that.
Anya turned over, slammed her face into her pillow and screamed.
What. The fuck.
Even worse, if she tried to think about her conversation with Donovan Desmond - Damian's father - then the confusion only worsened. He thought that she wanted compensation. (For what?). He said she was using Damian to get to him - and, well, he wasn't wrong, but did he know? About Strix? About the mission? Or was he talking about something else entirely?
Compensation. For what?
She couldn't get over the feeling that she was missing something big, but nothing stood out to her as the missing piece. It was all so frustrating.
And then -
Do you really think you are protecting him?
Anya wanted to scream all over again. Of course she was protecting Damian - from his own father! - but still, why would Donovan word it like that?
It was stupid stupid stupid , and with every angry thought, she punched her pillow again and again.
She wasn't smart enough for this. Not like Damian was - if he could figure out Twilight's secret, and rationalise all of her secrets, would he be able to help her with understanding his father's secret?
No. As soon as the idea came to her, Anya shook it off. It would be completely unfair for her to ask that of him. He had already gone through so much pain, and he needed her support now more than ever.
Only, if she were to share her worries about his father, then that would mean that she would actually have to tell him about -
Plan B.
Just the thought of it made her want to rip her own heart out. Her entire body rejected the idea. It just couldn't happen.
I want you to be honest with me, okay?
And then he had to go ahead and say that.
Damian had learned about her telepathy, he learned about her mother being an assassin, her father being a spy, her dog being an esper, her uncle being a member of the secret service, and so many other things that she couldn't remember. He had learned about them all one by one, piece by piece, he had been getting the truth out of her somehow and Anya was powerless to stop it. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before he would pull the last secret from her.
Without even trying to picture it, Anya knew that her final secret would be the hardest one. It was the pure embodiment of one of Damian's deepest fears - which was exactly why she should tell him as soon as possible.
After the Imperial Ball, when they said goodbye to Damian at the dorms, and as they walked away, Twilight spoke to Anya privately:
"Thanks for your help back there," he had said to her.
"What do you mean?" she said quizzically, which only confused Twilight even more.
"You tried to distract Donovan," he stated blankly. "You managed to hold him here Eden for a bit longer. So the teams are able to do what they need to."
Anya's eyes widened in panic. How was it that she had managed to help in Operation Strix without even meaning to?
She just wanted to chase after Donovan, and tell him how much he had been hurting Damian, and try to make him see some sense in what he was doing to his own son. It was a naive goal, completely driven by righteous anger, and the desire to drive Donovan away.
But it didn't matter that those were her intentions, because the impact of that was that she had unknowingly helped to take down Damian's father, however small her contribution was.
Darkness crept up inside her heart, deepening the already existing cracks, because deep down Anya knew that her contribution to Donovan's arrest was not small.
She had been placed in Eden College for a reason. To be in the same class as Damian, and work towards becoming an Imperial Scholar, all so that Twilight could navigate his way into the same room as Donovan Desmond. Not only that, but in the absence of an Imperial Scholarship, she had been actively trying to complete Plan B for over twelve years: using Damian's interest in her to its fullest advantage.
In that entire time, Damian had no idea that Anya was his ultimate enemy.
Anya buried her face in her pillow to keep from crying.
Anya was back to square one, feeling like the worst person in the world.
She never wanted to tell him. Just the thought of revealing that last truth broke her apart. Damian had been doing so much for her, had been fighting by her side the whole time, and she wanted to tell him, because she wanted to be honest with him, and so that there were no more secrets between them, because it hurt so much, so much, and Damian didn't deserve any of it -
She couldn't. She had to. She couldn't. She had to. There was no way in hell that it would end well. She couldn't not tell him. It was what good people did, right?
A good girlfriend wouldn't have gotten his father arrested!
But he was a war criminal.
That doesn't matter! He's Damian's father!
At some point, Anya had to pull the curtains on that thought, because it just rattled around inside her head, with nowhere to go. She couldn't ask her father for advice, because she knew what he would say. She couldn't ask her mother, because she would defer to Twilight on matters of spy business.
What a mess. What a huge, inescapable, inevitable mess that she had got herself into.
Until she would gather her courage and find the right time, this would just have to be the final secret. No matter how loud the countdown ticked beside it, waiting to explode and destroy everything in her life.
She would tell him. Eventually. When the time was right…
Two minutes and thirty three seconds.
A deep breath. Okay. Think about something else for a bit. Try to figure it out. She just needed to think about the other pieces. Maybe it would all make sense in a minute, or-
Two minutes and thirty three seconds.
Anya groaned. It just didn't make any sense. Demetrius just snuck up on her, and delivered that line, and it clearly meant something to him, so what was she missing?
Demetrius. Demetrius who was a telepath, just like her…
And if he was a telepath…
And if Donovan was the Investor or Project Apple…
Anya stopped breathing as something came to her.
Maybe Donovan did know who she was.
Compensation. He was talking about the Project. He knew who she was. But if he knew who she was - then why let her be close to Damian? Why let her stay at Eden? Why not take her back to the lab from the start?
Unless…
Argh! Why did thinking have to hurt her brain so much?
It would have been far easier to take an impressionable six year old back to a lab, instead of waiting until she was seventeen-actually-sixteen to give her some vague monologue, and still not take her back.
What did Donovan want? What was his goal?
Is it the same as the Director's…?
Anya turned her face out of her pillow, and watched as Bond trotted in her room. She gave him a scratch behind the ears as usual and he huffed in satisfaction. His warm breath tickled her face.
"Do you know what's happening right now?" she mumbled at him, and Bond borfed in response.
"Hm, yeah," she chuckled sadly. "Thought not."
.
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Next chapter Wednesday!